The Private Life of Henry VIII

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) is on the surface a partial chronicle of the marriages of King Henry VIII of England, but, underneath, the film is on the human instinctual urge of aggression. With unchecked power, such as in the case of an absolute ruler or in the international arena, the instinct can be quite dangerous. In other words, the film demonstrates just how unsuited human nature is to the political type of absolute ruler and a world of sovereign states sans something like what Kant refers to as a world federation that could provide some check and balance to wayward, aggressive states, which in turn are really just human beings.

As Henry VIII, Charles Laughton acts out the foibles that absolute power can render particularly pernicious. When Henry’s privy council informs the king that Katherine Howard, his fifth wife, has been unfaithful in having an ongoing affair with Thomas Culpeper, Henry physically attacks the messenger. At another point in the film, Henry wrestles one of the two wrestlers performing at a banquet just because his wife has just told Henry that one of the wrestlers is the strongest man in England. The cinematography provides a link to the aggression that is the stuff of war, as the shadows of Henry and one of the wrestlers are shown on a wall tapestry of an army.

The attitude of the film toward Henry is one of sympathy, for he is portrayed as a lonely man who feels that he has never had a wife who has really loved him. He says at one point that he would rather live the life of a man above a carriage house with a wife who loves him than that of a king who must remarry for reasons of state. Unlike most accounts of the king, this film portrays him as a victim of a political system in which the ruler must give up so much of a personal life for the state. Although on a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch, the series, The Crown, on Queen Elizabeth II emphasizes how she must sacrifice so much in putting the interests of the Crown above what she wants. Is even a limited monarchy fair to the inhabitants of the role, given how subservient their personal lives must be to the interests of the office?

In The Private Life of Henry VIII, a title which if taken literally is an absurdity, for an absolute ruler, in this case, a king of 3 million subjects, can have no private life, Henry laments there being so many “cooks” in his court who treat him as a breeder. “Refinement is a thing of the past,” Henry tells members of his court at one point. “I’m either a king or a breeding bull.” He asks Cromwell, “Would you make me a false marriage?” Although Cromwell’s reply, “we need more heirs” so as to reduce the change of a power-struggle (i.e., aggression) when Henry dies, Henry’s planned marriage to Anne of Cleves, a German, is to keep the warring Germany and France from involving England in war. Later in the film, Henry remarks that both Germany and France have offered new lands to England in exchange for siding with the one or the other in their ongoing wars. “What’s the use of new territories if it means war, war, war.” Henry wants peace in Europe, and fears that the fighting between Germany and France would someday leave the continent in ruins, but there is no one to help him to stop the aggression.

From the shadows wrestling on the cloth tapestry of an army to having to marry an ugly foreigner to stave off war from spreading to England, to having to keep marrying to get a male heir, the prominence of aggression is highlighted in the film. For much of the film is either showing angry fits of an absolute ruler or what he must give up for England to avoid aggression in the political domain—both in the matter of succession and in international relations. It is no wonder that Henry says to his infant son, “The crown is no smiling matter.”

It is ironic that the film skips over, in ellipses, the (aggressive) beheadings of two of Henry’s wives. Perhaps the narrative’s extension to cover even Henry’s last wife in a reasonable playing time is the reason, but the audience is left only with the sharpening of the sword to intimate the missed state-sponsored acts of aggression against two women (though one of whom was not innocent).  Even in the twenty-first century, executions under state auspices occur. How much more so that must have been the case when absolute rulership was common. Even in the time of Queen Victoria, when British sovereigns were no longer absolute monarchs, Lord Acton famously wrote to an Anglican bishop, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  By 1887, Parliament could act as a check on a monarch, but the titans of industry could still operate as absolute rulers over their workers in demanding very long hours and refusing to improve harsh working conditions. 

We moderns look back at stories of ancient and early-modern kings like Henry VIII as if the problem of abuses of power has since been solved, yet we watch citizen-videos of horrendous police brutality against unarmed innocent people. Human nature has not changed even as political theory has made some progress. It is still true that if we are angels, then surely we must be killer angels. This line comes from Gettysburg (1985), an epic film about the bloody battles at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863 as the Confederate States of America warred against the United States of America in what is more commonly known as the U.S. Civil War. More than seven thousand men died at Gettysburg and 33,000 were wounded. A total of 1.5 million casualties were reported in that war.  This is nothing compared to the casualties in World War II during the “modern” twentieth century, and many more people died from Hitler and Stalin outside of battle.  So I put to the reader, how significant really is the development in political theory since the time of Henry VIII? Have our great minds really come to terms with the salience of the aggressive instinctual urge in human nature in developing types and processes of political organization that take account of our intractable penchant for aggression? 

The Private Life of Henry VIII would have us believe that much of what obligated that king was the need to forestall or obviate fighting. This points both to the salience of aggression in our “social” species and whether ethical obligation (i.e., a duty to the state being put above personal desires) should be relied on as a corrective or constraint.

1917

Roughly a century before 2019, when the film, 1917, was made, the Great War, or what would subsequently be renamed, World War I, was raging in Europe. Incredibly, soldiers had to live in dug-out trenches for years. It is no wonder that the war would bring the Spanish Flu to both Europe and America. In 2020, roughly a century after that flu, the coronavirus pandemic was occurring globally, yet without any war to have incubated that virus. By 2020, Europeans and Americans alike could not have imagined what life must have been like in the trenches. The film’s finest contribution, I submit, is in capturing that context, which in effect does a great deal of the story-telling. The film is thus a good illustration of the role that context can play in story-telling in an audio-visual medium such as film.

Sam Mendes, and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, took advantage of new camera technology, by which I am cameras that are small enough to slither through a narrow trench filled with men and yet with a good picture-quality, and a mile-long trench dug under the supervision of the production engineer to tape shots as long as 5 or 6 minutes as the actors playing Blake and Schofield run through the trenches and then through an abandoned enemy line and on to find a unit in order to relay an order from a general to cancel a planned attack rather than fall into the German trap. The dramatic tension is made real not only because the context is so real—being shot on location—but also because the entire movie is one shot made up of a stitched series of long shots. No cuts within a dialogue to capture two faces. By 2020, that old technique had arguably become stale, and thus possibly disruptive of the suspension of disbelief (e.g., “Oh, that’s right, I’m watching a movie, rather than being fully engaged in the story-world.”).

Incredibly, the grip holding the camera runs ahead of the two protagonists as they (and the cameraman) must carefully navigate between the extras in the trenches, then at a juncture or fork the camera-shot shifts seamlessly to follow the two protagonist. The shifts from holding the camera to connecting it to crane are also seamless. From the perspective of the view, the entire film is one shot.

Although Mendes and Deakins both said after the filming that staying with the two protagonists without interruption through the film allowed the viewer to get to know them better, or more intimately, I contend that getting into the context was an even greater benefit. The film opens with a shot of a beautiful landscape, and as that shot goes on by means of the hand-held camera staying in front of the protagonists as they eventually go into a trench, their world incrementally envelops the view until not even the sky can be scene. Mendes emphasizes the subtle clues that the viewer gets along the way as to the relationship between the two soldiers—they had become friends in spite of coming from different backgrounds—but it is the context itself—the trenches—that really calls out to the viewer’s attention. This is especially so because the camera goes with the soldiers through about a mile of trenches. They way they are laid out, and what the extras are doing in the trenches primarily gives the viewer an authentic view of what life in the trenches was like and even the feeling of experiencing it, albeit as if on tour. For that is what the film really is—an engaging tour at close range and sustained by one continuous shot of 1917 as experienced by soldiers. To the extent that World War I was a war of contending trenches by trench-adapted creatures, then the film is a virtual experiential into 24 hours of that war at close range.  

Christian Films as Distinctly Theological: A Theological Project

Should films with a distinctively religious theme and narrative water down the theological dimension so to be more acceptable in modern, secular society (i.e., a broader range of movie-goers)? The success of films like The Last Temptation of Christ, The Nativity Story, The Passion of the Christ, and Son of God suggest that theology should be embraced rather than tempered if box-office numbers are at all important. The genre should thus be distinguished from historical drama. Screenwriters and directors engaging in the religious genre would be wise, therefore, to distinguish the theological from the historical even in handling religions in which the historical is salient in the theological.

Adam Holz, an editor at the Christian pop-culture site, Plugged In, warns against making a Christian film as a historical piece. “I think we live in a culture right now that isn’t particularly interested in history, so with historical epics, you almost need some {hook}.”[1] That hook is none other than a distinctive take on the theology. Mel Gibson, for instance, emphasized the violence in the Crucifixion in The Passion of the Christ. Last Temptation notably challenged some fundamental theological assumptions. Both films are set in a historical context, but history itself is not the issue. Neither film is a historical biography like the relatively unsuccessful film, Paul, Apostle of Christ.

In the cases of Judaism and Christianity, the concept of salvation history makes it difficult to ply apart the theological as distinctive. God makes a covenant with Israel at a certain point in its history—in the exodus from servitude in Egypt—and Jesus makes the vicarious sacrifice for mankind when he is crucified when Judaea was a province of the Roman Empire. Even just in using the present tense in referring to theologically-rich moments in the past, I am expressing the tension between the theological and the historical—that the theological in such cases is not simply history. Because the Exodus and the Passion Story were both written as faith narratives, they cannot be taken as historical accounts. No historical evidence exists, for instance, of a historical Jesus, and yet, Jesus is depicted as such in the faith narratives of the Gospels. It is indeed difficult to view the theological in such a case as distinct. Even though the historical Jesus movement sought to get back to the historical, I submit that the proper task of the Christian religionist is to uncover the distinctiveness of the theological. This doesn’t mean divorcing it from history; the two are so intertwined in the Gospels. Rather, the task, of which screenwriters and directors can partake, is to depict in moving pictures how theology is its own stuff—how, in other words, it can come into its own even when it is mixing with other domains like history, psychology, science, and even metaphysics.

My favorite scene in The Greatest Story Ever Told eerily depicts the whipped and thorn-crowned Jesus carefully walking down a hallway toward Pontius Pilate. The Roman’s facial expression suggests that something very different—a different, unknown kind of strength—is in the frail man who is remarkably still intact. The strength being depicted so well by the images and the music gives the viewers a glimpse of something distinctly theological. The historical setting is thus transcended; the film is not really about history. This example illustrates how filmmakers and actors can wrestle with the distinctive nature of the theological and how it can be depicted and heard onscreen.  

An elaboration of the distinctiveness of theology, with implications for relations to other domains, is in the booklet, "Spiritual Leadership."

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1. Patrick Ryan, “Christian Films’ Success Deserves More Faith,” USA Today, March 28, 2018.

Agora

Film has the potential to be so engrossing perceptually for the viewer-auditors that the medium can engage the human condition at a deep, unconscious level. At that level, the subconscious protects us in the games we so seriously play.  If done well, film-making crafts a coherent and complete story-world into which the voyageur can be temporarily lodged before returning to the ordinary world that now looks somehow different. The subtle perceptual change can result from part of the viewer’s subconscious having been made transparent, or realized, while in the film’s story-world. As concerns the religious domain, I contend that the medium has only touched the surface in holding a mirror up to ourselves. This is not to say that more anti-religion movies, such as Last Temptation of Christ, are the answer; neither are more palliative, apologist films, like The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told, the way to greater self-awareness for homo religiosis.  On account of their un-questioning, one-dimensionality (even when viewed with 3D glasses!), these films are more alike than their respective leitmotifs would suggest. Most importantly, none of these films raises penetrating questions that assume the validity of “the other side.” Agora does. The film evades easy categorization as anti-Christian or even anti-religion, and is thus able to effectively touch on the human condition beneath its denial and hypocrisies. My question here is how Agora transcends the predictable patina of reactionary films enough to widen our collective consciousness at the expense of hypocrisy and denial at the expense of the true spirit of religion. The key revolves around both subjecting religion (and particular religions) to critique and drawing on religion to supply an anchor. That is to say, religion is both truth and its antithesis.

Nietzsche advocates approaching truth itself as a problem rather than as something whose validity is held to be beyond question (i.e., sacred). Gandhi famously remarked that he used to think that truth (i.e., revelation, as in the Vedas) is God but came to realize that God is truth. To Gandhi, this meant that revelation contrary to non-violence is not of God. A film can subject truth itself as a problem (rather than as a conveniently partisan given) and enhance, thereby, human awareness of just what we are up to when we take ourselves as religious, whether in self (or group) identification or conduct. Once a film gets a grip on a truth and makes it a problem rather than a pallid backdrop, you can bet the river Styx in the human unconscious will be stirred, lapping over its banks as it tries to order its new-found energy gained from the antiseptic of unabashed sunlight.

Agora is based on historical events.[1] The director’s attention to visual accuracy, based in part on the ruins at Pompey, heightens the illusion of realism and the coherence of the story-world—both of which add to the credibility that is necessary to subject truth as a problem. Most importantly, the film holds off in taking sides in the religious disputes and related power-struggles, and thus avoids the pitfalls that go with an overwhelming partisan agenda. Moreover, the film tempers itself from becoming an outright anti-religious flick by highlighting hypocrisies from the vantage-point of “the other side” (i.e., religion) rather than the absence of religion in the human condition.

To be sure, the film will settle on the Christian patriarch Cyril as the antagonist—bent as he is on gaining power in cruel—and thus hypocritical—means. For once a person assumes the mantel of “the end justifies the means” to legitimate one’s dubious acts, the declining slope can be quite slippery indeed, and in a subtle way that can easily evade the person’s notice. Moreover, a bubble of pride can surround the denial rendering the hypocrisy all the more damning.

Lest it be concluded that the film finally reveals itself as an anti-Christian polemic, however, the film’s indictment is hardly straightforward.  Commenting on the film, Alejandro Amenabar, the director, distances his film from easy categorization by partisans as anti-Christian or anti-pagan by pointing out that the pagans were the first historically (as well as in the film) to lash out in violence.  “I really tried not to take anyone’s side,” Amenabar explains. “For most of the movie, you don’t know who is good and who is bad. This is because there are good people and bad people everywhere, among Christians, pagans, Jews.”[2] Agora is thus not as anti-Christian as it might seem in retrospect, and elements in that direction do not define what the film is ultimately about. The distance from overt religious partisanship gives the film the credibility necessary to take on, and thus make transparent, some of the important aspects of homo religiosis that are typically hidden (i.e., in society’s blind-spot).

 At the cusp of the ravaging conflict, Olympius, the pagan high-priest is incensed. Christians—including most notably their patriarch, Theophilus—are just outside the temple/library complex mocking statues of the gods, including most prominently the locally popular god, Serapis. Utterly unbecoming of the maturity typically expected in an elder official, Theon, a mathematician-philosopher and director of the library, backs up Olympius in answering that the insult must be answered (with violence).

Edward Gibbon describes Theophilus historically as “the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood.”[3] In the film, the bishop stands before a crowd, making fun of a stone statue because it cannot move and talk (as if statues of Jesus could). That Theophilus and his successor, Cyril, presume to know the mind of their god is all the more astonishing, considering how childishly they behave as religious leaders. Later in the film (and historically), Cyril incites his protector monks into an anti-Jewish, anti-woman (via Paul’s letters), and anti-pagan frenzy, resulting in the clerics’ murder of Hypatia, an astronomer/mathematician who has the ear of Orestes, the Roman prefect. Historically, the monks skinned her alive. Fortunately, the director went with a sympathetic suffocation followed by the monks stoning her dead body. Love thy enemy is nowhere to be seen in the film, except perhaps when Hypatia frees Medorus, her Christian slave who had just almost raped her before stopping himself.

With their perspective lost or severely undermined even by high principles, the religious leaders on both sides illustrate what can happen when people take their respective religions too seriously. . Generally speaking, the warring religious parties presume they could not possibly be wrong in their chosen routes and how grave the insults are. It is as if any otherwise viable check or “escape value” is somehow circumvented in the human brain from acting a self-correction on the mind itself of a homo religiosis. Hence, religion in the hands of a human can be quite dangerous in that things once lit can easily get out of control without the parties involved having a clue.

Accordingly, the film approaches truth as understood by human beings as a problem rather than as sacred (i.e., beyond the reach of questioning). That is to say, the presumed infallibility and the related loss of perspective are to be made transparent by the film. Perspective and the related attitude of humility is the film’s anchor.

For example, after the first round of violence over the insults to the gods, the pagans are burrowed inside the massive temple-library complex and the Christians are outside, desperately wanting in to retaliate against the pagans and burn the library’s thousands of “pagan” texts. Mortally injured by one of his Christian slaves, Theon admits to his daughter, Hypatia that the insults against the gods did not have to be answered with violence after all. Looking at his injured co-religionists lying around him, he wonders aloud, “How could I have been so wrong?” Before the fight, he had been so certain that the insults must be answered, only to be left astonished at how utterly mistaken he had been. It seems as though religion in human hands is particularly susceptible to this sort of blindness, and rarely open to regaining perspective in a way that shows the person as Creature rather than Creator—as so very partial rather than whole. Put another way, Theon’s self-deprecating acknowledgement of having been so very foolish stands out in the film as a rarely invoked remedy for religious arrogance and presumptive knowledge. No such bar is presented in the domain of philosophy, with Hypatia continuously questioning her own thinking on the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and Orestes admitting when still one of her students, “Perhaps I’m just simple-minded.” Why is it that questioning and self-effacing recognition are so rarely pursued in religious matters?

The sheer rationalizing of bad behavior under Christian illustrates just how toxic homo religiosis can become. “I was forgiven, but now I can’t forgive,” Medorus admits to Ammonius, one of the fighting Nitrain monks, after Jews had attacked and killed a group of the monks. Answering him, Ammonius tries to assuage the younger man’s internal angst as if a recalibrating internal struggle were something to evade at all costs. “Jesus was a god, and only he can show such clemency.” That Jesus preaches forgive seven times seven and love your enemy to his followers rather than just for himself has somehow eluded the monk. Yet he is nonetheless confident enough in his own theological interpretation to assure the former slave, “God wants us here doing what we’re doing.” With such insight into the mind of God radiating out of mere mortals, truth itself scarcely has any room, and is barely even noticed, but in a lowly former slave and two pagan philosophers.

Religion itself is on trial in this film. That the standpoint assumed is religious rather than secular makes the indictment all the more credible and severe.  For example, Medorus’s recognition of his own lack of forgiveness and Theophilus’s reading of part of the Sermon of the Mount—blessed are those who thirst after righteousness—serve as anchors in the film from the Christian standpoint. The excesses in the name of the religion are thus to be measured not from outside in, but, rather, from what the religion could be were its adherents willing to pause, submit their chosen religious ideals and conduct to the rigors of self-questioning, and be willing to be wrong about what they presume they cannot be wrong about. In short, by subjecting themselves to the problem of truth (and themselves as virtual fonts thereof), the stringent hold of denial can, at least theoretically, be broken. However, the religious consciousness must be open to the realization of having gone awry under the cover of masked hypocrisy. Were the film to assume a wholly anti-religious attitude, the defenses of denial would easily gain the upper hand out of sheer defensiveness over impending doom (for the religion). So the religious basis of the film—established for example in Theon’s wonderment at his own stupidity concerning what the gods want as well as in Medorus’s admission of his refusal to forgive—is critical to religious truth being subjected to critique through the medium of the film.

Perhaps the film’s best contribution to expanding human consciousness of religiosity comes in exposing hypocrisies, lapsed judgment, and warped thinking.  For example, whether from a category mistake—treating knowledge as a substitute for (and thus threat to) divine revelation—or the faulty assumption that the presence of statues of deities in the library mean the scholarship must laud the gods and excoriate Christianity—the overzealous Christians ransack the library’s ancient scholarship.

Apparently, Theophilus had not gotten the memo. Many early Christian theologians interpreted the Biblical account of creation aided by Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus.[4] More than two hundred years before Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria based his belief in the immortality of the soul on the Book of Psalms and Plato’s Republic on the final judgment.[5]  In fact, the second-century bishop of Alexandria argues, “Plato all but predicts the history of salvation.”[6] Justin Martyr comes even closer in linking Plato’s work to Christianity by seeing Socrates as a Christ-type and forerunner in being unjustly put to death in defense of Logos, or reason (Jesus being the preexistent Logos incarnate).[7] Similarly, Clement considered Homer’s Odysseus tied to the mast of a boat while passing the alluring Sirens as a foreshadowing of Jesus.[8] Clement read widely in classical Greek literature even as he considered himself as a faithful pupil of Jesus.[9] For all this drawing on “pagan” sources, Theophilus still felt the need to destroy the library in Alexandria, even if that meant acting contrary to what earlier Church fathers would have wanted.

In the film, the needed lens of perspective comes into play as the camera-shot pulls back from above to show the Christian monks clad in black robes scampering about like tiny ants running ancient scrolls to hastily-built fires. The true smallness of the species truly registers, however, only if the viewer recalls that each ant-like creature is presuming infallibly to know the mind of God.

Hypatia’s fixation on the stars also furnishes a benchmark for such, much needed, perspective. She allows herself to consider the possibility that the Earth is just one “wanderer” among others that revolve around the Sun. The panoramic camera-shots of Earth, moving slowly in, down to Alexandria and closer still to the library, show visually just how very small (and unimportant) our playpens truly are. We scamper around like ants in our daily lives, yet we presume nonetheless to act on behalf of our deities.

As “the instigators” were ensconced in the temple/library complex as the Christians waited pensively outside, an old man befitting Jung’s wisdom archetype pierces the grim veil of smoke and mirrors to see into the profound universe that surrounds us. Befitting the simplicity in the stars, the old man high up on a wall speaks of Aristarchus (c. 310-230 BCE), whose heliocentric model places the Earth and the other “wanderers,” or planets, as bodies orbiting the sun. Yet for all the beauty and easy of such heavenly simplicity, even Hypatia has trouble holding onto it, moving on to analyze elaborate alternative explanations that are—as Aristotle wrote of Plato’s system—“beautiful but false.”

Similar to Hume’s thesis in his Natural History of Religion that the human mind has trouble holding onto naked notions of divine simplicity, elaborations and divine contortions pervade through all the partisan warfare in the film as if inevitably, resulting in Christian monks stoning the dead body of innocent Hypatia. Even the sheer tolerance for such hypocrisy attests to just how presumptuous and self-serving we human beings can be in religious affairs even as we convince ourselves that we are acting on lofty principles.

During the fighting that ensues to “answer the insult” to the gods, one of Theon’s Christian slaves shouts over to the old man, “I’m a Christian!” Without any recognition whatsoever of the blatant contradiction, the slave attacks Theon by smashing his head with the butt of a sword. The sad implication is that Jesus had somehow failed, at least with respect to his preached message of turning the other cheek and loving enemies. It is as if the Christians would gladly nail even Jesus to the cross if he crossed them.

Indeed, in his audio commentary on the film, Amenabar says he views Hypatia as a Christ figure. The director says he has “a feeling that Hypatia, somehow, shared characteristics with Jesus. She had disciples, she would evoke feelings of brotherhood, she would preach tolerance, and eventually, and unjustly, due to political reasons, she was martyred and murdered.”[10] Actually, as in the case of Jesus, religious reasons were also in the mix.

In the film and historically, the Nitrian monks are supporters and enforcers, of Cycil’s anti-pagan message (e.g., that Hypatia is a witch). In the film, Hypatia puts herself out there by walking in public to her house. A small group of the monks corner her, and, quite ironically, take her to the bishop’s church in the library complex. Out of love for his pagan former master, Medorus, who earlier admits he does not know how to forgive, suffocates her while the other monks are out scrounging for stones. When they return, they stone Hypatia (presuming her to still be alive). The role of Hypatia as a Christ figure becomes very important to understanding the significance of the murder—and through it, the state of Christianity itself—both in the film and historically (she was actually skinned alive). In killing a Jesus figure, the blind monks effectively discredit their own faith without having a clue of having done so. Like light making its way to Earth from a distant star, the news of the fallen stars had not reached those stars themselves.

In conclusion, Amenabar effectively evaded a polemical film by keeping the viewers from being able to identify the antagonist early on.  Presumptuousness under the subterfuge of religion is the true culprit—the real antagonist. We are human, all too human, scampering around like ants in our “agendas,” and yet in spite of our smallness, and because of it, we presume to know the mind of God. We easily substitute “I know” for what is actually belief, and yet we presume that we cannot be wrong about what we think we know. Put another way, our religions may speak volumes more about us than anything transcending the limits of human cognition and perception and thus inherently ineffable. Interestingly, Hypatia was a neoplatonist in line with Plotinus, who had taught that ultimate reality is beyond the reach of the human mind. His writing anticipates Kant’s distinction between the noumenal (i.e., things in themselves) and phenomenal (i.e., appearance). We mere mortals seem to have an intractable difficulty staying put in the sand box of appearances instead of wandering around informing others of the truth, saying “I have the truth; you just have your opinion.” That truth eludes all of us somehow escapes our landscape of possibilities; we don’t even recognize the stench of our own hypocrisy, and yet we take it for granted that we know even the mind of God. Agora completes the circle, or ellipse, by showing us just how dangerous arrogance perched on stilts can be during a flood. By all rights, our innate sense of omniscience should be underwater, and yet it presumes virtual infallibility. Agora provides cognitive and visual perspective that can cut the stilts down to size and thus enable a more authentic homo religiosis to finally emerge from the dark miasma of empty pride.

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[1] According to the director, this “movie is very much based on true stories.” Alejandro Amenabar, Commentary on Agora.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: The Modern Library, n.d.), Vol. 2, p. 57.

[4] Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1985), p. 61.

[5] Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 5.14.

[6] Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries, p. 44.

[7] Ibid. See Justin Martyr, I Apology 5, 46; II Apology 10.

[8] Ibid., p. 42.

[9] Ibid., p. 38.

[10] Amenabar, Commentary.