Who is the Devil Incarnate?

1. Maybe this isn't worth writing about, but when so many Americans get their theology from Hollywood movies, perhaps some clarification is in order. 

2. The Bible has an Antichrist figure. He's not the devil, but a high-ranking human agent of the devil. Preterists tend to view the Antichrist as a personification for oppressive pagan or secular regimes. 

Futurists regard the Antichrist as an individual whose advent is a precursor to the return of Christ. He has a twofold role: as a sorcerer and a world leader. In Rev 13, these are split up. 

The "Antichrist" is a Johannine title, but it's used to designate a parallel figure in Paul (2 Thes 2:1-4). Same figure, different nomenclature. The Antichrist has OT motifs. 

3. Hollywood has developed its own legend of the Antichrist. In the mythology of Hollywood movies, the Antichrist is in some sense the Devil Incarnate. The Devil Incarnate is a fictional character, not a biblical figure. 

In that respect the Antichrist is a diabolical parody or travesty of the Christian Incarnation. Christ and the Antichrist are both symmetrical and diametrical figures. 

4. The two best examples are Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. In Rosemary's Baby, the devil impregnates a woman, thereby spawning a human/diabolical hybrid. He's not the Devil Incarnate but the devil's son. 

5. The origin of the Damien in The Omen is somewhat murkier. He isn't born to Katherine. Her child is said to be stillborn (actually the victim of infanticide), and there's a switch at birth. Damien's "mother" is a jackal, a surrogate mother. But Damiel certainly as a diabolical pedigree. 

6. In terms of Hollywood genetics and Antichristology, the Antichrist could be the Devil Incarnate in the Apollinarian sense that the Antichrist is the Devil with a human body. The Devil is a rational spirit and his mind takes the place of the human soul. That would be a dualistic model: two natures: a human body possessed by Satan. 

In vampire lore there's the question of whether the victim loses its soul, or if this is case of possession or multiple personality disorder where one personality is dominant while the other is suppressed. This this is fiction, there is no right answer. 

7. Of course, the Devil Incarnate is often used as a facetious metaphor. 

Zombie preparedness in real life

Horror stories about werewolves, vampires, and zombies allegorize epidemics and pandemics. Werewolves, vampires, and zombies are contagious. Each individual can infect a number of healthy humans. These in turn can infect a number of healthy human beings, so that the initial outbreak can spread at an exponential rate and quickly spiral out of control, leading to the collapse of civilization. 

Werewolves are asymptomatic carriers except during a full moon. Vampires are largely asymptomatic carriers although there are telltale signs if you know what to look for (fangs, aversion to light, lack of vital signs), so they must take precautions to avoid detection. 

Quarantine is a classic response to infectious disease. The success of quarantine depends in part on the incubation period. In some cases you have asymptomatic carriers who unwittingly infect others. By the time they become symptomatic, the disease has spread. It's too late to round them up. 

STDs can be another example of asymptomatic carriers. In some cases the carrier may be aware of the STD, but conceals his condition and continues to infect others.

In scifi lore, werewolves, vampires, and zombies are killed without compunction in part because they are dangerous to humans and in part because they are inhuman or subhuman. Vampires are lucid serial killers. Werewolves have lupine psychology at the time they kill, while zombies operate at an instinctual level.  

Some zombie flicks are comedies while others use the genre for social commentay. Zombie preparedness alerts and kits are humorous. The zombie apocalypse is a humorous trope. 

This is all fictional (except for STDs) but it has real-world counterparts. As I write, we are witnessing the Coronavirus. It remains to be seen how damaging that outbreak will be. 

Because we're social creatures, many humans have compassion for the sick and injured. That, however, depends on whether the sick and injured are perceived as posing a threat to healthy members of the population. 

Quarantine is a classic response to outbreak but quarantine isn't risk free because it requires some contact between the sick and the healthy. The OT has quarantine laws. It was humanitarian.

A more ruthless impulse is to contain an outbreak by killing the infected. And since carriers may be asymptotic, to kill everyone within a designated zone to provide a margin for error. A fictional example is 28 Weeks Later.

In an atheist regime like Red China, we see real-world analogies. The idea of risking your life to nurse the sick is a very Christian impulse. It taps into moral heroism. And it makes sense if you can afford to die because this life is not all there is. 

But atheists don't have that luxury. So the gov't is welding residential buildings closed. Sealing all the residents inside, sick and healthy alike, to die en masse from disease or starvation, dehydration, and lack of sanitation. 

Dracula on the move

L'Osservatore Romano

Dracula has been leaving a trail of exsanguinated victims in Poland, Spain, France, Italy and Ireland. Police are stymied by the fact that Dracula is a shapeshifter. In addition, he's invisible to security cameras. All of which make him exceedingly elusive. 

Church authorities have had more success tacking him down, but with demoralizing effects. The usual techniques have proven ineffectual, resulting in Dracula exsanguinating the church's best vampireslayers. 

The reason is that Catholic vampireslayers have nothing to use against Dracula since he's Romanian Orthodox. A Latin cross or crucifix is ineffectual. They need to use a Byzantine cross. Making the sign of the cross is ineffectual because Catholic vampireslayers cross themselves backwards: from left to right rather than right to left. Holy water is ineffectual because Catholic vampireslayers profess the Filioque, thereby invalidating the sacramental. The Vatican has been in negotiations with the Ecumenical Patriarch to dispatch Rumanian Orthodox vampireslayers to the West, but the Ecumenical Patriarch has demanded that the Pope come home to mother church before he authorizes such action. 

Public service announcement

Now that we're back on Standard Time, citizens need to be in a state of high alert. Standard Time is the season for vampires. Rumor has it that affluent vamps bribed lawmakers to create Standard Time in the first place. If bears forage in spring and summer, then hibernate in winter, vamps hibernate in spring and summer, then forage in winter. When days are short and nights are long, that's hunting season for vamps. And Standard Time gives them an extra hour before they must take refuge in their sunless coffins. So be extra vigilant as we enter the most perilous time of year. If any of your "friends" complain about Daylight Savings Time, that's an ominous clue. Another telltale sign is if they're allergic to Italian cuisine with garlic. The clincher is when they don't appear in photographs. 

Wolves, werewolves, and demons

To my knowledge, there's a very short list of superior werewolf movies, and even those aren't truly great movies. Mind you, there may be additional examples I'm not aware of.

Unless I've overlooked something, directors have failed to develop the dramatic potential of the werewolf character. It alternates between mundane human and savage instinctive animal. 

The problem is a failure to creatively explore and exploit lupine intelligence. To take a comparison, cats are interesting to watch in motion. How they move. Feline reflexes and feline stalking patterns. But in my observation, there just isn't a whole lot going on behind the eyes. 

By contrast, wolves strike me as being far smarter than cats. I don't just mean domestic cats but lions, leopards, and tigers. Wolves remind me of psychopaths. Amoral, pitiless malevolence. Of course, wolves lack the higher intelligence to be evil. But there's a certain analogy.

By the same token, wolves project a kind of inhuman diabolical cunning. Again, that's just an analogy. 

There's just something about lupine intelligence that seems to operate on a higher wavelength. When we look into the eyes of a wolf, it connects with the human viewer–almost like it understands us.  Something we recognize in ourselves, but chilling. Like looking in a mirror, where what you see looking back at you is both familiar and alien.  More akin to human intelligence than, yet inhumane in way similar to a psychopath: he has a human IQ but lacks natural empathy for fellow humans. Something is fatally missing. It's not surprising that heathen Indians felt a particular affinity for wolves. 

If directors, especially Christian directors, had greater imagination, the werewolf would be a good way to model demonic psychology. Or even the fall of angels, like the shift from werewolves in their human state to their lupine state–which parallels the change that fallen angels underwent. They remain angelic, but twisted. 

Shapeshifters

1. What's the basis for shapeshifters in pagan mythology and folklore? Are they purely figments of the imagination, which undergo further embellishment, or do they have analogues in reality? 

The werewolf character is the best known example, popularized by Hollywood, but I believe that's a part of some American Indian lore. Not sure how widespread that is, and whether that reflects independent traditions or cultural diffusion.

Is that just a legend, or does witchcraft enable practitioners to become animals? If so, do they retain human intelligence in that condition, or have animal psychology? 

2. This isn't confined to mythology and folklore. The cherubim in Ezekiel's theophanies are tetramorphs. Is that physical, or an optical or telepathic illusion?

What about the hybrid monsters in Daniel's visions? Are those merely artificial symbolic constructs? Or is there something analogous in reality that gave rise to the imagery? 

3. In some narratives, angels seem to have the ability to materialize, dematerialize, or even assume the form of human males. How deep does that go? Complete internal anatomy?

An alternative interpretation might be that angels don't have the power to assume human form; rather, they have the power to possess human bodies. If demons can do it, why not angels? Perhaps some descriptions involve angels taking possession of human males as temporary vehicles to perform a particular mission, then releasing the host after the mission is completed. 

4. On a natural level, the closest thing to metamorphosis might be male sexual arousal, which involves a degree of physical and psychological transformation, although nothing like shapeshifters. Human beings are composite entities: ensouled animal bodies. Male sexual arousal taps into something wild and primal. And that doesn't require an evolutionary explanation.

5. A more clear-cut example is the snake magic in Exodus, where the staff of Moses becomes a snake and vice versa. The Egyptian sorcerers are able to duplicate that feat. There is a naturalistic explanation for what the Egyptians sorcerers do, but for reasons I've stated elsewhere, I find that unconvincing. 

Vampirism, original sin, and redemption

There's an interesting parallel between vampirism, original sin, and redemption. In vampire lore, vampires have a genealogical identity. They turn humans into vampires by biting them. Vampirism spreads from one vampire to the next. So there are family trees of vampires. 

In addition, a vampire killer doesn't have to destroy every vampire individually. If he can track down the master vampire and destroy him, all his descendants instantly revert to human. So he doesn't have to destroy any of the descendants. He can save them from the curse of vampirism at one stroke by destroying the master vampire.  

Of course, vampires are fictional characters, and they make no scientific sense. At best, they only make sense as creatures of the occult. But the parallels between vampirism and Christian theology are striking. 

Monsters

It's my impression that the most popular monsters in supernatural horror films are werewolves, vampires, and zombies. There are countless trashy horror films, but I have in mind the more "upscale" examples. Excluding comedies, the more upscale representatives include:

Vampires

30 Days of Night (2007)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Count Dracula (BBC, 1977)

Let Me In (2010)

Near Dark (1987)

Nosferatu (1922) 

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

The Hunger (1983)

Werewolves

Dog Soldiers (2002)

Skinwalkers (2007)

The Howling (1981)

Wolfen (1981)

Zombies

28 Days Later (2002)

28 Weeks Later (2007)

I Am Legend (2007)

The Walking Dead (2010-)

1. These monsters share certain things in common:

i) Vampires, werewolves, and zombies were originally human. 

ii) Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are cannibalistic, feeding on humans.  

iii) Vampires, werewolves, and zombies are contagious. They propagate by biting the victim. In the case of werewolves, a scratch will suffice. 

iv) Vampires and werewolves are creatures of the night. If you can fend them off until sunrise, werewolves revert to human form while vampires retreat into windowless buildings to avoid cumbustion. I Am Legend combines the zombie mythos with the vampire mythos regarding the aversion to sunlight. 

v) Vampires and zombies are cadaverous. Functional corpses. The Undead. The Nosferatu variant gives vampires a more famished, cadaverous appearance (e.g. Daybreakers [2010]; Nosferatu [1922] Nosferatu the Vampyre [1979]).

vi) Both vampires and werewolves have a special kinship with wolves.  

vii) Both vampires and werewolves are shapeshifters. 

2. Insofar as the vampire, werewolf, and zombie genres originated independently of each others, it's an interesting question why they have so many things in common. Is this due to subsequent cross-pollination? Or do they reflect a common point of origin in a subliminal Ur-mythos? Is the human imagination wired to generate variations on this theme?

3. These three genres are revealing from a theological and sociological standpoint. In the past, death was all around us. Natural mortality was high, amplified by famine, warfare, siege warfare, epidemics, and pandemics. Heaps of human corpses in public view. Famine and siege warfare also resulted in cannibalism. Although less dramatic, open-casket funerals used to be the norm. But nowadays, due to cremation, modern medicine, and peacetime conditions in many parts of the world, the ugly face of death is easier to hide. And that, in turn, makes it easier for the natural fear of death to recede from consciousness.  

By the same token, travel by car, electrical lighting, and the elimination of wild predators has made the fear darkness recede from consciousness, although it remains close to the surface. Consider a child's instinctive fear of dark. Or walking in back alleys at night. Or your car breaking down on a deserted country road at night. 

So why do we create movies and frequent movies that evoke these primal fears? Perhaps because what's consciously suppressible remains subconsciously irrepressible. Even though modernity makes it easier to push these primal fears to the back of our minds, they remain firmly embedded in the human imagination. The world of nightmares. 

We enjoy scaring ourselves in a safe, controlled environment. And perhaps we feel that spooking ourselves in fantasy exorcises or inoculates us from genuine terrors. 

These genres reflect a throwback to the haunted imagination of the middle ages. They have a number of literal or analogical parallels in the medieval experience, viz. fear of death, fear of the dark, contagion, cannibalism, witchcraft. It's interesting that Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) combines the vampire mythos with plague rats. 

Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead (1988) is a horror film. I saw some of it years ago on TV. I didn't see the beginning or ending, but I later read the plot. 

It has elements of a B slasher film. But it has a mythic quality that transcends the execution. As Lewis observed:

The pleasure of myth depends hardly at all on such usual narrative attractions as suspense or surprise…Sometimes, even from the first, there is hardly any narrative e element…The Hesperides, with their apple-tree and dragon, are already a potent myth, without bringing in Herakles to steal the apples.   

A man who first learns what is to him a great myth through a verbal account which is baldly or vulgarly or cacophonously written, discounts and ignores the bad writing and attends solely to the myth. He hardly minds about the writing. He is glad to have the myth on any terms…The value of myth is not a specifically literary value, or the appreciation of myth a specifically literary experience. He does not approach the words with the expectation or belief that they are good reading matter; they are merely information. their literary merits or faults do not count (for his main purpose) much more than those of a timetable or a cookery book. C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Canto 1992), 43-44,46.

In addition, it has a moral complexity that's rare in the genre of pop Hollywood horror flicks. 

• A supernatural avenger

It's ironic that while progressive theologians expunge hell and OT holy war from Christian theology, secular directors reintroduce hell and retribution. This reflects a common grace instinct or haunted conscience. Humans can't shake the idea of just deserts, including supernatural recompense. 

• Devil's pact

Creating a monster you can't control. In the story, the outraged father cuts a deal with the dark side to exact revenge for the wrongful death of his son. But there's collateral damage. Once evil is unleashed, it can't be contained. The avenger is unstoppable by means. That makes him an effective avenger, but indiscriminate. Good Samaritans are marked for death.

• Revenge

The avenger is a surrogate for the father. The father sees the mayhem which the avenger wreaks through the eyes of the avenger, as if they have merged at a certain level. The avenger is a projection of the father's thirst for vengeance. The avenger empowers the impotent father's rage.

• Self-sacrifice

The only way to destroy the avenger is for the father, on whose behalf the monster was resurrected, to sacrifice his own life. Only that will break the cycle.

The film also benefits from the great Lance Henriksen in the lead.  

There's a lot of coded theology in this film. It's striking that as mainline denominations become secularized and abandon "offensive" biblical theology, secular filmmakers keep returning to archetypal biblical themes. Even though they reject Christian theology, they are irresistibly drawn back to the symbolism of Christian theology. That's a bridge for Christian apologists and evangelists. 

Hell is what you live for

Some years ago I did a post on biblical metaphors for hell:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/10/images-of-hell.html

The point of the post is that conventional views of hell generally neglect the range of metaphors used to illustrate the condition of the damned. 

Recently I did a short story on hell ("Journey out of hell"). As fiction, it wasn't necessarily meant to be theologically accurate. The hell which the characters experienced was a hell of their own imagination.

That, however, raises an interesting question which I've touched on in the past. There may well be a sense in which hell is a theme park furnished by the imagination of the damned–like the Dark Island in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

If so, hell is self-inflicted punishment because the source of suffering is the externalized imagination of the damned. The more evil the damned, the darker their minds.

The damned can't reasonable complain about their punishment because they are being punished by their own wicked imagination. This may mean hell is worse for some of the damned than others, because the imagination of some unbelievers is soaked in evil. Hell is only as bad as you are. The worse you are, the worse hell will be because it mirrors your heart.  

This might also mean that for some of the damned, hell is like a horror flick or gangster flick, because that's the mental world they inhabit even before they die. Hell is what you live for–even before you get there. Some moviegoers revel in vicarious sadism.

Ironically, while progressive theologians eliminate hell, secular directors reintroduce hell. For some of the damned, hell might be forever warring crime families. For some of the damned, hell might contain monsters like werewolves, zombies, vampires, Terminators, Xenomorphs, &c. Monsters animated by the lurid minds of the damned. In that respect, hell may be compartmentalized. 

By the same token, we might describe heaven (or the world to come) as what you live for. The difference is that the saints live for something different than the damned. 

I'm not suggesting that horror flicks are necessarily evil or evil to watch. Monsters in horror flicks can be powerful personified emblems of archetypal dread, malevolence, and retribution. Paradoxically, showing evil can be good. But it's a question of balance. The Bible sometimes describes evil in shockingly graphic terms (e.g. Judges, Lamentations, Revelation, Ezk 18 & 23). But that provides a contrastive background for good.  

Newtonian fatalism

I'd like to employ another example to illustrate a theodicy I often use. I don't think there's one silver bullet theodicy. But by combining several, we cover most-every situation. 

Before getting to that, I often talk about the problem of evil in fairly clinical terms. That's because I'm discussing the intellectual problem of evil rather than the emotional problem of evil. There's really not much you can say about the emotional problem of evil. That's not generally something that can be handled at a distance. It requires face-to-face contact. Grieving with those who grieve (Rom 12:15).

It's like a doctor who has to break terrible news to a patient. Tell the patient that he has terminal cancer or a degenerative illness. Suppose the patient asks why that happened to him? Well, in some cases, the doctor has an answer. He can say that due to your family history, you have a genetic predisposition to develop gastric cancer or Huntington's disease (or whatever). That's the right answer to the question. But, of course, it doesn't make the diagnosis less any less bleak. 

Mind you, even that can sometimes be helpful. The patient knows there's nothing he could have done to prevent it. Early diagnosis wouldn't help. Change of diet wouldn't help. 

In the nature of the case, an answer to the intellectual problem of evil will be somewhat dry. That's because we're addressing the philosophical aspect of the problem. I myself have seen the problem of evil up close and personal. Although I often write about it with critical detachment, that doesn't mean I'm a brain-in-a-vat. It just means I don't discuss family tragedies in public. 

Now for the illustration. To my knowledge, there are two tropes about fatalism in the horror genre:

I. Delayed fatalism

According to this trope, you can never cheat fate. At best, you can postpone the inevitable. But sooner or later, fate will find you. It will sneak back around and get you when you least expect it. You may temporarily outwit your fate, but eventually it will catch you off-guard.

II. Newtonian fatalism

According to this trope, you can cheat fate…but there's a catch! You can cheat fate, but someone else will have to take your place. Fate demands a substitute. In this version, if someone could elude fate, and there's nothing to compensate his evasion, that throws the natural order out of whack. In order to maintain cosmic equilibrium, it's life for life and death for death. You can only escape your fate if that's offset by a fall guy.

This has great dramatic potential in cheesy horror films where you volunteer your best friend. For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly finds himself in near-miss freak accidents. One close call after another. Little does he know you gave him up to save your own skin. And when he finds out…

Although this is fiction, it has a real-world counterpart. In a world that's overwhelmingly governed by cause and effect, every action has a reaction. So Newton's third law has implications for the problem of evil.  

If you think about it, it's a sobering fact that saving one life may come at the expense of another life. Someone may die in an accident because of something someone else did a 100 years earlier. A perfectly innocent action in the past may result in future calamity. Thankfully, most of us don't know the future. Even we did, it would be petrifying to see some of the long-term consequences of our benign actions. 

Likewise, if your father had married a different woman, or your mother had married a different man, you wouldn't be here. Someone else would be here instead. And so on and so forth.

So when we ask, why didn't God do this instead of that, we need to consider how one thing leads to another. It isn't cost-free. Someone's ill-fortune may pay the price for your good fortune, or vice versa. 

Skinwalkers

Brian Godawa has a provocative post on werelions:

http://godawa.com/theology/myth-bible-part-10-lion-men-moab/

Several issues:

i) I appreciate Brian's commitment to supernaturalism. And no doubt some commentators prematurely dismiss certain interpretive options due to their explicit or implicit naturalistic bias. 

ii) Since, to my knowledge (not having read them), Brian's novels are midrashic versions of Bible stories, a degree of literary license is permissible. 

That said, there's the danger of making Scripture look foolish by populating his midrashim with critters from Hollywood horror flicks. 

iii) His exegetical justification for identifying werelions in Scripture is tenuous and dubious. Begin with a rare, obscure word in 2 Sam 23:20. 

He supplements that by appeal to a synoptic passage in 1 Chron 12:8: "whose faces were like the faces of lions."

That, however, is naturally understood as a simile, like Richard the Lionheart.

He then appeals to a passage from the Gnostic Nag Hammadi literature. That's glossing a description from about the 10C BC (David's time) by reference to a text from the 4C AD. And, of course, Gnosticism didn't exist in any form in David's time. Not even close. To my knowledge, Gnosticism is a Christian heresy. 

His best bet is the Mesha Stele. Of course, theriomorphism is commonplace in ANE paganism–as well as Hinduism. 

iv) However, let's explore this line of thought. To my knowledge, legends of shapeshifters are widespread in folklore–in North and South America, Africa, and elsewhere. Werewolves, werejaguars, werelions, &c. How do we account for that? 

a) Many of these cultures are oral cultures, so its impossible to gauge the antiquity of their legends. And oral transmission can undergo legendary embellishment that's far removed from whatever originally inspired it. Moreover, shapeshifting motifs may be widespread, not due to the extent of their experience, but cultural diffusion. 

In our own time, there's cross-pollination as shapeshifting legends inspire horror films, which in turn embellish the original legends. 

b) It's not surprising that pagans wish to absorb the spirit of a respected animal, to acquire its special abilities. Shapeshifting is a projection or representation of that desire. 

c) Sometimes, these might be bedtime stories or campfire stories to spook little kids. Deter them from venturing into the woods unaccompanied. 

d) (a-c) are naturalistic explanations. A supernaturalistic explanation that falls short of actual metamorphosis would be animal possession. Can the soul of a witchdoctor possess an animal? Can the spirit of an animal (assuming animals have spirits) possess a witchdoctor? Perhaps. 

e) Finally, can those who practice witchcraft actually shapeshift? Perhaps. 

v) But if werewolves and other suchlike actually exist, why have they never been shot or captured? In Hollywood lore, a werewolf that's killed reverts to human form. So there'd be no evidence that it was or wasn't a werewolf. Likewise, a captured werewolf could shift back to human form. In that respect, the theory is unfalsifiable. Lack of direct evidence is consistent with their existence. But you pay a price for that move: there's no positive evidence for their existence.

There are, of course, reported sightings. How we assess that depends on the usual considerations. Was it seen under conditions of low visibility? Were observers in an agitated state that clouded their perception? Are they just telling telltales? 

vi) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that shapeshifters exist, imagine a paleontologist discovering a fossilized shapeshifter. That would be a "transitional form"! A "missing link"! 

Supercentenarians

In the horror genre there are supercentenarian humans or humanoid monsters who maintain virtual immortality by sucking the vital juices out of the young–or purloining their organs. In some versions this is a cyclical process in which they need to rejuvenate every few years. They have a narrow window of opportunity, and become increasingly frantic. Due to the conventional Christian morality of the genre, they typically come to a bad end. When their effort to find fresh young victims to suck dry (or harvest organs) is thwarted, they age centuries in a few minutes. 

But what used to be horrific fiction is becoming horrific reality. You have the recent story of Planned Parenthood hawking baby corpses. 

You also have a movement to harvest the organs of patients declared to be in a persistent vegetative state. This despite the fact that some comatose patients wake up years later, with mind and memories intact.

In addition, if the society becomes increasingly secularized, some rich folks might endeavor to extend their lifespan having their vital organs replaced with organs harvested from healthy young men. There are parts of the world where you can procure anything if you have enough money. Just bribe the authorities to look the other way.

Of course, you can't replace the brain, but perhaps having newer organs would retard the aging process of the brain.

To be sure, there are medical complications, which are magnified by multiple organ transplants. But desperate people do desperate things. 

An apologetic of horror

Since All Hallows' Eve is almost upon us, here is an article by Brian Godawa on the subject of horror. (He also appears to have an out-of-print lecture on DVD titled "Horror: A Biblical Genre.")

Here's an interview with Godawa on the same topic as well:

Zombie apocalypse

The walking dead:

And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths (Zech 14:12).

Old at heart

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/04/old-at-heart-rambling-reflection-on-how.html

Horror as religion

(Posted on behalf of Steve.)

This review suffers from a bit of Catholic bias (or so it seems). I, for one, have no trepidation about entering a Gothic cathedral. But that aside, it's a useful analysis.