A closeted gay student at an evangelical seminary is a
contrast with a rather obvious clashing point, with the predicted ending being
that the student is kicked out and must find or come into his own identity free
of exterior constraints. Yet The
Seminarian (2010) smartly avoids that road well-traveled. Instead, the
screenwriter risks giving theology a prominent, and perhaps even central place
in the film. The venture is at odds with the bottom-feeder mentality of
Hollywood represented in the film, De-Lovely
(2004), in which Cole Porter’s bisexuality occupies center-stage. Comparing
these two films, irony drips off the
screen as De-Lovely, which is
patterned after a theatrical musical, looks down on Hollywood and yet has a common theme, while The Seminarian is a film through and through and yet takes the high road by supposing
that the viewers can and will stay through some substantive theology, which transcends
social issues and even the dramatic.
Theologically, The
Seminarian, through its protagonist Ryan, wrestles with the relation of God
as love and the love that is in human
relationships. Specifically, if God made us capable of feeling love for another
person so to demonstrate that God is love, then why do we suffer in
relationships in which there is love? Ryan, who is suffering because he is
falling for a guy he met online but keeps postponing a second date, runs the
risk of using theological analysis to
work out a personal problem. He supposes that we suffer in matters of love here
below because God suffers for want of love from us. The unmentioned implication
is that Jesus suffers on the Cross because we have fallen short from loving
God. We have hurt God and so stand in need of being redeemed in order to be
able to love God such that it will not suffer from want of our love. The
suffering servant on the Cross is not just a human suffering, but also the divine suffering. Yet doesn’t this
imply that God is incomplete in some way? God may have created humans so to be
loved by us—hence the hurt from having love denied—but God itself is the
fullness of love. As Augustine and Calvin emphasize in their respective
writings, God is love. This is the subtitle of the film!
So, as in most theological problems worth their salt, an
internal problem can be found and begs to be solved. Although Ryan attempts a
solution in his thesis, the problem of God being complete unto itself is not
addressed in the film. Perhaps God voluntarily created a vulnerability within
the divine when he created humans to love, and thus glorify, it. The second
person of the trinity, the Logos, is a part or manifestation of God since
before the beginning, and we can perhaps find the vulnerability—even if still
when the suffering of God is potential—meaning before the Incarnation of Jesus
as a god-man, fully human and fully divine, and even so fully able to suffer.
In other words, the divine in Jesus suffers too; it is not just his human
nature that suffers. Interestingly, the Gnostic text, The Gospel of Philip, has the divine leave, or abandon, Jesus on
the cross just before he dies, and thus after
he suffers. The question is perhaps whether love that is by its very divine-nature
complete or whole yet suffer. If so, the pain would be from humans not loving
God as we were meant (by God) to; the pain suffered by God would not be from a
want of divine love.
It is significant, I submit, that a Hollywood film would
give viewers such ideas to ponder rather than focus on the
gay-guy-meets-conservative-religionists element of the narrative—a theme which
had already enjoyed pride of place in many films that tease the tension that is
in a society in motion. To be sure, Hollywood is indeed still capable of
dishing out banal sugar to a superficial public, but this makes the choice made
in the screenwriting of The Seminarian all
the more noteworthy and deserving of emulation.
