Jesus
Christ in the Movies
A
Biblical and Reformed Response to Mel Gibson’s
“The
Passion of the Christ”
by
Rev. Rodney Kleyn
This is a transcript of a Public Lecture given on
On
The movie has been promoted as an
evangelical tool. This was Gibson’s intent, “I hope this film has the power to
evangelize,” and many protestant leaders have followed this lead, commenting “I
believe The Passion of the Christ may well be
one of the most powerful evangelistic tools of the last 100 years” (Laurie) and “The Passion will stun audiences and create
an incredible appetite for people to know more about Jesus. I urge Christians to invite
their spiritually seeking friends to se this movie with them” (Strobel). One Roman
Catholic source said, “It is the best evangelization opportunity we’ve had since
the actual death of Jesus” (Lisa Wheeler, Catholic Exchange). Churches have bought
out movie theaters and transplanted their worship services to the theater, hoping to draw
crowds and evangelize. One church bought as many as 18,000 tickets at seven theaters.
I am not going to answer these
questions by giving a detailed review of the movie -- I have not seen the movie and will
not -- but by answering a more generic and more fundamental question or topic, “Jesus
Christ in the Movies.” What does Scripture have to say about this? When I have
answered this question, I will say a few things about the recent movie, The Passion of the Christ, based on the large
number of reviews that I have read.
It is my intention to show that
the depicting of Jesus in a movie is blasphemy, and that the recent Passion movie ought
therefore to be condemned and avoided by Protestant Christians.
Before I do this, though, I want
to say a few things about the purpose of this lecture. Perhaps there are some here who
have seen the movie and liked it, or who have come to this lecture because they do not
like what our churches have said about this in the last month. I want to say two things to
you.
1) I have made this lecture
especially for you. Not because I want to be right, and want to show you that you are
wrong, but because I want to show you what the Bible says, and what historic Protestant
Christianity has said about this, with the hope and prayer that God will help you to see
it as well. And, I want to do this in such a way that you understand the true passion of
Christ, and where the proper understanding of that true passion is to be found.
2) My concern tonight is God’s
glory. The big questions are not, Is the movie antisemitic? or Is the movie historically
and biblically accurate? or even Will the movie convert the masses? But the big question
is, What does God and his word have to say about this, and what does a movie like this do
to the biblical gospel set forth in the Scriptures?
It saddens me that I must do
this. The modern church and modern Christianity are in a sad state of affairs, and this
grieves me. One reviewer is right when he says that the movie The Passion of the Christ and its popularity are
indicative of the “Poverty of the church.” Not only are many ignorant of what
the Scriptures have to say about such a thing as a movie on Christ, but many are ignorant
of the true meaning of Christ’s passion because they do not hear of it in the
preaching, and so they look to a movie
to discover its meaning.
Doctrine, that is what Scripture teaches, has taken a back seat to feelings and emotions
and experience.
It is wrong to portray the Person and Passion of Christ
The first thing I want to say in
answer to the question of Jesus in the movies is that, based on the biblical teaching of
the second commandment, all physical portrayals of Jesus are wrong, and that therefore the
portrayal of Jesus by an actor in a movie is wrong.
The second commandment, as
recorded in Exodus 20:4-5 is, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor
the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth below, or that
is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”
God further explains this commandment in Deuteronomy 4:15ff by saying, “Take ye
therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that
the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire;lest ye corrupt yourselves,
and make you a graven image…"
What is forbidden? Simply this,
the making of any image as a representation of God. Why? Because we do not know what God
looks like – “ye saw no similitude.” God is not physical but spiritual
(John
But now the question is raised,
“But Jesus was a man; mayn’t we represent him?” The answer is that Jesus
was more than a man; He was and is the eternal Son of God who took to himself a human
nature and body, which human nature is now glorified and different from the earthly. He is
the “express image of the Father” (Hebrews 1:3). Because of this, we cannot make
an image of Christ.
For one thing, no man alive knows
what that body looked like so any re-creation of him comes again from man’s
imagination. But more, to create an image of Jesus is to limit Him to His human nature and
to separate his human and divine natures. One of the reasons that
To make an image of Jesus Christ
does the same to Him. The New Testament has something to say about this in 2 Corinthians
5:16 when it says that those who knew Jesus Christ in the flesh (his disciples) do not
know him that way anymore. To make an image of him is to limit him to his earthly human
nature and to steal his divinity from him.
This is not a new theological
question. This issue was dealt with very early on in the history of the church. In A.D.
451 the council of
If any person shall divide the human nature, united to the person of God and the Word;
and, having it only in the imagination of his mind, shall therefore attempt to paint the
same in an image; let him be holden accursed. If any person shall divide Christ, being but
one, into two persons. . . let him be accursed. If any person shall paint in an image the
human nature, being deified
by the uniting thereof to God the Word; separating the same as it were from the Godhead assumpted and deified; let him be holden as
accursed.
Of course, history
shows us that the church soon departed from this. But, the protestant reformers returned
to this biblical teaching. John Calvin says, “Every figurative representation of God
contradicts his being” (Institutes, 1.11.2). He then applies this to images of Christ
when he says that Christ is presented to man not by images, but by preaching (1.11.7).
The confessional
statements of the Protestant churches, (i.e. all the churches that left the Roman Catholic
Churches), show that this was the accepted and adopted position of the Reformation
churches. Explaining the Second Commandment, the Westminster Confession says that this
commandment forbids “the making any representation of God, of all or any of the three
persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any
creature whatsoever” (Larger Catechism, Q&A
Just as it is wrong
to portray the Person of Christ in an image, so it is wrong to portray the Passion of
Christ. By passion we mean the “suffering” of Christ. That is what the title of
the movie means. To portray the passion of Christ visually is to do the same to his
passion as to his person, namely, it is to separate his physical suffering from his
spiritual suffering. It is true that Christ suffered immense physical suffering, and the
Scriptures even have much to say about this. But, to make a movie of this suffering is to
limit his suffering to what can be seen with the eye. Again, this limits Christ.
Christ’s
suffering was that he suffered at God’s hand. He suffered the just wrath of God
against the sins of his people. His suffering was unique. The uniqueness of his suffering
was not in what he suffered physically. Many others have gone through similar crucifixion
experiences, and worse torture. But, Scripture shows that his real suffering was anguish
of soul under the heavy hand of God’s wrath against sin. In Mark 15:33-34 we have the
heart of his suffering expressed this way, “And when the sixth hour
was come, there was
darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with
a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabbachthani? Which is being interpreted, My God,
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
These verses show
that when it was time for Christ to really suffer under His wrath God said to the world,
“Thus far with the physical suffering, thus far with what man will do to Christ, now
I will inflict a suffering on him far worse” and then God turned the lights out on
the world and poured out all His wrath on Christ, and made Christ suffer all the
bitterness of hell, so that He cried out “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?”
Christ the Son, in his suffering, sent to hell and forsaken of the Father. This can never
be portrayed in a moving picture. Christ’s suffering points to the depth and cost of
the atonement for sins, which He achieved for His people in his once-for-all-time
sacrifice. Any message which portrays less than this great cost diminishes the gospel. The
moving picture because all it can portray is the physical, limits his suffering to the
physical thus taking from his true suffering.
The reformers of the
16-17th century recognized this as well. It was because they recognized that Christ’s
suffering cannot and may not be expressed in a physical image that crucifixes, that is
crosses bearing a physical representation of the suffering Christ, were condemned and
destroyed. The recent passion movie is nothing other than, as one author puts it, an
“animated crucifix.”
It is Wrong to use Images of Christ as Teaching
Tools
maker intends to give a physical
representation of Christ in his suffering with the purpose of teaching the masses about
Christ and His suffering. This is true as well of the other movies which portray Jesus,
such as The Jesus Film, or more recently a movie
called The Gospel of John. In these films the
physical portrayal of Christ is intended to teach. They are not intended for
entertainment, but are promoted as “great tools for evangelism.” This is a sin
against the second commandment.
The
Here, many Protestant churches
today have become very pragmatic. Someone who is pragmatic believes that an action is
right or wrong based on its results. Churches today have ignored what God’s Word, and
their protestant creeds teach, for the argument that movies of Jesus produce conversions.
But that is not God’s
standard for determining whether something is right or wrong. Rather, His Word, in the
Scriptures, sets down what is right and wrong. It does that in regard to how God will have
his people taught, as well. God does not just give us the content of what must be taught
and known about Christ, but he also gives us the method for teaching it.
In 1 Corinthians 1, through the
inspired apostle Paul, God tells his church that preaching is the way to convey the gospel
and suffering of Christ. There, Paul calls preaching “the power of God” (v. 18),
and contrasts it with the world’s methods of teaching. The world’s methods he
identifies in verse 22, “The Jews require a sign, the greeks seek after wisdom.”
The Jews wanted miracles, they wanted the gospel preachers to do something spectacular
like Elijah of old, and call down fire from heaven. The Greeks wanted wisdom, that is they
wanted a method that would manipulate the emotions and the minds of their audiences, their
philosophy and their acting guilds (drama is not new, the ancient greek world in which
Paul preached was full of it). But Paul says, “No, God has not chosen the wisdom of
the world. God has not chosen the miraculous, God has not chosen manipulation, God has not
chosen drama, but God has
chosen something foolish and
despised, something at which the Jews stumble and the Greeks mock, God has chosen the
preaching of the gospel to convey the message of the gospel and of Christ’s
suffering.” Folly to the world. Powerless, ineffective to them. But, to them which
believe, the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation.
Where are you going to witness or
see the Passion, the suffering, the crucifixion of Christ? Not on a movie screen, but in
your local church where the gospel is faithfully preached. That is the meaning of
Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey
the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among
you?” That is a remarkable statement. Christ was set forth before their eyes, and
crucified among them. How? Did Paul get an actors guild together to perform the
crucifixion? Did it take blood and gore and nails and weeping women for them to see Christ
crucified? No, they heard the preaching, and they saw Christ crucified, not with the
physical eye but with the eye of faith.
The clamoring among churches
today for the Passion movie shows not only their
disobedience to this God-ordained way, but also their lack of faith in God’s
appointed way. They do not believe God’s word in passages such as 1 Corinthians 1, or
Romans 10:14-17 where we read that faith comes by hearing the word of God in the
preaching. They don’t like God’s way. They think they have a better way, and so
they resort to blasphemous images in the movie.
More Blasphemy
One other concern that we ought
to have with movies about the life of Christ is the blasphemy involved in the acting. On
the one hand sinful and fallen men are acting out the sinless Jesus Christ, and on the
other hand actors are re-enacting the wicked deeds of Peter, Judas and Pilate and even
playing Satan.
To demonstrate my point, I want
to read a quote from James Caviezel, who acted Jesus, in the Passion movie. In an interview with Sean Smith of Newsweek Caviezel was asked about the long scene
where he is scourged with metal lashes. He describes the scene this way,
There was a board on my back, about a half-inch thick, so the Roman soldiers wouldn’t
hit my
back. But one of the soldiers missed, hit me flush on the back and ripped the skin right
off. I
couldn’t scream, I couldn’t breath. It’s so painful that it shocks your
system. I looked over at the
Here we have the sinless Christ,
suffering, led before his shearers as dumb, who opened not his mouth, and James Caviezel,
acting Christ, and using profanities!
Besides this, there is in this
movie Peter’s denial of Christ, Judas’ betrayal of Christ, the wicked deed of
Pilate in condemning Christ to death, the Jewish mobs crying “Crucify Him, Crucify
Him,” and the Roman soldiers, those that passed by, and the thieves mocking the
Christ. Also, the movie seeks to portray the miraculous in the healing of Malchus’
ear and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These are not acts that men ought even attempt
to re-enact.
It is the
Before we leave the second
commandment and get to the Passion movie
itself, I want to ask and answer one more question. Why? Why do they do it this way and
not the way of preaching?
The answer is that this is the
easy way. The true worship of God through the speaking and hearing of His word in the
preaching is difficult. Preaching good biblical sermons requires hours of hard work.
Listening to sermons, learning the doctrines and teaching of Scripture, teaching your
children these things, sitting through church services where a minister speaks God’s
word and trying, not only to stay awake, but to concentrate, these are all very difficult.
True preaching does not appeal first of all to the emotions, but to the mind. True worship
of God is a spiritual exercise; “They that worship the Father must worship him in
Spirit and in truth” (John
This is at heart, the sin against
the second commandment. God is God in heaven; exalted, transcendent, spiritual, greater
than our thoughts can ever comprehend. Man is on earth, and earthy. He wants things easy,
he wants things his way. He wants something physical and tangible, whereas in worship--God’s
way–we must transcend the earthly. And so in the Old Testament they erected golden
calves, and images, and bowed down to them. That was much easier than trying to understand
all the significance of the
Sometimes, we get the idea that
man in a Western civilized culture is different than men during biblical times. We think that they wanted and worshiped idols and images
because they were barbarian and that a Western man would never do that because he is
civilized. This is a mis-conception. The same sin is in the heart of the natural man today
as was in the heart of O.T. Israel when they had Aaron build the golden calf at Sinai.
That sin is an inclination away from the spiritual and towards the physical and tangible.
Just like them, man wants an image, something tangible, that he can look at, that
stimulates his physical senses. And so you have image worship in the drama that is a part
of so much worship in the churches today.
Some Things on The Passion Movie
Now I want to issue a
warning to Protestant Christians against this particular movie, The Passion of the Christ. As I said, I have not
seen the movie, so this will not be an in depth review. But, reviewers have pointed out
definite elements that are worthy of our attention.
The movie is a Roman
Catholic Movie. Mel Gibson, the director, says of it, “It reflects my beliefs.”
He is a Roman Catholic. His beliefs are not the same as the Protestant beliefs. Mel Gibson
reads Scripture differently than the reformed believer. As part of putting the movie
together he consulted a large number of high-ranking priests and theologians in the Roman
Catholic Church.
That this movie is
Roman catholic is clear first from the mode of instruction that it uses. It follows Roman
Catholic method of teaching, with visual images and icons. Gibson’s intent with this
movie is to enrich the Roman Catholic understanding of the mass. He wants his audience to
think of his movie whenever they see the mass taking place, to think that what they see in
the movie is what takes place in the mass each time it is performed. The Roman Catholic
mass is, as the Heidelberg Catechism points out, a “daily offering by the priest”
of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine. The priest is repeating in the mass
what was done to Christ in his crucifixion. This is a denial of the efficacious and
atoning death of Christ, a sacrifice once made that made full satisfaction for sins.
The movie is clearly
Roman catholic also in its content. The script of the movie was drawn up from a composite
of what is contained in the 4 gospels and two other documents that belong to Roman
Catholic mystical writings, Mary of Agreda’s “The Mystical City of God” and
Anne Catherine Emmerich’s “The Dolorus Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
These extra-biblical writings provided not only the inspiration for Gibson to make this
movie, but also provided much of the content of the movie. Emmerich’s “The
Dolorus Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” is a record of a number of supposed visions
that she received in which she reportedly received revelations about the events of Christ’s
suffering. This work reads something like a novel, adding much that is fiction to the
account of Christ’s suffering. Much of this content is included in Gibson’s
movie. One reviewer writes,
Reading through The Dolorus Passion of Christ after seeing the
movie I was shocked by how closely the script of The
Passion of the Christ follows this book. So much of what I assumed was artistic
license was actually drawn from extra-biblical revelation.
Let me list a number
of things included in the movie that are not in Scripture, but come from Emmerich.
1. Satan’s torment of Jesus in the garden.
2. Mary’s awakening at Jesus arrest, with
the premonition that something has happened to her son.
3. The soldiers throwing Jesus off a bridge as
they bring him to the high-priest.
4. Peter’s running to Mary after he
denies Christ, weeping and calling her mother.
5. The torment of Judas by Satan and many
devils.
6. The setting for the scourging scene.
7. Pilate’s wife giving linens to Mary to
wipe up Jesus’ blood.
8. Jesus stumbling many times as he carries
the cross, and then having Mary run to his side to encourage him to go on.
9. Simon’s rebuke of the mocking
soldiers.
10. Mary’s words to the dying Jesus,
“Let me die with you.”
All of this is
extra-biblical material. All of it comes from a woman who claimed to have extra-biblical
revelations. Just as we would condemn these writings of Emmerich and other Roman Catholic
mystics as an adding to God’s Word, so we should condemn the use of them in a movie
which proports itself to be biblically accurate. “If any man shall add unto these
things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book” (Revelation
Furthermore, these
scenes import Roman Catholic theology into the film, particularly relics (the dabbing of
Jesus face by a woman, which supposed cloth is now a relic) and Mary theology (she is the
one who encourages Christ while Satan taunts him, she gives her approval to the Christ’s
atonement after he says “It is finished” with the word “Amen”).
One other obvious
Roman Catholic element in the film is the emphasis on Christ’s suffering rather than
his victorious resurrection, and his present glory. Of course, this glory should not be
acted out, but Roman Catholicism emphasizes suffering at the expense of the glory and
victory of the cross. The movie spends all of 12-15 seconds at the end on the resurrection
of Christ. It also spends an inordinate amount of time on the flogging of Christ as though
that was the heart of his suffering.
As I said, I was not
going to review the movie. My intent is to point to obvious Roman Catholic elements that
are ignored and overlooked by many Protestants. These elements ought not be over-looked.
These differences are real and are significant. These differences are the things for which
the Reformers lived and died in the Reformation of the 16-17th centuries. The serious
minded believer will take them into consideration.
Many are not. These
differences are being ignored by many as though they are non-existent or minor. This movie
has crossed denomination lines from the Roman Catholic church and into Protestant
churches. In its use there is no effort made to distinguish between denominations. What it
teaches is accepted by Protestants and Catholics alike. This is dangerous. For Protestants
to ally themselves with Roman Catholicism is for them to ally themselves to a false gospel
and to deny the great truths of the Reformation. Satan claps his hands in delight as
apostate Protestantism goes back to
Conclusion
I have said a lot.
Let me conclude by pointing you, again, to the one place where you will see and come to
know the suffering of Christ. Philippians
Where will you get that passion?
You will get it in a true church, where the true suffering of Christ at God’s hands
as payment for sin is preached. You will get it when you believe that preaching.
Trinity Protestant Reformed Church
Phone: (616) 669 7024
You can also email us at trinityprc@iserv.net
Visit us online at www.trinityprc.org
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