Ben-Hur

By 2026, the world hardly needed any convincing regarding the strident zeal for endless vengeance in the Middle East, given the genocide still occurring in Gaza against the Palestinian people. In 1945, the world had needed no convincing on just how severe, and at what tremendous scale, state-sponsored (and engineered) hatred against a people deemed “subhuman” could be. The 1959 film-version of Ben-Hur is saturated with the desire for vengeance, with the antipodal motive of forgiveness only being shown as a more powerful, and thus stronger, phenomenon at the end of the film when Judah Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are spontaneously cured of leprosy at the very moment in which Jesus dies on the Cross. Only in aiding Jesus with water on his arduous way to the Cross does the Jewish man, Judah, realize the value of the suffering man’s righteous, unmerited suffering, especially relative to the value of even satisfied vengeance. At the moment of his death, Jesus, freed of a mortal body, cures the two women as a result of Judah’s change of heart. The message is that forgiveness wins over resentment and vengeance from a spiritual standpoint.

Prior to the period shown in the film, the wealthy Ben-Hur family took in and raised the Roman boy, Messala. So, it is with a sense of utter ungratefulness that as an adult and a Roman official that Messala turns on Judah for refusing to divulge the names of dissidents by banishing him to work in as a rower in the Roman navy for five years and sending Judah’s mother and sister to prison and then to a leper’s colony. Fortunately, Judah saves a Roman general from drowning in a battle-at-sea and is rewarded by being adopted by the general and given Roman citizenship. Judah has the wherewithal to return to Jerusalem to challenge and vanquish Messala in a chariot race. Even after Messala dies from being injured by Judah’s chariot during the race, Judah is still not satisfied—still not free of his resentment. He walks by as people are gathering to hear Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, which causes Balthasar to remark, “You are choosing death.” This intriguing line can be unpacked.

Even vengeance satisfied, albeit with Judah’s mother and sister still suffering from leprosy, is death—of the spirit—whereas the qualities valued by Jesus in his sermon represent a freed up spiritual life. Interestingly, were Balthasar to deliver the line to Judah as Jesus is dying on the Cross, the allusion to death could be taken literally, given the soteriological meaning of the Passion Story. Specifically, the salvific meaning of Jesus’s death and resurrection is that the vicarious, voluntary sacrifice pays off original sin and thus reconciles humans with God. Literally walking past Jesus on the Cross would connote the choice of death rather than eternal life. It is interesting that Balthasar remarks that Judah is choosing death in refusing to stay to hear Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. The death is figurative, in that Judah is still buried in resentment because his mother and sister are still ill as a result of Messala’s punishments. As for Messala, in turning on, in utter betrayal, the generous family that had raised him, he can be reckoned as spiritually dead, and his literal death occurs before he can let go of his chackles. Judah takes considerable time, but, unlike his adopted-brother, Jesus’s example of selfless agape-love even amidst severe suffering sinks in and softens Judah’s harden heart.

Before Messala’s death at the hands of Judah in the famed race, Judah is rebuffed in his zeal for vengeance by Ester, who, having heard Jesus preach, tells Judah that a young rabbi has said that “forgiveness is greater, and love is more powerful than hatred.” Later, just before the horse race in which Judah intends to kill M, Judah prays, “God forgive me for seeking vengeance, but my path is set. Into your hands I commit my life. Do with me as you will.” The request to be forgiven is a lie because Judah himself has decided that his path towards exacting retribution is set. Judah is not committing his life to God in any sense, and is again lying when he says God can do with him what God will. In actuality, Judah is very much in the driver’s (or chariot’s) seat concerning what he will do during the upcoming race.

Judah goes on to win the race and, in the process, he has killed his nemesis who has so unfairly subjected Judah to years of severe hardship and suffering simply because Judah would not betray his fellow Jews. The presiding Roman official remarks at the end of the race that the spectators have made Judah the victor their god, albeit just for the time being. Drunk with having exacted revenge, Judah is still of a hardened heart when he leaves the track and walks past Jesus, who is shown atop a hill in the distance—and not shown frontally in a close-up—just as he is just about to give his famed Sermon on the Mount. Judah is still hardened, nevertheless, because his mother and sister still have leprosy as a result of having been in a dank prison-cell for five years. As his dying nemesis says to Judah just before dying after the race, “The race continues.”

In witnessing Jesus struggling physically and mentally as he is being prodded and whipped by Roman guards no the way to be crucified, Judah is taken back. “What did this man do to deserve this?” Judah asks out-loud. That is the man who helped Judah with water when Judah was under extreme duress. It is not suffering itself that is given positive significance, but, rather, the willingness to take on the sins of others by suffering what they should by all rights suffer. The silent strength evinced by the suffering man who seems so weak suddenly is clear to Judah, who can now free himself from the chains of his own resentment. Ironically, letting go of resentment owing to the ongoing suffering of his mother and sister ends their suffering. He lets go of his resentment prior to the miracle healing that removes the ongoing reason for the resentment.

The miracle itself is important because it shows that in the story-world of the film, as in that of the Gospels, Jesus is the Son of God. Esoterically (i.e., the following is optional reading), the noetic significance of the religious title is dwarfed by the ontic significance of spiritual freedom over spiritual captivity, as evinced by Judah Ben-Her in the film as he offers Jesus water on the way to the Cross over having felt himself internally compelled to pass by Jesus's Sermon on the Mount.

Whereas the sort of explicit power evinced by Messala and the ship-galley task-masters, and, moreover, the Romans in Jerusalem even against Jesus on the way to the Cross, is quite visible, the power of letting go of vengeance and even offering compassion to detractors and even enemies is silent yet paradoxically stronger. The litmus test for Judah has finally to do with which of the two types of power he values more in the sense of which is stronger, and thus has more worth in itself. The relevant death is not physical, but, rather, spiritual, as per the human instinct for freedom, which Nietzsche ironically calls the will to life, or will to power, as ultimately felt best in overcoming (i.e., mastering, not repressing!) one’s most intractable instinctual urge, such as that of vengeance.  

The Apocalypse

In the film, The Apocalypse (2002), the Apostle John is a prisoner at an island-prison because he is a Christian. He is having visions of heaven in the last of days and Valerio, another prisoner is dutifully writing what John dictates so various church congregations can know of John’s revelations. He is esteemed so much by other Christians that he feels pressure to steer them to God’s truth. Too much esteem, I submit, is being directed to John, as he is, as he admits, only a human being, though he does get caught up in his own direct access to God, as in being able to know the will of God. This is a temptation for any religionist, especially religious leaders. Although subtly, the film conveys John’s over-reaches though without having another character explicitly refer to them as such.

In one of his visions, John hears the question, who is worthy to open the scroll of the meaning of mankind to God. That is, why did God create our species? What does God intend for us in creating us? The answer that John receives is that God wants people to turn back to God to praise God and feel God’s love. Who is worthy to break the seven seals on the scroll? Only the innocent lamb who gave himself to be sacrificed for humanity. “Look,” an angel tells John during a vision, “the Messiah has triumphed, and so he will open the scroll.” Indeed, as John points out, the core of the Christian faith is that God will be victorious over evil at the end of time. In the meantime, John believes God is calling him to lead people to God’s kingdom.

Other Christians in the movie think John’s significance is more than merely preaching on how God’s truth can lead people to God’s kingdom. Gaius, the leader of a congregation, says, “We must wait until his letters show us God’s will.” This implies that John has a special access to God in virtue of having visions and being the last person alive who witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. Irene implores John to come with her to escape from the prison. “We need you so badly. You’re the only witness to the resurrection of our Lord. They will listen to you. You will save us.” It is highly significant that in praying, John says, “I am only human,” and he replies to Irene, “Only the Lord can save us. But now he wants me here to deny my own name and testify to his.” John believes that Jesus is keeping John at the prison. It is God’s will. But is it? Even John finally admits to Irene that he could be wrong. After all, John feels that he should help Christians who are lost. So, after John tells her, “I have to stay. The Lord has spoken to me,” and Irene begs John in the name of Jesus to escape to save her and the other Christians, he suddenly realizes that he, a mere mortal, could be mistaken, so he joins her. As it turns out, the Lord has not spoken to John; his place is with the struggling Christians rather than in prison. In fact, John is very mistaken.

John’s sudden realization should be a wake-up call for any Christians who are so utterly convinced that they know the will of God in their lives. It is not as if everything that happens is God’s will; such a belief ignores the impact of free-will, which in turn is necessary to avoid the conclusion that God is responsible for evil. Historically, the Jansenists, for whom Augustine’s later works rather than the early book of free will are important, believed that the Fall damaged free-will rather severely such that no good whatsoever can come from us. In the film, John voices this theology in stating, “my strength is not from me; it comes from the Lord. But to stave off the self-love that manifests as selfishness, is it necessary to deny having any strength of one’s own? Augustine holds that self-love of that of oneself that is in the image of God has positive religious value. Must even such self-love be denied in order for the sin of selfish self-love to be expunged from a person’s nature? Augustine clearly thought that self-love is not necessarily a sin. Even Jonathan Edwards argues that self-esteem is a neutral self-love in religious terms.

Therefore, John deserves some credit for giving food and drink to an old man and Valerius, respectively, when they are mistreated by Roman guards in the prison. Acting thusly in line with Jesus’s preachments and example, John does not risk incurring the sin of self-love. Ironically, in believing that he knows God’s will for him, that sin can find enough pride to grow on. John’s compassionate acts matter in a religious sense, in terms of him entering the kingdom of God. So, John is mistaken again when he states, “He who believes shall have eternal life.” Without love put in action, even faith that moves mountains is for naught. John is correct, therefore, in stating as a Christian that “God is love, and whosoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” John is hit by the Roman head of the prison and put in a cage for days for having wiped the back of a violent, nasty prisoner whom a guard has just whipped.  John uses his free will in compassion to an undesirable and thus not only believes that God is love, but actively chooses to participate in loving acts that are inconvenient. It is subtle, but very important, that the other prisoners and Roman guards are taken back as if in awe when John is compassionate in actions to the weak, old, and even nasty. This awe is not owning to John’s salvific personhood, as though he has direct access to knowing God’s will and can save Christians who feel lost.

In short, John’s strength is not wholly due to God; free-will was not so warped in the Fall that Christians do not deserve some credit for choosing to act in line with Jesus’s teachings on how to enter the kingdom of God that is within, rather than just at the end of time. The film could do more to emphasize that John’s compassionate acts instantiate the presence of the kingdom of God within him, and this would not be the case were John not able to exercise enough of his free-will in choosing to act rather than just believe consistent with the type of inconvenient love preached by Jesus in the Gospels.

The Seventh Sign

Carl Schultz’s film, The Seventh Sign (1988), centers on the theological motif of the Second Coming, the end of the world when God’s divine Son, Jesus, returns to judge the living and even the dead. In the movie, Jesus returns as the wrath of the Father, which has already judged humanity as having been too sinful to escape God’s wrath. David Bannon, who is the returned Jesus in the film, is there to break the seven seals of the signs leading up to the end of the world, and to witness the end of humanity. Abby Quinn, the pregnant wife of Russell Quinn, asks David (an interesting name-choice, given that Jesus is of the House of David in the Gospel narratives) whether the chain (of signs) can be broken. How this question plays out in the film’s denouement is interesting from a theological standpoint. Less explicit, but no less theologically interesting, is what role humans can and should have in implementing God’s law. The film both heroizes and castigates our species.

The lamb of God now returned as God’s lion, the second person of the Trinity (i.e., the Logos incarnated), tells Abby that God has already judged against humanity due to too much killing of humans by humans. A quarter of a century into the twenty-first century, David would only have to point to the Russians in Ukraine and (especially) the Israelis in Gaza as more than enough support for God’s wrath. That the Israelis atop Israel’s government and military even enjoyed the mass killing, including by starvation, of hundreds of thousands while more than a million residents of Gaza were being made homeless (and even bombed in temporary camps), all in the Hebrew deity’s name could easily excite the deity’s wrath because the residents were not worshipping another deity. Jesus’s notion of God, which is primarily mercy because, as Paul and Augustine wrote, God is love—a statement that applies even to God’s love for people who intentionally offend and even reject the Trinity—would be, from at least my limited, human, all too human, perspective, utterly shocked by the atrocity unleased by the “chosen people” against innocent civilians as if they were subhuman. The Zionist biblical claim that Yahweh gives the lands of Gaza and the West Bank to the Hebrews translated into public policy evinces a category mistake in conflating religious narrative, or myth, and empirical public policy. Ignoring this category mistake, we could look at the Old Testament to find Yahweh punishing the Hebrews for willfully disobeying the deity and conclude that it would support a government’s military conquering and clearing out Israel. Ignoring the category mistake, more than one scriptural precedent could be found.

In the film, the presumptuousness of humans applying God’s law to other humans and even executing punishment is personified in Jimmy, a young adult who even has Downs Syndrome and yet thinks he is able to decide against his parents because they were brother and sister before he spread gasoline on them in bed and burned them alive. If such a severe punishment fits such a sin, then even more severe punishments surely befit greater sins. Clearly, the execution of Jimmy hardly qualifies as the death of the last martyr. That David (i.e., Jesus) comes to Jimmy’s cell and pats him on a shoulder is perhaps the filmmakers’ greatest blunder. Sympathy with a person with Downs Syndrome would be appropriate were one a victim, but Jimmy is no victim; in fact, the name Jimmy applied to an adult who has Downs Syndrome can be considered to be a pathetically patronizing puerile appellation.

The execution of the Word of God killer is one of the signs of the apocalypse: the last martyr. Therefore, Jimmy’s death is very significant theologically, for if he is not killed, the series of signs is interrupted and the world does not end. Jimmy’s excuse for killing both of his parents so grotesquely is, “It’s not murder if it is God’s punishment,” but if it is God’s punishment, and, notably not even specified in the Hebrew Bible, then it is presumptuous of any human to decide what specific punishment fits the violation of the sin, and then to go on as the executioner adds presumption on top of presumption. Jimmy’s certainty may even evince self-idolatry. Only a deity with Downs Syndrome would think such a heinous punishment fits a brother and sister who marry because they have fallen in love. To be sure, I am not advocating such a marriage. Rather, as Lyle and Erik Menendez found out in the twentieth century, not even having been psychologically abused and repeatedly molested by one’s own father justifies killing him, and those two brothers were better equipped cognitively than is Jimmy in the film.

That in history so many people have unilaterally presumed an entitlement to know and execute God’s law makes clear the serial, recurring lapse of which the human brain is all too prone commit, wherein theology (as in scriptures) is treated as the same type as are history, politics, and even science. Religion is a qualitatively different domain, so it is worse than unfortunate that the human mind seamlessly goes from a theological tenant to empirical criminal justice; presuming that a scripture is also a historical account (rather than making selective use of events in history) also evinces the cognitive vulnerability.  

It is no wonder that the proverbial “public square” in many societies has become secularized; the cleansing of religious activities and artifacts may have been due at least in part to too many people applying their religious beliefs in objectionable ways to other domains, such as politics and society. The core of the mental problem may be that the self-check function of the human mind tends to be turned off or dismissed as irrelevant in the domain of religion (and that of political ideology too). A brain could do worse than to periodically keep the need for self-checking in mind whenever anything religious (or political) is being thought. Furthermore, keeping in mind that theology is a distinct domain, or discipline, would be a good addition to a person’s spiritual exercises. Even if a deity is not finite, the human mind is, and thus the latter is inherently limited, and thus hardly omniscient. Epistemological humility applied to religious thinking can go a long way, given the salience of subjectivity, which includes ideology, inherent in human nature.

In the film, Jimmy connects a passage that he has read in the Old Testament with the fact that his parents deserved to be burned alive. In the Euthyphro, Socrates points out to Euthyphro that the prosecution of his father for having left a murderous slave in a ditch overnight (such that the slave died) does not count as piety to the gods; for one thing, the son has violated his duty to his father. That filial duty has not even registered indicates that Euthyphro is too certain that he knows what piety is. In the film, Jimmy commits the same sin, and yet is treated as a martyr even by Jesus.

Given the propensity of humans to implicitly lapse into wanting to be gods—a motive anathema to Augustine and yet urged on by Marsilio Fincino during the Renaissance—the motif of the individual hero in Christian theology may seem to be paradoxical, or else as saying that we can be awesomely good even in our weakness and yet we can be horrific creatures. The sheer distance between these two poles is astounding; human nature is indeed complex rather than isomorphic.

In the film, Jimmy, motivated by his religious beliefs that he misconstrues as facts, has burned his parents alive; his execution, as a martyr, even has apocalyptic significance. On the other end of the spectrum, Abby, who has attempted suicide, is in a position to bring life not only to her baby, but also to the whole world. Strength out of weakness is perhaps the motif of Christianity, epitomized theologically by God’s agape love in emptying Himself by incarnating in lowly flesh. God loves our species even before Creation by the unincarnated Logos of God, and such spontaneous, unconditional love is very, very different than any love that a human being can have and extend to others. So that God reverses judgment on the species because of the use of free-will by one person makes sense even though it can be asked why should humanity’s fate depend on just one person? In the film, that person is not David (i.e., Jesus in the Second Coming); rather, Abby is decisive, for her infant is to be stillborn without a soul unless she gives up her soul for her child.

Earlier in the film, before the birth, Abby asks David whether she can do anything to break the series of the apocalyptic seven signs. David points out that it would require her to have hope, and yet in attempting suicide she had none of that; she had given up not only on the world, but also her own life. “How can someone who cared so little for life give life to the world?”, David asks her rhetorically. She could stop the sign of the soulless birth of her child—souless because the hall of souls in heaven is now empty—but she would have to die for her child, and in so doing she would give humanity a second chance as her self-sacrifice would be enough for God to freely reverse His judgment on the sinful species.

“Will you die for him?” is the line that she hears repeatedly in dreams. The voice is that of Cartaphilus, the gatekeeper of Pontius Pilote fated to live until the Second Coming for having hit Jesus on His way to the Cross for going too slow (as if the Romans were justifiably in a hurry). In the film, Cartaphilus is Father Lucci, the Roman Catholic priest who shoots Jimmy before the execution to make sure that he dies so the series of signs does not end part-way because the last martyr is not martyred. Lucci is in a hurry to die because he has become tired of living for so long; death is the only redemption that he can have, for he is not sorry for having struck the definitive, soteriological martyr whose death is believed by Christians to be redemptive. Yet apparently not enough, for just after Abby declares while giving birth that she will die for him—her soulless baby—Jesus aka David Bannon enters the operating room and declares “The hall of souls is full again. It was you, Abby, with hope enough for the whole world.” He addresses Abby’s young Jewish friend, who is presumably now Christian, “Remember it all, write it down, tell it, so people will use the chance she has given them.” Out of her weakness—her utter lack of hope—she has mustered enough hope to give humanity another chance. 

With the twentieth century as the bloodiest century, to be followed by so many killings of innocent people in Ukraine and Gaza after two decades in the next century, it is hard to argue that the Christian message has made much of a difference. As beautiful as “strength out of weakness” is, too many people still value “might makes right.” So, I think the film hits a nerve in that a second chance is needed; the Christian Passion Story has not been sufficient to change how people, especially those in power, behave. The high are not made low. Corporate CEOs give only lip-service to “servant leadership.” Too many universities in the U.S., even private elite ones, had by 2025 been intentionally made into virtual police-states, with Yale even inviting the FBI in to train the university’s private police force in counter-terrorism tactics that could used on even paying students. Even university administrations can be seen as being visibly backed up ultimately by their own hired guns. But it is perhaps the engineered genocide of Gazans for two years without the world coming to their rescue that damns the species. 

At the very least, the notion that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ had redeemed the species could be viewed as having been debunked (and rejected) by the species as a whole, for the value in kindness and compassionate help being directed to enemies clearly has not taken hold of humanity. On an interpersonal level, responding compassionately to human needs of people whom a person dislikes or are disliked by the person is so rare that we can declare after two-thousand years that Jesus’s message has been de facto rejected by the species as a whole even if the preachment has made a dent in some people. The leitmotif of the film, that our species is in need of a second chance, is as much an indictment on historical Christianity as it is of our species. Perhaps with less hero-worship and more attention to the substance what it takes to enter the Kingdom of God before physical death, our species could have that second chance.