Geoff

A classmate of mine this summer turned out not only to be a brother in Christ, but also a Thomist. We had a very edifying discussion a few weeks ago about the transcendentals. He said that at one level truth, goodness, and beauty as such are the same thing and really at the ultimate level, because of God’s simplicity, they are God just like being, as such, is God. But at the level of created reality and things that change, he noted, truth, goodness, and beauty are ways of talking about order.

1. Truth is order apprehended by the intellect.
2. Goodness is order apprehended by the will.
3. Beauty is order apprehended by the appetites.

I think this is a remarkable explanation. I’m sure it had antecedents in something he read, but there it is.

Tonight I had an interesting discussion about horror movies…though I rather did most of the talking.

The thing about horror movies is that I’ve always liked the genre because the stakes are high and often the plot devices (magic, technology, absurd levels of psychopathy, etc) are too over the top to be truly capable of influencing the way you think about reality. Thus, a horror film or book is one of the few pieces of entertainment that allows me to experience feelings I don’t often have. It’s not that I’m not easily frightened, it’s that I live within civilization and I’ve rarely been afraid. Truthfully, any adventures I’ve have in the wilderness or with the unpleasantries of crime and violence have all happened so suddenly that any type of fear came later.

Anyhow, my wife and I were at a cafe with a friend and she asked about horror as a genre of art. We discussed it in as Socratic a fashion as we could.

Essentially these were the questions:

1. Scripture commands us not to fear so often, why intentionally be afraid?
2. Well, lets hold off on that, is natural fear ever a good thing? For instance, is it biologically, socially, or personally expedient?
3. Are those commands in Scripture generalized for all human emotion or are they contextual?
4. If they are context based, is it possible to enjoy exploring circumstances that lead to fear without inculcating bad or inappropriately fearful habits in life?
5. Could fear ever be spiritually expedient?
6. Have Christians utilized the genre of fear producing rhetoric or imagery in positive/negative ways?
7. Is it possible that horror genres give rise to emotionally exploring topics usually too difficult to explore quickly? For instance, this scene in the Fly (don’t watch if you’re squeamish):
   
   Essentially the idea is that the human without restraint is every bit as brutal, but also every bit as morally significant as an insect.
8. Does the portrayal of horrific material necessarily entail the endorsement thereof?
9. Can horrific material be portrayed in a way that is not reveling, pornographic, or celebratory of evil? Or could a book or movie portray people celebrating evil, even horrifying evil without the author’s endorsement thereof (one thinks of Scripture)?
10. Horror movies, as a genre, tend to include a great deal of gratuitous nudity, is that a logical conclusion of enjoying the fictional fear of other people?
11. Is it possible to enjoy frightening roller coasters without creating a lapse in virtue because you’re merely simulating fear as a form of pleasure, sort of like enjoying a romance poem when you’re single? 
12. Should we make a distinction between art/film designed to create a yearning for perversion rather than to display it as perverse and thus undesirable? Also, is there not a difference between entertainment that portrays people pretending to do something for plot purposes (pretending to lie/steal/be a villain/take over the world) and something that literally portrays people performing morally illicit acts (various forms of nudity, filmed sadism masquerading as art, etc)?

All of these questions came up. Ultimately, I suppose, we all need a bit less low entertainment in the form of movies and more time with other flesh and blood humans, more books, and more quality high and folk art. But, when it comes to movies, should Christians choose to watch them, is it merely preference that dictates what Christians watch, should they choose to do so?

Josh Porter has thoughts on this topic here and here.

I think anything that draws you away from God, the transcendentals (truth, goodness, and beauty), or the truly human things (virtue, community, contemplation, vocational excellence, etc) is a bad idea.

How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the chosen One,
Bring many sons to glory.

(“How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend, I think.)

This concept appears in a great deal of sermons on the atonement and it seems to revolve around this logic:

1. God cannot look at sin. (Hab 1:13)
2. He who knew no sin (Jesus), became sin… (2 Corinthians 5:21)
3. Therefore God could not look at Jesus on the cross. (Q.E.D.)

The other source for the view comes from Jesus’ cry on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).

I have a longer essay on this topic that deals with instances of this view in recent Bible commentaries. One day I may edit it down for blog consumption, but in summary, I find the view that God the Father turned away from Jesus on the cross to problematic for several reasons:

1. The doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation make this notion fairly incoherent.
2. The whole Bible teaches that God is with the righteous in their suffering.
3. Jesus’ cry is from Psalm 22, which is a prayer written for times of intense suffering and includes this bit of theological wisdom, “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him (Psalm 22:24).” 
4. The idea that God cannot look at sin does not actually mean that God doesn’t see sin. It means that God judges sin.
5. The whole testimony of Paul and Peter on the topic of suffering is that precisely at the moment one seems abandoned by God is when we know that God is with us precisely because Jesus was raised (Romans 8, 1 Peter 2-4, 2 Corinthians 3-5, etc).
6. If the notion is raised in defense of penal substitutionary atonement, let it be recalled that God’s wrath happens when he sets his face against people (Leviticus 20:3). The metaphor is wrong. If the notion is raised because of the sadness of the even for God, let us remember that “it pleased God” to use the message of the cross to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:21). “It pleased” is a word used to indicate something that was considered best or most useful by a king or Lord. This wasn’t something sad that happened, it is something that God planned.

Conclusion:

Thought I fully understand the piety and logic behind the view that God the Father turned his face away from Jesus on the cross and can appreciate the attempt to maximize our concept of Jesus’ suffering on our behalf, the notion is very difficult to support. I prefer to just hum that part of the song.

The medieval church utilized a four-fold system of Biblical interpretation which they labeled the quadriga. It attempted to interpret the Scripture in four senses:

1. Literal- This is the meaning of the passage in the context of the book that contains it.
2. Allegorical- This would be the significance of the passage as a type or allegory for the gospel or some aspect of the Christian life.
3. Tropological- This is the moral sense of the passage, describing how it might apply to the believer today.
4. Anagogical- This is the sense pertaining to the last day and the glories of the new heavens and the new earth.

Though most people would completely and utterly reject such a taxonomy of Biblical interpretation, I do wonder if there is a way to revive this scheme for people.

1. Literal – This is the meaning of the passage in the context of the book that contains it.
2. Canonical Meaning – This explains the passage in its salvation historical context, how it fits into the gospel story, and whether/how it is fulfilled in the New Testament. This also compares the book to other perspectives in the canon. If the collectors of the canon included Chronicles and Samuel, they certainly knew about the utterly different perspectives on David. Thus, it would seem, that this level of significance might compare the historical utility or the rhetorical place of each perspective in the life of ancient Israel and even for the Christian today.
3. Tropological – This explains how the passage is morally relevant to the person today. Perhaps it is a negative example, such as Abraham’s cowardice. It could also be a positive example, such as Paul’s custom of working with his hands. I suppose here too, the use of imagination is important. Believers can see themselves in their struggles as somebody whose faith is akin to those listed in Hebrews 11. Thus, such figures, in their flaws and quests that seem irrelevant to us, become types for our own struggles to conform ourselves to Christ. Another example might be preaching Jeremiah’s message of repentance and then immediately showing how his message was taken up by John the Baptist and Jesus.
4. Eschatological – This is a further exploration of the text’s significance in salvation history, but with a view toward the eschaton. So, you see in stories about God’s judgment (even ones that make no sense considering the New Testament picture of God) a picture of a final righting of wrongs on the last day.

Am I crazy for admiring the quadriga? I’m not crazy for that particular reason. I do find that the quadriga provides a way for people to see multiple layers of significance to Biblical passages without doing violence to the immediate intent of the authors, editors, and framers of the canon.