Although Prof. Vigen Guroian does reference some of the common misconceptions concerning Iconology that were mentioned by Dr. Leonid Ouspensky (ie. supposed "canonical" methods of painting, anti-naturalism in iconography, etc), the following chapter from his book "The Victorious Cross" gives a thought provoking critique of the movie "The Passion of Christ."
One wonders if the iconological arguments Guroian makes is dependent on Ouspensky's perspectives on the transcendental image. I admit that Ouspensky's mention that "a temporal portrait of a saint [or of Christ] cannot be an icon, precisely because it reflects not his transfigured but his ordinary, carnal state," does make a good argument, but one wonders what that implies for kenosis, pathos in icons, or when the carnal or material continually points towards the Archetype, the Resurrection and death transformed.
Nonetheless, I would agree with Guroian that there's a sort of overemphasis in the film on suffering and a bit of absence of the connection to Resurrection. I'd also agree that some of the images play into the desire for pietism. Lots to muse over.
Also related is http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/04/the-passion-of-christ-orthodox.html
The Victorious Cross
By Vigen Guroian, adapted from "Chapter 5: The Victorious Cross" in Melody of Faith (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010) 93-114.
I have previously discussed a theology of redemption and atonement that St. Anselm of Canterbury introduced at the close of the twelfth century. In Cur Deus Homo? Anselm reworked the juridical and penal metaphors with lawyers logic into a persuasive “rational theology.” His doctrine of the divine satisfaction influenced broad streams of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin also proposed their own versions of this doctrine. Thus, it should not be surprising that in our day, many Christians — Protestant, Roman Catholic, and even Orthodox — adhere to a belief in the Cross the lineage of which is traced back to these innovations, though the subtleties of their originating authors are usually lacking.
This piety of the Cross sees Jesus crucifixion singularly, often virtually in isolation, as that action by which he secured our salvation. By virtue of his sinless life, complete obedience to God, and death by crucifixion, Christ paid in full the terrible debt owed for Adam’s and all humanity’s transgressions, thereby reconciling with the Father those who believe in him.
But this piety is fundamentally flawed, and it behooves us to understand why. For example, if one presses the logic of this contemporary piety of the Cross, the Resurrection (although it may be a comforting epilogue to the Gospel narrative) becomes unnecessary, for on Holy Friday Jesus accomplished all that was needed in order that humankind might inherit eternal life. However, most in whom this piety resides do not follow the logic that far. Although many espouse a conservative Christianity that fervently affirms Jesus’ bodily resurrection, many also fail to recall the ancient Christian conviction that the Resurrection — not the Crucifixion — completes the purpose of the Incarnation.
Ironically, this piety of the Cross could not have come about but for the early church’s conviction that the Resurrection is, indeed, the culmination of the Passion story. Over a period of forty days ending with his ascension, Jesus in his glorified body appeared before the disciples and a multitude of witnesses — according to St. Paul, more than five hundred (1 Cor. 15:6) — precisely in order to fix the truth of his resurrection firmly in the mind and imagination of a fledgling church. This is the significant narrative background of St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s fourth-century pronouncement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” (Note 1. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture 13:4, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2d series, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978), p. 83.)
All creation was confounded with terror when it beheld thee suspended on the Cross, O Christ. The sun was darkened, and the foundations of the earth were shaken; all things suffered in sympathy with him who had created all things. O Lord, who of thine own good will did suffer for us, glory to thee.
In the first-century Roman Empire, there was no glory in public crucifixion. If you and I had stood near the Cross, we would not have gained comfort from Jesus suffering and death. We would not have walked away and confidently declared, “Jesus has died for our sins and saved us on that tree!” Something else had to have happened that removed the despair from his disciples hearts and replaced it with hope. And that, of course, was the Resurrection.
From the standpoint of the ancient church’s resurrection faith, Jesus was neither simply a victim of Roman injustice and cruelty, nor just a hero admirable for his teaching and for a life well lived. As Georges Florovsky writes, “Christ was not a passive victim, but the conqueror, even in his utmost humiliation. He knew that this humiliation was no mere endurance or obedience, but the very path of Glory and of the ultimate victory.” (Note 2. Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, vol. 3 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976), p. 110.) There could be no compulsion or necessity in Christ’s crucifixion and death. These had to be undergone willingly in an absolutely free act of obedience to God, so that his death was a perfect sacrifice. Wherever sin exists there is no pure sacrifice. But Christ was without sin and could act without enslavement to it or captivity to death.
Christs "choice” to go to the Cross was freely undergone, but not according to our ordinary understanding of “choice” as choosing between several possibilities or options. Neither was it the only “choice” he had. Christ chose to suffer and die on the Cross, “not merely in the sense of voluntary endurance or non-resistance, not merely in the sense that he permitted the rage of sin and unrighteousness to be vented on Himself... but willed it.” (Note 3. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, p. 100.) In the words of a fifth-century Armenian catechism, “[Christ] came willingly to death, and as All-powerful, was forced by no one____Christ willingly, in his love coming to death, announced with a loud voice with awesome signs that even in death He was one in will and deed with the Father.”(Note 4. The Teaching of Saint Gregory, trans. Robert W. Thomson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 109, par. 477, 488.) “Therefore, Christ as a man offered the spotless sacrifice to the Father, not intending to bring to the Father some juridical equivalent,” says the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae, “but to endow us through our union with him with the power of becoming ourselves a spotless sacrifice, so that we too might be able to enter with him into the Father s presence.” (Note 5. Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 195.)
Christs death was not a suicide. There was nothing morbid or selfish about it. In going to the Cross, the Son of God chose life, not death. The movement of his will was in perfect accord with the will of the Father of Life, consistent with his unlimited love for humankind. With his arms outstretched, Christ beckons humankind to join him on his cross, which is at the center of the universe and on which life triumphs over death in his person.
The church calls the death that human beings die a “corruptible death” that dissolves the body-and-soul unity of the human person. Though Jesus death was a real death, death’s malevolence and destructiveness were exhausted on his divinity. His death ‘was an ‘incorrupt death,’ and therefore corruption and death were overcome in it, and in it began the resurrection.” (Note 6. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, p. 136.) The power of God in Christ rejoined body and soul and resurrected him bodily from the grave. What appeared, even to St. John and the grieving women at the Cross, as the humiliating demise of a powerless victim, was revealed three days hence as a conquerors act of freedom, love, and power that overcame death.
He-Who-is-Crucified is He-Who-is-Resurrected. “He who truly died, the same is ever living,” states the sixth-century Armenian philosopher David Anhaght. (Note 7. David Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” in David Anhaght: The “Invincible” Philosopher, ed. Avedis K. Sanjian (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1986), p. 87.) Just as there is no meaningful distinction between God’s weakness and Gods strength (“The weakness of God is stronger than men”; 1 Cor. 1:25, NKJV), or between Gods will and Gods love (“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us”; 1 John 3:16, NKJV), so the Cross and he who was crucified on it are inseparable. What looks to the world like weakness is Gods power. Gods love is the height of Gods power. In other words: God’s love is power and his power is love. “The One who alone is real has in Him as His own each and all the powers,” continues Anhaght. (Note 8. Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” p. 85.)
Thus, the Crucifixion could not possibly have led to the demise of Jesus Christ, but only to his resurrection. For indeed, the power of the Resurrection is the power of the Cross. Henceforth, every cross is a crucifix, and every crucifix is the victorious Cross. The Crucifixion did not make the Resurrection necessary; rather; in order that the Resurrection might come to pass, the Crucifixion had to be. The aim and goal of Christ’s suffering and death is resurrection. St. Paul proclaims that the power of the Cross is the Resurrection: “For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4, NKJV).
O Christ God, who spread apart your spotless hands on the cross and gave us the sign of triumph, through it preserve our lives.
When we view the Crucifixion in this light, it should not be surprising that the earliest Christian art depicts it with an emphasis on Christs victory over death. The Resurrection shines through the Crucifixion in this Christus Triumphans type of crucifixion art. In it the figure of Jesus stands upright on and against the cross, his arms straight and outstretched, his feet usually set apart, his torso erect. His neck is straight or only slightly bent, and his eyes are open.
This contrasts with the more familiar Christus Patiens style of crucifixion icon that gained prominence after the ninth century and of which there are vastly more examples. (See Figure 2.) Icons and religious paintings of this type depict Christ in a wide range of ways, from a relatively upright, unmarked, and serene subject with eyes shut as if in sleep, to a scourged and bloodied figure that sags heavily from the Cross, his head fallen over and his eyes shut in unmistakable death.
We will consider this style of crucifixion in the form of an agonized Christ momentarily, especially as it has been presented in the immensely popular movie The Passion of the Christ; which came to the theaters in the spring of 2004 and aroused so much controversy over its graphic imagery and supposed anti-Semitism. I was dissatisfied with the film for different reasons. In my view, The Passion of the Christ is a kinetic icon that depicts the piety of the Cross with special force, which helps to account for the enormous appeal of the movie to a large swath of Christians across denominational lines.
But first let us turn briefly to the early Christus Triumphans type of crucifixion art, for it embraces a very different and ancient piety. This art unambiguously communicates the conviction and meaning of St. Cyrils bold statement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” Let us look at two examples of this type of crucifixion art. The first belongs to the Syrian Rabula Gospel illuminations of the sixth century. (See Figure 3.) The second is an Armenian illumination of much later date by a fourteenth-century artist named Barsegh. (See Plate 5.)
The Rabula Gospel juxtaposes the Crucifixion and the Resurrection as a diptych on a single page. The Crucifixion is at the top of the illumination, and the Resurrection is at the bottom. In the former, Christ stands in an upright position on a central cross that rises high and stretches wide so that his unbent arms reach over the crosses of the two thieves on the left and right. His head is just slightly tilted,
while his eyes are wide open as he looks compassionately upon the penitent thief to his right. Despite the fact that the Roman soldier Longinus is thrusting a spear into his side — according to the Roman method of verifying that the man is dead — this Christ is unmistakably alive. His posture and face express a quiet self-possession and radiant inner strength; in other words, peace and tranquility. The blood around the nails and wounds does not depict gore in a naturalistic way but symbolizes, rather, the loving and redeeming sacrifice.
The Resurrection shines through this crucifixion. This is emphasized by the placement of the empty tomb: at the center of the Resurrection scene below and aligned perpendicularly with the Cross. The guards lie asleep on the ground to the front and side of the tomb. In triptych fashion, two other Gospel scenes are depicted on either side of the tomb. On the left, an angel announces to the two Holy Women that Jesus is alive; on the right, the women kneel before the resurrected Christ.
At the beginning of the first millennium, Eastern iconography started to adopt the Christus Patiens model of the Crucifixion. Nevetheless, it retained important characteristics of the earlier Christus Triumphans form. Paul Evdokimov explains that this type of crucifixion icon “never shows the realism of exhausted and dead flesh; [and] painful expressions of agony have no place.” (Note 9. Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Oakwood Publications, 1990), pp. 133, 314.) Leonid Ouspensky adds, “Everything which reminds of the corruptible human flesh is contrary to the [true] icon, for ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth incorruption inherit corruption (1 Cor. 15:50), and a temporal portrait of a saint [or of Christ] cannot be an icon, precisely because it reflects not his transfigured but his ordinary, carnal state.” (Note 10. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of the Icon (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), p. 36.)
Over the centuries, my own Armenian tradition has clung more tenaciously than even the Byzantine tradition to the inspiration of the Christus Triumphans crucifixion. (Note 11. Medieval Armenian iconographers may well have clung to it in support of their church’s opposition to the two natures Christology of the Council of Chalcedon (451) that both the Byzantine and Roman churches embraced. The Armenian Church favored the “one nature” Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria (378 44). Cyril defined the unity of divine and human activity in Christ with the formula “One Nature (mia physis) of the Word of God incarnate.” He employed physis in the sense of a concrete reality or being, rather than an abstract set of natural properties that might be described as a “human nature” or a “divine nature.” The Armenian Church adheres to this Cyrillian “monophysitism” and affirms that, through an act of divine economy, the preexistent Word of God voluntarily and forever took upon himself (assumed) and enacted the fullness of our humanity. Furthermore, the Christus Triumphans style was more compatible with the Armenian Church’s leanings toward a strong view of the incorruptibility of Christ’s flesh in life, as well as in death.) Thus, even as late as the fourteenth century, we find a rather remarkable illumination by the painter Barsegh that with the simplicity of a line drawing renders the distinctive Christus Triumphans form. (See Plate 5.) The primitive appearance of the painting is deceiving and belies a sophisticated theology. Barsegh seems intent on stressing the doctrine that the death of the Incarnate Word was not only freely willed but also incorrupt. Death exhausts itself completely in the immortal and incorruptible body of the Divine Word. Death is utterly defeated on the Cross and life triumphs. An Armenian hymn for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross expounds upon the meaning that Barsegh seeks to convey: “God the Creator was lifted onto the cross, and upon it he renewed and revived those who had died in sin by eating of the wood.” (Note 12. Armenian Canon for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, First Day, in Michael Daniel Findykian, “Armenian Hymns of the Church and Cross,” St. Nersess Theological Review 11 (2006): 77.)
In Barsegh’s crucifixion, Jesus body quite literally blends into the wood of the Cross, as if he and it are one substance. As though he were commenting on this painting, David Anhaght writes, “He [Christ] who pleased to dwell on it [the Cross] did not depart from it, but dwelt, dwells, and will dwell there____Therefore, the Cross is the Cross of God, and He Himself the Crucified One, God immortal, uncircumscribable and infinite.” (Note 13. Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” pp. 85, 87.) The Cross and he who was crucified on it are inseparable. Christ and the Cross, his body and the wood, he and the Tree, are bonded as one and yield the fruit of eternal life.
Let me say a word here about the distinctive Christology that David Anhaght expresses so powerfully. While in this chapter we stress the victory on the Cross, this emphasis must not be at the expense of the suffering and death that Christ endures. This theology of the Cross strongly affirms that the subject, the person, who suffered death on the Cross was the Divine Word. God in Christ, through the flesh that he took from his mother, truly suffered and died on the Cross. This is the belief underlying Anhaghts insistence that Christ was “pleased to dwell on it [the Cross]” and will never disassociate himself from it. We can fully appreciate the greatness of Christs victory on the Cross only if we also recognize the infinite love for humankind that he showed by taking upon himself the full force and malevolence of death, so that death might become a passage into eternal life.
In the Barsegh painting, Christ s elongated limbs, especially his arms that nearly cover the horizontal beam of the Cross, reinforce the impression that the flesh and the wood are one, and that the death that was endured on the Cross is taken into the life of God. The braiding of Christs body indicates the suffering, and is virtually all that enables the eye to distinguish Christ from the Cross, his body from the wood. There are no visible wounds or nail markings on Christs hands or feet. This idiosyncratic omission boldly emphasizes that the Crucified and the Resurrected are one and the same, namely, the eternal and immortal Word of God.
The two thieves in the painting are diminutive. They appear to be floating in space beneath this cosmic Christ. There are no city walls in the background; only empty space adorned with sun and moon, hung to either side of Christs outstretched arms, as if he is holding them up. In the words of another Armenian hymn, “Today the Only Begotten Son spread out his spotless arms upon the Holy Cross./Most highly exalt him forever./For he triumphed over death by his mighty power,/and he called the universe to salvation and to eternal life./Most highly exalt him forever.” (Note 14. Armenian Canon for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, First Day, in Findykian, “Armenian Hymns of the Church and Cross,” p. 78.)
Christs eyes are completely open, as are the eyes of the penitent thief, whereas the eyes of the second thief are shut. Twice at the bottom of the painting, Barsegh carries over this soteriologically charged motif of open eyes. First, the eyes of the traditional skull of Adam at Christs feet are open. The new Adam restores to life the old Adam. Second, just beneath this “living” skull, Christ lies in a sepulcher. His body remains braided, perhaps to remind us that his suffering is not something he leaves behind, but that it continues to bear significance through the whole of time and eternity. The open eyes of this entombed “dead” body may be meant to show that the Resurrection is already “happening” or “present,” even in the grave.
Then he said..., “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
Keeping the Rabula Gospel and Barsegh’s crucifixion illumination in mind, we may turn now to the movie The Passion of the Christ In an interview in the spring of 2004 with Mel Gibson, who produced and directed the film, television journalist Diane Sawyer asked Gibson why he had depicted the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus so violently and bloodily Gibson responded:
The Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, certainly does commemorate Jesus’ suffering and sacrificial death on the Cross, but this is not all. From earliest Christianity, the Eucharistic commemoration has reflected the meaning of St. Cyril’s proclamation: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, an early third-century text, includes a prayer of institution that incorporates this grander vision:
According to Caleb Deschanel, who was the cinematographer for The Passion of the Christ, the movies scenes of Jesus scourging and crucifixion were strongly influenced by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance artist Caravaggio. In an American Cinematographer magazine interview of March 2004, Deschanel concedes, however, that Caravaggio did not depict Christs wounds nearly so explicitly (naturalistically) as the movie did. Nor does he mention the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century crucifixion paintings of such artists as Lucas Cranach and Matthias Grünewald. Yet the crucified Christ in the movie strongly resembles the sanguinary and agonized Christ of these paintings.
Grunewald’s crucifixion panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16) is a good example and one that may be regarded as a historic predecessor of The Passions kinetic iconography. (See Figure 4.) It is a bold attempt to represent the human suffering of Christ on the Cross through naturalism in art. Grünewald uses colors and includes details in his crucifixion painting that are viscerally evocative of the agony of death and even of decay. Jesus flesh is punctured and shredded from the scourging and flagellation. His skin is a greenish, sickly yellow. The blood that covers him and is clotted on his forehead around the crown of thorns is dried and rust-colored. Grünewald leaves no doubt that this grotesque and tortured figure is a corpse. There is not the slightest indication that this dead body is the incorruptible flesh of the Incarnate God who will be raised in three days.
Yet Grünewalds crucifixion is not thoroughly naturalistic and modern. However grotesque the body of this crucified man, however tortured and expressive of weakness and not strength; defeat and not triumph; agony and not peace; nonetheless, Grünewald includes several significant traditional elements of earlier Christian iconography. Like his medieval predecessors, Grünewald alters dimension and perspective in order to emphasize Jesus centrality and also, perhaps, his hidden power. Grünewalds painting retains motifs of a sacred cosmology and a sacramental vision of Creation, motifs that relate our visible world to a spiritual reality. This reflects the Christian belief that the Incarnation especially reveals this spiritual reality and has the power to clear even the eyes of those that have been blinded to it by the scales of sin.
Christs perforated and utterly savaged body is larger than the figures in the foreground, emblematic of his divinity; his arms, hands, and feet are especially elongated. In traditional fashion, Mary Magdalene, St. John, and the Virgin Mary are positioned on the left. On the right is St. John the Baptist. The Baptist points to Christ with one hand and holds an open Bible inscribed with the text of the Gospel of John: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). At the bottom of the painting, a small lamb stands between the Baptist and the Cross. Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, NKJV). The lamb faces the crucified figure and holds a cross, the sign of victory, and a chalice, emblematic of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the medicine of eternal life. (Note 18. The Isenheim Altarpiece has two sets of wings that include, among other images, an Annunciation and a Resurrection. The Resurrection is a surreal image with a luminous Christ figure ascending into the night from his tomb in view of his disciples, who, together with the soldiers, are falling to the ground in awe or fear. No doubt this was how Grünewald intended to depict the glory of God in Christ and his final victory over death. But there is no continuity between these two images of Christ on the Cross and Christ flying from the grave. They have not the slightest resemblance to one another. It is as if they are two entirely different beings. This represents a rupture of reality that seems peculiarly modern, a dualism of natural and supernatural that does not belong to traditional iconography.)
But Gibson pursues historical accuracy with a vengeance and abandons this symbolism. If there had been no resurrection scene in the movie, the viewer would have been left with an image of suffering and a death that is pathetic, or, at best, the tragic defeat of a noble cause.
Despite the similarities in their art, Gibsons theology of the Cross is weaker and thinner than Grünewald's. Gibson strives to replicate what the naked eye might have seen, and that is all. Such naturalism does not even hint of a transcendent reality that lies “beneath” or “inside of” what the naked eye sees or the camera records. The Passion of the Christ fails to express what historic Christianity steadfastly maintains and traditional iconography affirms: that the soteriological truth of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection lies within the historical course of events and that the eyes of faith — or the eyes of the artist in this case — may read this truth out from ordinary reality.
In this respect, Gibson’s artistry is entirely modern and thoroughly secular, not in the least sacramental, for it radically severs and separates the natural from the supernatural, the ordinary from the transcendent. Deschanel, who, unlike Gibson, does not profess to be Christian, expresses an opinion in the American Cinematographer interview that is revealing of the movies modernism: “Of course, the story of this film is really pre-religion: it inspired a religion, but its not a religious story. It’s the story of a person whose powers come from forgiveness. . . . For me, its [the resurrection scene] when the film becomes religious.” (Note 19. “A Savior’s Pain”: An Interview by John Baily. Available online at http://www.theasc.com/magazine.maro4/cover/index.html.) But if this is so, the integral vision of salvation in the traditional icono-graphic rendering of the Crucifixion is forgotten and lost.
My wife, my daughter, and I went to see The Passion of the Christ on Holy Thursday. I vividly recall my agitation and disappointment with the ending of the movie, not just the crucifixion scene, but also the resurrection scene. The hyper-naturalism that Gibson employed to portray the scourging, the nailing to the Cross, and the suffering and death on it could not work for the Resurrection. So he turned to a typical Hollywood gimmick: the portrayal of mystery as magic.
I was cognitively and emotionally jolted when the cinematography shifted suddenly from naturalism to Daliesque surrealism — to the aerial view of the crucifixion, the teardrop falling from heaven to earth, the burial shroud collapsing, as if the dead body disappears from beneath it, as the cameras eye moves to the figure of a resurrected Jesus seated near the stone slab. (Note 20. Gibson also makes his own myth of the Resurrection. Nowhere in the New Testament is the Resurrection described sans witnesses at the empty tomb. Nowhere in the Gospels or the Epistles is the actual “event” of the Resurrection described. Yet in The Passion, Gibson does just these things. With his “hidden” camera he records the mystery itself: Christ arising from death before the first witnesses have arrived. Though this freedom may be granted the moviemaker, and though this is not the first time an artist has done this, the canons of traditional Christian iconography forbid it.) This fantastical imagery of the resurrection scene does not connect effectively with the rest of the narrative, especially the crucifixion. Both the crucifixion and resurrection scenes of The Passion fail the test of serious Christian art.
One wishes that Gibson had taken a lesson from his sister in the Roman Catholic faith, writer Flannery O’Connor. She advised, “The novelist... if he is going to show the supernatural taking place ... has nowhere to do it except on the literal level of natural events.” For fiction “should reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete, observable reality. If the writer uses his eyes in the security of his Faith, he will be obliged to use them honestly, and his sense of mystery, and acceptance of it, will be increased.” (Note 21. Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), pp. 176,148.) O’Connor practiced in her fiction what she called a Christian realism, which is by no means naturalism. Quite the contrary, O’Connor avoided naturalism’s denial of transcendent human freedom, as she also steered clear of sentimentalizing and trivializing religious mystery by depicting it as “otherworldly” and completely “outside” of history or nature. Christian realism endeavors to demonstrate that history and nature are shot through with God’s purpose and grace. This is a sacramental vision of life that recognizes and strives to portray God’s presence and activity throughout the created order. O’Connor writes her fiction as an invitation to discover oneself as a participant in a sacred, spiritual reality that sin or pride in the power of reason without faith blocks from our perception. As Dante writes in the Divine Comedy, “You who have sound intellects/Seek out the doctrine that conceals itself/Beneath the veil of the strange verses.” (Note 22. Dante, Inferno, 9:61-63.)
In closing, let’s imagine how The Passion of the Christ might have been made differently in order to represent persuasively the integrality of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and to overcome the deficiencies of the popular piety of the Cross with a truly sacramental vision of salvation by the Cross. I propose three key alterations.
First, the final resurrection scene would be left out. Instead, the movie would end with Jesus final utterance on the Cross, according to St. John the Evangelist: “It is finished” (John 19:30, NKJV). Second, the movie would have an entirely different beginning. It would open with St. Lukes post-Resurrection story of Jesus’ appearance to two of his disciples (Luke 24:13-35). St. Luke reports that on the same day that Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to two of his disciples on the road to a village named Emmaus. The disciples did not at first recognize this “stranger” as their beloved teacher, though they were mysteriously attracted to him and were moved to trust him with their most personal feelings about Jesus’ crucifixion and death. They also told him of the odd happenings that day at the tomb when “certain women of our company” found it to be empty and “had ... visions of angels who said He [Christ] was alive” (Luke 24:22-23, NKJV).
According to St. Luke, when the disciples finished telling their story, Jesus said to them, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” and then expounded “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:26-27, NKJV). But even then the disciples failed to recognize him. When in the evening the company arrived at the village, the disciples invited Jesus to join them for supper. “Now it came to pass,” continues St. Luke, “as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, ‘Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road?’” (Luke 24:30-32, NKJV).
The final alteration to The Passion of the Christ would weave this motif of the Resurrection, with its allusion to the Last Supper, into the whole of the rest of the narrative, like the gilt thread that runs through a fine tapestry. Gibson did include strong Eucharistic imagery in The Passion. But in my alteration, the Eucharistic theme would be charged with not just the sacrificial significance of the Cross but also the redemptive reality of the Resurrection, as a testimony to the truth of St. Cyril's statement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.”
One wonders if the iconological arguments Guroian makes is dependent on Ouspensky's perspectives on the transcendental image. I admit that Ouspensky's mention that "a temporal portrait of a saint [or of Christ] cannot be an icon, precisely because it reflects not his transfigured but his ordinary, carnal state," does make a good argument, but one wonders what that implies for kenosis, pathos in icons, or when the carnal or material continually points towards the Archetype, the Resurrection and death transformed.
Nonetheless, I would agree with Guroian that there's a sort of overemphasis in the film on suffering and a bit of absence of the connection to Resurrection. I'd also agree that some of the images play into the desire for pietism. Lots to muse over.
Also related is http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/04/the-passion-of-christ-orthodox.html
The Victorious Cross
By Vigen Guroian, adapted from "Chapter 5: The Victorious Cross" in Melody of Faith (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010) 93-114.
I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, The Catechetical Lectures, 13:4
I have previously discussed a theology of redemption and atonement that St. Anselm of Canterbury introduced at the close of the twelfth century. In Cur Deus Homo? Anselm reworked the juridical and penal metaphors with lawyers logic into a persuasive “rational theology.” His doctrine of the divine satisfaction influenced broad streams of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin also proposed their own versions of this doctrine. Thus, it should not be surprising that in our day, many Christians — Protestant, Roman Catholic, and even Orthodox — adhere to a belief in the Cross the lineage of which is traced back to these innovations, though the subtleties of their originating authors are usually lacking.
This piety of the Cross sees Jesus crucifixion singularly, often virtually in isolation, as that action by which he secured our salvation. By virtue of his sinless life, complete obedience to God, and death by crucifixion, Christ paid in full the terrible debt owed for Adam’s and all humanity’s transgressions, thereby reconciling with the Father those who believe in him.
But this piety is fundamentally flawed, and it behooves us to understand why. For example, if one presses the logic of this contemporary piety of the Cross, the Resurrection (although it may be a comforting epilogue to the Gospel narrative) becomes unnecessary, for on Holy Friday Jesus accomplished all that was needed in order that humankind might inherit eternal life. However, most in whom this piety resides do not follow the logic that far. Although many espouse a conservative Christianity that fervently affirms Jesus’ bodily resurrection, many also fail to recall the ancient Christian conviction that the Resurrection — not the Crucifixion — completes the purpose of the Incarnation.
Ironically, this piety of the Cross could not have come about but for the early church’s conviction that the Resurrection is, indeed, the culmination of the Passion story. Over a period of forty days ending with his ascension, Jesus in his glorified body appeared before the disciples and a multitude of witnesses — according to St. Paul, more than five hundred (1 Cor. 15:6) — precisely in order to fix the truth of his resurrection firmly in the mind and imagination of a fledgling church. This is the significant narrative background of St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s fourth-century pronouncement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” (Note 1. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, Lecture 13:4, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2d series, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978), p. 83.)
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All creation was confounded with terror when it beheld thee suspended on the Cross, O Christ. The sun was darkened, and the foundations of the earth were shaken; all things suffered in sympathy with him who had created all things. O Lord, who of thine own good will did suffer for us, glory to thee.
Byzantine Hymn for Holy Friday
In the first-century Roman Empire, there was no glory in public crucifixion. If you and I had stood near the Cross, we would not have gained comfort from Jesus suffering and death. We would not have walked away and confidently declared, “Jesus has died for our sins and saved us on that tree!” Something else had to have happened that removed the despair from his disciples hearts and replaced it with hope. And that, of course, was the Resurrection.
From the standpoint of the ancient church’s resurrection faith, Jesus was neither simply a victim of Roman injustice and cruelty, nor just a hero admirable for his teaching and for a life well lived. As Georges Florovsky writes, “Christ was not a passive victim, but the conqueror, even in his utmost humiliation. He knew that this humiliation was no mere endurance or obedience, but the very path of Glory and of the ultimate victory.” (Note 2. Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, vol. 3 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976), p. 110.) There could be no compulsion or necessity in Christ’s crucifixion and death. These had to be undergone willingly in an absolutely free act of obedience to God, so that his death was a perfect sacrifice. Wherever sin exists there is no pure sacrifice. But Christ was without sin and could act without enslavement to it or captivity to death.
Christs "choice” to go to the Cross was freely undergone, but not according to our ordinary understanding of “choice” as choosing between several possibilities or options. Neither was it the only “choice” he had. Christ chose to suffer and die on the Cross, “not merely in the sense of voluntary endurance or non-resistance, not merely in the sense that he permitted the rage of sin and unrighteousness to be vented on Himself... but willed it.” (Note 3. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, p. 100.) In the words of a fifth-century Armenian catechism, “[Christ] came willingly to death, and as All-powerful, was forced by no one____Christ willingly, in his love coming to death, announced with a loud voice with awesome signs that even in death He was one in will and deed with the Father.”(Note 4. The Teaching of Saint Gregory, trans. Robert W. Thomson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 109, par. 477, 488.) “Therefore, Christ as a man offered the spotless sacrifice to the Father, not intending to bring to the Father some juridical equivalent,” says the Romanian theologian Dumitru Staniloae, “but to endow us through our union with him with the power of becoming ourselves a spotless sacrifice, so that we too might be able to enter with him into the Father s presence.” (Note 5. Dumitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 195.)
Christs death was not a suicide. There was nothing morbid or selfish about it. In going to the Cross, the Son of God chose life, not death. The movement of his will was in perfect accord with the will of the Father of Life, consistent with his unlimited love for humankind. With his arms outstretched, Christ beckons humankind to join him on his cross, which is at the center of the universe and on which life triumphs over death in his person.
The church calls the death that human beings die a “corruptible death” that dissolves the body-and-soul unity of the human person. Though Jesus death was a real death, death’s malevolence and destructiveness were exhausted on his divinity. His death ‘was an ‘incorrupt death,’ and therefore corruption and death were overcome in it, and in it began the resurrection.” (Note 6. Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, p. 136.) The power of God in Christ rejoined body and soul and resurrected him bodily from the grave. What appeared, even to St. John and the grieving women at the Cross, as the humiliating demise of a powerless victim, was revealed three days hence as a conquerors act of freedom, love, and power that overcame death.
He-Who-is-Crucified is He-Who-is-Resurrected. “He who truly died, the same is ever living,” states the sixth-century Armenian philosopher David Anhaght. (Note 7. David Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” in David Anhaght: The “Invincible” Philosopher, ed. Avedis K. Sanjian (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1986), p. 87.) Just as there is no meaningful distinction between God’s weakness and Gods strength (“The weakness of God is stronger than men”; 1 Cor. 1:25, NKJV), or between Gods will and Gods love (“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us”; 1 John 3:16, NKJV), so the Cross and he who was crucified on it are inseparable. What looks to the world like weakness is Gods power. Gods love is the height of Gods power. In other words: God’s love is power and his power is love. “The One who alone is real has in Him as His own each and all the powers,” continues Anhaght. (Note 8. Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” p. 85.)
Thus, the Crucifixion could not possibly have led to the demise of Jesus Christ, but only to his resurrection. For indeed, the power of the Resurrection is the power of the Cross. Henceforth, every cross is a crucifix, and every crucifix is the victorious Cross. The Crucifixion did not make the Resurrection necessary; rather; in order that the Resurrection might come to pass, the Crucifixion had to be. The aim and goal of Christ’s suffering and death is resurrection. St. Paul proclaims that the power of the Cross is the Resurrection: “For though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4, NKJV).
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O Christ God, who spread apart your spotless hands on the cross and gave us the sign of triumph, through it preserve our lives.
Armenian Canon for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, First Day
When we view the Crucifixion in this light, it should not be surprising that the earliest Christian art depicts it with an emphasis on Christs victory over death. The Resurrection shines through the Crucifixion in this Christus Triumphans type of crucifixion art. In it the figure of Jesus stands upright on and against the cross, his arms straight and outstretched, his feet usually set apart, his torso erect. His neck is straight or only slightly bent, and his eyes are open.
This contrasts with the more familiar Christus Patiens style of crucifixion icon that gained prominence after the ninth century and of which there are vastly more examples. (See Figure 2.) Icons and religious paintings of this type depict Christ in a wide range of ways, from a relatively upright, unmarked, and serene subject with eyes shut as if in sleep, to a scourged and bloodied figure that sags heavily from the Cross, his head fallen over and his eyes shut in unmistakable death.
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| Figure 2. Icon depicting the Crucifixion by the Novgorod School The Bridgeman Art Library |
But first let us turn briefly to the early Christus Triumphans type of crucifixion art, for it embraces a very different and ancient piety. This art unambiguously communicates the conviction and meaning of St. Cyrils bold statement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” Let us look at two examples of this type of crucifixion art. The first belongs to the Syrian Rabula Gospel illuminations of the sixth century. (See Figure 3.) The second is an Armenian illumination of much later date by a fourteenth-century artist named Barsegh. (See Plate 5.)
The Rabula Gospel juxtaposes the Crucifixion and the Resurrection as a diptych on a single page. The Crucifixion is at the top of the illumination, and the Resurrection is at the bottom. In the former, Christ stands in an upright position on a central cross that rises high and stretches wide so that his unbent arms reach over the crosses of the two thieves on the left and right. His head is just slightly tilted,
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| Plate 5. The Crucifixion by Barsegh New York Public Library, Special Collections |
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Figure 3. The Crucifixion and the Women at the Tomb from the Rahula Gospels
Scala/Art Resource, NY
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while his eyes are wide open as he looks compassionately upon the penitent thief to his right. Despite the fact that the Roman soldier Longinus is thrusting a spear into his side — according to the Roman method of verifying that the man is dead — this Christ is unmistakably alive. His posture and face express a quiet self-possession and radiant inner strength; in other words, peace and tranquility. The blood around the nails and wounds does not depict gore in a naturalistic way but symbolizes, rather, the loving and redeeming sacrifice.
The Resurrection shines through this crucifixion. This is emphasized by the placement of the empty tomb: at the center of the Resurrection scene below and aligned perpendicularly with the Cross. The guards lie asleep on the ground to the front and side of the tomb. In triptych fashion, two other Gospel scenes are depicted on either side of the tomb. On the left, an angel announces to the two Holy Women that Jesus is alive; on the right, the women kneel before the resurrected Christ.
At the beginning of the first millennium, Eastern iconography started to adopt the Christus Patiens model of the Crucifixion. Nevetheless, it retained important characteristics of the earlier Christus Triumphans form. Paul Evdokimov explains that this type of crucifixion icon “never shows the realism of exhausted and dead flesh; [and] painful expressions of agony have no place.” (Note 9. Paul Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Oakwood Publications, 1990), pp. 133, 314.) Leonid Ouspensky adds, “Everything which reminds of the corruptible human flesh is contrary to the [true] icon, for ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth incorruption inherit corruption (1 Cor. 15:50), and a temporal portrait of a saint [or of Christ] cannot be an icon, precisely because it reflects not his transfigured but his ordinary, carnal state.” (Note 10. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of the Icon (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), p. 36.)
Over the centuries, my own Armenian tradition has clung more tenaciously than even the Byzantine tradition to the inspiration of the Christus Triumphans crucifixion. (Note 11. Medieval Armenian iconographers may well have clung to it in support of their church’s opposition to the two natures Christology of the Council of Chalcedon (451) that both the Byzantine and Roman churches embraced. The Armenian Church favored the “one nature” Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria (378 44). Cyril defined the unity of divine and human activity in Christ with the formula “One Nature (mia physis) of the Word of God incarnate.” He employed physis in the sense of a concrete reality or being, rather than an abstract set of natural properties that might be described as a “human nature” or a “divine nature.” The Armenian Church adheres to this Cyrillian “monophysitism” and affirms that, through an act of divine economy, the preexistent Word of God voluntarily and forever took upon himself (assumed) and enacted the fullness of our humanity. Furthermore, the Christus Triumphans style was more compatible with the Armenian Church’s leanings toward a strong view of the incorruptibility of Christ’s flesh in life, as well as in death.) Thus, even as late as the fourteenth century, we find a rather remarkable illumination by the painter Barsegh that with the simplicity of a line drawing renders the distinctive Christus Triumphans form. (See Plate 5.) The primitive appearance of the painting is deceiving and belies a sophisticated theology. Barsegh seems intent on stressing the doctrine that the death of the Incarnate Word was not only freely willed but also incorrupt. Death exhausts itself completely in the immortal and incorruptible body of the Divine Word. Death is utterly defeated on the Cross and life triumphs. An Armenian hymn for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross expounds upon the meaning that Barsegh seeks to convey: “God the Creator was lifted onto the cross, and upon it he renewed and revived those who had died in sin by eating of the wood.” (Note 12. Armenian Canon for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, First Day, in Michael Daniel Findykian, “Armenian Hymns of the Church and Cross,” St. Nersess Theological Review 11 (2006): 77.)
In Barsegh’s crucifixion, Jesus body quite literally blends into the wood of the Cross, as if he and it are one substance. As though he were commenting on this painting, David Anhaght writes, “He [Christ] who pleased to dwell on it [the Cross] did not depart from it, but dwelt, dwells, and will dwell there____Therefore, the Cross is the Cross of God, and He Himself the Crucified One, God immortal, uncircumscribable and infinite.” (Note 13. Anhaght, “An Encomium on the Holy Cross of God,” pp. 85, 87.) The Cross and he who was crucified on it are inseparable. Christ and the Cross, his body and the wood, he and the Tree, are bonded as one and yield the fruit of eternal life.
Let me say a word here about the distinctive Christology that David Anhaght expresses so powerfully. While in this chapter we stress the victory on the Cross, this emphasis must not be at the expense of the suffering and death that Christ endures. This theology of the Cross strongly affirms that the subject, the person, who suffered death on the Cross was the Divine Word. God in Christ, through the flesh that he took from his mother, truly suffered and died on the Cross. This is the belief underlying Anhaghts insistence that Christ was “pleased to dwell on it [the Cross]” and will never disassociate himself from it. We can fully appreciate the greatness of Christs victory on the Cross only if we also recognize the infinite love for humankind that he showed by taking upon himself the full force and malevolence of death, so that death might become a passage into eternal life.
In the Barsegh painting, Christ s elongated limbs, especially his arms that nearly cover the horizontal beam of the Cross, reinforce the impression that the flesh and the wood are one, and that the death that was endured on the Cross is taken into the life of God. The braiding of Christs body indicates the suffering, and is virtually all that enables the eye to distinguish Christ from the Cross, his body from the wood. There are no visible wounds or nail markings on Christs hands or feet. This idiosyncratic omission boldly emphasizes that the Crucified and the Resurrected are one and the same, namely, the eternal and immortal Word of God.
The two thieves in the painting are diminutive. They appear to be floating in space beneath this cosmic Christ. There are no city walls in the background; only empty space adorned with sun and moon, hung to either side of Christs outstretched arms, as if he is holding them up. In the words of another Armenian hymn, “Today the Only Begotten Son spread out his spotless arms upon the Holy Cross./Most highly exalt him forever./For he triumphed over death by his mighty power,/and he called the universe to salvation and to eternal life./Most highly exalt him forever.” (Note 14. Armenian Canon for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, First Day, in Findykian, “Armenian Hymns of the Church and Cross,” p. 78.)
Christs eyes are completely open, as are the eyes of the penitent thief, whereas the eyes of the second thief are shut. Twice at the bottom of the painting, Barsegh carries over this soteriologically charged motif of open eyes. First, the eyes of the traditional skull of Adam at Christs feet are open. The new Adam restores to life the old Adam. Second, just beneath this “living” skull, Christ lies in a sepulcher. His body remains braided, perhaps to remind us that his suffering is not something he leaves behind, but that it continues to bear significance through the whole of time and eternity. The open eyes of this entombed “dead” body may be meant to show that the Resurrection is already “happening” or “present,” even in the grave.
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Then he said..., “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
Luke 24:25-26, NKJV
Keeping the Rabula Gospel and Barsegh’s crucifixion illumination in mind, we may turn now to the movie The Passion of the Christ In an interview in the spring of 2004 with Mel Gibson, who produced and directed the film, television journalist Diane Sawyer asked Gibson why he had depicted the scourging and crucifixion of Jesus so violently and bloodily Gibson responded:
I wanted it to be shocking. And I also wanted it to be extreme. I wanted it to push the viewers over the edge ... so that they see the enormity — the enormity of that sacrifice — to see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness, even through extreme pain and suffering and ridicule. (Note 15. “Faith, Hope, Love, and Forgiveness: Mel Gibson Tackles Passion Controversy”: An Interview with Diane Sawyer on Prime Time. Available online at http://www.taik.livedaily.com/showthread.php?t=39i059 (date posted: 14 Feb. 2004).)
About the same time, Gibson explained to Christianity Today why in the last minutes of the film he deliberately juxtaposed images of the Last Supper with the main action of the Crucifixion. He said he wanted “to point out what it [the Last Supper] is, how it was instituted, and why.” (Note 16. “‘Dude, That Was Graphic’: Mel Gibson Talks about The Passion of the Christ” by Daniel Neff and Jane Johnson Struck. Available online at http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/melgibson .html (date posted: 23 Feb. 2004).) In this way, he sought to stress the redemptive meaning of Jesus’ suffering.
The Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, certainly does commemorate Jesus’ suffering and sacrificial death on the Cross, but this is not all. From earliest Christianity, the Eucharistic commemoration has reflected the meaning of St. Cyril’s proclamation: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.” The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, an early third-century text, includes a prayer of institution that incorporates this grander vision:
When he was about to surrender himself to voluntary suffering in order to destroy death, to break the devils chains, to tread hell underfoot, to pour out this light upon the just, to establish the covenant and manifest his resurrection, he took bread ... (Note 17. The Apostolic Tradition, in The Springtime of the Liturgy, ed. Lucien Deiss (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1979), pp. 130-31.)
And all of the great catholic liturgies of the church do likewise.
According to Caleb Deschanel, who was the cinematographer for The Passion of the Christ, the movies scenes of Jesus scourging and crucifixion were strongly influenced by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century religious paintings of the Italian Renaissance artist Caravaggio. In an American Cinematographer magazine interview of March 2004, Deschanel concedes, however, that Caravaggio did not depict Christs wounds nearly so explicitly (naturalistically) as the movie did. Nor does he mention the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century crucifixion paintings of such artists as Lucas Cranach and Matthias Grünewald. Yet the crucified Christ in the movie strongly resembles the sanguinary and agonized Christ of these paintings.
Grunewald’s crucifixion panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16) is a good example and one that may be regarded as a historic predecessor of The Passions kinetic iconography. (See Figure 4.) It is a bold attempt to represent the human suffering of Christ on the Cross through naturalism in art. Grünewald uses colors and includes details in his crucifixion painting that are viscerally evocative of the agony of death and even of decay. Jesus flesh is punctured and shredded from the scourging and flagellation. His skin is a greenish, sickly yellow. The blood that covers him and is clotted on his forehead around the crown of thorns is dried and rust-colored. Grünewald leaves no doubt that this grotesque and tortured figure is a corpse. There is not the slightest indication that this dead body is the incorruptible flesh of the Incarnate God who will be raised in three days.
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Figure 4. The Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald
The Bridgeman Art Library
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Christs perforated and utterly savaged body is larger than the figures in the foreground, emblematic of his divinity; his arms, hands, and feet are especially elongated. In traditional fashion, Mary Magdalene, St. John, and the Virgin Mary are positioned on the left. On the right is St. John the Baptist. The Baptist points to Christ with one hand and holds an open Bible inscribed with the text of the Gospel of John: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). At the bottom of the painting, a small lamb stands between the Baptist and the Cross. Christ is the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, NKJV). The lamb faces the crucified figure and holds a cross, the sign of victory, and a chalice, emblematic of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the medicine of eternal life. (Note 18. The Isenheim Altarpiece has two sets of wings that include, among other images, an Annunciation and a Resurrection. The Resurrection is a surreal image with a luminous Christ figure ascending into the night from his tomb in view of his disciples, who, together with the soldiers, are falling to the ground in awe or fear. No doubt this was how Grünewald intended to depict the glory of God in Christ and his final victory over death. But there is no continuity between these two images of Christ on the Cross and Christ flying from the grave. They have not the slightest resemblance to one another. It is as if they are two entirely different beings. This represents a rupture of reality that seems peculiarly modern, a dualism of natural and supernatural that does not belong to traditional iconography.)
Despite the similarities in their art, Gibsons theology of the Cross is weaker and thinner than Grünewald's. Gibson strives to replicate what the naked eye might have seen, and that is all. Such naturalism does not even hint of a transcendent reality that lies “beneath” or “inside of” what the naked eye sees or the camera records. The Passion of the Christ fails to express what historic Christianity steadfastly maintains and traditional iconography affirms: that the soteriological truth of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection lies within the historical course of events and that the eyes of faith — or the eyes of the artist in this case — may read this truth out from ordinary reality.
In this respect, Gibson’s artistry is entirely modern and thoroughly secular, not in the least sacramental, for it radically severs and separates the natural from the supernatural, the ordinary from the transcendent. Deschanel, who, unlike Gibson, does not profess to be Christian, expresses an opinion in the American Cinematographer interview that is revealing of the movies modernism: “Of course, the story of this film is really pre-religion: it inspired a religion, but its not a religious story. It’s the story of a person whose powers come from forgiveness. . . . For me, its [the resurrection scene] when the film becomes religious.” (Note 19. “A Savior’s Pain”: An Interview by John Baily. Available online at http://www.theasc.com/magazine.maro4/cover/index.html.) But if this is so, the integral vision of salvation in the traditional icono-graphic rendering of the Crucifixion is forgotten and lost.
My wife, my daughter, and I went to see The Passion of the Christ on Holy Thursday. I vividly recall my agitation and disappointment with the ending of the movie, not just the crucifixion scene, but also the resurrection scene. The hyper-naturalism that Gibson employed to portray the scourging, the nailing to the Cross, and the suffering and death on it could not work for the Resurrection. So he turned to a typical Hollywood gimmick: the portrayal of mystery as magic.
I was cognitively and emotionally jolted when the cinematography shifted suddenly from naturalism to Daliesque surrealism — to the aerial view of the crucifixion, the teardrop falling from heaven to earth, the burial shroud collapsing, as if the dead body disappears from beneath it, as the cameras eye moves to the figure of a resurrected Jesus seated near the stone slab. (Note 20. Gibson also makes his own myth of the Resurrection. Nowhere in the New Testament is the Resurrection described sans witnesses at the empty tomb. Nowhere in the Gospels or the Epistles is the actual “event” of the Resurrection described. Yet in The Passion, Gibson does just these things. With his “hidden” camera he records the mystery itself: Christ arising from death before the first witnesses have arrived. Though this freedom may be granted the moviemaker, and though this is not the first time an artist has done this, the canons of traditional Christian iconography forbid it.) This fantastical imagery of the resurrection scene does not connect effectively with the rest of the narrative, especially the crucifixion. Both the crucifixion and resurrection scenes of The Passion fail the test of serious Christian art.
One wishes that Gibson had taken a lesson from his sister in the Roman Catholic faith, writer Flannery O’Connor. She advised, “The novelist... if he is going to show the supernatural taking place ... has nowhere to do it except on the literal level of natural events.” For fiction “should reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete, observable reality. If the writer uses his eyes in the security of his Faith, he will be obliged to use them honestly, and his sense of mystery, and acceptance of it, will be increased.” (Note 21. Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990), pp. 176,148.) O’Connor practiced in her fiction what she called a Christian realism, which is by no means naturalism. Quite the contrary, O’Connor avoided naturalism’s denial of transcendent human freedom, as she also steered clear of sentimentalizing and trivializing religious mystery by depicting it as “otherworldly” and completely “outside” of history or nature. Christian realism endeavors to demonstrate that history and nature are shot through with God’s purpose and grace. This is a sacramental vision of life that recognizes and strives to portray God’s presence and activity throughout the created order. O’Connor writes her fiction as an invitation to discover oneself as a participant in a sacred, spiritual reality that sin or pride in the power of reason without faith blocks from our perception. As Dante writes in the Divine Comedy, “You who have sound intellects/Seek out the doctrine that conceals itself/Beneath the veil of the strange verses.” (Note 22. Dante, Inferno, 9:61-63.)
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It is finished!
John 19:30, NKJV
In closing, let’s imagine how The Passion of the Christ might have been made differently in order to represent persuasively the integrality of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, and to overcome the deficiencies of the popular piety of the Cross with a truly sacramental vision of salvation by the Cross. I propose three key alterations.
First, the final resurrection scene would be left out. Instead, the movie would end with Jesus final utterance on the Cross, according to St. John the Evangelist: “It is finished” (John 19:30, NKJV). Second, the movie would have an entirely different beginning. It would open with St. Lukes post-Resurrection story of Jesus’ appearance to two of his disciples (Luke 24:13-35). St. Luke reports that on the same day that Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to two of his disciples on the road to a village named Emmaus. The disciples did not at first recognize this “stranger” as their beloved teacher, though they were mysteriously attracted to him and were moved to trust him with their most personal feelings about Jesus’ crucifixion and death. They also told him of the odd happenings that day at the tomb when “certain women of our company” found it to be empty and “had ... visions of angels who said He [Christ] was alive” (Luke 24:22-23, NKJV).
According to St. Luke, when the disciples finished telling their story, Jesus said to them, “Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” and then expounded “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:26-27, NKJV). But even then the disciples failed to recognize him. When in the evening the company arrived at the village, the disciples invited Jesus to join them for supper. “Now it came to pass,” continues St. Luke, “as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, ‘Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road?’” (Luke 24:30-32, NKJV).
The final alteration to The Passion of the Christ would weave this motif of the Resurrection, with its allusion to the Last Supper, into the whole of the rest of the narrative, like the gilt thread that runs through a fine tapestry. Gibson did include strong Eucharistic imagery in The Passion. But in my alteration, the Eucharistic theme would be charged with not just the sacrificial significance of the Cross but also the redemptive reality of the Resurrection, as a testimony to the truth of St. Cyril's statement: “I confess the Cross, because I know of the Resurrection.”
Source: Vigen Guroian, "Chapter 5: The Victorious Cross" in Melody of Faith (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010) 93-114.
