On watching Noah

One of the principles of hermeneutics (the study of how to interpret meaning) is that the context imparts meaning – sometimes just as much as the of what you are experiencing through your senses.  Actually, we all do that – no one listens to a song and criticizes the lyrics for grammar or the artist for saying impossible or otherwise stupid things.  Likewise we expect our newspapers to have literal and factual accounts.  The standard we hold the media to depends on the media itself. 

So when I went to see the new Noah movie, I did not expect to watch an entirely Biblical account.  The Biblical account is only 4 chapters long – it’d be virtually impossible to make a literal 2hr movie from that anyway!  So I expected Aronofsky to take license with the story in order to add length and other visual interest points.  I also knew that Hollywood is not an orthodox seminary, so I could expect to see license also taken with theology.  On those two counts I was not disappointed – much license was taken in almost every respect.  But was I upset?  No.  Actually I rather enjoyed the movie.

Kathy Klassen got it right when she pointed out that many Christians see a movie ‘based on the Bible’ like Noah and have one of three reactions:

1. The literalists who throw out the movie at the slightest bit of license taken. 


2. The nominalist that doesn't really care and just enjoys the story presented. 


3. The evangelist who looks for the redeeming qualities of the film and then uses that to generate "god-discussions" with seekers.

As I read my friend’s reviews of Noah on FB and blogs, I find that many are joining the first camp.  I must say that in years gone by I would’ve joined them immediately.  But is it right to expect Hollywood – and I could go further and ask if it’s right to expect any film director ever – to correctly translate the Scriptural record to film?  I believe the answer is no.  If God knew that film would be the best media for His revelation, He would’ve made film possible when He inspired the men who physically penned the Bible.  Film is an alternative way of telling a story, and in our culture a more socially acceptable way.  But Man cannot improve on what God has said or written.   What we can do – and have been doing since the fall of Adam and Eve – is distort, misunderstand and add to it - and that is exactly what Aronofsky’s movie does.   He might well argue that the point of his movie is to tell Aronofsky’s interpretation of the Scriptural record.  That it also does. 

So you might ask, what would I want from such a movie?  Well, other than being entertained in exchange for cash (which it also does) – it creates a good deal of discussion.  If I can use that discussion to explore the hermeneutic of another (by asking them what they think of the movie and it’s meaning) then I think the movie has more than mere entertainment value.  If I shut down that discussion by pronouncing my own judgment on it, then I think I only display my own values, and the movie’s usefulness is gone.  You might not even think that to be a bad thing.  But the age of Hollywood and in a culture where celebrities are worshipped, I don’t think it takes a scholar to realize that we need to use every means possible to discuss God and His Word. 

When I think of "Global Impact week"

At some point I think most every adult who encounters a church asks why there are so many different denominations.  Usually they ask that question in consideration of protestant denominations - seeing Catholics as one form of Christianity and all others (Baptist, Pentacostal, Methodist, etc) as various permutations of Protestantism.  As such, the question really is – why can’t all the branches of Protestantism get together – why can’t they be one as Jesus prayed, “that they may all be one…” in John 17:21? 

The reality is that from the time of Christ’s resurrection there have been various forms of Christianity, just as in Christ’s day there were various forms of Judaism (Sadducees and Pharisees to name two of them).  Just as today, there were free thinkers among almost every place Christianity spread.  They pushed the ideas they were given further down one line of thought than most commonly agreed on.

So many divergent ideas were formed that a gathering of Christian leaders was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine way back in 325 AD.  The purpose of that council was to attain some kind of consensus in the church regarding the nature of the Son of God and His relationship to God the Father.  A man named Arius put forward the idea that Jesus was created by God the Father and as such is subordinate to Him.  The council disagreed, and Arius was decreed a heretic.  But he believed in that idea and started his own branch of Christianity.  Some would argue that this was the first formal split.  We can all agree it certainly wasn’t the last.

When the church next got together over such matters (the council of Constantinople in 381), it split out the followers of Macedonius (aka the Semi-Arians).  At the next council (Ephesus in 431) it split out the Nestorianians.  And so it went - almost every time the church got together to come to some common understanding, a breakaway group was launched out.   We commonly think only of the day Martin Luther formally protested the teaching of the Catholic church in 1517 as the first great split in the church (Catholic vs Protestant), but actually there were many, including the ‘great Schism’ of 1054 that divided Eastern Orthodoxy from the Western church of Rome.

It is worth some consideration that while such councils were called ‘ecumenical’ (that is, about promoting unity), the way that unity was to be created was through sound and agreeable doctrine (doctrine being the set of beliefs our faith mandates).  But declaring sound doctrine almost always results in confrontation (Jesus had many such confrontations with both Sadducees and Pharisees), and that confrontation can go two ways – it can lead to repentance, forgiveness and restoration, or it can lead to anger and separation. In fact, every single one of the church splits was over a matter of church doctrine.

Nowadays the term ‘ecumenical’ typically means something slightly different – the changing of already established doctrine such that unity might prevail.  We can see that in the constitution of the World Christian Council of Churches.  It states, “…to call one another to visible unity in one faith and in one eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and common life in Christ, through witness and service to the world, and to advance towards that unity in order that the world may believe.”  A laudable goal if all have the same faith.  A laughable goal if you’re trying to get different faiths to unite.

Of course, in the broader sense, Christianity is not a set of beliefs but rather a worldview.  As such, it lies deeper than beliefs, and perhaps in that sense all Christians already have a degree of unity - at least as much as the Sadducees and Pharisees had unity (of course, that kind of unity was set against Christ).  Nevertheless, one cannot live one’s life with worldview only.   Someone once pointed out that your worldview must inform your beliefs and your beliefs inform your values and your values inform your behavior.  You will never find unity at the belief level and above (value and behavior) unless you can agree on an absolute expression of the common worldview.  Therein lies the ecumenical challenge (in the modern sense of the term).  We might find agreement in the Scripture (assuming we agree on what the Scripture consists of), but only if we have a very high view of Scripture.  As soon as we lower that view (via conflicting hermeneutic or outright dismissal of the text itself) than we will never find any agreement at all. 

This is true today just as it was true in Christ’s day.  When the Israelite elders questioned Jesus, He often said, “have you not read….”  He was calling them to a higher view of the Scripture (and a better hermeneutic) than they obviously exhibited.  So it is today.  At the core, it isn’t so much about whether we agree with each other or not – it is about whether we agree with God or not.