Forbidden

The early film, Forbidden (1932), asks the viewers to sympathize with a married politician and his mistress, who together have a “love child,” even though the politician, as a governor, finally follows his conscience and admits to the decades-long affair. Lulu, the mistress, selflessly remains alone and hidden from public view so Bob can climb the political ladder without scandal. At one point, Bob offers to leave his wife, Helen, and leave with Lulu for a shared life somewhere else, but Lulu refuses for the sake of Bob’s career in politics. She places his interests above her own. The film’s attitude toward the “cheater” and his mistress ethically is complex, as is human nature itself. The film presents the complexity that can go with some, but certainly not all, ethical controversies.

Because Lulu acts so selflessly in putting Bob’s interests ahead of her own, the affair comes off as ethical even though Bob’s wife is harmed by her husband’s infidelity. But is she? Bob and Lulu are successful in keeping their affair a secret, so it can be said that what Helen doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her. On the other hand, that Bob is cheating sexually on her is in itself unethical, as it involves infidelity both sexually and in lying to her.

Next to the affair, Lulu’s contrived marriage to Holland, a newspaper editor as ambitious as Hildy Johnson the later film, His Girl Friday (1940), so Holland will not publish a front-page article on Bob’s affair and love-child with Lulu, seems unethical on Lulu’s part. As in the character Ralph Bellamy plays in His Girl Friday, Holland is duped by a woman who loves someone else. In His Girl Friday, Hildy still loves Walter Burns, played by Cary Grant; in Forbidden, Lulu still loves Bob. Holland discovers the truth not only about the decades-long affair, but also why Lulu has just married him. To stop him from exposing Bob, who is by then the governor, Lulu shoots Holland. She is eventually pardoned by Bob, who “comes clean” to his conscience by writing on his deathbed that he has loved Lulu and has a daughter by her. Again selflessly, Lulu throws away the letter just after Bob’s death. She is again acting on his behalf. She really does love him, which makes the affair seem ethical, especially because Helen never learns of the affair, but Lulu’s reason for using Holland by marrying him without loving him is clearly shown to be unethical because she has hurt him greatly. Of course, murdering him is unethical too. Lulu’s role as a mistress and even Bob’s cheating on his wife come out as relatively ethical even though both Bob and Lulu are behaving unethically in their affair.

Typically, characters in a film who are having an affair are portrayed as bad people. Not only is the act portrayed as unethical; the adulterer and the accomplice are viewed as not being virtuous in character. Forbidden presents its audiences with a different take. To be sure, the affair itself is not portrayed as ethical in itself; rather, Bob and Lulu are presented as worthy of sympathy even though they go decades without paying heed to conscience. Were cheating itself, whether on a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or a wife, approached in the film as not being unethical, the film would (hopefully) suffer from not be credible, for infidelity (i.e., lying) in an emotionally intimate relationship is indeed very unethical, even if the lies hold up and thus are not revealed. Lying itself takes a toll on the victim nonetheless, as the person lying can only be so intimate emotionally, and a significant other deserves more.

Therefore, it is interesting that Lulu’s selflessness is portrayed as virtuous even though she is enabling Bob to cheat on his wife. Even Bob comes off as virtuous on his deathbed as he finally bows to his conscience and writes to make public not only the affair, but the existence of his daughter with Lulu. It would be quite different were Bob and Helen to have agreed to have a sexually open relationship, assuming mutual consent rather than Bob claiming to be “polyamorous” as an excuse to have sex separately with emotional attachment or connection with other people outside of the relationship. The film’s complex attitude toward Bob and Lulu ethically does not excuse infidelity itself, which makes the film’s sympathetic portrayal of Lulu and even the affair interesting; it is as if Helen were not hurt at all because she never discovers Bob’s infidelity—though I suspect that on some level she intuits it and so the marriage is harmed nonetheless in terms of emotional intimacy.

A cheater cannot really “have his or her cake and eat it too.” At Bob’s deathbed, Lulu and Bod realize the toll that their ongoing arrangement has taken on both of them—that they were not able to have it both ways—Bob remaining married while he and Lulu continue their relationship on the side. Lulu finally realizes that she had been stubborn in refusing Bob’s offer to leave his wife, and Bob admits that he has been unhappy acting contrary to his conscience. In the end, both characters come off as ethical even though what they did for decades is itself highly unethical. Good people can act unethically.

Love, especially theological love but also falling in love, is neither a virtue nor an ethical principle. The slogan, “All is fair in love and war,” wherein the opposite of love is actually indifference rather than anger, gets at this point. The sort of deep, even profound love that is sourced in an existential connection between two people, or a person and the divine, is not in the domain of ethics. In Forbidden, Bob and Lulu have such a strong connection that they cheat on Helen so not to have to part ways. Holland loves Lulu, though his connection to her is not as strong as Bob’s is; even so, Bob, in feeling betrayed by Lulu because she has married him not out of love, but, rather, so Holland, an ambitious journalist, would not ruin Bob’s governorship by exposing the decades’ long affair, intends to hurt Lulu by running the story on the newspaper’s front page. Generally speaking, if a person is unfortunate enough to fall in love with a person who is in love with another person more, it is better to walk away from the person (and the connection) than to constantly fight against the gravitational force of the beloved’s other, deeper relationship. Being the person “settled for” when the beloved is in love with someone else can result in unethical conduct out of resentment, jealousy, and sheer emotional hurt. Ironically, love can cause good people to act unethically because love is on a deeper level than are ethics, which are oriented to conduct, which in turn is relatively superficial (i.e., on the surface). 

I suppose the bottom line is that human nature craves the sort of existential connection that occurs naturally rather than by will or intention. Magnifying the value of such love, the automatic or natural bonding can be quite rare. Ethical judgment can thus be subject to the strong gravitational pull of what may seem like a black hole at the center of a person who is in love; not even light can escape from such a hole. To face severing such a connection must surely seem like sheer hell; behaving unethically to keep from losing an existential connection or because the connection is unrequited by the other person can seem like a small price to pay in knowingly violating conscience. The medium of film can indeed bring the human condition to light. 

The Exception

The medium of film is capable of bringing nuances of power to audiences, even when the story-world is steeped in autocracy and totalitarianism. The Exception (2016) is such a film, for in terms of power the film shows the relationship between the Nazi government of Germany and (retired) Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Netherlands, which has just been occupied by Germany. The Nazi officials represent the state, whereas Wilhelm’s “soft” power stems from royalty. As Wilhelm’s attendant, Col. Sigurd von Ilsemann, observes, no one is safe from Nazi reprisals, not even Wilhelm and his high-brow wife. So he is not the exception alluded to in the title in the sense of being exempt from raw Nazi power; the night of the long knives demonstrated that no one is safe, even though the former king still means a lot to the German people. The exception refers instead to Capt. Stefan Brandt, and in particular to his moral scruples concerning the Nazi mass murders in eastern Europe. As the story unfolds with a visit by Himmler, Wilhelm becomes an exception in this sense too. Even in a totalitarian autocracy, a surprising amount of soft power can exist in opposition. Taking a moral stand can manifest "soft" power even though an ethic is semi-permeable by power-aggrandizement.

The captain has been sent by General Falkenberg to Wilhelm’s country house in Holland to guard the former Kaiser. Stefan and Mieke, a Dutch Jew who is a maid in the house and is secretly funneling intel to the British via a clergyman in town, fall in love. Mieke discovers that Stefan too has reservations about the Nazis’ brutality, and he goes so far as to keep her outlawed ethnicity a secret and then to help her escape. Even Wilhelm helps her by feigning a heart attack and thus a rationale to be driven seemingly to a hospital. As the story unfolds, Stefan and Wilhelm both turn vehemently though of course secretly against the Nazis, having learned of their utter moral depravity by listening to Himmler at a dinner for him at the house.

That visit highlights the real power dynamics between the Nazi state and the former king. Wilhelm and his wife appease Himmler outwardly because the Nazis have all of the official power; they give the household a financial allowance and allow the former king and his wife to continue living. In exchange, the couple put up a public display of loyalty to the state. Yet even in this regard, the pedigree “soft” power of being royalty allows the couple to refuse to say, “Heil Hitler” back to Himmler in his arrival. Even though Himmler could order the couple to be shot, he does not use his power to force the royals to speak the two words. The film thus illustrates that oppositional “soft” power can exist even in a totalitarian dictatorship; power dynamics are complex rather than linear.

Before sitting down to the dinner, Himmler holds what he calls “a private audience” with Wilhelm to offer the former king the choice of whether to return to Berlin to once again wear his ceremonial crown. Of course Hitler would never tolerate even a ceremonially-based potential rival or threat to his authority as the Leader (Fuhrer), and Himmler reveals to Stefen and Dietrich that the offer is really a ploy to uncover pro-monarchists in order to have them killed. Even though Stefen uses his soft power to inform Col. Ilsemann of the trick, Wilhelm choses not to return to Berlin to take up his crown again before being informed that the offer is a plot. Instead, Wilhelm acts on moral principle to use the soft power in Himmler having given Wilhelm the choice. Taking advantage of being given a choice is another example of soft power even in the context of a totalitarian regime.

Wilhelm makes his decision based on what he learns about Himmler and the Nazis from Himmler himself at the dinner table. To be sure, both men are in perfect agreement on the dangers posed by international Jewry. In 2026, after years of the Israeli holocaustic genocide in Gaza and Israeli blatant theft and outright, unprovoked violence in the West Bank against lawful Palestinian homeowners, someone in the U.S. casually informed me, “more people are going back to Hitler’s writings.” This information at first shocked me, as I would never have believed such a statement in the twentieth century, but then I understood why people—especially young people—would do so. In the film, that Himmer and Wilhelm, a Christian who would exercise restraint on the Nazi state were he to re-assume his crown in Berlin, agree on the dangers poised in terms of power (and money, as, for example, AIPAC represents in the U.S.) lends credibility to the stand. Himmler’s observation that the danger posed only became widely known in the 1920s harkens back to the refusal of rich German Jews to extend their charity to other Germans (as if they constituted another people) during the years when Germany had to pay harsh post-World War I war reparations. 

The two men deviate, however, when Himmler pivots to discuss the need to remove people in eastern Europe to make room for Germans—“other means” would be needed if removal is not sufficient—and to kill retarded and crippled children on a scale beyond the capabilities of injecting poison into the heart because not enough of them would be killed fast enough that way. If allowed to reach adulthood, those people would only continue to be a drain on the resources of state. The revelation of Himmler’s thinking and values leaves Wilhelm and his wife, as well as Capt. Stefan and Col. Ilsemann speechless in dombfoundness; none of them had keine Anung of just how sordid the Nazis are. Mieke too, being Jewish, looks on in a harsh facial demeanor; she knew, for her parents were killed by Himmler’s SS. At the end of the dinner, as Stefan walks past her, she sternly tells him, “They are the rule; you are the exception.” She knows of what his reaction to Himmler’s statements must have been. She would hardly have fallen in love with him had he been “the rule,” though it is admittedly possible to fall in love with someone with dreadful, mendacious values.

Even when Wilhelm and Stefan know that Mieke is an enemy agent, the two men help her to escape. The willingness of both men to help can be interpreted not only as indicative of their admiration for her, but also of their utter rejection of the Nazi party and its horrendous tactics. At the University of Wisconsin in the 2000s, I sat in on a course on Nazi Cinema (in contrast to Stalin’s blatantly patriotic Soviet cinema). The eighty-year-old German professor, who flew to Wisconsin every autumn to teach, had been forced to go to a Hitler youth camp, and he had seen Hitler in person. Even though the professor told me that Hitler was not behaving like the angry, sullen man typically pictured in the footage selected by the Allies to air over decades, that the Nazis murdered 19 million Slavs in eastern Europe—in a myriad of non-combative villages and towns rather than in battle—is a relatively unknown fact that best attests to the Nazi mentality.

In the film, Wilhelm leaves the dinner is silence to chop wood so he can reconsider whether to accept Hitler’s “offer” of resumed kingship, now that Wilhelm knows how horrendously different the Nazis are. Even though Stefan has informed Col. Ilsemann that the offer is a ploy—a “deception” in Himmler’s own words—word has not yet reached Wilhelm by the time he decides to stay at his country house with his wife for the rest of his life rather than be in any way associated with the government. Because Wilhelm wants nothing more than to resume his kingship, his decision illustrates just how much sway ethical principles can have against other motives. To be sure, such principles are semi-permeable, in that they can be broken through in the quest for power or money, for instance, but that they have this quality renders Wilhelm’s stance all the more worthy of human nature. Just as power-aggrandizing and economizing (e.g., greed) can break through ecologizing (semi-permeable) constraints (e.g. the equilibrium state of an ecosystem in nature), so too power-seeking and greed can act as rockets shooting through the higher net of ethical values.

As Al Pacino says at the Devil in The Devil’s Advocate (1997), “Free-will, it’s a bitch!” In The Exception, Stefan uses his free-will to risk asking Col. Ilsemann whether a solder can have a loyalty higher than to one’s country; Ilsemann points out that Germany may not be their country any longer, as it belongs to the Nazis with whom both men reject, albeit in the silence of their own hearts. Wilhelm is able to use the “soft” power of royalty to reject Himmler’s offer, as Wilhelm is given a choice, even though Himmler then having Wilhelm killed is easily imaginable.

Finally, Mieke uses her free-will to marry Stefan, if he survives the war; she is, after all, pregnant with his child. She has been willing to open herself up to his seed in part because he is the exception rather than the rule in Nazi Germany. Being the exception is all about values and free-will. To be willing to fully open up to, and take hold of romantic love without too much emotional harm, a person must sense congruent values and therefore trust in another’s free-will so as not to be constantly looking over one’s shoulder for the roof to suddenly fall in from a searing, heedless, and utterly selfish betrayal. It comes as no surprise in the film to see Himmler in a bedroom in the country house with a half-naked woman, who, as Wilhelm’s wife coyly observes in greeting Himmler when he arrives, is not Himmler’s wife; Himmler just looks on, wholly unperturbed in his visage, and then says he is tired from the journey and wants to go to the bedroom that has been prepared for him. The ecologizing, semi-permeable quality of ethical stances—whether the ethical is to be valued or not—is  a matter of character mixed with free-will. It is a fool’s errand in college (e.g., in vocational business schools) to suppose that ethical conduct can be imposed through teaching.

The Physician

In the 11^th century, Christians were not welcome in Persia, so in the film, The Physician (2013), Rob Cole, a Christian, pretends to be Jewish in order to travel from Western Europe to study at the medical school of Ibn Sina, a famous physician in Isfahan. He eventually reveals his religion as that of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” when he is on trial before the local imam. The Jews there doubtlessly feel used and betrayed. As interesting as interreligious controversy can be, I contend that the nature of Cole’s crime is more significant from the standpoint of religion itself. In short, the film illustrates what bad effects are likely to come from committing a category mistake with respect to religion and another domain. Whether conflating distinct domains or erasing the boundary between them, category mistakes had diminished the credibility of religion as being over-reaching by the time that the film was made. As for the matter of interreligious differences, the sheer pettiness by which the three Abrahamic religions that share the same deity have made mole hills into untraversable mountains is hardly worthy of attention, whereas that which makes religion as a domain of phenomena unique and thus distinct from other, even related domains, is in need of further work. The film could have done more in this regard.

Rob Cole’s crime is the desecration of a human corpse by dissecting it. It may be that dissection does not count as desecration because the study is done systematically and for the beneficial outcome of progress in medical science, but this argument is not even presented to the imam in the film. Even though the old man agreed to the procedure just before he died in Ibn Sina’s hospital (and medical school), and Cole’s purpose was to save lives by discovering human organs, the imam sentences not only Rob, but also Ibn Sina to be executed for having “violated Allah.” Presumably the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish deity is against progress in the science of medicine such that sickness is not so often a death-sentence. Holding to a dogma nonetheless demonstrates one of the fallibilities of the human mind when it enters the domain of religion. It is not as if Cole’s dissection and study would cause death and destruction—two things that are typically associated with evil. In fact, Rob, with Ibn’s assistance, which alone is an interesting role reversal, successfully operates on Shah Ala ad Daula, the king of Isfahan, using the knowledge obtained during the dissection of the corpse. That operation in turn enables the Shah to survive the next day, when his presence is needed as his army sets out to fight a radical Islam-only invading force to which the local imam is allied. That force is against the presence of the Jews in the city, and would certainly against the Shah pardoning Cole and Sina. In short, the Shah was too secular and tolerant for the imam and the related invading king.

The “religious” rationale for finding Cole in violation of Allah’s law should be treated as more problematic in the film. Cole, Sina, or even the Shah could engage with the imam during or after the “trial” on the validity in religious terms of the injunction against medical science advancing by study of human internal-organs, for what is scientific—and thus of that domain—is being claimed by the domain of religion. Hence it is assumed by everyone in the film except for the medical student and his teacher that religion can legitimately override medicine even in the domain of medicine.  I contend that this overreaching is invalid—it is akin to an invading army taking over a city—because religion’s coverage should fit within its borders. In other words, religion has primary jurisdiction over that which is distinctly religious. The overall domain of a religious deity holds sway within the religious domain, just like a king’s authority only extends throughout his kingdom even if he claims to be ruler of the world. Kings of other kingdoms could rightly object to the latter claim by insisting that another king’s authority extends only to the borders of that king’s realm. This does not invalidate the meaning of “ruler of the world” within that realm, just as “God is omnipresent and omnipotent” has meaning in the religious domain even though science and other domains, including metaphysics, psychology, and history, do not yield to the authority that is in the religious realm. Paradoxically, by overreaching, the credibility of that authority is diminished even within the religious domain. In the film, the validity of Cole’s dissection of a willing corpse is stronger than that of the religious decree against “desecrating” human corpses regardless of any benefits from it in other domains. The egocentric over-reaching of religion can be likened to a bully, who, once made transparent, is typically viewed as less than credible.

The gap between whether Cole (and Sina) should be applauded or punished is so large that they can be said to manifest from different social realities. Cole and Sina heal the Shah as a result of Cole’s dissection and his teaching thereof to a very enthusiastic Sina, yet the local imam ignores or dismisses the value of this progress and its benefit—perhaps not just for religious reasons as he is politically against the ruling Shah. Cole utterly dismisses the validity of the Imam’s ruling and sentencing on the basis of Cole and Sina having offended or violated Allah. Whereas Cole and Sina may have been religious, the narrow, and one-sided ruling makes sure that even if the two men survive, they would never be fully religious again. Running a hospital as a physician back in London at the end of the film, Rob Cole surely looks at religion itself more skeptically than he did before hearing the imam’s narrow ruling.

The upshot is that confining the authority and validity of religion to its own domain so it does not over-reach with the presumption of legitimately being able to overrule the innate authorities in other domains in those domains is a good thing. This does not mean that the distinctly religious belief that a deity is sovereign without limitation is rendered invalid in the religious domain. Likewise, claims that everything is political and religion is really just psychology (e.g., Freud) or a function of means of production (e.g., Marx) are valid only in the domains of psychology and economic philosophy, respectively. Religionists are not the only guilty party in terms of over-extending the authority of their domain onto others even over the authorities in those domains. Within a given domain, I contend that the substance and criteria of the domain is worthy of respect in itself rather than as a subsidiary of another domain’s substance and criteria. Disrespect in this respect may even contribute towards a mental habit that thwarts interreligious dialogue and peace. Even respect between people may be diminished.

In the film, Hope Gap (2019), Grace attempts to use the Roman Catholic Church’s religious injunction of legal divorce to undercut the validity of her separated husband’s request for a divorce. Edward’s request is unhinged from any reality, Grace insists (as if by even her faith she is omniscient with respect to realities). That she has been contemplating suicide suggests that she may be the person untethered from a viable reality. From the standpoint of a legal system of a country, the religious dictate of one party of a marital separation should not be allowed to overrule a law that permits divorce even if the counterparty (Edward) is religious. In the office of a lawyer, the substance and criteria of the law should prevail, just as the substance and criteria of distinctly religious meaning should prevail in the office of a priest, imam, minister, or rabbi. Those four functionaries have much more in common, being in and of the same domain, than they may realize. In fact, they could help each other to resist the power-aggrandizing temptation to overreach their religious authority in usurping the authority of authorities in other domains. Then the substance and unique criteria of the religious domain of human experience would be more respected. At the very least, humility and self-discipline—“coloring within the lines”—naturally earns respect.

Lest this critique be misconstrued as secular in nature, the upshot is that the stuff “within the lines” of the religious domain (i.e., distinctly religious phenomena, such as religious meaning that does not depend on history or science, as is not reducible to ethics or psychology) deserves to be uncovered from underneath the weeds that have hitherto been allowed to grow and even thrive from seeds that have drifted over from other gardens. In the film, the imam may not even understand what desecration means in a religious sense, and yet he is quick to interlard a religious belief as if it deserved to be decisive and thus hegemonic in the political and (related) jurisprudential domains. Similarly, I wonder whether people who deem themselves capable of accusing others of committing abominations as if the word itself warrants death know that the word only means “disliked by God.” This is distinct from “hated by God,” of which evil unequivocally qualifies. To be sure, in the religious domain, such activities that are disliked by the deity are not recommended, for the actual point is likely to obey God, but the commonly held dire connotations of the word as if dislike were equivalent to hate misses the mark and yet precisely such “making mole hills into mountains” has given rise to much suffering and harm historically. The sheer presumptuous of ignorance and what it feels entitled to, is, I suppose, hated rather than merely disliked from the perspective of the very condition of existence, or Creation, even when that condition or ultimacy is personified as a deity with divine attributes even if they anthropomorphic in appearance. Film has amazing potential as a medium through which such thoughts can be projected and put in dialogue with some depth and extent beyond what is typically done by filmmakers who want to hurry a plot as if skipping a stone quickly on the surface of a lake.

The Professor and the Madman

The film, The Professor and the Madman (2019), is based on the true story of James Murray, the editor of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the 19^th century, and William Minor, who contributed over 10,000 entries. Minor, who suffered from schizophrenia, was at the time a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum for having killed Jack Merrett under the recurrent delusion of being chased. In the film, this narrative serves as the basis to explore whether even people who think they are unredeemable can nevertheless be redeemed, and thus freed, from their own guilt.

Once at the asylum, William Minor seeks to atone by making the injustice he has committed in committing the murder by making it up to the murdered man’s wife, Eliza, and her children by directing that all of his income go to them. Initially, Eliza refuses this offer, but facing crushing penury, she eventually accepts the income. Incredibly, guard Muncy of the asylum personally sees to it that the family is helped by the money. This generosity is a reflection of the goodness of Minor in spite of his unimaginable suffering from schizophrenia. Indeed, Minor even volunteers to teach Eliza how to read so she in turn could teach her children so they could escape from poverty. Although Minor is correct that he owes the widow and her kids money enough to survive, he is wrong that he also owes them the gift of reading. He is clearly going the extra mile.

Even so, he still believes he cannot be redeemed for his sordid act of murdering an innocent man, even though he has been found innocent by virtue of insanity. This verdict should be enough for Minor to let go of his guilt, for he is well aware of the role that his mental illness played in his heinous act. He is arguably too hard on himself, and Eliza comes to see this. In fact, she comes to love him for it. She writes down “If love…then what?” and hands the card to him. The open-endedness of the unknown expanse that opens up for a culprit and a victim once the latter has forgiven the former, who as gone the “extra mile” in making atonement, is, I contend, the most important message in the film. Minor’s 10,000 words that he donates to Murray pale in comparison; the matter of the heart is much more important, and I make this claim as an intellectual and scholar who loves words, especially when they are set in relation to each other.

It is ironic that a psychotic person goes so far beyond what the overwhelming number of “sane” criminals do in making amends to victims even to the point that a person who loved a victim comes to love the character and sense of obligation and contrition of the victimizer. Such atonement is so unusual that it is easy to feel empathy for Minor when he states that he still thinks he is unredeemable. It is not his mental illness that is responsible for his refusal to let himself accept that he can be free from his guilt, and thus redeemed; rather, it is the value that he places on being redeemed. No mention is made of a redeemer; Minor is faced with the heavy choice and responsibility of deciding whether he has atoned sufficiently to be redeemed. Indeed, his strength of character is such that he can be trusted, in spite of his mental illness, with the decision of redemption that God justly places on his shoulders.

So the movie ends with the open-ended question of where a victim and one’s victimizer go from hatred and fear, respectively. Where do they go in the freedom that the lack of vengeance and guilt open? In the film, Eliza even kisses William. Eventually, he is deported back to America, where he continues to supply Murray with words (through the letter v; Murray himself died when he was on the t’s). How far they get with the massive project is dwarfed by William Minor’s project of the heart by which he is redeemed even though he won’t accept it. Free-will, and what we do from using it, matters in terms of redemption, and "love thy enemy" is utterly transformative such that God, which is love, can be present even in the relationship between a murderer and the widow of the victim. This is perhaps the overriding message of the film.

Golda

In introducing a screening of Golda (2023) at Yale, Shiri Goren, a faculty member in the university’s Near Eastern Languages department, told the audience that “the non-Israeli, non-Jew Helen Mirren” plays Golda Meir in the film. Rather than evincing gratitude that the excellent actress would play an ugly character, the implication is that an actor can, or even worse, should only play characters of the actor’s own background. Goren’s basic ignorance of the craft of acting belies her credibility in teaching a course called Israeli Society in Film. That another of her courses was Israeli Identity and Culture may explain why her knowledge of film was eclipsed, namely by an ideological agenda or orientation. I contend that underlying her delusion concerning acting (and film, moreover) is a much larger problem: that of the artificial monopolization by one group identity. In actuality, each of us has more than one group-identity, so to allow one to envelop one’s very identity is problematic.

The craft of acting lies precisely in being able to inhabit a character in spite of the fact that its background is other. Hence actors do research in advance on a character to be played, whether it is fictional or nonfictional. Such research includes, for example, the character’s occupation and even the location where the character lived or is set to live in the film. Emotional work is also involved as an actor considers what within oneself can be drawn on in playing a given character. Johnny Depp, for instance, said in an interview that he regularly draws on more than one person (or character) in coming up with how to embody a character. To claim, therefore, that an actor can only inhabit characters having the actor’s own background is to deny what acting is, namely, inhabiting someone else. No one would criticize Depp for not having grown up in a crime family in Boston in playing Whitey Bulger in Black Mass (2015). In fact, quite the contrary. That I realized that Depp was the actor playing the role only well into the film attests to the actor’s skill precisely in inhabiting a character of a personality and background so different from Depp’s own. Moreover, that Depp had such versatility as to be able to play a pirate, the owner of a chocolate company, and a serious mobster demonstrates just how wrong it is to claim that an actor can only play a certain kind of character—one in line with the actor’s own background. This is such an obvious point concerning acting that that any claims to the contrary must surely involve false-belief and even delusion: qualities that ideology can have, according to Raymond Geuss in his book, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School.

An ideology, such as one stemming from a suffocating group-identification that seeks to foist itself over a craft such as acting, can be “dependent on mistaking the epistemic status of some of [the ideology’s] apparently constituent beliefs.”[1] In other words, an ideology may hinge on a false-belief. Indeed, the human mind seems to be vulnerable to circuit-failures as an ideologically important false-belief is presumed to be true as if it could not be false. In other words, the mind doesn’t seem to do a good job at flagging its own false beliefs especially if an ideology being held is dependent on them. Hence, a group-identification ideology can get away with utterly misconstruing the craft of acting. Geuss even includes delusion as pertaining to ideology pejoratively.

I contend that delusion pertains to an ideology in which one group-identification is established monopolistically for an individual. To be sure, Geuss insists that “(h)umans have a vital need for the kind of ‘meaningful’ life and the kind of identity which is possible only for an agent who stands in relation to a culture.”[2] The kind of identity is here that which is informed by a person’s relationship to a culture. Each of us is connected to more than one cultures, and, relatedly, more than one group-identity applies.

I’m a Midwesterner; that’s my ethnicity. Identifying as an American in terms of culture is a looser or more general and even secondary ethnicity for me, whereas my group-identity as an American is foremost politically. My vocational group-identity as a scholar goes beyond vocation, and I have more than one religious group-identifications informing my religious identity. Other group-identifications apply to me as well. My racial group-identification as a Caucasian, or “White,” is actually not one that I an conscious of very often, so other people who are constantly referring to themselves and others by race strike me as unnaturally obsessed with the racial group-identification at the expense of others.

Seldom do we realize that one’s group-identification and that of another person may be different not only on the same axis (e.g., being of different racial groups), but also in emphasizing different types. One person might say, “I’m a Black person,” and the hearer might reply, “I’m a Catholic.” The types, or bases, of the two group-identifications are different: race and religion, respectively. This essentially relativizes a person’s favorite basis because others could alternatively be the person’s favorite. The choice seems arbitrary. The hearer could have replied, “I’m an American.” It is not self-evident that a Black person should view oneself primarily in terms of race rather than nationality (or religion or ethnicity, which is yet another category rather than isomorphic with race). More than one Black person has told me that only in leaving the U.S. and living in the E.U. has that person been able to de-prioritize his race-identity to other bases on which to self-identify. It seems to me, however, that a person has more control over which basis upon which to predominately group-identify, even if one basis is foisted upon oneself by a group to which one is accustomed to identifying with primarily.

Because each of us has several group identifications, any one of which a person could perceive as primary, allowing one to monopolize one’s group-identity temporally or geographically can be seen as dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In getting into character, a good actor does not ignore the subordinate group-identifications. In the case of Golda Meir, she was actually from the Ukraine in the Soviet Union, so the claim Helen Mirren’s portrayal suffers because the actress was not Israeli can be understood to be fallacious. In the film, Golda tells Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State, that during her childhood in the Ukraine, people would beat up Jews in the streets with impunity. The character doesn’t even identify mostly as an Israeli. Furthermore, her ethnic and religious group-identity as a Jew, while salient, does not monopolize her self-identity.

In fact, the film shows actual television footage of Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat in which Golda says, “As a grandmother to a grandfather, . . .” She could have said, “As a Jew to a Muslim,” or “As an Israeli to an Egyptian,” or “As a politician to a politician,” but her group-identification as a grandmother is on top at that moment. I submit that in her depiction of Golda Meir, Mirren draws significantly from her own group-identity as a woman and a mother.

Three times in the film, Golda empathizes with the typist whose husband is fighting in the war. It is clear from her facial expressions that Mirren is having the character react as a woman to another woman’s experience. Golda is even crying when she watches her assistant inform the typist that her husband has been killed. In listening to a soldier being attacked in battle, Mirren has Golda react as a mother would: to the boy’s anguish. Even in urging Henry Kissinger to eat borscht, a Ukrainian soup, Mirren portrays Golda as a mother—admittedly, as a very Jewish mother. But even in that scene, Golda’s Jewish group-identification is not the only one in play.

To be sure, Mirren does a great job in playing Golda’s specifically Jewish group-identity.  In a scene in which Golda is talking with Ariel Sharon, then a general, she tells him that all political careers end in failure. She even adds fatalist, “huh,” at the end of the sentence. Mirren portrays Golda’s Jewish ethnicity most stridently and explicitly along with Golda’s identification as a mother in the scene in which Kissinger is eating the soup.  As an immediate context, Golda makes explicit the primacy of being Jewish in Israel to Kissinger (e.g., “In Israel, we read right to left”) and even says that her cook is a survivor (i.e., of the Holocaust. It is the posture that Mirren adopts while watching the Jewish American eat the Ukrainian soup that may be Mirren’s most Jewish statement, and, given her skill as an actress, she didn’t need to be Jewish herself.

So, the rather pedestrian, non-intellectual comment of the faculty member at Yale that the non-Israeli, non-Jewish actress would be playing Golda Meir in the film says more about the sordid motive to impose an ideology containing a false-belief (and a delusion) as a weapon than it does about the actress or her (ability to play the) role. The group-identifications of Golda Meir that Helen Mirren uses most are actually as a woman and a mother. Even in this respect, whether Mirren was a mother at time of filming is not terribly important because her craft would have included the ability to play a mother regardless. To be sure, being able to draw on a common background or group-identity is an asset for an actor, but the viability of the craft does not depend on having a common background. That any given character has more than one group-identity makes it more likely that an actor can draw on personal experience in some respect and thus have an experiential connection with the character. This is not to say, however, that such experience is necessary, and even less that experience in one of the several group-identifications of a character is necessary. Besides, the most obvious group-identification of a character to an observer may not actually be primary either to the character (or the historical person on which the character is based) or to the actor in portraying the character. Part of Mirren's talent may be to assess which of a character's group-identities really drives the character, and, relatedly, which is decisive in pulling off the role. As observers, we bring our own ideological agendas, and this is especially problematic if we allow one of our group-identities a monopoly over our self-identity.

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1. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 13.
2. Ibid., p. 22.

The Case for Christ

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The journalist attends a debate between two scholars of religion, Singer and Habermas, on the historical Jesus movement in Biblical hermeneutics—that is, on what the Gospels, as faith narratives, can tell us about Jesus as a historical person. Singer denies that information in a faith narrative, or myth, can be taken as historical evidence. Logically, to treat a religious text as a historical account is to commit a category mistake (i.e., ignoring the distinction between two categories). For one thing, the incorporation of history into a faith narrative serves religious points, which are of a higher priority than historical accuracy. In writing a religious narrative, the writer’s intent is not to provide a historical account; historians do that.

For example, the synoptic Gospels differ on when the Last Supper takes place relative to Passover. Different theological points are being made. Jesus being crucified during Passover likens him to the animals sacrificed in Exodus. Jesus is the Lamb of God. Were the authorial intent to provide a historical account, this theological point could not be made if the historical Jesus was crucified after Passover. It makes sense that a writer who is religious would be more faithful to his theology than to history. The Gospel writers selectively appropriated historical accounts without verifying them as historians would have done. In fact, the writers would even have been inclined, given how important their faith was to them, to take sayings passed on orally as unfettered (i.e., unbiased) historical accounts.

A Gospel writer (and Paul) could have written things as if they were historical to make theological points. Paul’s miraculous experience on the road to Damascus provides the man who had prosecuted Christians with status in Jesus’ inner circle. The historical nomenclature tends to crystalize over centuries as the historical “fact” eclipses Paul’s religious reason for portraying the miracle as having really happened (i.e., as an event in empirical history). That is, the authorial intent in making an event seem historical by using historical nomenclature is often overlooked by faith-readers, especially in an era in which empirical facts are the gold standard covering even religion. Therefore, Singer’s position is that the Gospels cannot be assumed to be reliable sources of historical information.

Habermas answers Singer by claiming that the Gospels are indeed reliable sources of historical events. As a public event, the crucifixion would have had witnesses—sympathizers and critics. Habermas points out that an atheist school of thought “now believes that the earliest known report of the resurrection was formed no later than three years after the Cross.” Habermas cites a book by Gurd Luderman, which discusses the report. Unlike Singer, Habermas believes that the obvious faith-interest of the sympathetic witnesses in the resurrection having really occurred would not cause them to lie. That many witnesses saw Jesus after he resurrected adds to Habermas’ confidence.

It is interesting that in using the word, really, to refer to history, I have just committed a common error wherein even in religious matters, the historical criteria trumps, or is more real, than religious truth, whose reality comes to us by symbol, myth, and ritual. The religious truth of the resurrection is contained in the Gospels, whose theological truths transcend history, just as the Creator transcends Creation.  

Implicit in Habermas’ position is the rhetorical question: why would people of faith lie? Why would people deeply motivated by religious truth violate truth itself by fabricating their historical accounts of Jesus after his resurrection? Habermas would likely dismiss the “ends justify the means” rationale for doing bad things for a good outcome. Fundamentalists may be particularly susceptible to this way of justifying doing bad things in service to a faith even though an objective observer would see the hypocrisy. The two scholars may thus be debating, at least in part, how human nature interacts with religion.

The journalist’s initial position rephrased is that if the resurrection did not happen historically (rather than only in the faith narratives), then religious truth in the faith narratives would have no value. In other words, faith serves history rather than vice versa in the religious domain. To be sure, it can be argued that if the historical Jesus did not “really” resurrect in physical body and spirit, then his true followers will not resurrect after their physical death. The religious truth necessitates the historical event, yet no reliable (i.e., independent of the faith narratives) historical account exists. The journalist and Habermas are thus diametrically opposed.

Historians overwhelming contend that the Jesus passage in Jewish Antiquities, written by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who covered Jesus’ period in Judaea, was actually added subsequently in order to include Christian faith claims that go beyond what a historian would include in writing history, and what a Jew would believe and thus proselytize through writing “history.” The journalist would strongly agree that historical accounts that are separate from faith narratives can be susceptible to interpolated (i.e., injected) faith material that is portrayed as historical. Josephus mentions Jesus and his followers, though “close in style and content to the creeds that were composed two or three centuries after Josephus.”[1] Specifically, Josephus’ uses of “the Greek verb forms such as aorists and participles are distinct in the passage on Jesus.” They are “different than the forms that Josephus uses in other [Pontius] Pilate episodes, and these differences amount to a difference in genre.”[2] The passage on Jesus is close to the Gospels, which are faith narratives, whereas the other events involving Pilate are written in verb forms used by historians to write histories.

A Jewish historian such as Josephus would not have been inclined to include Christian faith-claims, especially as part of a historical account. For example, the parenthetical () “if indeed one ought to call him a man” is not a historical fact and not something to which a Jew would subscribe. Furthermore, Josephus did not use the literary device of parentheticals except in his passage on Jesus. This suggests that a later Christian editor or copyist may have inserted material within sentences to include elements of the Christian faith (even inserting phrases within sentences distinct from the sentences’ contents) morphed into historical content by means of historical nomenclature (i.e., using words that make something seem historical). That is, the interlarded additions in the passage on Jesus conflate two distinct genres, faith narratives and historical accounts.

As a Jew and a historian, Josephus would not likely have written that Jesus was a teacher to people willing to “accept the truth.” This is not a historical statement, for truth is not a historical event. This applies also to the statement, “He was the Messiah.” Finally, the statement that after three days, Jesus was “restored to life” (i.e., resurrected) is not something that a Jew would take as a historical event.[3] Interestingly, not even Habermas sites Josephus; rather, the religious scholar relies on witnesses in the Gospels, thus conflating the two genres: myth (i.e., faith narratives) and history.[4] Singer points out that taking witnesses in a faith narrative as providing historical evidence is invalid by the criteria of history.

In short, Josephus would indeed have been a very unusual Jew had he believed these faith claims to be valid; he would have been a deficient historian had he viewed them as historical accounts rather than faith claims.

Justus of Tiberius, a rival historian, did not include Jesus even though this historian “wrote in great detail about the exact period of Tiberius’s reign that coincided with Jesus’s ministry.”[5] Therefore, even the validity of Josephus’ mention of Jesus as a historical person living in the Middle East can be contested. Perhaps the entire passage of Jesus was implanted by a later editor or copyist sympathetic to Jesus. If so, then no historical record exists to support the claim that Jesus existed historically rather than only in the faith narratives. We could not know whether Jesus’ resurrection really happened by appealing to historical evidence (e.g., witness accounts separate from those in the Gospels).

After the debate, Habermas and the journalist sit down for a coffee. “How can anyone talk about historical evidence for a resurrection when the resurrection is by its very nature a miracle?” the journalist asks. “We all know miracles can’t be proven scientifically.” The source of a miracle is outside of Creation, and thus its natural laws and processes. “We don’t have to prove a miracle in order to prove the resurrection, Habermas replies. “You just have to show that Jesus died and was seen afterwards.” Interestingly, Habermas uses the word show rather than prove. This may suggest that he has already ceded some ground on how difficult it is to prove that an event happened empirically two thousand years ago. The journalist seizes on this vulnerability of historical studies. “Right,” he says, “but the very people who claimed that they saw him are religious zealots. In my line of work, we call those biased sources.” We are back to the problem of the selective use of history in faith narratives, and in taking Josephus’ historical account as valid historically.

Habermas dismisses the problem of biased sources and declares, “I care about the facts.” The journalist cleverly hinges on the problem of what constitutes a fact. “So what are the facts, Dr. Habermas? The resurrection narrative is more legend than it is history.” To be sure, that the resurrection is in a myth does not in itself mean that Jesus did not resurrect historically (i.e., it was a historical event). Even if neither the witnesses in the Gospels nor even Josephus’ historical account suffices under historical criteria, historical events have surely gone unreported by historians. In effect, the journalist is using his stance in the discussion as a fact. Habermas spots this fallacy and replies, “Really? Not according to historical records. Did you know that we have a report of the resurrection from specific eye-witnesses that dates all the way back within months of the resurrection itself? That source also adds that five hundred people saw Jesus at the same time.” However, because Habermas is relying on witnesses in a faith narrative, or myth, we cannot count them as historical witnesses. In other words, he is conflating the two genres and not offering a counterargument to the problem of biased sources. Even the journalist falls victim to conflating the two genres.

Replying to Habermas, the journalist says, “That’s still just one historical source—the Bible.” Habermas replies, “Wrong, there are at least nine ancient sources both inside and outside the Bible confirming that disciples and others encountered Jesus after the Crucifixion.” Notice that Habermas refers to ancient sources inside the Bible. The word ancient is a historical term. Habermas is likely invoking Josephus’ historical account, which as discussed above is problematic in itself as a historical source. If the scholar is counting other historical accounts, he would have to confront the consensus among historians that Josephus provides the only mention of Jesus in a historical account (as well as the consensus that Josephus’ account is problematic as a historical source). It would be presumptuous of Habermas as a religious scholar to claim superiority over historians in deciding what constitutes a valid historical account (i.e., by criteria in the discipline of history). Would the historians then have superiority over scholars of religion on religious questions?

Pointing to the problem of biases sources, the journalist claims that the disciples and others who encountered Jesus after the Crucifixion “were already followers of Jesus.” This gives us an idea of what would be needed to have a valid historical source. Such a witness would have be verified as independent of Jesus and his followers, and mentioned in a historical account, which itself would have to be authenticated. This is not to say that Jesus’ followers could not have witnessed an event such as the resurrection and reported it orally to others. A historical account would need more support; however, as such witnesses would have had a faith-interest in reporting the event as empirical even though the resurrection has religious truth-value in the faith narratives alone.

Strangely, Habermas uses Paul, a zealot for Christ. “Think of Saul of Tsaris,” Habermas says. “He originally was a persecutor of Christians.” However, Paul’s letters are from the perspective of Paul as a devoted follower of Jesus. How could Habermas possibly think that because Paul as Saul had been against the Jesus movement that he would be unbiased after his conversion? Indeed, Paul’s own written account of his conversion experience is subject to the point that he could have added in his miraculous vision to legitimize himself as an apostle even though he had not met Jesus. Also, just because Paul’s letters are historical artifacts does not mean that their contents report historical events. Paul was not writing historical accounts, and so his religious messages and religious-interest could have used historical events selectively and even invented some. The warping effects of religious ideology on cognition (and ethics) can be significant.

Habermas next accepts the journalist’s initial premise that if Jesus’ resurrection is not a historical event, then the Christian faith would collapse. This is so because it depends on that historical event. Nevertheless, that faith has not collapsed, or been discredited, and in fact Christians have even been willing to die in its service. “If the early church fathers knew that the resurrection was a hoax, then why would they willingly die for it?” Habermas’ assumption can be critiqued.

Firstly, that Christianity has not collapsed does not necessarily mean that the theological resurrection in the faith narratives happened historically. Christianity could have endured due to the intrinsic value of the religious truth that is in the faith narratives (and Paul’s letters). It may have been enough that those narratives depict the resurrection as a historical event without the event having taken place empirically (i.e., outside of the narratives).

Secondly, Habermas assumes that if the resurrection did not occur as a historical account, then the early Church fathers would have known that the resurrection as a historical event was a hoax. This assumption too does not hold, for the fathers could have erroneously assumed that the historical nomenclature (i.e., wording) used in the faith narratives is sufficient to guarantee that the resurrection was also a historical event (i.e., apart from its mention as such in the Gospels). That is, the portrayal in the Gospels of the resurrection as a historical event does not mean that the resurrection “really” happened. Furthermore, to put so much emphasis on whether the resurrection really happened eclipses the value of the resurrection’s religious truth-value in the faith narratives. Lastly, Habermas assumes that if the resurrection were not a historical event, then the church fathers would have known it. They were not omniscient, so it is possible that the historical event did not occur and yet the fathers assumed from the historical nomenclature in the faith narratives, casting it in a historical light, that the resurrection must have happened as a historical event.

Habermas then brings up the Christian assumption that Jesus’ resurrection must have “really” happened (i.e., historically) for Christian souls to subsequently be able to enter heaven. Without that empirical event having taken place, no souls could go to heaven. “I know that I’m going to see my wife again someday,” Habermas says. He is committing a category misstate, however, in claiming that knowledge rather than belief pertains to faith. The religious studies scholar Joseph Campbell once asked why faith would be needed at all if were knew that heaven exists and that we would go there. Empirical knowledge, unlike belief, requires the certainty that scientific evidence can make more likely than can faith-claims. Such claims are true in a religious sense, and thus provide certainty as to religious truth, but not to empirical facts. The hold of Habermas’ religious ideology on his epistemological knowledge (i.e., what counts as knowledge) is responsible for his embellishment of religious belief as knowledge. The added certainty that knowledge provides is without merit, but this is of no concern to Habermas as the assumption of certainty conveniently aids his religious ideology.

Habermas nonetheless declares, “What I want and what I don’t want has no impact on truth. That said, if Christ’s resurrection means that I get to be with Debbie again, then I have no problem being happy with that. Sometimes truth reminds of us of what is really important.”

I submit that what a person wants does have a bending impact on one’s hold on truth. That is, even though religious truth itself is changeless, by definition, concepts of religious truth in a human mind can wittingly or unwittingly serve the ideological interests of a mind (i.e., person). Habermas assumes that his desire to be with his wife in heaven has no impact on his belief that Jesus’ resurrection in the faith narratives refers to a historical event, and, furthermore, that the historical resurrection made it possible for souls to go to heaven. In other words, a historical event made possible a spiritual (i.e., nonempirical) state that is outside of history. This belief is based on an underlying belief: that of the Incarnation (i.e., God made flesh in Jesus).

Putting aside the matters of people who had died before the historical resurrection and non-Christians thereafter that challenge Habermas’ belief-claims, Christian theology contends that the Crucifixion in the Gospels, as also a historical event, makes it possible for souls to enter heaven. Jesus’ vicarious atonement made possible by his willingly sacrificing himself even though he is innocent makes possible the reunification of a human being with God. Specifically, Jesus’ death pays the price of original sin. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection as “first fruits” means that the saved souls that are in heaven will someday be bodily resurrected. Therefore, even though Habermas claims to know that Jesus’ historical resurrection made going to heaven possible, Christian theology begs to differ; the historical resurrection made bodily resurrection possible. Habermas is thus overstating the importance of a historical resurrection in regard to him being able to be with his dead wife again. Put another way, even from the standpoint of theology, we can see that embellishment can result from self-interest, which includes the matter of the veracity (i.e., truth) of a religious ideology even hyperextended to cover historical empirical facts.

After speaking with Habermas, the journalist makes an appointment to speak with a Roman Catholic priest whose specialty is biblical manuscripts. Especially because Christians rely so much on the faith narratives in believing that the resurrection was also a historical event, the question of the manuscripts’ authenticity is highly relevant. Specifically, the question can be raised as to whether the manuscripts we have are accurate copies of the originals. Just as a Christian copyist may have added the non-historical faith claims to Josephus’ reference to Jesus and his followers, copyists may have embellished the biblical manuscripts by adding miracles and even claiming that they “really” happened. That is, copyists may have used history as a justifying basis for religious truth rather than in sufficing to treat the latter as being intrinsically valid in its own domain, and thus as needing no validation from other domains.

The journalist first points out to the priest, “Just because I write something down and bury it in dirt, it doesn’t make it true. How can we be sure of the reliability of these manuscripts?” The priest answers, “The same way we authenticate any historical document—by comparing and contrasting the copies that have been recovered. It’s called textual criticism. The more copies we have, the better we can cross-reference, and determine if the original was historically accurate, and the earlier they come in history, the better.” If a biblical passage is in all of the extant copies—and even better, word for word—then the chances is higher that a copyist did not tamper with the passage. It would still be possible, however, for changes to have been made by a copyist that are reflected in all of the extant copies available now. This would be increasingly possible the earlier the copyist. It should be noted that the historical accuracy of a copy of a manuscript refers back to its original manuscript, rather than to whether the events in that original really (i.e., empirically) happened. Even if a Gospel’s original writer used historical nomenclature to describe an event in the narrative as being a historical event does not mean that the event in the narrative corresponds to a historical event outside of the narrative. Historical nomenclature itself is a narrative device in service of the narrative’s theme or point.

The writers would have known themselves to be writing faith narratives rather than historical accounts because the writers wrote primarily of religious belief-claims that go beyond history, and thus the writing of historical accounts. The proof of the genre is in the writing itself (i.e., what is written). Writers of religious belief-claims rather than historical accounts would not have felt obliged to record only historical events. In fact, the latter could be selectively appropriated and even invented to suit the construction of the faith-narratives. A major drawback of this device is that readers may assume that religious truth needs historical verification to be valid. This fallacy is especially possible in an empirical-fact, or scientific era. Therefore, cross-referencing manuscripts to get as close as possible to the original manuscript can only get us so far if our aim is to ascertain the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection outside of the faith-narratives.

For example, the Gospels do not have the same women discover Jesus’ tomb. To be sure, the Gospel writers may not have had access to the same information. Even the accuracy of historians’ accounts can suffer from this problem. Alternatively, in writing faith narratives, the Gospel writers may not have been motivated to obtain the information and verify it as historians are. Instead, the writers of the faith narratives may have chosen characters to make theological or ecclesiastical points.

Because women in ancient Jewish culture (i.e., historically) were deemed to be unreliable witnesses—as a religious studies scholar tells the journalist—the Gospel writers’ decision to specify that the witnesses at the tomb are women has been taken as support for the historical veracity not only for the witnesses, but also the resurrection itself. “Why else, the religious scholar from Jerusalem asks the journalist, would “all four Gospel writers record that it was women who discovered the empty tomb?” But were the writers recording? Historians do that, whereas the writers of faith narratives make religious points to serve a religious theme, or faith.

Perhaps the Gospel writers, who differed in their choice of which women are at the tomb, made their respective choices to support different theological or ecclesiastical points. There were, after all, factions in the early church. For example, Paul is said to have differed from the Jerusalem church on whether converts must be circumcised. Whether or not to include Mary Magdalene as a witness at the tomb (all four Gospels do, but Paul does not) and whether she is first among the women has ecclesiastical implications both concerning her status as an apostle and whether women should hold leadership positions in the church. Considering Paul’s opposition to this and the fact that he excludes women at the tomb, we cannot conclude that he was oriented to providing a historical account; his agenda was ecclesiastical.  Similarly, rather than recording an account from historical research, the Gospel writers could have been pushing back against Paul by providing a basis on which women could have legitimate authority in the early church.  All this is in line with the point that the Gospel writers were writing faith narratives rather than historical accounts, and that Paul’s letters are not historical accounts, but, rather, preachments.

In fact, given the clear difference between the two genres, the writers of the faith narratives would have known that their readers not assume that they were reading historical accounts. Yet many evangelical Christians in the twentieth century disregarded both the authorial intent and the early reader response—both being in the faith-narrative genre—in assuming that the Gospel writers were operating as historians as well as men of faith. A further assumption is that the faith role does not have any impact on the historian role, so the Gospels can be taken literally.

In biblical hermeneutics (i.e., methods of interpretation) until the twentieth century, figurative, symbolic, analogical, and literal interpretations were generally understood as equally valid and thus as useful—the objective being to use the one that fits best for a given biblical passage in deriving religious truth. With science propelling technological advancement, and thus dominating Western society by the mid-twentieth century, the literal (i.e., “historical fact”) kind of interpretation enjoyed a presumptive place for any biblical passage that could be taken as historical. This new predominance would have been unknown both to the Gospel writers and to interpreters prior to the twentieth century. That is, the Gospel writers could scarcely have anticipated the overarching role for literal interpretation even when they were using historical nomenclature to make religious points in their faith narratives.

Distant culturally and through oceans of time from the writers’ world and literary context, we can unwittingly reflect our culture in approaching the Gospels. Of course, we do not know how the writers would react were they alive today because much of their intents, especially for particular verses, are lost to us today. Instead, we supply our own intents onto the page and presume that the authors had the same intents. In our era, empirical facts are hegemonic (i.e., on top), so we naturally assume that history plays a salient role in the construction of a faith narrative. We even subordinate religious truth in a faith narrative to the extent that it is not supported by empirical, historical facts. By implication, we are of little faith in scarcely believing that  religious truth has its own intrinsic value and is therefore not in need of historical justification and sanctification.

Perhaps we cannot help remaking an ancient religion in our own societal image. Perhaps religious ideology bends space and time to reflect what is acceptable to us. The medium of film, being in our era rather than that of the founding of an ancient religion, can operate as a facilitator. Helped by the suspension of disbelief, we believe that we are “in” Jesus’ world, and thus closer to his story and its religious meaning. What we see of ancient Judaea on the screen only reflects what the filmmakers construct, based on the faith narratives and what historians have uncovered of that locale back then. Film viewers are not in Judaea as it was. They are not in the garden and at the crucifixion. Yet the viewers naturally feel that they have never been closer to them. Furthermore, the illusion and related suspension of disbelief that the medium of film has can lead the viewers to assume the historicity as factual rather than conjectured. For example, seeing the dramatic coming of dark clouds as Jesus dies on a cross can result in a false sense of historical accuracy as in, so that’s what it was really like. Future Good Fridays that are sunny may not even feel like Good Fridays.

Additionally, what conjecture that film can give us of the story world as historical too combines with the religious interpretation or ideology (i.e., a set of aligned interpretations) driving the film to present the narrative’s point, or theme. This can uplift the faithful or give them reason to subject their faith to critique. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. A faith pruned of bad assumptions can become a healthier mature tree. What need of childish things does an adult faith have? A film can aid in this process.

I contend that The Case for Christ falls short because the pruning tools provided are not strong enough. The character arc of Lee, the journalist—that is, his transformation or inner journey over the course of the film narrative—goes from an atheist stance to an affirmation of evangelical Christianity. In spite of this protagonist having a critical stance toward religion (and Christianity) through most of the story, he suddenly decides that the resurrection was indeed a historical event. This can be taken as the filmmakers’ desired stance, at least as far as the movie goes. I have emphasized the critique of this stance precisely because the film does not give the arguments enough credit. In other words, the film makes a “straw man” argument against the resurrection being a historical event. The case against Christ is too easily pushed aside by the case for Christ. So I lean here in the other direction, not because I personally take the anti-historical-event side, but, rather, because moviemakers and viewers alike would benefit by understanding that the dialogue on Christianity could have been better written, with better arguments on the skeptic’s side, so that the viewers, whether atheist or theist, could have a better grasp of the difficulties involved in using faith narratives to make historical claims. 

For Christian viewers, a more realistic stance could prompt a realization that religious meaning or truth is inherently or intrinsically of great value. For example, the spiritual value of turning the other cheek, or, even better, helping people who have insulted or even attacked you does not depend on historical facts. In other words, such value need not stand on the stilts of history. In fact, religious truth transcends history. The means that Jesus teaches, such as turning the other cheek or loving enemies, are so foreign to human nature and history that the source of the value can be viewed as being beyond human nature and history, and thus divine. If the medium of film can facilitate a recognition of the sui generis (i.e., unique) nature of religious value (of religious truth or meaning) as distinct from and independent of historical facts, the medium is indeed more valuable than perhaps we realize in handling deep meaning.

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[1]   Paul Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus: Jewish Antiquities xviii: 63, In Linguistics and Literary Studies, Monika Fludernik and Daniel Jacob, Eds. (Walter de Gruyter, 2014), pp. 147-170.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Testimonium Flavianum, in Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3, section 63, translated by Louis Feldman (The Loeb Classical Library).

[4] On this distinction in Judaism, see Von Rad’s two-volume History of Israel.

[5] Paul Hopper, “A Narrative Anomaly in Josephus.