tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32836981891355043572024-02-08T02:22:32.108+00:00CharismataDechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.comBlogger873125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-88736709680717637252017-06-21T22:55:00.003+01:002017-06-21T22:55:43.398+01:00The Thunder Rolls"...at the decisive points they cannot fail to hear something of the rolling thunder of the 1921 <i>Romans..."</i><br />
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So says Barth in the preface to CD IV/2. The "they" he is referring to are the Pietists concerned with the doctrine of sanctification (and the apparent lack of one in Barth's theology). IV/2 is Barth's answer to this group, though it is an answer which may not satisfy them. Why not? Because the "thunder" of Romans II which so disturbed many of its readers can also be heard here in the "mature" Barth.<br />
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I mention this only because there's a great quote from <i>Deadwood </i>(delivered without suitable gravitas by the inimitable Keith Carradine) which captures what I'm trying to do with my thesis on Barth's concept of love: "listen to the thunder."<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kmYdYti-obg" width="560"></iframe>Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-47112124220888552732017-05-25T18:44:00.003+01:002017-05-26T12:21:25.097+01:00The Turn to the TrinityThere's is an excellent series of tweets on <a href="https://twitter.com/FaithTheology" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Ben Myers's twitter page</span></a> concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. I thoroughly recommend it. A while back I started writing my own set of theses on the doctrine of Trinity, more as a rant than anything else. I quickly gave up, in part because that's how anything I begin to write usually ends, and in part because it was becoming clear that I'd be aligning myself with some form of heresy.<br />
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So, for example, thesis 1 was: "The doctrine of the Trinity is simply a way elaborating on the claim that Jesus is Lord," and, following on from this, thesis 2 was "The doctrine of the Trinity serves Christology, and not the other way around."<br />
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In a parallel universe, when historians of theology write the intellectual biography of the second best theologian to come out of Mervue, Galway in the early twenty-first century, they will call this my hyper-Barthian phase.<br />
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Anyway, the point is, the doctrine of the Trinity vexes me. It always has. And if Barth is responsible for the modern "turn to the Trinity," then I think it's one of his more regrettable gifts to the church. For it has given rise to all sorts of meaningless talk of perichoretic relationality, participation in the divine dance (or just participation full stop), divine mystery, and so on. Here my instincts are firmly with the early Melanchthon, who thought that such talk was for the worst form of scholasticism. Protestants, he argued, were interested in more concrete matters like law, sin, and grace - in short, the benefits of Christ given to an undeserving world. Melanchthon, it should be noted, later corrected himself, beginning subsequent editions of his theology handbook with a doctrine of God.<br />
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One of the fault lines in theology today is, essentially, whether to follow the early or the later Melanchthon. Barth, in typical fashion, disagreed with both the early <i>and </i>the later Melanchthon, though I'm sure he was entirely successful. Barth began (it seems to me) by trying to have the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology as equally basic. These, he claimed, where the distinctives of <i>Christian</i> theology. For my own part, I'm yet to be convinced that a doctrine of the Trinity <i>per se</i> is a Christian distinctive. What I mean is, I can imagine a Triune God who is quite other than the God revealed in Jesus. This is what the first two of my ill-advised theses were getting at. That is not to say that God is not Triune. But it is to say that God's Triunity, in abstraction from the concrete person of Christ, is an idol, perhaps even the worst of all idols.<br />
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Now you can see why I abandoned those theses.Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-27868451959064186352017-04-10T13:42:00.002+01:002017-04-10T13:47:10.368+01:00Football, Bloody Hell<div style="text-align: justify;">
I've decided, with no small amount of fear and trembling, to stop watching football. I'll see this season out, but once the Champions League final ends, once Eamon Dunphy has prophesied the impending demise of the beautiful game on account of there being no more street football, once the football websites are filled with talk of £150m war chests, and talk of the good-player-but-not-a-great-player Dele Alli moving to Manchester United for a world record fee of three billion pounds, I will make my quiet exit from the stadium. Footage may emerge of me in my car, head buried in my hands, wondering what's just happened. But the die has been cast. There will be no going back.</div>
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Except there will be going back. I'm sure I'll watch games with friends (Alva counts as a friend, right?). Furthermore, I intend this as a sabbatical of sorts. A break away from the game to clear my head, perhaps learn a foreign language or two to expand my options for the years ahead. I will continue to play football. But the hours I spend watching it, reading about it, hearing about it, thinking about it (both in its "real" and "fantasy" form, though it's getting harder to tell the difference) will be reduced to virtually zero. And we really are talking hours and hours here. More than I'd care to tot up and admit.</div>
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Why the drastic measure?</div>
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You could understand it pietistically, as my attempt to wean my soul from those things that distract me from God and neighbour.</div>
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You could understand it politically, as my attempt to embody Terry Eagleton's insistence that the first thing a socialist government would have to do would be to get rid of sport (whether he means the consumption of it or the playing of it I'm not sure.)</div>
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You could understand it iconoclastically, as my attempt to topple an idol not only in my own life, but an idol that has transfixed the world, turned human beings into gods worthy of worship - an idol which itself has sold out to the gods of money and glory and war (in a post-apocalyptic world, footballers and other pristine athletes will rule the world).</div>
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You could understand it pragmatically, as my attempt to sharpen my focus on the PhD as I approach its final year.</div>
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You could understand it psychologically, as my attempt to avoid seeing my beloved Andres Iniesta rage against the dying of the light.</div>
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But if you really want to understand it, simply watch this David Mitchell sketch. It gets me every time.</div>
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There was a time when, relatively speaking, I didn't watch much football (it is surely no coincidence that I supported Aston Villa during that time). I watched the Champions League, and got excited by these cultured Europeans with their novel ideas of passing and moving. I watched the major international tournaments, and got excited by whoever was deemed the "next Maradona" or the "next Pele" or the "next Kilbane". That was the age before digital streaming and digital media. There's no going back to that age. Football will plough on, seemingly impervious to the economic conditions of the time - or perhaps their most faithful and horrifying representative. I will no doubt resume my journey with it into the depths of hell. A sneaky <i>El Clasico </i>here, a covert catch-up on <i>Second Captains </i>or <i>Football Weekly </i>there. I may even fall in love with it all over again, as it dangles in front of me a New Ronaldo (the 'real' one, as Mourinho once called him - purely out of spite for the current one, of course), a New Valeron, a New Riquelme, a New Iniesta as its death-rattle. How could I resist? In about two months time, I will try to do just that, so help me God.</div>
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Until then, however, I will be soaking up every meaningless kick of a football, and doing my damndest to ensure that my 10 year old nephew doesn't beat me in Fantasy Premier League. <i>Fantasy Football Scoutcast</i> here I come. You were the canary in the coalmine, but let's just stay a little while longer and go out with a bang.</div>
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-57914908733518205532017-02-12T12:05:00.000+00:002017-02-12T12:05:33.773+00:00A Knowledge of God Independent of Jesus Christ? Nein!<br />
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<a href="http://restoringpangea.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Screen-Shot-2015-03-11-at-11.49.34-AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://restoringpangea.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Screen-Shot-2015-03-11-at-11.49.34-AM.png" height="260" width="400" /></a></div>
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Consider the following passages from two theologians at almost opposite ends of the spectrum.</div>
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First, J. Gresham Machen, from his book <i>Christianity and Liberalism</i>:</div>
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"How, then, shall God be known; how shall we become so acquainted with Him that personal fellowship may become possible? Some liberal preachers would say that we become acquainted with God only through Jesus. That assertion has an appearance of loyalty to our Lord, but in reality it is highly derogatory to Him. For Jesus Himself plainly recognized the validity of other ways of knowing God, and to reject those other ways is to reject the things that lay at the very center of Jesus’ life. Jesus plainly found God’s hand in nature; the lilies of the field revealed to Him the weaving of God. He found God also in the moral law; the law written in the hearts of men was God’s law, which revealed His righteousness. Finally Jesus plainly found God revealed in the Scriptures. How profound was our Lord’s use of the words of prophets and psalmists! To say that such revelation of God was invalid, or is useless to us today, is to do despite to things that lay closest to Jesus’ mind and heart. </blockquote>
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But, as a matter of fact, when men say that we know God only as He is revealed in Jesus, they are denying all real knowledge of God whatever. For unless there be some idea of God independent of Jesus, the ascription of deity to Jesus has no meaning. To say, “Jesus is God,” is meaningless unless the word “God” has an antecedent meaning attached to it. And the attaching of a meaning to the word “God” is accomplished by the means which have just been mentioned. We are not forgetting the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” But these words do not mean that if a man had never known what the word “God” means, he could come to attach an idea to that word merely by his knowledge of Jesus’ character. On the contrary, the disciples to whom Jesus was speaking had already a very definite conception of God; a knowledge of the one supreme Person was presupposed in all that Jesus said. But the disciples desired not only a knowledge of God but also intimate, personal contact. And that came through their discipleship with Jesus. Jesus revealed, in a wonderfully intimate way, the character of God, but such revelation obtained its true significance only on the basis both of the Old Testament heritage and of Jesus’ own teaching. Rational theism, the knowledge of one Supreme Person, Maker and active Ruler of the world, is at the very root of Christianity."</blockquote>
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Second, Katherine Sonderegger, from her <i>Systematic Theology</i></div>
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"Once again we must quietly but firmly state the Christology cannot be the sole measure, ground, and matter of the doctrine of God; there is more, infinitely more to the One, Eternal God."</div>
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Now, contrast both of these claims with the claim of Karl Barth in volume IV of <i>Church Dogmatics</i>:</div>
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"That God as God is able and willing and ready to condescend, to humble Himself in this way is the mystery of the "deity of Christ" - although frequently it is not recognised in this concreteness. This deity is not the deity of a divine being furnished with all kinds of supreme attributes. The understanding of this decisive christological statement has been made unnecessarily difficult (or easy), and the statement itself ineffective, by overlooking its concrete definition, by omitting to fill out the New Testament concept "deity" in definite connexion with the Old Testament, i.e., in relation to Jesus Christ Himself. The meaning of His deity - the only true deity in the New Testament sense - cannot be gathered from any notion of supreme, absolute, non-worldly being. It can be learned only from what took place in Christ. Otherwise its mystery would be an arbitrary mystery of our own imagining, a false mystery. It would not be the mystery given by the Word and revelation of God in its biblical attestation, the mystery which is alone relevant in Church dogmatics. Who the one true God is, and what He is, i.e., what is His being as God, and therefore His deity, His "divine nature," which is also the divine nature of Jesus Christ if He is very God - all this we have to discover from the fact that as such He is very man and a partaker of human nature, from His becoming man, from His incarnation and from what He has done and suffered in the flesh. For - to put it more pointedly, the mirror in which it can be known (and is known) that He is God, and of the divine nature, is His becoming flesh and His existence in the flesh."</blockquote>
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A dissertation's worth of stuff could be said on the relationship between these three passages. And a litany of proof-texts could be given in reply to Machen and Sonderegger. For example,</div>
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"No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."</div>
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Or,</div>
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"For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity dwells in bodily form..."</div>
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One could also make some interesting historical observations in relation to these passages. For instance, to the extent that liberal theology was an attempt to recover the significance of the concrete person of Jesus for Christian theology and life, then Barth can indeed be seen as a child, even an heir, of liberalism. Whatever else it may have been, Barth's break with liberalism in the first decade of the 20th century was not a return to orthodoxy. The standard American description of Barth as "neo-orthodox" is for this reason a complete misnomer. Barth had no interest in reviving orthodoxy as such. Barth's radical Christocentrim - and it is easy to forget how radical it is when you study at the University of Aberdeen (described by one theologian as the home of "radical-apocalyptic Barthianism") - blocked the way for any simple return to orthodoxy as expressed in the mode of classical theism. For Barth, there can be no grounding of Christianity in "rational theism," even one which is based on Scripture. And there is no getting behind Christ to a God who is more rich than the one revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. One can of course contest Barth on these points - though the contest will be most fruitful simply in the doing of one's work, and not in methodological squabbles. And even if one agrees with Barth on the way in which theology must proceed, one can and should contest the conclusions which he draws. If being a Barthian (my supervisor hates this word, as did Barth, who famously said "If there are Barthians, I am not one of them") means anything, it means doing theology the way Barth sought to do theology; it should never mean repristination. Barth claims that "back to" is never a good slogan in theology. This is equally true of any calls to go "back to Barth."</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-45332158423807983982017-01-14T12:57:00.000+00:002017-01-14T13:27:04.760+00:00Film Awards 2016: Part V<h3>
Best Attempt to Destroy a TV Show</h3>
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<a href="https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/david-brent-life-on-the-road.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/david-brent-life-on-the-road.jpg?w=670&h=377&crop=1" width="320" /></a><i><b>David Brent: Life on the Road</b></i>, is a terrible, terrible comedy. If that scientific fact hurts Gervais's feelings, then it's for him to get better feelings, not for me to get better facts. He has quite simply pissed on everything that made <i>The Office</i> great, managing to achieve nothing of its pathos, its humanity, not to mention its humour. I shouldn't be surprised. In an ironic twist, Gervais's career has gone the way of Andy from <i>Extras</i> once he made it big, and the comedies he's made barely rise above the level of <i>When the Whistle Blows</i>. The two seasons of <i>The Office</i> remain the most perfect seasons of any television comedy. I watch them religiously, and throw in quotes from them as part of my own comedy (see what I did there?). But if there is a God - and it's difficult to tell from Gervais's Twitter account whether he thinks there is - I will never watch <i>Life on the Road </i>again.<br />
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Best Dialogue</h3>
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<a href="http://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/hell-or-high-water.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/hell-or-high-water.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a><i><b>Hell or High Water</b></i> is the film critics were contractually obliged to call this "elegiac." The story is a slight twist on the bank-robbing genre, with the banks themselves (and not the law enforcement) being the real enemy to the robbers. The strength of this film is not its story, however, but its script. Catherine Shoard wrote a good piece on the decline of dialogue in contemporary cinema. <i>Hell or High Water</i> does all it can to buck that trend. "Who the hell gets drunk on beer?" says Ben Foster in response to little brother Chris Pine's request that he not get drunk so early in the morning. This is just one example of the many innocuous but revealing interactions between the characters. Of course one cannot praise the dialogue without also praising the actors. The four leads are excellent. We know what Jeff Bridges can do (and he does it superbly here in tandem with Gil Birmingham), and Ben Foster may well be the most underrated actor of our generation, but it's Chris Pine who really stands out. I didn't think he had it in him, but this is a wonderful addition to his patchy CV. All told, <i>Hell or High Water</i> is a lament of sorts: a lament for a time when the South was different, and a lament for a time when films spoke.<br />
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Best War Film</h3>
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There's nothing particularly special about <i><b>Anthropoid</b></i>. It's not bad, and it's not brilliant. It tells the story of a Czech resistance movement to Nazi occupation, and the plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Final Solution. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0vgw-PeSFc" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Watch it or don't. but I got some place to be</span></a>.<br />
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Best Film</h3>
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<a href="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/08/10/08/arrival-trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/08/10/08/arrival-trailer.jpg" width="320" /></a><b><i>Arrival </i></b>is as moving a moving picture as I've seen in quite a while. Comparisons with Malick, in particular <i>The Tree of Life</i>, are not out of place. If <i>Tree of Life</i> is an Augustinian prayer, then Arrival is an Augustinian treatise on language and time. The film is simple - almost cliched - in its construction (alien invasion, flash-backs, agitated military men), but it plays with these in mostly interesting ways, leading to a final twist which somehow you realise you knew all along. It is not perfect. For a film about language, it suffers from a lack of truly memorable lines. Even the verbally challenged <i>Tree of Life</i> managed to imprint some of its language as well as it images on me ("Father...Mother...always you wrestle inside me" and so on). But <i>Arrival </i>is the perfect antidote to the <i>London Has Fallen</i>'s and <i>Eye in the Skye's</i> of this world. It is not the film we deserve, but it's the film we need.Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-62467310482104309742017-01-06T21:25:00.001+00:002017-01-06T21:25:45.458+00:00Film Awards 2016: Part IV<h3>
Best Film Based on a Computer Game</h3>
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<a href="http://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/warcraft-trailer-screenshots/warcraft-70.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/warcraft-trailer-screenshots/warcraft-70.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>The optimistically named <i><b>Warcraft: The Beginning</b></i> is a right ol' mess of a movie. Yet sometimes messes can be fun. This wasn't one of those times. For people who have never played the computer game there is too much that needs explaining, too many characters and magic powers to keep track of. I felt lost, and nobody should feel lost in a film as dumb as this. <i>Warcraft: The Beginning </i>did go on to make nearly half a billion dollars, so we may well be getting a <i>Warcraft: The Middle</i> in the near future. Needless to say, <strike>I won't be watching</strike> I will probably end up watching it.<br />
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Best Use of the Michael Scott Principle of Improv</h3>
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Richard-MoneyMonster-1200x630-1463152794.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Richard-MoneyMonster-1200x630-1463152794.jpg" height="168" width="320" /></a>If <i>The Big Short</i> is the sharp-witted version of the financial crash, then <i><b>Money Monster</b> </i>is the farce. It seemed like everyone had a good time making this film, and it's hard not to have a good time watching it. As for tension, the movie follows <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djC8nI_Y--E" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">the Michael Scott principle</span></a>: if you want to make a scene interesting, give someone a gun. Or, in this case, a bomb. That said, the film doesn't really work as a thriller, but it certainly has enough going for it to make it eminently watchable, if not exactly memorable.<br />
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Most Unnecessary Sequel</h3>
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<a href="http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bourne-5-matt-damon1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bourne-5-matt-damon1.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a>There were three strong contenders for this gong. <b><i>Independence Day: Resurgence</i></b> and <b><i>Now You See Me 2</i></b> did all they could to demonstrate their superfluity. The former has all of the nonsense of the original but none of its silly charm, whereas the latter continues to suffer from the fact that magic can only be effectively communicated in a live experience and not by way of a medium. But the king of this year's unnecessary sequels is <i><b>Jason Bourne</b></i>. <i>The Bourne Ultimatum</i> was practically perfect in almost every way. Indeed, the <i>Bourne</i> trilogy has a strong case for being the best trilogy in the history of cinema. A fourth installment was wholly unnecessary, but unfortunately we got what we wanted and not what we needed. The sequence during the riots in Greece is pretty spectacular, but the rest of the film feels tired and unimaginative, adding nothing to the character or the story. It is by no means a bad film, but it is destined to remain a disputed member of the canon - a strawy film if you will (#Reformation500).<br />
<br />Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-21154108752621681002016-12-31T12:30:00.000+00:002016-12-31T13:05:57.156+00:00Film Awards 2016: Part III<h3>
King of the Jungle</h3>
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What a pleasant surprise <i><b>The Jungle Book</b></i> was. It looked gorgeous in a I-can't-believe-it's-not-<strike>butter</strike>-real! sort of way, and had the feel of <i>Apocalypto </i>for kids, with some light humour thrown in and some light maiming and human sacrifice thrown out. This is one of those children's movie that's fun for adults too that's actually fun for adults too! <i>The Jungle Book </i>was a delight from start to finish. A cinematic treat easily beating <i><b>The Legend of Tarzan</b> </i>to the award for best jungle-based movie. The latter may feature the son of Stellan Skarsgård, the man who plays Prof. Lambeau in <i>Good Will Hunting</i> and who I have an irrational love for (I know how you feel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNwVdc7Er8s" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">jealous T.A</span></a>). But I will not let that love - or Margot Robbie - cloud my judgment. <i>The Legend of Tarzan</i> was a disaster of colonial proportions.<br />
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<h3>
Most Disappointing Film</h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Any chance there's a script up there?"</td></tr>
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There are very few films I have had the real urge to walk out on. As bad as some of the films I've seen this year have been, it never crossed my mind to leave the cinema early. As I said in my introduction to these awards, a bad film in the cinema is still a film in the cinema. But there was about a ten minute stretch during <i><b>Knight of Cups</b> </i>when I wrestled with the thought. Those who dislike Malick's films sometimes criticise them for resembling two hour perfume adverts. I wasn't having any of that, not even for <i>To the Wonder</i>. But there is perhaps no better way to describe <i>Knight of Cups</i>. This is self-indulgent, up-its-own-arse film making that moved me only to disappointment. In his review of <i>The Tree of Life</i>, Xan Brooks writes that he does not believe in God, but he does believe in Terrence Malick. Well I do believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Terrence Malick. Has his latest blockbuster caused me to lose faith? Not quite. For all its many faults, it has a great line: "You don't want love. You want a love experience." There's a criticism to cut the modern individual to the heart. The only problem is that it's not much fun watching Christian Bale having half a dozen love experiences in a couple of hours. I think I need to come to terms with the reality that it won't get any better than <i>The Tree of Life. </i>But it surely doesn't have to be as bad as this. The good thing is that the newly-prolific Malick has a couple of movies coming out soon. Like a Premier League team with a midweek fixture after a heavy defeat, he has a chance to right some of the wrongs and get <i>Knight of Cups </i>out of my system. Over to you, unnamed project starring half the actors in Hollywood.<br />
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<h3>
<br />The Joseph Fletcher Award for Services to Situation Ethics</h3>
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<a href="http://img.wennermedia.com/article-leads-horizontal/rs-231526-eye-sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img.wennermedia.com/article-leads-horizontal/rs-231526-eye-sky.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>Governments have a lot of difficult decisions to make. For example, do we accept the $13 billion that is legally owed to us, or do we refuse it? Or, in the case of <i><b>Eye in the Sky</b></i>, do we murder an innocent child or do we not? <i>Eye in the Sky</i> is as close to a piece of propaganda for liberal democracy that you're likely to get. It shows all sorts of fine people wrestling with what we're supposed to believe is the central moral dilemma. There's an old joke that says Catholics can do what they want as long as they go to confession, and Protestants can do what they want as long as they feel bad about it. If there's any truth to this, then <i>Eye in the Sky </i>is a deeply Protestant film. There's lots of politicians and soldiers who feel bad about doing what seems to be a necessary evil, but the final message of the film is: don't judge us from your comfortable armchair; we sacrificed our lives so that you could have the freedom to sit in this cinema munching on popcorn and Minstrels and watching important movies like <i>Zoolander 2</i>. In other words, only those who have had to decide whether or not to murder a child are in a position to criticise governmental action. <i>London Has Fallen </i>made no secret of its sadism, no attempt to rationalise or justify its brutality. <i>Eye in the Sky</i> is an evil film precisely because of these attempts. And the worst of it is, it's not even telling us the really brutal truth. Now, imagine a country deciding that <i>London Has Fallen</i> and <i>Eye in the Sky </i>are the only two nominees for the Best Picture Oscar.<br />
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The country you have imagined is Fuckheadica.<br />
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<h3>
Best Biopic</h3>
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If you want to learn the truth about someone's life, it's probably best to avoid their biopic. The best you can usually hope for in these films are half-truths. And you can be fairly certain that these half-truths will add up to a story of redemption. This was the formula for last year's <i>Steve Jobs</i> and it was the formula for this year's <i><b>Miles Ahead</b></i>. I didn't much about Miles Davis before I saw this film, save for the fact that he was a famous jazz musician. Having seen the film I now know that he was a famous jazz musician with a drug problem. This is a strange movie. It follows Davis around in the wilderness years of his career, when he apparently spent his time getting into hilarious jams while chasing his next fix. In the flashbacks we witness a younger Davis in his pomp, playing his trumpet in smokey jazz venues and occasionally beating his wife. It's not an exaggeration to say that these two timelines don't mix very well. Davis is presented to us as a flawed genius who loses his way, though the flaws are severely underplayed (what's a little violence towards women when you can play a mean trumpet?). Don Cheadle is very good in the lead role, but there is something soulless about the whole project.<br />
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<h3>
Best Comedy</h3>
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I love a good buddy comedy, and <i><b>The Nice Guys</b> </i>is a a perfectly good buddy comedy from the master of the genre. Russell Crowe plays Russell Crowe, an aging, surly man with a short temper. He's the straight guy to Ryan Gosling's clumsy, flamboyant P.I.. It's an old formula but it works. Gosling in particular demonstrates some good comedy acting chops. The jokes come thick and fast (some work, some don't, but who's counting?), making this a worthy addition to the buddy comedy canon. That it did so badly at the box office while <i>The Avengers' Civil War 2: Thor vs Black Widow and Hawkeye's Revenge</i> made 17 trillion dollars is why we now have Brexit and Trump.*<br />
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<h3>
<br />Best Film Featuring a Member of the Skarsgård Family</h3>
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If the son of Stellan Skarsgård cannot save a film then can Stellan Skarsgård himself? This is the pressing question of our age, and the answer is...sort of. <b><i>Our Kind of Traitor</i></b> taps into the popularity of British author John le Carré. I've never read a le Carré novel, but if this film is anything to go by then the book on which it is based was probably churned out by le Carré one rainy afternoon while he was waiting for the roast chicken to finish. That is not to say that this is a bad film (or that it must be a bad book). It's just not a very thrilling espionage thriller, and I like my espionage thrillers thrilling.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Not strictly true</span>Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-67247059567910323582016-12-20T10:53:00.000+00:002016-12-20T10:53:35.523+00:00Film Awards 2016: Part II<h3>
The Best Advertisement for Journalism</h3>
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<a href="http://www.thenatterbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Spotlight-film-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.thenatterbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Spotlight-film-2.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>In the fifth season of <i>The Wire</i> (the worst of the five by general consensus, but also the most underrated), David Simon finally tackles head on the institution which is closest to his heart: print journalism. <i>The Wire</i> gives us good journalists and bad ones, with the former suffering because of idiotic decisions made at corporate level and the latter prospering. It's a fairly bleak depiction of the industry, though hardly surprising given Simon's own experiences as a journalist, as well as his singular drive towards what he calls "the audacity of despair." In <i>The Wire</i>, the failure of the journalists (even the good ones) is their remarkable ability to miss the stories that matter. The city of Baltimore is teeming with interesting characters who we have been following for several years. Yet when these characters die, for example, the story of their deaths is buried in some small section of the newspaper. The point Simon is making here - a point which not only applies to journalists, but to police, politicians etc - is that people are ignorant of their own cities. And not only that, but trapped in an ignorance that is self-perpetuating because it is willed. As Detective McNulty says of a former CI, he “saw the street like we wish we could.” In <i><b>Spotlight</b></i>, we are given a more hopeful depiction of print media - though not without a final <i>mea culpa</i>. The "street" in this instance is Boston, with the story centering around the sexual abuse suffered at the hands of clergy throughout the city, as well as the institutional cover-up. Indeed, it's perhaps even more the latter than the former. The film shows us good journalists doing good work - interviewing victims, gathering evidence, spotting corrupt practices, facing up to the powers that be. Though a sensational story, the film is not given to sensationalism. It is subdued and matter-of-fact almost to a fault. That said, the "fact" in question is sufficient of itself to evoke heartbreak and fury. How could something not only so horrific, but so widespread, so systematic, so <i>known</i>, have happened? <i>Spotlight's </i>line is that it takes a village (a city) to abuse a child. There is no one with clean hands, though some certainly have dirtier hands than others.<br />
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<h3>
Best Sequel to a Movie That Was Quoted to Death During My Teenage Years</h3>
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<a href="http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/11/10/10-zoolander-02.w529.h529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/11/10/10-zoolander-02.w529.h529.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xFAMGoL1Ik" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">You know what I like about rich Dublin kids? Nothin’!</span></a> My first exposure to <i>Zoolander </i>was at a Christian summer camp, where a bunch of my dorm mates [?] quoted it to each other <i>ad nauseam</i>. That’s never a good way to endear one to a film. The same thing happened with <i>Napoleon Dynamite</i> and <i>Anchorman</i>. When I eventually got around to watching these films, there was nothing left to enjoy. We've been spared a <i>Napoleon Dynamite 2</i> (with Jon Heder's miserable career to thank for that), but we have had no such luck with the others. <i>Anchorman 2</i> is a singularly humourless comedy, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. But <i><b>Zoolander 2</b></i> is not far behind. It got one cheap laugh out of me, but one cheap laugh does not a comedy make (that goes for you as well, <i>David Brent: Life on the Road</i>, but we'll talk later). The if-in-doubt-load-your-comedy-up-with-celebrity-appearances formula just isn't working. Who knew? It's time for Hollywood to take a long hard look at itself and figure out what's funny again. The era of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frat_Pack" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">the Frat Pack</span></a> is over. Time of death: <i>The Internship</i>. They had a good run. The question is, where to next? It's hard to know, but don't be surprised to see <i>Bongwater 2</i> hitting your local cinema this time next year while Hollywood comes up with a more acceptable answer.<br />
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<h3>
Best Poor Man’s <i>Heat</i></h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Remind me why agreed to do this movie?"</td></tr>
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Films about a crew of thieves taking one last score in a big city will inevitably be compared to Michael Mann’s <i>Heat</i>. By me. But the wait for one of these films to step out of its shadow goes on. <i>The Town</i> failed to do it, losing its way near the beginning and ending up with a final minute which looked like a cut scene from Miley Cyrus vehicle <i>The Last Song</i>. The bad news for <i><b>Triple 9</b></i> is that it doesn’t even reach the heights of <i>The Town</i>. Or <i>The Last Song</i>, for that matter. This is, unfortunately, a case of Casey Affleck saying to big brother Ben, “Anything you can do, I can do slightly worse.” An A-list cast is given precious little to work with, with the characters and the story going nowhere interesting. Instantly forgettable, but for the fact that it could have been so much better. And for the fact that Kate Winslett plays a Russian mobster.<br />
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<h3>
Best Neologism</h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GB: "Get out of this franchise while you still can, Aaron! I'll cover for ya."<br />AE: "But how are you gonna get out?"<br />GB: "....." </td></tr>
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A trip to Frankie and Bennie’s followed by <b><i>London Has Fallen</i></b> is surely a contender for worst evening ever, but that's a blog post for another time. It was bad taste all around, with this Gerard Butler-led action romp being perhaps the fittingest film for 2016. If <i>Air Force One</i> is the Democrat’s version of a president-based action movie, then <i>London Has Fallen</i> is the Trump version. It wears its xenophobia on its sleeve, and makes no apologies for its knife-a-bad-guy-to-death-and-ask-questions-later approach to conflict. But it wins this award for giving us what should have been the Oxford word of the year: Fuckheadistan. Gerard Butler throws in this beauty as he taunts one of the terrorists over a walkie-talkie, telling him and his terrorist friends to go back to “Fuckheadistan” or wherever it is they came from. Zing! Forget your post-truth, forget your Brexit: the English word of the year is Fuckheadistan. It’s not the word we need, but it’s the word we deserve. It's also kinda fun to apply the same zinger to other countries. For example, instead of "America" you can say "Fuckheadica". That might not actually be a bad idea, at least in the short term. It may sound like an over the top gesture, but I am becoming increasingly convinced this is the only way to make Fuckheadica great again.<br />
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<h3>
Best Horror</h3>
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I am about as much an authority on horror films as David Cameron on Aston Villa. So take this award with a pinch of salt. <i><b>The Witch</b></i> is more or less the only horror movie I've ever seen. And truth be told, it's not a quintessential horror movie. There are no real jumps to be had, no moments of impending fright, other than when you discover that Finchy is playing the lead role. This is a film that builds slowly and menacingly to a dramatic finale. The story is simple: a family in 17th century New England is banished from their Puritan plantation, and set up home near the woods. What follows is the unraveling of all certitudes, and the exposure of and to the evil which they have heard about with their ears (it is learned from the great Confessions) but which they now see with their eyes. This was a contender for my film of the year. It is certainly the only flawless film I've seen in the past twelve months. Once you've seen it, it is impossible to shake it off. It exposes you to a darkness you would rather not contemplate, but which you are forced into contemplating (fair to say it's more a Lenten film than a Christmas film, though Herod's massacre might suggest otherwise). As Evgeny Morozov once remarked, evil was not eradicated with the invention of the iPhone. That said, for better or worse those who lived before the iPhone were perhaps more aware of it. Does that mean that the iPhone is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN_sRhaehw4" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">the devil's greatest trick</span></a>? Possibly, but what is certain is that you would be missing a devil's trick if you don't see this movie. Highly recommended, as it used to say in the RTE guide.<br />
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<h3>
Least Worst Comic Book Film</h3>
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There are no longer any "best" comic book films. Only comic films which aren't quite as bad as other comic book films. After the double whammy of <i>The Avengers </i>and <i>Man of Steel</i> I made a solemn oath never to see a comic book movie in the cinema again. For a couple of years I was true to my word. But possessing an Unlimited card makes a man do things he can never undo. One of those things was my trip to see <i>Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice</i>. My expectations were rock bottom, yet still I was disappointed (though mostly I was just bored and angry). The first quarter of the film flirts with intelligence. It tries to deal with the fact that these films almost inevitably end up in mass destruction which goes unaccounted for. In this case, the Superman of <i>Man of Steel</i> (played with all the charisma of a cardboard box by Henry Cavill) is shown to have paid no regard to the fortune of Bruce Wayne as he and Zod knocked lumps out of each other. Wayne is pissed, and he's looking for any excuse to take down Supes.<br />
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There's even some mildly interesting political commentary on Superman vs Liberal Democracy, But all of that goes out the window once Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor gets going. Coincidence? I think not. There is an attempt at a kind of pseudo-Nietzschean theme, as well as an attempt at theodicy (can Superman be omnibenevolent and omnipotent?). To put on my theologian's hat for a second, the problem with these attempts is that, contrary to the view of popular atheists (Ireland's friendly racist Ian O'Doherty, for example), God is not thought to be something like an alien (as Terry Eagleton puts it, God plus the universe does not make two). And for Christians, God becomes man, not <i>Übermensch</i>. But all of this is rather beside the point. The real problem with this film is that it's not actually a film at all. It is a two and a half hour advertisement for future films/advertisements. If there are any god-like figures at work here, it's the studio executives intent on creating a cinematic universe, or rather, the Mammon which has them grovelling at its feet and willing to do anything to appease it. 2019's <i>Plastic Man</i> may end up being the film of the decade. But I'll be damned before I go to see it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A metaphor: Oscar Isaac is comic book movies, <br />Jennifer Lawrence is the film industry</td></tr>
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With all this in mind, the award for least worst comic book film goes to <i><b>X-men: Apocalypse</b></i>. Yes, it's bad. Really bad. Stupidly bad. But it has two things going for it. First, it has Michael Fassbender, the most beautiful man in Ireland. (Aside: nothing makes me prouder to be Irish than the fact that an Irishman is dating Alicia Vikander. It's as if we're all dating her.) Second, it feels like the end of one of these franchises rather than a set-up. That in itself is worth celebrating. I mean, surely there's nowhere to go after an apocalypse. Right?<br />
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-62672082382492100712016-12-15T13:36:00.000+00:002016-12-15T13:36:17.307+00:00Film Awards 2016: Part I<br />
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Let's be clear. 2016 was not a particularly vintage year at the cinema. That being said, I must also confess: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubw5N8iVDHI" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">I chose poorly</span></a>. There were potentially great films on offer which for one reason or another I didn't get to see: <i>Hail, Caesar</i>!, <i>American Honey</i>, <i>Son of Saul</i>, <i>Midnight Special</i>, <i>I, Daniel Blake</i>, <i>Nocturnal Animals, Sing Street, <strike>Mother's Day</strike></i>. I could blame Cineworld and its reluctance to show anything that isn't guaranteed to earn three billions pounds in its opening weekend. I could also point to the happy fact that my cinema going days all but ended in October (at least for the time being). But truth be told, this one is on me. My rationale is, most of those potentially great movies which I neglected can be watched at home without much loss of appreciation. The cinema, however, is for films that are guaranteed to earn three billion pounds in their opening weekend. And so I trudged along to some unimaginable crap over the last twelve months. You name/ridicule it, I saw it, my only consolation being the fact that, thanks [?] to my Cineworld Unlimited card, it wasn't costing me anything extra to see if <i>Now You See Me 2</i> or <i>London Has Fallen</i> could live up to the originals (they couldn't, which says a lot).</div>
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But it wasn't all bad. I saw a few truly great films this year, films that will live long in the memory, films that I can't wait to see again. And even a bad film at the cinema is still a film at the cinema, and thus an excuse to indulge in my new vice: Galaxy Minstrels (or Counters, though the Minstrels come in bigger bags) mixed with salt & sweet popcorn. So without further delay, here are my awards for the Films of 2016.</div>
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Best Film Featuring a Man Sleeping Inside a Horse</h3>
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<a href="http://s3.foxmovies.com/foxmovies/production/films/96/images/gallery/revenant-gallery-20-gallery-image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3.foxmovies.com/foxmovies/production/films/96/images/gallery/revenant-gallery-20-gallery-image.jpg" height="172" width="320" /></a><br />
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Alejandro Iñárritu is so hot right now. <b><i>The Revenant</i></b> was the first film I saw in 2016, and none since has matched it for sheer spectacle. From the fairly tight confines of his previous film <i>Birdman</i>, Iñárritu drags his audience out into the vast expanses of the North American wilderness, this time to track Leonardo DiCaprio as he crawls from one misfortune to another. <i>The Revenant</i> covers an enormous amount of space, displaying all the beauty and brutality of Nature. Yet precisely because of this the human story gets sort of swallowed up, or should I say, chewed up and spat out (quite literally). Perhaps that is simply part of the narrative, a sort of critique of Enlightenment anthropocentrism and its attendant colonialism. In the battle between Man and Nature, the lesson of <i>The Revenant</i> is that Nature will not be subdued without cost. What then of the battle between Man and (Tom Hardy’s unnecessarily unintelligible) Man? <i>The Revenant</i> certainly has politico-theological aspirations, aiming to say something about loyalty and violence and revenge, but these remained slightly obscure and unconvincing to me. There are flashbacks and visions that didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, though perhaps they would become clear with a second viewing. But watching <i>The Revenant</i> on anything other than a giant cinema screen seems a waste of its talent. This is a made-for-cinema film. In short, <a href="https://youtu.be/izwD5yxd4rk?t=1m15s" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">I ain’t inclined to watch it anymore. I’ve done it already</span></a>.</div>
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Film with the Best Use of '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbszJJr9I9U" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">The Mighty Rio Grande' by This Will Destroy You</span></a></h3>
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<i><b>Room </b></i>isn’t the first film to use 'The Mighty Rio Grande' (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJOU8rlKMBA" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">it cropped up in 2011’s Moneyball</span></a>). But it’s definitely the best. I didn’t know what I was walking into when I walked into <i>Room</i>, and after ten minutes I felt like walking out. But this turned out to be a quite brilliant film, weaving philosophical reflection (think Plato’s cave allegory) into a well-told story of human suffering, struggle, and hope. It is as if we are getting a first-hand insight into what it might be like for a child to go from womb (room?) to world: the terror, the disbelief, the wonder. It may or may not be a stretch to call this a pro-life film, but it is undoubtedly life-affirming in the most pregnant sense of that term. That is not to say that <i>Room </i>is an easy watch. It most certainly is not. But this is a carefully crafted and beautifully acted film that deserves to be watched. A definite highlight of 2016. (If you care to see the scene with 'The Mighty Rio Grande' again, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la67kba0Vjk" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">here it is</span></a>.<b>)</b></div>
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Best Film Featuring an Actor with the Same Name as a Basketball Legend</h3>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQM3-8UanKQ" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">“Where’s Wallace at?”</span></a> you ask? He’s only starring in one of the most enjoyable movies of 2016, is where he’s at! Michael (B.) Jordan is not yet a household name in the acting world, but it is surely only a matter of time. He oozes charisma and likability, and carries <b><i>Creed </i></b>on his considerable torso (it's a long time since that <a href="http://urbanfilth.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/1/4/28149961/7552471.jpg?1448968929" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">oversized jacket in the low rises</a>). There is enough of an ode to the old <i>Rocky </i>films to keep this attached to the original series, but it doesn’t allow itself to get bogged down by nostalgia or sentiment. This is a film which stands on its own</div>
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two feet. It doesn’t exactly break any new ground, but it effortlessly retains boxing’s status as the sport which makes for the best movies. And I hate boxing.</div>
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Best Financial Crash Comedy-Drama<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dz8-bhqe5oSs9R1b0ZrtnyMqPmg=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4340355/the-big-short-wide-crop_1400.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/dz8-bhqe5oSs9R1b0ZrtnyMqPmg=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4340355/the-big-short-wide-crop_1400.0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It may have missed a trick by not having Kevin Hargaden explaining sub primes while doing calf stretches on an exercise ball, but <i><b>The Big Short</b></i> does a fine job of turning the financial crash of 2008 into an intelligent and entertaining film (consider a companion piece to the more solemn <i>Margin Call</i>.) There is too much bravado and machismo on display (Like <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i>, it seems to assume that its audience is exclusively male, hence Margot Robbie in a hot tub.) But this is a film with good actors giving good performances, and it tells a story so few really understand (in part, at least, because of the technocratic obscurity which surrounds the crash) in a way that helps us to understand it. Do I now know what a sub prime is? I won't pretend that I do. But when I bump into Margot Robbie at the next Society for the Study of Theology conference I will at the very least know to ask her.</div>
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Best Actor</h3>
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Dalton Trumbo is not a communist. He may be a liar, a screenwriter, and a communist, but he is <i>not </i>a porn star. <i>Trumbo </i>may not be the best film of 2016. But given what has happened in the western world since its release, it may well be one of the most significant. It tells a history I knew absolutely nothing about: the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">The Hollywood Ten</span></a>) who were accused of being communists, and therefore traitors in America's war against Russia - a war which would not be resolved until <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsJnxlXepsY" target="_blank">Rocky IV</a></i>. </span>Trumbo (who wrote the Oscar winning screenplay to the wonderful <i>Roman Holiday</i>, but couldn't receive credit for it because of the blacklist) is played by <b>Bryan Cranston</b>, perhaps one of the funniest actors in Hollywood at the moment. He gives a sharp and compelling performance, helping to bring an important but neglected moment in American history to life. As a friend recently remarked, there is no real Left in America any more. This film explains at least in part why that might be the case. And as much as Hollywood today likes to think of itself as a strange bastion of something that might be called 'leftist values'...well, <span style="color: #0b5394;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaMaeNK_gqs" target="_blank">watch this video</a> </span>and weep. <strike>Workers</strike> Film lovers of the world, unite! (by watching this movie over Christmas).</span></div>
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-29585728689729759342016-10-17T16:51:00.000+01:002016-10-17T16:51:44.612+01:00Health is Wealth<div style="text-align: justify;">
Just before the summer I went on a "theological retreat" for first-year systematic theology students and their supervisors. We were joined by a visiting scholar from Tuebingen, who presented a paper on God and medicine. One of the points he made - the one that has stuck with me - is that the things we used to do for God we now do for our health. A pilgrimage is a way of keeping fit and improving our mental health, fasting keeps us slim and cleanses the body, and so on. It is little wonder, then, that Silicon Valley is pumping millions of dollars into experimental medicine in order to discover the thing which God alone was once thought to offer: eternal life.</div>
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I live in the UK, home to the NHS, but I have private health insurance. Why? Because I am married to someone from the wrong country. For my wife to get a residence card, we needed to have something called "comprehensive sickness insurance," and the NHS didn't count. So we now pay a substantial sum of money every month for a service that we neither want nor need.</div>
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The reason I mention all of this is because I just received a call from our health insurance provider, and I have seen the future. The lovely gentleman on the phone explained to me with great gusto all of the fantastic little offers available to me as a paying customer. For example, I can get "free" cinema tickets by keeping track of my steps and earning rewards. I can also pay for the new Apple watch simply by exercising and uploading the data to their app. This, I fear, is the future. It is not a future without money. I cannot pay my health insurance provider by walking to my office, although there may come a time when that data alone will suffice. But it is a future in which the body is monetised not only for sex or for labour, but for exercise and well-being - in short, for energy (or "power" if you want to speak in a theological idiom). Energetic human beings are deemed valuable human beings. This is one reason why abortion in general - and the abortion of those with disabilities in particular - can be justified. Those without energy are deemed burdens, and they do not belong to our energy-harvesting and data-mining future.</div>
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I will continue to play my (ridiculously expensive) Tuesday evening and (free) Saturday morning football. I can't claim to feel God's pleasure as I play, and I get the impression that God derives increasingly little pleasure from watching me play. But I'll be damned before I wear a piece of technology which tells my insurance company how many (or, more likely, how worryingly few) steps I took so that I can get an Apple watch. Get me a machine that records nutmegs, however....</div>
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-3256775917513034632016-10-05T15:36:00.002+01:002016-10-05T23:12:40.750+01:00 Fancy a Pint of Evangel-Ice?<div style="text-align: justify;">
I grew up in a Christian environment where street evangelism was something close to a norm. My church would regularly stage events in the main square in Galway, where members of the congregation would hand out tracts (little leaflets giving you the nuts and bolts of the gospel) and share their testimony (the story of their conversion). I was too young actively to participate in these events, but I wasn't too young to feel embarrassed at having to tag along with my parents. I knew that what we were doing was odd, and that we would be making many regular people on the streets either uncomfortable or angry. There was always a certain amount of guilt attached to that embarrassment. After all, if I'm ashamed of Jesus, then Jesus will be ashamed of me. That was never said to me directly I hasten to add, but that's one of the mentalities that surrounded the whole endeavour.</div>
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My unwillingness to participate in this kind of evangelism never went away, though the gradual decline of the 80s-90s enthusiasm of evangelical Christians made the opportunities for street evangelism few and far between - at least in my small circle. More and more Christians, it turns out, are ashamed of Jesus.</div>
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Was the street evangelism wrong? Or was my embarrassment and unwillingness wrong? I am in no position to make a final judgment. What is clear to me is that the willingness of Christians to "share their faith" is not a categorical good. The reticence of Jesus to make known his true identity (the so-called 'Messianic Secret' of the Gospel of Mark) is perhaps - <i>perhaps </i>- as much a model of how to be faithful as are the extravagant stories recounted in the book of Acts. Furthermore, consider Jesus's words in the Sermon on the Mount: "On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you." All of this is by way of saying that unwillingness to boldly proclaim the name of Jesus in the streets of Galway is not necessarily a sign of disobedience. On the contrary, it may very well be the kind of quiet obedience that Christ commands (he said, in order to justify himself).</div>
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Why do I mention all of this? Because on my way to university this afternoon (a la my NUIG days) I saw an army truck and stall set up outside the campus library. From some distance I could see the recruitment slogan: "Be the best." All of a sudden I was the regular Joe on the streets of Galway, and the soldiers were the weird Christians handing out tracts and trying to convince me that there was something better out there for me. The whole thing felt odd, and I wondered if others felt the same way. Do those who are made uncomfortable or angry at the street evangelism of Christians also feel uncomfortable or angry at the street evangelism of soldiers?</div>
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There is much more that could be said about all of this. But what struck me is the rather simple truth that we are never not being evangelised. Speaking on the story of Elijah and Elisha, Walter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHtSjSUffxY" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Brueggemann asks his congregation the question</span></a>: "Who threw the mantle over you?" What this question presupposes is contesting evangelists who preach contesting gospels, gospels to which we have committed our lives. Many of us in the West like to think that we do not wear anyone's mantle, only the mantle we made for ourselves. But that is just the mantle we have been given. The extent to which we think it is worth passing on is perhaps measured by our willingness to have and raise children. Those British soldiers are looking to throw a particular mantle over students, a mantle which brings with it some potentially horrific expectations and devastating consequences, but which is sold as the opportunity to "be the best." The Christian gospel is deeply opposed to the military <i>evangel </i>in ways far too numerous to be discussed here. The point is, seeing that truck and that recruitment stall made me realise that Christian evangelism - in some form or another - is more needed than ever. Or, better, the gospel is more needed than ever.</div>
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I was ashamed of going out into the streets of Galway as a very young Christian. I still am! But twenty years on from the mid-nineties evangelistic fervour I am, in my better moments, learning why Paul could proclaim that he was not ashamed of the gospel.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-46518562368847389332016-08-30T20:25:00.000+01:002016-08-30T20:25:04.382+01:00Interview with Barth<div style="text-align: justify;">
In November 1938 Columbia Theological Seminary published an interview with Karl Barth. It's not the most enlightening interview you'll ever read. Most of the questions (asked by William Childs Robinson) take the form: "Is it true that...?" or "Given what you have said, does this mean that...?" For this reason Barth's responses rarely rise above the level of "Yes," or "No," or "I wouldn't quite put it that way." Indeed, as you read the interview you realise just why you had never discovered what 5 minutes ago appeared to be a hidden gem. The interview is little more than a wasted opportunity, really, but then we hardly lack for words by or about Karl Barth.</div>
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Still, there is one question and answer that gives a good summary of what Barth is up to in his theology. William Robinson asks:</div>
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"Would you describe sin as the transgression of the law of God?" (what did I tell you?)</div>
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You might expect Barth to respond with a simple "Yes," but he has something a little difference up his sleeve. He replies:</div>
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"Not primarily. Sin is first a protest against grace. There is no law apart from grace. Of course, grace gives a law, but what makes sin condemnable is our resistance against His love, not against His commandments. The Gospel comes before the law and love before the claim."</div>
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With these few sentences the traditional configuration of law -> sin -> grace is criticised and re-configured. For Barth, the true order is grace -> sin -> grace -> law (or perhaps grace -> law -> sin). This is why Barth says elsewhere the only Christians can properly sin, since Christians are the ones who know the grace (and the God) against which they sin. Indeed, our chief sin is our attempt to understand sin apart from grace. Barth's name for this attempt is "ethics."</div>
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One thing worth thinking about is what Barth's order would do to the practice and content of evangelism.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-46399631508017530302016-06-28T12:24:00.001+01:002016-06-28T12:24:13.957+01:00Creator and Creature<div style="text-align: justify;">
“But God confronts all that is in supreme and utter independence, i.e., He would be no less and no different even if they all did not exist or existed differently. God stands at an infinite distance from everything else, not in the finite degree of difference with which created things stand towards each other. If they all have their being and a specific nature, God in His freedom has conferred it upon them: not because He was obliged to do so, or because His purpose was influenced by their being and nature, but because their being and nature is conditioned by His being and nature. If they belong to Him and He to them, this dual relationship does not spring from any need of His eternal being. This would remain the same even if there were no such relationship.”</div>
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Above is a passage lifted out of Barth's <i>Church Dogmatics</i>. In this passage and its surrounding context, Barth is talking about the aseity of God, that is, the freedom of the divine being in itself and in relation to others. The standard claim of the tradition - a claim which Barth more or less follows - is that God does not need us to be God, that God would be God without us. I get what he is saying (and, more importantly, what he is trying to avoid saying) when he follows this line of thought. "Pious blasphemies" such as God does not exist if we do not exist, or God needs us as much as we need God, are just that - pious blasphemies.</div>
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And yet...In this and other similar passages, is Barth not in danger of treating that which is other than God – creation – in the abstract? Barth appears to be speaking of human beings or creatures in general, as opposed to the human being Jesus Christ. But if we take the man Jesus of Nazareth as the true creature - as Barth insists we must - then is it really true to say that God "would be no less and no different" even if the man Jesus did not exist or existed differently? Barth, of course, does not want to divinise the man Jesus, or turn the flesh which the Word became into an eternal, divine flesh, as if the creature is co-eternal with the creator. But Barth appears to be speaking of the Creator-creature relationship un-christologically in this instance, which is surely a problem. There must be some other way of articulating this relationship that doesn’t make the man Jesus either irrelevant to the divine being or co-eternal with it.</div>
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For those of you who are by God's good grace unaware of the secondary literature on Barth, what I'm on about here is one of the fault lines in Barth studies. The issue being debated is a genuine issue. You only need to read Barth for a while before you begin to wonder what it might mean to say "God could be God..." or "If God didn't..." Of course there is the danger that such wondering is precisely the kind of theological speculation that Barth rejected. Perhaps this is an unavoidable danger, such that the whole debate is destined to be unfruitful at best, divisive and elitist at worst. I have no real interest in picking sides, or in making a contribution which will decide the issue one way or the other (or which will perhaps introduce a "third way", or a fourth way which is even more nuanced than the already existing third ways). That is not theology. That is hell. But I'd be lying if I said that the passage quoted above didn't raise any questions. The Christian theologian is profoundly interested in the claim that the creature Jesus of Nazareth is God. What must be clear to the Christian theologian, however, is that that interest is not for the sake of academic positioning. It can only be for the sake of the Church, for its worship of God and service to the world.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-59793448762634904812016-06-27T13:01:00.000+01:002016-06-27T13:02:37.848+01:00Loyalty and Love<div style="text-align: justify;">
"The intuition is that loyalty, not prosperity, is the foundation of a healthy society. To my mind, it’s a sound intuition."</div>
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The editor of <i>First Things</i>, R. R. Reno, <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2016/06/britain-votes-on-brexit-today-heres-whats-at-stake" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">wrote these words</span></a> the day before just over half of the 72% eligible to vote in the United Kingdom decided to leave the EU. The "intuition" mentioned belongs to those who campaigned to leave. In Reno's own words, "the vote to 'Leave' opens up the possibility of a different future, one in which national identities are renewed rather than 'fused.'" This renewal of national identities is, for Reno, a self-evident good, with the vote to leave representing a collective, British middle finger to the "global technocratic empire" whose face in this instance is the European Union.</div>
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This is all socially, historically, economically and politically dubious. It becomes theologically dubious when Reno connects the United Kingdom post-Brexit with Augustine's City of God. According to Reno, had the UK remained in the EU then it would be a polity ruled by fear of poverty and the rapacious desire for prosperity. These are the characteristics of the city of man. By contrast, a UK outside of the EU would model the city of God by participating "in the ennobling power of love". The basis of this participation is "national loyalty." The object of this love is one's British neighbour.</div>
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If what Reno is describing were true, it would be disconcerting at best and diabolical at worst. A theologically justified nationalism is a collective middle finger to the Christ attested in Scripture. But what Reno is describing isn't even true. It's false. And that's the real problem. What is happening in Britain is not nationalism per se (if there is even such a thing). It is racism. There have been an enormous amount of reports from people who have either experienced or witnessed abuse and hatred in the wake of the UK's vote to leave the EU. What is worth noting is that a significant number of these people are British. But being British is simply not enough. They may be "officially" British, they may have British passports, they may even have been born in Britain, but they don't look like a British person should look, or they don't talk like a British person should talk. or they don't worship the god that a British person should worship. All of this is by way of saying that nationalism is inherently racist. To be British is to be white, not black. To be British is to be Christian, not Muslim. The "national loyalty" that Reno gets so misty eyed about is poisonous to its very core. It is a loyalty that Jesus came quite explicitly to defeat. It is a loyalty that nailed him to the cross, but which was in fact nailed to the cross with him.</div>
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We live in troubling times. We always do. That is why theological work needs to be done. Indeed. Karl Barth's justification for theology is a simple one: sin. The sin of Christians, the sin of non-Christians, the most especially sin of theologians, means that the work of theology must continue. Church's who sing the songs of national loyalty, and theologians who write its propaganda, cannot go uncriticised. Woe to those who call the city of God the city of man, and the city of man the city of God.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-32834122992114284592016-06-23T15:49:00.003+01:002016-06-23T15:49:33.689+01:00How (Not) to (Not) Speak (about) (God)<div style="text-align: justify;">
In Barth's foray into doctrine of God he makes the modest claim that more or less every pre-Reformation and post-Reformation theologian got the doctrine of God wrong. Theologians today work in the wake of this claim. Some agree with Barth, and try to continue along the same path that he walked, though not uncritically. Others agree, but seek to find alternative solutions (some of which are more alternative than others). And others simply disagree, and seek to keep alive what is in danger of being lost.</div>
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Barth's criticism can be summed up as follows: theologians have confused theology with metaphysics. What does such confusion look like?</div>
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Barth gives one such example. Take the divisions we might make between nature and grace, body and soul, visible and invisible, material and spiritual, earth and heaven. You will finds these divisions all over so-called "classical theology". God is generally associated with the latter term, and creatures are associated with the former term. So, for example, we associate God with "spirit" and "supernatural" and "invisible" and "heaven." Barth's point is that the differentiation of the divine from the non-divine does not coincide with these other distinctions. In other words, God is as much to be distinguished from the "supernatural" as He is from the "natural", or from the "spiritual" as the "material". So if we think we are in the realm of true talk about God when we talk about spirit, we are gravely mistaken. According to Barth, it is no more anthropomorphic to talk of God's hands or feet or back than it is to talk about the being of God as spirit.</div>
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With this Barth basically dismantles the work of my former teacher, Maximus the Confessor. Maximus was of course much too sophisticated to identify God with any human word, be it spirit or being or absolute. Indeed for Maximus God so transcends Being Itself that He is perhaps even more like non-being than being when conceived by us. Nevertheless, the metaphysical hierarchy is present: spirit, intellect, soul are closer to God than matter, senses, and body.</div>
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Barth's argument is that we cannot equate God with the Invisible, or Incomprehensible, or Absolute, or Ground of Being. God is as different from the invisible as He is the visible. Or on the positive side, God is as free to be associated with the visible as He is with the invisible. We don't get closer to the "pure essence" of God when we approach God with our metaphysical i's dotted and t's crossed. There simply is no way from here to there.</div>
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The takeaway point in all of this?</div>
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People in "sophisticated" (post)modern Churches would do well not to identify God with absolute spirit or the unknown ground of being, whereas people in "unsophisticated" evangelical Churches would do well not to identify God with the supernatural.</div>
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<br />Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-41912033398362479112016-06-12T13:16:00.000+01:002016-06-12T13:16:25.956+01:00I Believe, Help my Unbelief<div style="text-align: justify;">
I didn't realise it until I saw BBC News this Sunday morning, but this weekend the Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and Head of the Commonwealth, officially celebrated her 90th birthday. Little did I know, that wouldn't be the last I heard of it.</div>
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I trotted off to Church, for the first time in a while it must be said. We arrived late, and were greeted with a hymn book and an order of service, before settling into a deeply uncomfortable pew. Hymns were sung, prayers were offered, there was lovely choir performance that may or may not actually belong in a worship service, and some biblical texts were read from the lectern. And then there was a sermon.</div>
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It started off fairly benign, but the more it went on the more subversive it became. The only problem, and it really was the only problem, was that this particular sermon was subversive of the gospel. Out of nowhere, the Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and Head of the Commonwealth was front and centre. The minister made reference to his own personal acquaintance with the Queen, and described this weekend as a celebration of her "public life". I turned to my wife and asked her what the hell he is talking about the Queen for? But it was about to get worse. The minister then directed our attention to what was coming at the close of the service - the first verse of the national anthem. Of cours,e he acknowledged that there may be some in the room who are critical of the monarchy, and they are of course free not to sing along. Yet this tolerance of other views was immediately undermined by his claim that "Yes, monarchy, <i>in the past</i>, has done bad things, but then" - wait for it - "so has the Church". The hidden message, of course, being - you who have not sinned, only you can refuse to sing the national anthem and refuse celebrate the "public life" of a queen. And for the record, this is a Presbyterian Church in Scotland. A Presbyterian Church in Scotland! As Alex Ferguson would put it, Church, bloody hell.</div>
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Now this is all bad enough as it is. And when I say bad, I mean idolatry and heresy. But the irony of it all was the biblical texts everyone in that massive Church building heard. That's the beauty of Scripture. Even when it is being mishandled and abused, it has a power that no human can get a handle on. The thing is, if you wanted to pick three texts that are deeply critical of monarchy, nationalism, and pride in human achievement, you probably could not have hand picked three better texts. Without any discernible self-awareness, the minister preached his sermon <i>after</i> we had just heard the story of King Ahab coveting the land of Naboth, and his wife, the Queen, conspiring to have Naboth killed and the land handed over to the monarchy! Here, in plain speech, is what the Bible has to say about the public life of queens. If only we had ears to hear. Next came a passage from Galatians, where Paul chastises Peter for a nationalism which undermines the truth of the gospel. Finally, the Gospel reading was from Luke 7, where Jesus eats dinner at the house of Simon the Pharisee, a religious leader enthralled by power and therefore blind to his need for forgiveness. Three texts, one deeply troubling and energising gospel, and a sermon that sought to threaten it all at every turn.</div>
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We left after the sermon, but not before we recited the Apostle's Creed together. There we affirmed our faith in Father, Son, and Spirit, and our belief in the Church. And at times like this it is crucial to remember: that there is a Church is not a given, a self-evident factor in the world, but an article of faith. We thank God that there has been a Church, and pray that there will be a Church in the future, but it is in God's hands whether there is a Church or not. Stanley Hauerwas, in his Gifford Lectures, is critical of a sentence in Church Dogmatics where Barth says that the world would be lost without Christ, but would not necessarily be lost if there was no Church. This morning was a reminder of why Barth thought had to say what he said. The Church needs God, but God does not need the Church. </div>
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In the Apostle's creed we also declared our common belief in the forgiveness of sins. Before I left, I was tempted to use the pen I was given to write on the order of service sheet: "God forgive us for celebrating the life of Jezebel." I refrained. I won't be going back to this Church again. An unfaithful, sinful Church is simply the Church of Jesus Christ. But an unfaithful, sinful Church that is blind to its need for forgiveness is the Church for Simon the Pharisee and Jezebel the Queen, and not the Church for the woman who loves the merciful Jesus and the vineyard owner who will not bow to the demands of the royal family.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-54581958991097334162016-06-04T11:50:00.000+01:002016-06-04T11:50:05.497+01:00Health Before WealthIn Slavoj Zizek's reading of <i>Titanic</i>, the film is not a love story. It is a film about the redemption of a bourgeois woman. Leonardo Di Caprio is not her lover, but her priest and saviour, instilling in her bloated and regimented existence some of his lower-class values of spontaneity and revelry (the <i>real</i> party is in steerage, you see). In the end, Kate Winslett gets the best of both worlds. Leo dies, meaning she doesn't have to live an impoverished existence with him. Instead, we see pictures of her living an affluent life but without the guilt and depression that might have ensued had she not been freed to enjoy her wealth. The problem, it turns out, was not wealth, but the fiance who would prevent her from finding satisfaction in it.<br />
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Almost 20 years later, we have a slightly new spin on this trope. I have not seen <i>Me Before You</i>, but I have read about it. It seems to be almost identical to <i>Titanic </i>in its form, though with one significant difference: one of the "lovers" is disabled. This, it seems, makes all the difference. While it is bad to be working class, it is actually worse to be rich and quadriplegic. Like Kate Winslett's Rose, Sam Claflin's Will is wealthy and suicidal. But unlike Rose, Will is beyond saving. His disability means that he is unable to enjoy his wealth, and this makes him deeply unhappy. The Jack Dawson of this film, Louise Clark, is an "eccentric" and "bubbly" working-class woman without much qualifications or job prospects. Like Will, she is in need of salvation, but unlike Will, she can actually be saved. Where Will is wealthy (good) and unhealthy (bad), Louise is poor (bad) and healthy (good). To spoil a film that should probably never be watched, the two fall in love. But what this means is that Will must take himself and his disability out of the picture if Louise is to truly find happiness (if you love someone, set them free and all that). So Will goes through with his planned assisted-suicide, but not before leaving Louise with a large inheritance. Like Rose in <i>Titanic</i>, Louise now has the best of both worlds. She is healthy and wealthy, and Will's tragic existence has given her a real sense of duty to make the most out of her newly-possessed privileges.<br />
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The takeaway lesson is as follows: health without riches is useless, but riches without health are equally useless, if not more so. Indeed, in the hierarchy of human existence, persons with disability apparently rank the lowest, and they ought at least to consider the possibility that they'd be better off dead. It is little wonder that this film is being protested against. This is a vile message when stated explicitly, yet it is implicitly accepted by many of us. What is at work here, theologically speaking, is idolatry. Health and Wealth are our gods. All that we do, we do for them. All that we sacrifice, we sacrifice for them. It would be a grave mistake for churches to think this idolatry is only practiced by "health and wealth" or "prosperity gospel" churches. Churches which are not temped by the the health and wealth gospel are more often than not Churches whose members have a surplus of both.Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-19558092907136145232016-05-15T12:08:00.001+01:002016-05-15T12:11:14.917+01:00The Worst Thing in the WorldIn the same Barth Q and A mentioned in the previous post there is a question about the relationship between Christianity and other religions. Based on the text in Acts 14 where it says that God did not leave the nations without witness or testimony, the student asks Barth whether there is revelation in religions outside of Christianity. Barth's response? "The answer is 'No'" But what then of Acts 14 and these "testimonies" given to the nations?<br />
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Barth explains this by drawing a distinction between revelation and what he calls "signs." Certainly, he says, the world is full of signs of God's presence. Paul also talks about this in Acts 17 and in Romans 1. But these signs of God's presence are not revelation, that is, they are not God's self-disclose, His own speech concerning Himself.<br />
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Returning to other religions, he notes that in the Bible the other religions surrounding Israel (and later, the Church) are not dealt with as revelation. On the contrary, the relationship between the people of God and other religions is always agonistic (though it must be said that the relationship between the people of God and the <i>people </i>of other religions is not always so). Indeed, Barth summarises the story of Scripture as the fight between God's revelation and what is called religion. "The worst thing in the world," claims Barth, "is religion." One hesitates to conclude that this is mere exaggeration. Indeed, Barth returns to his first answer - there is no revelation in other religions - and adds that one can and must include Christianity in this <i>Nein</i> insofar as Christianity has become a religion. What initially looked like "religious intolerance" from Barth becomes something much more interesting: the call to abolish all religion, including the Christian one.<br />
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"God's speaking in the Gospel - now <i>there </i>is revelation over against the whole Christian and non-Christian world!"<br />
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The "Thus saith the Lord" is therefore not the word of a pious man, or the theological insight which has arisen form the human heart. It is, for Barth, the Word which is strange and new, graceful and helpful. In other words, revelation is apocalyptic all the way down. If we follow Barth, we might say that the extent to which Christianity fails to conform to this apocalypticism is the extent to which it becomes the worst thing in the world.Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-67212744886663315722016-05-14T11:15:00.004+01:002016-05-14T11:17:33.307+01:00Do the Barth ManIf you go to <a href="http://postbarthian.com/2015/04/16/karl-barth-1962-warfield-lectures-audio/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">this website</span></a> you can hear Barth deliver his lectures on evangelical theology in Princeton in 1962, as well as some Q and As. I especially recommend the latter, since it gives you a chance to appreciate Barth's wit and self-deprecation. One exchange in particular stands out,<br />
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In the Q and A with students, one of them quotes to Barth a sentence he wrote in <i>The Resurrection of the Dead</i> (from the mid 1920s), and asks Barth is he still agrees with this sentence, and if he does, is it not problematic? Barth comments that that book was written a long time ago, and that there are certainly sentences which he can no longer uphold. But he asks the student to read the quote again slowly, and says "I will look into what I can make of it." So the student repeats the quote from <i>Resurrection</i>: "Exactly in the place of that which makes me a man, the human soul, is placed that which makes God God."<br />
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In the recording you hear a sort of confused pause by Barth, followed by silence, and then laughter from the crowd. Barth himself seems to be laughing. As the laughter stops, Barth asks: "Can you tell me...what I may have meant...!?" Barth is laughing again by the end of his question, and the students follow suit.<br />
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From another theologian this question could come across as patronising and arrogant, as if to say: well of course <i>I </i>know what I meant, but I want to check to see if YOU know how to interpret me. But here it is a genuine question from Barth, a question which seems to be mocking the obscurity of the original quotation. For all Barth's giftedness as a theologian, his best characteristic is perhaps his refusal to take himself seriously. He is not precious about "his" theology. From the very beginning of <i>Church Dogmatics</i> he insists that dogmatics is not mastery, but service. This, sadly, is a characteristic often absent from Barthians, who would do well to pay as much attention to the spirit of Barth's theology as to the letter.<br />
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If you want to hear the exchange for yourself, click <a href="http://postbarthian.com/mp3/karlbarth/1962warfield/1173KB0562_01.mp3" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">here </span></a>and go to minute 10:30Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-38651633928264589342016-04-13T12:46:00.002+01:002016-04-13T12:51:33.673+01:00Non-Competitive?<div class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
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If you've ever wondered what psychoanalysis might have to say about <i>The Sound of Music</i>, then wonder no more. In the above video philosopher Slavoj Zizek uncovers the "hidden" message of the film, and more importantly, the "hidden" message of the Church as institution: "pretend to renounce and you can get it all". In the case of the film "getting it" means getting Baron von Trapp.</div>
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What Zizek doesn't mention is the theological move which the head of the Convent makes. Here's the key part of the dialogue:</div>
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<b>Maria</b>: I left... I was frightened... I was confused. I felt, I've never felt that way before, I couldn't stay. I knew that here I'd be away from it. I'd be safe... I can't face him again... Oh, there were times when we would look at each other. Oh, Mother, I could hardly breathe... That's what's been torturing me. I was there on God's errand. To have asked for his love would have been wrong. I couldn't stay, I just couldn't. I'm ready at this moment to take my vows. Please help me. </blockquote>
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<b>Reverend Mother</b>: Maria, the love of a man and a woman is holy too. You have a great capacity to love. What you must find out is how God wants you to spend your love. </blockquote>
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<b>Maria</b>: But I pledged my life to God. I pledged my life to his service. </blockquote>
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<b>Reverend Mother</b>: My daughter, if you love this man, it doesn't mean you love God less. No, you must find out and you must go back. </blockquote>
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<b>Maria</b>: Oh, Mother, you can't ask me to do that. Please let me stay, I beg of you. </blockquote>
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<b>Reverend Mother</b>: Maria, these walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live.</blockquote>
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At work in the Reverend Mother's pastoral wisdom is a non-competitive account of a creation governed only by the law of love. In essence, the advice to Maria is "follow your heart". Such advice is, of course, the very antithesis of pastoral wisdom, but who of us would not like to hear it?</div>
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This is what makes a passage such as 1 Corinthians 7 so troubling (and so ignored). Paul speaks of divided interests, of a "world" which competes with God for our time and devotion and service. In other words, if Maria had gone to St Paul for advice, it seems he would have told her: stay as you are. By loving this man you will almost certainly end up loving God less. But if you're too horny then go ahead and marry him. You won't be sinning, and your union with him can be of service to God. Now this advice may have led to the very same outcome, but the kind of world that Maria now inhabits would have been radically altered by Paul's speech.</div>
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Another episode from <i>The Sound of Music</i> which Zizek does not mention is the relationship between Liesl, the eldest daughter in the von Trapp family, and Rolfe, a telegram delivery boy. Their relationship mirrors that of their seniors in many ways, but it does not enjoy the same happy ending. Nazism gets in the way of true love! There is a very interesting exchange toward the end of the film. Liesl meets Rolfe in Vienna, having not seen him in quite some time. She tries to rekindle their youthful romance, but the newly recruited Nazi Rolfe tells her: "I'm now occupied with more important matters."</div>
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More important than modern, romantic love?! Neither the film, nor the Christians it depicts, can imagine such a thing. Surely the only true ideology is one which allows us to roam free in a non-competitive space, where even God Himself does not impinge on our personal projects.</div>
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But the God of Paul does so impinge. As Zizek says, the kind of non-competitive, follow-your-heart logic of the Reverend Mother does not belong to Christianity as such. Christianity is much more interesting than that. So what am I saying? I think I am saying that if we want to look for the logic of Christian discipleship in <i>The Sound of Music</i>, we can look no further than the Nazi Rolfe.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-15636364592581948692016-04-09T19:00:00.001+01:002016-04-09T19:04:32.477+01:00That's Amore<div style="text-align: justify;">
Since I am supposed to be doing research on love (if ever something cries out not to be researched, it is surely love), Pope Francis's latest statement has proved timely. It is called <i><a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20160319_amoris-laetitia_en.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Amoris Laetitia</span></a></i> - The Joy of Love. Francis is not reflecting on love per se (whatever that might mean), but on love as it pertains to family life.</div>
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I have only began to read what is a fairly long statement, but the following line caught my attention. Francis says:</div>
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The ability of human couples to beget life is the path along which the history of salvation progresses.</blockquote>
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This claim comes in the context of "fruitful" human love being understood as imaging the fecundity of the divine life. I have two things to say about it.</div>
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First, it is not true. If Scripture teaches us anything, it teaches us that it is precisely the <i>in</i>ability of human couples to beget life that is the path along which the history of salvation progresses. The child of promise, and not the child of the flesh, is the one who carries forward the divine blessing. This is a basic theological truth, but it is one so easy to miss, and one whose implications are enormous.</div>
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Second, Pope Francis's claim shows how tempting it is to speak the language of natural theology when we talk about love between human beings. Indeed it is hard to know how to speak about love and *not* engage in a bit of natural theology, intentionally or otherwise. My hope is that Karl Barth might teach me how to do so, and thus help me to avoid the notion of <i>agape</i> as the civil virtue which keeps the machine running. (Not that that's what Pope Francis is doing, I hasten to add.)</div>
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-13280107102426406842015-12-24T13:12:00.000+00:002015-12-24T13:15:09.317+00:00Film Awards 2015, part 2<br />
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<a href="http://cdn.red.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/meryl-streep-first-look-on-set-at-suffragette-23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.red.fm/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/meryl-streep-first-look-on-set-at-suffragette-23.jpg" height="190" width="320" /></a>Watching the trailer for <b>Suffragette</b>, it appeared that Meryl Streep had a significant role to play in this piece of historical fiction. In reality, the trailer showed almost the entirety of her performance. Meryl Streep is in this film in the same way that Sean Connery is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - by not really being in it at all. The comparisons between Suffragette and Prince of Thieves don't end there, however. Both focus on a character who joins the cause of the oppressed. Both lead characters challenge the injustice of the law and are thus treated as outlaws. Both feature a despicably evil male antagonist. And both don't quite live up to the subject matter. Now Suffragette is far superior to Prince of Thieves. Most films are. But there is something about it that didn't quite work for me. It's decent, but I thought it would be brilliant.</div>
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I expected <b>Sicario </b>to be thrilling, but I didn't expect it to be beautiful. There is a stunning aerial shot</div>
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of a convoy of SUVs serpentining (?) its way into Juarez which shows the makers of the awful True Detective season 2 how it's done. But the best shot of all captures the silhouettes of an elite team of operatives descending into a hidden tunnel as the sun sets on the Texas desert. This cinematic flair combined with excellent performances from Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro distinguishes Sicario from the pack.<br />
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<li>The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason and Logic and Bigotry Award for the Film which Contributes More to Science than Richard Dawkins Himself</li>
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<a href="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2015/10/The-Martian-crops.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs-images.forbes.com/erikkain/files/2015/10/The-Martian-crops.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a>If I ever end up stuck on Mars, I want to be stuck there with Matt Damon. I don't use the word "hero" lightly, but he is the greatest hero in American history, It's almost impossible not to like him, And it's almost impossible not to like his character in <b>The Martian</b>. Without exaggeration, this is the coolest botanist you're ever likely to see on screen. Matt Damon gets to deliver some cracking lines, such as: "I'm going to have to science the shit out of this." And that is quite literally what he does, since he uses his own poo as a way to grow potatoes on Mars. I wasn't a huge fan of the scenes which didn't feature Damon, but overall The Martian is like a light-hearted version of Interstellar (which also featured Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain), and it is all the better for it. It is full of science and reason and logic. And given its <a href="http://variety.com/2015/film/news/the-martian-white-washing-asian-american-ridley-scott-1201614155/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">"white-washing" of some Asian characters</span></a> who originally featured in the novel, it is also full of bigotry. Richard Dawkins would be proud.</div>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Worst Car Chase</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://image.automobilemag.com/f/111604301+w1000+h667+q80+re0/spectre-car-chase-screenshot" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://image.automobilemag.com/f/111604301+w1000+h667+q80+re0/spectre-car-chase-screenshot" height="212" width="320" /></a>It could only be the one featured in <b>Spectre</b>. Bond and the henchman race around Rome in a couple of lavish sports cars. They don't drive particularly fast. There are no machine guns attached to the vehicles. There are no laser guided missiles. No banana skins are released from the rear. They don't even bump into each other. Bond simply gets a small head start on the henchman, and maintains it without much fuss for a minute or two, until he drives into a river or something like that. It is boring beyond belief.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Hagiography</li>
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<a href="http://www.vogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/08/steve-jobs-movie-2015-holding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.vogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/08/steve-jobs-movie-2015-holding.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>The Steve Jobs depicted in <b>Steve Jobs</b> is an asshole. There's no denying it. He's rude, manipulative, heartless, mean, arrogant, vindictive. The film doesn't shy away from this side of him. But he's not a bad man. Yes, he's "poorly made." But his supposed worst offence - his neglect of his daughter - is amended by the end of the film. All his other petty squabbles and character flaws are covered over by the healing of this central relationship, as Danny Boyle's three act play comes to a neat close. But Steve Jobs was not a "regular type asshole." His crimes against humanity are completely overlooked. Where was the snappy pre-launch conversation with the mother of the Foxconn employee who committed suicide? This is an all too sanitized account of a flawed, modern saint. I have heard people cite Steve Jobs as an argument for allowing Syrian refugees into the States, If anything, Steve Jobs embodies the only argument for <i>not </i>allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S. "But he invented the iPhone!" Exactly. I rest my case.</div>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Second Part of a Film that was Unnecessarily Divided Into Multiple Parts</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://content-img.newsinc.com/jpg/415/29213897/22495131.jpg?t=1433849400" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://content-img.newsinc.com/jpg/415/29213897/22495131.jpg?t=1433849400" height="180" width="320" /></a>I was a big fan of the first two Hunger Games films. Not so much the third, but it grew on me after the second viewing. <b>The Hunger Games III/2</b> does not rival the first two in terms of thrills and the amount of Woody Harrelson we get to see, but for its sheer bleakness and subversive narrative it deserves this award. I just didn't see this end coming. That just shows you the extent to which I have been tricked into thinking that war ends well.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Remixed Christian Film</li>
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<a href="http://www.intallaght.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/coopers2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.intallaght.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/coopers2.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a>I'm convinced that <b>Christmas with the Coopers</b> began life as a "Christian film", with Kirk Cameron ear marked to play the lead role. It has all the hallmark signs: family values, Christian character who <i>always</i> finds the moral high ground, saccharine voice over, wisdom from the elderly. But then someone got their hands on the script and decided to marry it with some edginess: a young girl who swears, a gay character, some weird kissing. Much like the marriage in the film, this one is not happy. The film is entirely confused about what it wants to be. It's neither dramatic nor funny, and it has some very odd moments. And in the biggest twist of all, it ends with the Coopers doing some zany dancing in the middle of a hospital ward, because, you know, they don't have inhibitions like normal families. (What do you mean "that's almost exactly how Little Miss Sunshine Ends"?) The Coopers also don't have tact. Joyous dancing in the middle of a hospital: insensitive much? This is truly awful stuff.</div>
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<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Most Ridiculous Temper Tantrum</li>
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<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/film/starwarsforceawakens/ew_21-xlarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/film/starwarsforceawakens/ew_21-xlarge.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>Imagine someone with a propensity for outbursts of rage being given some upsetting news. Now imagine that person with a lightsaber in their hand. We're treated to not one but two of these scenes in <b>Star Wars: The Force Awakens</b>. They feel like out-takes from Spaceballs, which is not a compliment. Yes, it's funny to see the new Darth Vader trashing things with his lightsaber and the fear of those who bring bad news. But these scenes only serve to make what should presumably be a scary character seem like a spoiled child who's just been told he's not allowed to play with the death star. We're moving dangerously close to Kick-Ass 2 territory at this point, which I don't think is where Star Wars wants to be. It's not where anyone wants to be. If this is the character whose journey we're supposed to follow over the next 17 Christmasses, then it doesn't bode well. The same goes for the character played by the new Keira Knightley. The greatest trick J.J. Abrams ever pulled was convincing the world he makes good films. The Star Trek reboots are crimes against cinema. I read an interview in which Abrams cited Terrence Malick as an influence for this Star Wars re-make. While that does explain the half-hour spent looking at a tree while the C3PO contemplates the ambiguous nature of the force in a voice-over, there is none of Malick's daring in this safe but forgettable adventure. Malick leaves himself open to boos (although he never actually hears the boos himself, since he spends his time cutting people's hair in a cave just outside Paris). Abrams has probably never heard a boo in his life (Exhibit A: Star Trek: Into Darkness has an 87% rating on RT. I will never get over that). Star Wars will make its billions. But if by some divine miracle it doesn't, just make sure the Disney executives don't have lightsabers in their hand when you tell them the bad news.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Film</li>
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<a href="https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UlUpsvPSGcMk-SX0DHozhlwbGW4=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3693876/FRD-DS-00253.0.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UlUpsvPSGcMk-SX0DHozhlwbGW4=/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3693876/FRD-DS-00253.0.JPG" width="320" /></a>I came into this film with no expectations, and without having seen any of the previous films in the series. I left <b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b> with a renewed faith in cinema and a strong urge to play the electric guitar while spraying chrome into my mouth. This is a film which has an enormous amount of care and craft behind it, which seems a strange thing to say about a film which opens with the title character stuffing a lizard down his throat. But in all the mayhem – and there really is a lot of mayhem to go ‘round – there is this odd but intoxicating aesthetic which is maintained throughout. Consider this film an ode to moving vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and an antidote to Spectre's excuse for a car chase. In truth, though the film bears Max’s name, it belongs to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. Without having to say much she is an inspirational hero. We join her and her fellow escapees on a war rig as they attempt to flee the patriarchal tyrant Immortan Joe, whose hold over his people is symbolised by his control of the city’s water supply. Will their attempt at escape be successful? You can’t be certain. But what is certain is that you will have one hell of a ride watching the whole thing unfold. The cinema was made for moving pictures like this. Forget film of the year: this is the best action film I’ve ever seen on the big screen.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-6955967881233151382015-12-23T11:49:00.000+00:002015-12-23T13:13:24.960+00:00Film Awards 2015, Part 1<div style="text-align: justify;">
Before I moved to Aberdeen I had it on good authority that there is nothing to do other than go to the cinema. Now that I've lived in Aberdeen for 3 months, I can tell you on good authority that there is nothing to do other than go to the cinema. A Cineworld Unlimited card is therefore not a luxury but a necessity. Without one you will die. Between now and this time next year I expect to have seen over four thousand movies. This blog post will therefore be a lot trickier in 2016. For now, however, I feel capable of presenting you with The Decy's - my awards for the films of 2015.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Funniest Film</li>
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<a href="http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news_img/25549/Charlie_Day_25549.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cinemablend.com/images/news_img/25549/Charlie_Day_25549.jpg" height="133" width="320" /></a>Maybe it was the Venezuelan heat, maybe it was the fact that it <i>wasn't</i> Two and a Half Men (one of the shows shown in English on Venezuelan TV), maybe it's the fact that good comedy is hard to find these days, maybe, just maybe, it was actually a decent film. But whatever the reason, this award goes to <b>Horrible Bosses 2</b>. This is one of those rare sequels that actually outshines the original. If you like Charlie whats-his-face from <i>It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia</i> then you will probably like this movie. I like Charlie whats-his-face from <i>It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia</i>.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Western</li>
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<a href="http://filmracket.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/salvation-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://filmracket.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/salvation-3.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
This may have been the only western I saw in 2015, but that doesn't mean that <b>The Salvation</b> is here by default. Which it is. Nevertheless, this Mads Mikkelsen-led revenge piece is solid to a fault. This really is Western-by-numbers, complete with evil-mustached-gunslinger-terrorising-small-town, and woman-in-need-of-help. Well beneath the surface there is some subversive political commentary, but for this most part this is a straight shootin' western of reasonable caliber.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Film Starring Landry from Friday Night Lights</li>
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<a href="http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fnl/images/f/f8/Lg_fnl_2009_5.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20140714011101" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fnl/images/f/f8/Lg_fnl_2009_5.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20140714011101" height="179" width="320" /></a>Honourable mention to Black Mass, but the gong goes to <b>Bridge of Spies</b>. This was a surprisingly witty and wonderfully shot film. Clean, crisp, and without a wasted moment or word. It did leave me a bit cold, however. I never felt any sense of tension, even when we arrived at the titular bridge. The movie always had the feel of a story that would end well. But it's nice to see Landry doing well for himself, eh?</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Actor</li>
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<a href="http://www.cinemum.net/IMAGES/2015/L/LOVE-AND-MERCY-PIANO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cinemum.net/IMAGES/2015/L/LOVE-AND-MERCY-PIANO.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
For his portrayal of a young Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy, I'm giving The Decy to <b>Paul Dano</b>. The highest compliment I can pay to Dano is to say that if the film had spent all its time with his Brian WIlson rather than cutting to the later Wilson played by John Cusack, <b>Love & Mercy</b> could have been film of the year. The scenes in the recording studio are engrossing, and there is a memorable moment when Dano's Wilson plays his new song "God Only Knows" on the piano for his angry and controlling father. Here we see the genius, the sadness, and the vulnerability all at work. And then X-Factor went and spoiled it all by doing something stupid like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK461zFa5kU" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">having someone butcher this Beach Boys classic</span></a> Alexandra-Burke-Does-Hallelujah style. Is there nothing sacred?</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Sequel Which Erases the Memory of Mission Impossible 4</li>
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<a href="http://icdn4.digitaltrends.com/image/mission-impossible-rogue-cruise-plane-1051x700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://icdn4.digitaltrends.com/image/mission-impossible-rogue-cruise-plane-1051x700.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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This franchise is a case of odd numbers decent, even numbers crap. I have previously expressed by dislike for MI:4 (the one where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Nyqvist#/media/File:Michael_Nyqvist_June_2013.jpg" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0b5394;">Slavoj Zizek plays the bad guy</span></a>). I'm pleased to report that <b>Mission Impossible 5</b> is a vast improvement, i.e. it's watchable. The opening scene with the airplane is incredible, and there is a teriffically tense sequence at an opera. It all goes a bit flat after that, but this is still by far and away the best sequel to Mission Impossible 4 released this year. A worthy winner.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Film that's Better than All Previous Jurassic Park Sequels but Still Considerably Worse than the Original</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/10/feca6920-f35b-0132-f113-0ed54733f8f5.png?w=684&h=513&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://lovelace-media.imgix.net/uploads/10/feca6920-f35b-0132-f113-0ed54733f8f5.png?w=684&h=513&fit=crop&crop=faces&auto=format&q=70" height="150" width="200" /></a>If Landry from Friday Night Lights is the omnipresent supporting actor of our times, then Bright from Everwood is the omnipresent lead actor. I can live with that. <b>Jurassic World</b> has little of what made the original so memorable, but there is plenty to keep you entertained, and one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment featuring Nick from New Girl.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Film Which Has Paul Giamatti Play the Kind of Character Paul Giamatti Played 15 Years Ago</li>
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<a href="https://threerowsback.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/paul-giamatti-in-san-andreas-295287.jpg?w=590" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://threerowsback.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/paul-giamatti-in-san-andreas-295287.jpg?w=590" width="320" /></a>There can only be one winner here: <b>San Andreas</b>. While The Rock received all the acting plaudits for his nuanced portrayal of a macho rescue pilot, Paul Giamatti does what Paul Giamatti does best: he plays a geeky tech guy who shouts a lot. A true return to form for Giamatti, and one for the grand-kids' college fund.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Worst Casting Director</li>
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<a href="http://images1.fanpop.com/images/photos/1500000/Air-Force-One-gary-oldman-1533797-852-480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://images1.fanpop.com/images/photos/1500000/Air-Force-One-gary-oldman-1533797-852-480.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a>The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'s <b>Reg Poerscout-Edgerton</b> may just have out done the Mummy 3's Ronna Kress in managing to cast the most amount of actors who play major characters from other countries. We have an American playing a Russian, a Brit playing an American, a Swede playing a German, and an Australian playing an Italian. The accents are as ropey as the film in general. Were there no Russian actors to call upon for the role of Illya Kuryakin? I seem to recall a very talented Russian actor playing Harrison Ford's nemesis in Air Force One. Was he not available? As for the role of Napoleon Solo, the list of actors considered for the role reminds me of Manchester United's recent shopping list: all big names, but none of them remotely interested. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum, Alexander Skarsgård, Ewan McGregor, Robert Pattinson, Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joel Kinnaman, Russell Crowe, Chris Pine, Ryan Reynolds, Jon Hamm, Tom Cruise. Yep, all of these actors were "considered" by Reg, but he decided that <strike>Marouane Fellaini</strike> Henry Cavill was the man for the job. Suuuuure, Reg. We believe you.</div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;">Best Film About a Terminally Ill Teenager that Leaves You Feeling Heartless for Hating It</li>
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<a href="http://www.metro.us/_internal/gxml!0/4dntvuhh2yeo4npyb3igdet73odaolf$c9ihtj6b7q0ryywtls6xqluywkgbwrj/me-earl-dying-girl.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.metro.us/_internal/gxml!0/4dntvuhh2yeo4npyb3igdet73odaolf$c9ihtj6b7q0ryywtls6xqluywkgbwrj/me-earl-dying-girl.jpeg" height="240" width="320" /></a><i>Pace</i> the Sundance Film Festival, I thought <b>Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl</b> was properly crap. Yet another film shamelessly sucking up to the film industry. Yet another film with CRAZY parents who make our own parents seem to boring. Wow, did his dad just say that!? Dad's don't say that kind of thing! That's crazy! I wish my dad was like that! I think Stanley Tucci is a repeat offender in this regard. Third strike and he's out. I'm serious, Stanley. Play a crazy parent again. I dare you. I double dare you motherf****r! In what could have been an interesting film about friendship with the dying, we are instead treated to "one young man's personal journey", with the central dilemma being: will he get into college? The film also lies to us. I mean flat out lies. If we can't trust the movie industry, who can we trust?</div>
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That's all for part one. Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow, where I will be presenting eight more awards, including the prestigious Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason and Logic and Bigotry award for the film which contributes more to science than Richard Dawkins himself, as well as the award for film of the year.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-88063383096230076982015-11-14T10:25:00.000+00:002015-11-14T10:38:37.134+00:00Yoder and the Work of Christian Theology<div style="text-align: justify;">
What do you do with a highly influential (and deceased) Christian theologian who has been exposed as a systematic abuser of women? That, apparently, is a question worth pondering at a social gathering of theology students. (We also do Bar Mitzvahs and children's birthdays.) Anything useful I say here has almost certainly been borrowed from a colleague. Anything stupid is entirely my own.<br />
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For those who do not know the story, Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, in the last years of his life (he died in 1997), was forced to admit to various counts of sexual abuse toward women and to undergo a process of repentance and restoration. The dominant narrative up until recently has been that Yoder repented, submitted to a disciplinary process, and came out the other end a restored Christian. By and large his work continued to be used by Christians well after his death. I am among these Christians. You will be hard pressed to find an essay of mine written for my undergraduate degree that does <i>not</i> include a citation of one of Yoder's many works. I approached his work entirely uncritically, and focussed solely on the fact that his exegesis of Scripture was convincing and convicting.</div>
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What I did was wrong, with or without the latest information regarding Yoder's crimes (crimes for which he served no time in prison). To be uncritical is to cease to do the work of Christian theology. In truth, it is to cease to do the work of a Christian. A Christian is not a positive thinker. There should be no one more critical than a Christian, for there was no one more critical than Christ. We learn that from his first instruction as a wandering prophet: Repent! Why and how we do the work of criticism is another question, but there can be no question that it is work which must be done. The uncritical church will not be a "positive" influence in society. It will be a miserable place of secrecy and betrayal, with no hope of truthful communion. </div>
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To bring this back to Yoder, there can be no escaping the sin of the institutions who allowed him to abuse women under his supervision. Institutions - and the church is here no exception, but perhaps the great exemplar - cannot bear criticism, because criticism quite literally comes with a cost. How many times has the church acted as if it is above criticism, as if it can sweep criminal actions under the rug in the name of a warped view of the church's standing in the world? What is this other than a grossly sinful attempt to maintain the church's being as a "light to the world"? What is this other than Genesis 3 repeated: wilful disobedience and blatant cover-up, followed by excuses along the lines of, "Well, there's two sides to every story..." The Wire - that great, modern critique of institutions - puts the matter straighter than most Christians would: a lie is not another side of the story; it's just a lie.</div>
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I said that, until recently, Yoder was used by and large uncritically by theologians. An article written in January 2015 has made this uncritical stance impossible. The story of Yoder the theological genius who had a grave sin in his life, who repented of this grave sin and underwent church discipline, and who has now been restored to us as a brother, is not another side of the story. It is a lie. Yoder wrote numerous theological essays which justified his actions. He could never see that what he was doing was sin, and so he could never properly repent. He used not only his position and power, but also his theology to make possible his life of violence against over 100 women.</div>
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What do we do with John Howard Yoder? Much depends on who this "we" is. I have had this conversation exclusively with Christians, which should tell us that this is not an "academic" question but an ecclesial question. It is tempting for Christians theologians to turn this into an academic issue, and to treat Yoder as first of all a source, someone who's work can be cited in university papers. In this register our duty is to the integrity of ourselves and our academic work. But that is to miss our primary duty, which is to the church. We when the question of Yoder is asked with the church in mind, I think there is little doubt as to what our action should be: hand Yoder (his person and work, which Christian theology has taught us not to separate) over to the flames in the hope that he will be saved. The Church has. a certain times in its history, quite literally burned the work of theological geniuses who were deemed destructive for the Church's life. The case of Yoder should make us more sympathetic to this drastic action. If nothing else this teaches us that the Church does not live by the work of its theologians. The Church lives by the Word of God. All other texts, from the greatest (<i>Church Dogmatics</i>) to the least (take your pick) are dispensable. Thomas Aquinas was really on to something when he called his life's work "so much straw." </div>
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Furthermore, Christian pacifism does not require the witness of Yoder for its intelligibility, who in truth is a counter-witness. Christian pacifism's intelligibility and witness is secured by the lordship of Christ in His Word and the presence of the Spirit in the Church. What should really worry Christian theologians is not the question of whether to cite Yoder in one's work. It is the question of how (if at all!) one handles the Scriptures. That there will be thousands of theological works which contain not one jot or tittle of Scripture should make all Christian theologians pause and think: what am I doing? To what tradition do I belong?</div>
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Another factor which must be included in this discussion is sex (as in male and female). It is an incredibly small sample size, but from my interactions with people it seems that men are more inclined to struggle with the question of Yoder, whereas for women it is quite straightforward. Thinking (uncritically) as a man, I find myself producing the following logic: well, I'm no less sinful than Yoder, and given the same conditions I could easily do what he has done, and who am I to judge? In short, the tendency is to sympathise, man to man. This sympathy is misguided and wrong. It is wrong because it is a sympathy with the powerful, not with powerless. It is sympathy with the oppressor, not with the oppressed. It is a sympathy which thinks of itself as understanding, compassionate, forgiving, but it is a deeply patriarchal sympathy, and as such it is a sympathy which Christ opposes.</div>
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When I described the duty of the theologian as being a duty to the Church, in the case of Yoder the duty of the theologian is first of all to the women of the Church. It is a duty to the victims of Yoder's abuse, victims who may read your work. The Church must listen to these women, and to all the women - theologians, ministers, laypeople - who see things far clearer than the men. Sympathy with Yoder is not a virtue. Just the opposite. The question for me as a man is: can I have solidarity with Christian women? The answer is that I can and I must, but this is no easy task.</div>
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I am writing my PhD on Christian love. Since I began my theological education 1 Corinthians 13 has performed a critical role. It has reminded me first of all that human knowledge is partial knowledge. It is relative, not absolute. We see in part and know in part, and all our strongest theological dogmas are provisional, in need of constant criticism in the light of the revelation of Christ. Second, it has reminded me that faith and knowledge without love are empty. I can be a "theological genius" (whatever that might mean), but if I have not love I am nothing. Genuinely nothing. Yoder was known as one such "theological genius", yet he lived a life without love. By the judgement of Scripture, therefore, his words are meaningless noises, his life and work reduced to nothingness. To use Yoder as a pacifist thinker has become entirely unintelligible, because we can say without a shadow of a doubt that he was not a pacifist. If we learn anything from the life and work of Yoder, then, if there is any "good" to come out of this by the providence of God, we learn that pacifism - indeed, theology itself - is not a "position" or an "idea," but a practice.</div>
Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3283698189135504357.post-87609213938719602182015-11-09T13:40:00.001+00:002015-11-09T17:29:06.919+00:00Why Remembrance Day in the Church is u̶n̶B̶a̶r̶t̶h̶i̶a̶n̶ unChristian<div style="text-align: justify;">
Karl Barth's most important contribution to the church is not this or that doctrine, but a way of doing theology. This way begins with the being and action of God as revealed by the person of Christ. This being and action of God is what is <i>really </i>real. Human being and action is only real to the extent that it corresponds to the divine. So, for example, we do not know what a father is, and then understand God in the light of our experience or practice of fatherhood. Rather, we know God as Father, and human fatherhood or lack thereof can only be seen in this light. Human fatherhood is first of all judged and then redeemed by the Fatherhood of God. Or better, first of all redeemed, and then judged.</div>
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One of Remembrance Day's effects on the church is the undoing of Karl Barth's contribution. On Remembrance Day we begin with a human understanding of sacrifice, and in the light of this we understand "the greatest sacrifice" offered by Christ. In churches up and down the UK, the relationship between Christ as Lord and the church as servant is reversed. We remember our deeds and judge Him on their terms, when we should be remembering His deeds and opening ourselves up to His gracious judgement. On this day of reversal we forget that Christ was the collateral damage of a foreign occupation conducted in the name of peace, and that he suffered at the hands of those who sacrificed their lives (and the lives of their enemies) for the empire.</div>
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One does not need to be a pacifist, then, to oppose the "celebration" of Remembrance Day within the church. One only needs to pay attention to the proper logic of Christian talk about God: a logic based on the truth that when we talk about God we are not talking about a greater version of ourselves.</div>
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Dechttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14416263247593607473noreply@blogger.com3