and no role play either thanks
This follows on from the "no graven images" issue and goes into one futher aspect of it which is maybe more relevant in the contemporary situation than the drawings-or-sculptures type of image. It's to do with the trend for producing films where an actor plays Jesus, and then for these films to be tolerated by Christians and sometimes even welcomed within the Church as evangelistic tools.
There are different kinds of ways of attempting to make an "image" of God - portraits on paper, stained glass, crucifixes, statues of madonna and child, etc, but they're all just ways of making the attempt to represent God in some physical way. In getting an actor to attempt to play Jesus, it's only one step further - it involves a living human being rather than a statue, but it still falls into the category of making an "image", because it's an attempt to represent him physically, visually - somehow other than spiritually. Whether it's a 2D picture-image, a 3D statue-image, or a living moving human-image, these are all ways of in effect bringing God down into the realm of things which we can get a hold of, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.
Films are favoured as teaching tools because of the way they can convey their message much more powerfully than conventional media. But when you present someone with an actor attempting to play the role of Jesus, the message that that conveys is wrong from start to finish.
It's wrong ultimately because it contravenes the second commandment, but it's wrong too in the sense that it gives the viewer a fatally distorted idea of what this person Jesus Christ is really like. Here's a short, three-pronged explanation of how.
(a) For one thing, although Christ Jesus was of course a real human being just like all the rest of us, yet he was also God, and that's really the vital fact that we need to know about his person. He was, and is, a divine person, even though he has a human nature united to his divine person. The implication of this is that anything that's merely human must inevitably fail to convey the most important thing about him. In fact, I think it's safe to say that any actor who tries to do this, is really behaving blasphemously.
(b) For another thing, I might even say that in one way it's much worse to act as Jesus than to make an image of him from wood or gold or other physical material, because it much more forcibly makes him seem "altogether such a one as ourselves," Psalm 50 - altogether as merely-human and sinful as any one of the rest of us. In itself it is just staggering that any mortal fallen human being would take it upon themselves to impersonate the eternal Son of God in our nature, considering he is absolutely holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens - but quite apart from that, when it is done, it taints our understanding of him with human frailties and sinful imperfections much more subtly and insidiously than mere objects do. You can grant that "ordinary" graven images come from the best intentions of misguided religious people using their natural skills to create a thing of beauty - their creations are still blasphemous and conducive to idolatry, but in themselves they're only pieces of wood and metal or stone, without any moral properties of their own, in contrast to whatever human being you pick in the whole world, whose person must be sinful.
(c) One more reason is that no piece of acting can convey what he was doing in the world at all. Unlike every other human who was ever born, he came deliberately according to his own will, and on purpose to do a work. The details of what he did, and the success of it all, is something that no one can ever convey by attempting to act out any part of his life. It has to be said too that the attempt to do so casts obscurity onto his uniqueness and the fact that he is a real Saviour, and again, it can really only be described as blasphemous.
Finally I'll just refer you to a helpful article on this general issue dating from the release of the "Passion" movie - available here - which I found useful at the time, as something of a lone voice on the huge problems associated with treating that film in particular with approval.
There are different kinds of ways of attempting to make an "image" of God - portraits on paper, stained glass, crucifixes, statues of madonna and child, etc, but they're all just ways of making the attempt to represent God in some physical way. In getting an actor to attempt to play Jesus, it's only one step further - it involves a living human being rather than a statue, but it still falls into the category of making an "image", because it's an attempt to represent him physically, visually - somehow other than spiritually. Whether it's a 2D picture-image, a 3D statue-image, or a living moving human-image, these are all ways of in effect bringing God down into the realm of things which we can get a hold of, changing the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man.
Films are favoured as teaching tools because of the way they can convey their message much more powerfully than conventional media. But when you present someone with an actor attempting to play the role of Jesus, the message that that conveys is wrong from start to finish.
It's wrong ultimately because it contravenes the second commandment, but it's wrong too in the sense that it gives the viewer a fatally distorted idea of what this person Jesus Christ is really like. Here's a short, three-pronged explanation of how.
(a) For one thing, although Christ Jesus was of course a real human being just like all the rest of us, yet he was also God, and that's really the vital fact that we need to know about his person. He was, and is, a divine person, even though he has a human nature united to his divine person. The implication of this is that anything that's merely human must inevitably fail to convey the most important thing about him. In fact, I think it's safe to say that any actor who tries to do this, is really behaving blasphemously.
(b) For another thing, I might even say that in one way it's much worse to act as Jesus than to make an image of him from wood or gold or other physical material, because it much more forcibly makes him seem "altogether such a one as ourselves," Psalm 50 - altogether as merely-human and sinful as any one of the rest of us. In itself it is just staggering that any mortal fallen human being would take it upon themselves to impersonate the eternal Son of God in our nature, considering he is absolutely holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens - but quite apart from that, when it is done, it taints our understanding of him with human frailties and sinful imperfections much more subtly and insidiously than mere objects do. You can grant that "ordinary" graven images come from the best intentions of misguided religious people using their natural skills to create a thing of beauty - their creations are still blasphemous and conducive to idolatry, but in themselves they're only pieces of wood and metal or stone, without any moral properties of their own, in contrast to whatever human being you pick in the whole world, whose person must be sinful.
(c) One more reason is that no piece of acting can convey what he was doing in the world at all. Unlike every other human who was ever born, he came deliberately according to his own will, and on purpose to do a work. The details of what he did, and the success of it all, is something that no one can ever convey by attempting to act out any part of his life. It has to be said too that the attempt to do so casts obscurity onto his uniqueness and the fact that he is a real Saviour, and again, it can really only be described as blasphemous.
Finally I'll just refer you to a helpful article on this general issue dating from the release of the "Passion" movie - available here - which I found useful at the time, as something of a lone voice on the huge problems associated with treating that film in particular with approval.
posted by cath at
9:08 pm
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