The Conjuring 3 And The Evidence Against The Warrens

The third installment in the Conjuring series is coming out in late May in England and in early June in the United States. The first two installments were among the most popular horror movies ever made. Like other popular movies, their influence overflows into other contexts. One of those other contexts is the predictable discussions of Ed and Lorraine Warren that come up whenever a Conjuring movie is released.

There's a large amount of material on the web discussing the case The Conjuring 3 is based on. The best articles I've come across are this one in the Washington Post that was published in 1981, shortly before the trial of Arne Johnson began, and this one published in 2014 in the Hartford Courant. And here's a more recent article that summarizes how various aspects of the case have developed over the last few decades.

I want to quote and comment on some portions of the first two stories linked above, since I found those portions especially pertinent to evaluating the genuineness of the case. First, from the Washington Post story:

Is Genesis history?

According to Tim Challies, the documentary Is Genesis History? is available to watch for free for a limited time. The documentary includes interviews with scholars Todd Wood, Paul Nelson, Andrew Snelling, Kurt Wise, and others. I haven't watched it, but I thought some people might be interested.

Strachan reviews 1917

Owen Strachan reviews the film 1917: "Keep Your Eyes on the Trees: An Essay on 1917, the Most Profound Film Since Tree of Life".

I also reviewed 1917 back in February.

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. 

Hollywood ETs

Regarding the true identity of UFO and ET sightings, one question I have, which I haven't bothered to research, is the extent, if any, that their resemblance coincides with the advent of Hollywood movies from the 1950s about alien invaders. 

I'm not suggested that reports of ETs and UFOs date from that period. For all I know, they may go back centuries or millennia. Rather, the specific question is whether the appearance of ETs and their spacecraft have evolved in ways that that correspond to Hollywood movies. If that's the case, then it seems unlikely that these are genuine ETs. We shouldn't expect their physical appearance or their technology to mimic Hollywood movies. At least, that wouldn't be realistic. I suppose you could salvage that explanation by claiming that they are playing to human expectations. But it certainly invites the explanation that whatever else they are, these aren't really intelligent biological organisms from another galaxy.

However, I admit that I haven't studied the issue. I have a limited interest in ufology because it doesn't threaten my theology. Moreover, ufology is a vast trackless swamp, so you can easily lose your bearings as you get drawn deeper into the many layers of ufology. 

On the Beach

On the Beach (1959) is a memorable film. A movie that's better for the parts than the whole. A heavy-handed unilateral disarmament film by the terminally sappy-headed Stanley Kramer. But if you can bracket the polyannaish propaganda, it's a useful political allegory. 

In the film, the human race in the northern hemisphere was instantly annihilated by a thermonuclear exchange between Russia and the USA. Humans in the southern hemisphere temporally survived, but they know they are doomed by the delayed reaction of fallout as it drifts down to the southern hemisphere, so that human life on earth will become extinct. 

The question raised by the coronavirus is whether it will plunge the globe into a worldwide Venezuela. The irony is that this a catastrophe, not caused directly or primarily by the pathogen, but by bureaucratic countermeasures to contain the pathogen. By heads-of-state, governors, mayors, and public health officials, supported by citizens who are either sheepishly subservient or blindly regard cooperation as their patriotic duty. How dire it gets remains to be seen. But there's certainly reason for foreboding. 

Warrior (2011): A review

I'm a casual MMA fan. I sometimes like to watch UFC fights. Legends like GSP, Fedor, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones, etc. Even Conor McGregor can be entertaining to watch, despite his insufferable trash talking.

The movie Warrior (2011) is perhaps my favorite sports film. The plot involves MMA fighting, but the movie is really about redemptive love.

Spoilers ahead.

Coronavirus vis-à-vis Contagion

1. I enjoyed the movie Contagion. I thought it was generally accurate and realistic. Below is a British physician reviewing the movie in light of what's happening with the coronavirus. I appreciate his humor and I think his review would be educational for many people too. Hence why I'm posting it.

2. As far as where things stand with the coronavirus at present. I haven't paid any attention to Scott Gottlieb until now, so I don't know what he's been saying about the coronavirus in the past, but I largely agree with his recent remarks here. There's a transcript as well.

The value of fiction

1. Human beings have an insatiable appetite for fictional stories. That includes short stories, novels, plays, and epic poems. More recently, that includes movies and TV dramas, as well as interactive video game stories. 

2. Is there any Christian justification for the consumption of fictional stories, especially in such massive quantities? No doubt many people have a skewed sense of priorities. They consume too much fiction to the neglect of Bible study, apologetics, and the practice of the Christian faith. That said:

3. Human beings are prone to boredom. Cultivating the life of the imagination is a form of intellectual playtime and recreation. 

4. Fiction takes us to other times and places. Before we were born. Where we never lived. Fiction exposes us to the imagination of other human beings. So it vastly broadens our mental horizon. We're not confined to our personal, firsthand experience of the world. It creates a collective imagination (not in the Jungian sense). 

5. Fiction is a vehicle Christians can use to filter their own experience. To provide a theological interpretation of their own life and the world round them. A fictional setting is more flexible than individual reality. A way to illustratively think through the practical implications of a Christian worldview. 

6. From the standpoint of Christian metaphysics, there's the question of whether one man's fictional story may be another man's lived reality. When we write a story, God thought of that story before we did. Every story originates in God's imagination. Our fictional stories are just a tiny finite sample drawn from the infinite library of God's illimitable imagination.

7. Between divine omniscience and divine omnipotence, it's possible that some of our fictional stories are true stories. They are fictional in relation to the world history of our particular universe, but from what I can tell, there's no presumption that God only created one timeline. If I write a fictional story, I may unwittingly write about real people in a real time and place. It's fictional in relation to the world history of the universe God put me in, but it may have a realistic counterpart in parallel universe with an alternate world history.

Of course, that's speculation, but it's no less speculative to deny it. Given all the interesting, worthwhile ways in which things might turn out differently, it seems like an arbitrary coin toss if there's only one world history–to the neglect of so many other significant forks in the road. I can't prove that conjecture, so it's not a point of Christian orthodoxy, but conjecture is unavoidable on both sides of the question. 

Parasites

"Workers of the world, unite!"

Ironic to see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto quoted by rich elitist celebrities who wouldn't be seated anywhere near the second-class bourgeoisie passengers let alone among the proletariats in steerage. No, they'd instead be in the stateroom enjoying the luxurious lifestyle of the 1%. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in the ridiculous progressive activism on display at the Oscars last night.

That said, it's interesting to see the Korean film Parasite receive four (of six) wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. The film's writer-director-producer Bong Joon-Ho won all of them. Furthermore it's the first foreign film to win Best Picture. And Parasite is the third film to concurrently win the Oscar for Best Picture and the Palme d'Or (Best Picture at the Cannes film festival). The other two were 1945's The Lost Weekend and 1955's Marty. All in all, quite an accomplishment for S. Korean cinema.

Prior to this, I think the best Asian cinema had done was nearly two decades ago when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four (out of ten) Oscars (Best Foreign Film, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography).

Today there are plenty of other critically acclaimed Asian movies and shows. Take for instance The Farewell as another recent critically acclaimed film. There are lauded tv sitcoms like Fresh Off the Boat and Kim's Convenience too. I'm sure we could multiply examples.

There are many reasons for the ascendancy of Asian cinema in recent years. However I just want to note it looks to me most the best aspects of Asian cinema have arisen in democratic Asian nations like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and S. Korea. It's not often one sees (say) communist China produce high quality films. Especially before it embraced a capitalist market economy, albeit state-controlled. Probably Zhang Yimou is one of the few standouts in mainland Chinese film, but even his films have been censored by the Chinese government.

Yet we have moralizing Western elites lecturing average people about the horrors of Trump and conservatives, and the greatness of progressivism and socialism, while they're likewise benefiting from the fruits of a nation where film and the arts have the ground soil in which to flourish. In other words, the same moralizing celebrities wouldn't likely enjoy the life they currently enjoy if they had worked in show business in Cuba, N. Korea, or communist China. Who are the real "parasites" again?

Too bad these progressive Hollywood celebrities didn't take to heart Ricky Gervais' monologue at the Golden Globes last month:

So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God, and [bugger] off, okay?

Update: I finally watched the movie Parasite. I review the film here.

Dracula without Christ

I suppose vampire flicks are interesting in large part because of their associations with Christianity (often Catholicism). Symbolisms involving blood and (holy) water. Children of the light vs. children of darkness. Dracula as a Cain or antichrist figure. And so on.

However the new BBC/Netflix Dracula series seems to be attempting to subvert this relation to Christianity. To secularize Dracula. To background the Christian themes and symbols in Dracula and to foreground secular elements. The series suggests that traditional Dracula tropes (e.g. fear of crosses or crucifixes, sunlight burning vampires to a crisp) are in Dracula's head. Dracula doesn't actually get burned by sunlight. Crosses don't in fact harm him. He simply fears sunlight and crosses. So it's more like a person with an irrational phobia. This in turn (the episode suggests) is because what Dracula really fears is death so he's turned his fear of death into superstitious rituals or the like in the hopes that these will keep death at bay. It's like someone afraid to walk under a ladder because he thinks it'll mean bad luck for him.

If this is the case, then it's further interesting to note the creators and showrunners are Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. Both men are known for their work on the BBC's Doctor Who as well as the BBC's Sherlock. Both are vocal secularists as well as LGBTQ supporters. Indeed, Gatiss is homosexual. As such, I wonder if perhaps Dracula is meant to mirror what most secular homosexual men fear - getting old, losing their youth, a slackening in their sexual vitality, death? Sure, many non-secularists and many non-homosexuals share these fears as well, but it seems to me it's particularly acute among homosexual men. For example, Prof. Christopher Hajek at the University of Texas-San Antonio has concluded based on his research that gay men are "scared of aging more than a lot of other people would be".

At the very least, even if it's not true of homosexual men, or no more so than the general population, it seems quite true of secular atheist or agnostic types. See this 97 year old professor for instance. He "grieves" as those "who have no hope" (1 Thes 4:13) over the death of his wife. He wrote a book arguing not to fear death when he was much younger, but at 97 years old he candidly admits he was wrong in his book. He confesses he's scared of death.

In any case, there's no ultimate hope outside Christ. That's why it's good for us to remember and be thankful that God saved us, for we too "were at that time separated from Christ...having no hope and without God in the world" (Eph 2:12). God gave us hope who had no hope. And God continues to give hope to the hopeless if only they will forsake the darkness and come into the light.

1917

I saw the film 1917 yesterday.

Films for boys

1. Some Christian parents have lists of books for kids to read. Classics which every boy or girl should read by the time they reach adulthood. Cliche examples include The Chronicles of Narnia. 

However, I haven't seen comparable lists for movies. I mean, there are lists of "safe" movies for kids. Bubble-gummy G-rated fare. But I mean something more intelligent and growup, parallel to serious literature. 

Due to the overwhelming dominance of the cinematic artform in contemporary culture, it's useful to make a list. At the same time it's a daunting task due to the thousands of films. This post will focus on male-oriented movies because that's what I naturally relate to. 

There are films by categories, like sports, horror, science fiction, Western, war. Sports movies about an underdog athlete or team that defies the odds are popular, and there are movies on that theme which represent different sports:

• Friday Night Lights (football)

• Goal! (soccer)

• Miracle (hockey) 

• Hoosiers (basketball)

• Vision Quest (wrestling) 

There are popular Westerns like the Lonesome Dove series. 

Although it may not be a technical genre, wildness films set in the high country, Yukon, or safaris (African savanna, Amazon jungle) are naturally appealing to guys. 

There's a large category of war films. This can include Arthurian tales which model the virtues of chivalry.

2. From the standpoint of Christian parenting, what interests me more than genre are memorable films that can provide a frame of reference to illustrate and stimulate thinking about philosophy, theology, and ethics. 

3. There are films that explore the relationship between appearance or illusion and reality:

• Harsh Realm

• The Matrix (1999)

• Dark City

• The Prisoner (2009)

4. There are existential films that explore the meaning of life:

• Last Holiday (1950)

• Tuck Everlasting

5. Some films probe moral issues, like Strangers on a Train

6. Final Destination (2000) is a convenient illustration of fatalism. 

7. There are time-travel/parallel universe films that compare and contrast tradeoffs involving alternate life choices: 

• Mr. Nobody

• The Butterfly Effect

8. October Sky is good coming-of-age film

9. An important plot motif, that's not unique to any particular genre, is the story of "friends" or comrades who are thrust into a group survival situation. This can take place in different settings: wilderness, battlefield, island, POW camp. 

This becomes a test of friendship. Will they be altruistic? Will they takes risks for each other? Or will they turn on each other, double-cross one other, leave the sick and injured behind to die? Theme of loyalty, deception, betrayal, revenge, and/or reconciliation. A winnowing process. 

That theme is sometimes explored in war films, wilderness films, and spring break teen films. I don't have any particular titles in mind.

Just as certain books like The Pilgrim's Progress, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Flies, and Perelandra can function as a lifelong frame of reference which grown children continue to reflect on and refer back to, it would be good for Christian parents to select a dozen or so films which can serve the same purpose. For instance, fathers and sons can watch the same film together, then talk about the significance of the film. Some films may raise important questions but lack the Christian resources to give good answers. 

Retroengineering the development of doctrine

Catholic apologists like to retroengineer the development of doctrine. With the benefit of hindsight, they retrace later positions and policies back to seminal ideas in the church fathers. 

Sometimes that's legitimate, but it an easily be an illusion. That's because it's often possible for the same ideas to branch out in divergent directions. So it's unpredictable. In themselves, the same ideas may have no orientation to a particular line of evolution. 

To take a comparison, consider the character of Batman, Superman, or Dracula. In later creative hands, these are open to a wide range of alternative developments that could not be foreseen or intended by the creators of the character. 

If you know how an idea began, and you stand at a certain point down the line, it may seem more inevitable that it was going to unfold that way. But suppose you didn't know how the character of Batman or Superman or Dracula originated. If all you had to go by were their current permutations, how successful would you be at recovering the Ur-character, with his original history? 

Revelation: the movie

The Apocalypse is the most cinematic book of the Bible. Thanks to advances in CGI, it's now possible to film Revelation. Do a cinematic adaptation. 

It's useful to play director. A useful mental exercise because a director must visualize what he's going to film. He has to make many interpretive judgment calls. So a director is like a commentator, only in the case of book like Revelation, the material lends itself to the cinematic imagination. So even though the average reader isn't going to turn Revelation into a feature-length film, it's a good interpretive exercise. 

1. Plot

Premils typically think Revelation has a linear plot, at least from 4-22. Modern-day amils typically think Revelation has a largely recursive plot, although it straightens out towards the end for the definitive, end-of-the-world events. 

So should a director film the plot in the original sequence, or rearrange things according to what he thinks is the intended structure? 

I think it best to film the plot as is. Even if it's implicitly recursive to some degree, that's best brought out by a linear storyline. The very linearity provides a point of contrast for when events fold back on themselves. There are stock cinematic conventions for showing flashbacks. 

Also, it's important for the director to avoid taking unnecessary liberties with the sacred text. 

2. Setting

There are several different options. 

i) 1C Roman Empire

If you're a preterist, you think the 1C time and place go together. When it happens and where it happens are synchronized. 

In traditional (Roman) preterism, the 1C Roman Empire is the terminus ad quo while the fall of the Roman Empire (however that's dated) is the terminus ad quem.  

ii) 1C Roman Empire placeholder 

If you're an amil, you might give it a 1C setting but with the proviso that the 1C setting is a stand-in for events throughout church history.  So even though it has a 1C setting, that may refer to later events.

From the standpoint of a movie-viewer, (ii) will be neutral with respect to preterism, amillennialism, or even premillennialism. It would be open to a futuristic perspective, but all the audience would see is the 1C setting. 

iii) Futuristic setting

If you're premil, you might give it a futuristic setting. It would be future in relation to whenever the movie is made. The director will project it further into the future.

The dilemma of a futuristic setting is that futuristic scenarios often become very dated because that's not how the future turns out. 

A futuristic setting requires the director to take greater liberties by devising futuristic counterparts to the stuff in Revelation.

What did John see? We don't know for sure what John saw. On an amil or premil interpretation, did he see future events set in 1C terms, or did he see future events as they actually appear in the future, but narrated them in stock imagery and 1C terms because he lacked the vocabulary or common frame of reference to describe them on their own terms?

The reader doesn't have direct access to John's imagination, so we can't be sure what he saw. But it's best to be conservative. 

3. Genre

i) Literal

i) Allegorical

ii) Historical fiction

iii) Science fiction

iv) Fantasy

By fantasy and science fiction, I don't mean that's the actual genre of the Apocalypse. Rather, I mean that if a director was adapting Revelation to the film medium, would it be appropriate to use the conventions and furniture of science fiction or fantasy to depict the action? Science fiction would provide futuristic analogies for the 1C imagery. 

That raises some interesting theological issues. The danger of a science fiction adaptation is to secularize the material. Especially in "hard science fiction," advanced technology replaces "magic".

However, that can be a false dichotomy. The Christian worldview alternates between miracle and ordinary providence. Science coexists with miracle, answered prayer, and special providence. So these aren't mutually exclusive paradigms.

That said, a fantasy genre might be more suited to Revelation. Again, I don't mean "fantasy" in the sense of fictional. Rather, I mean fantasy is more suited to supernaturalism. 

In addition, the Apocalypse is visionary revelation with a surreal quality, so a fantasy adaptation might be more fitting to the nature of the material. It's not realistic in terms of physics. Rather, the power comes from agents with psychokinetic abilities. Mind over matter. 

I'd add that a director doesn't necessarily have to make exclusive editorial choices. He could shoot some of the same scenes from alternate genres and let the audience decide which is more authentic. 

4. Characters

i) How should a director depict angels? In Scripture, angels have three forms. Sometimes they look indistinguishable from normal human males. At least what you can see of them. Sometimes they're humanoid but luminous. Then you have tetramorphs (cherubim, seraphim). 

And still leaves a lot to be penciled in. Angels simulate human form, but in how much anatomical detail? They don't have the hormones to produce the facial and body hair of adult males, so are they beardless? Presumably they have an ageless appearance. Do they all look like twin brothers? 

What's the ethnicity of angels? I presume they blend to match the people-group they appear to. 

On film, should they appear corporeal, or more like translucent energy fields, viz. a holographic image of a human being? That would emphasize their numinous nature. 

ii) What about Satan? Although Revelation calls him a snake and a dragon, he's not literally reptilian. Perhaps he could have a humanoid appearance with ophidian eyes 

5. Application

We might now consider some specific scenes in Revelation:

Chap. 1 The opening scene is prosaic. A penal colony on Patmos.

i) But it quickly shifts to the overwhelming Christophany, with stars, menorah, and angels. What should Jesus look like? An enhanced image of the Shroud of Turin is one possibility. I'm not vouching for its authenticity, but it's recognizable and looks Jewish. However, this is an incadescent Christophany. So Jesus would have to have a nimbic aura. 

ii) The identity of the angels is a crux. One attractive possibility is to depict them as warrior angels (cherubs) who protect the churches. That would fit the admonitory function of angels on tombstones in ancient Anatolia, which is the setting for the seven churches of Asia Minor:

https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2016/07/26/angels-pagan-jewish-christian/

It's as good a guess as any, and has dramatic appeal. 

Chaps 2-4 Letters to churches 

Rather than have a narrator read the letters aloud, the director should have cameo scenes of what the letters describe. 

Chap 5 Throne room

i) This is a challenge for a director. There's the danger that any cinematic depiction will be a letdown. It can't rise to the necessary expectations. Likewise, there's the danger that depicting the figure on the throne will be irreverent and anticlimactic. 

ii) However, lightning is the primary illumination in the throne room. Lightning both reveals and conceals. You only see glimpses through flashes of lightning. So that simplifies the challenge. In addition, the rainbow is like a screen obscuring the figure on the throne, preserving God's unapproachability. 

iii) Not coincidentally, the gemstones, rainbow, and sea of glass are light-reflective materials. So it's like a kaleidoscopic mirror. 

iv) The sea of glass may be the benign, celestial counterpart to the malign, infernal lake of fire. 

In Revelation there's a certain symmetry between heaven and hell in the use of firelight. But their respective significance is arrestingly divergent. 

v) The lightning from the throne seems to be the primary form of interior illumination for the sky city. 

Chap 6,8 Astronomical and ecological cataclysms 

i) This is what CGI was made for.

ii) Heaven is a sky city or temple containing an inner sanctum. 

Chap 7 Angels restraining four winds

An interesting technical question is how to show angels restraining wind, since wind is ordinarily invisible. A director might show the effect of wind on one side of the angel. The angel extends his hand, like a wall blocking the wind. On one side are bent trees, roiling seas, lowering clouds, and dark turbulent air like a sand storm. On the other side the air is clear, the sea is calm, the grass is still. 

Chap 9 Fiery netherworld hybrid monsters 

Caves and caverns, illuminated by licking, flickering flames, would be a natural setting. 

Chap. 12 Portents and prodigies

In principle, it could show ancient constellations like Virgo, Draco, Serpens, or Hydra. Certainly the imagery trades on that. 

It would, however, make more sense to have a dragon composed of red starlight. He rain down on earth like a meteor shower, then reassemble. Likewise, the woman could originally appear to be a starry mosaic. 

Chap 13 The Beast 

i) The challenge isn't depicting a hybrid sea monster but how to depict it communicating. 

ii) The imagery of the second beast rising from the earth might suggest a ghost rising from the grave (tomb, sepulcher). So the false prophet could be a wraith. Perhaps the damned soul of a sorcerer conjured from the dead. 

Chap 14 The Lamb

i) Should Jesus be shown as a lamb, or as the Redeemer in a garment stained with his paschal blood? 

ii) The winepress is a graphic symbol of salvation and judgment. Should a director depict the symbol or what it symbolizes? Unless the audience is familiar with its significance, the symbol is opaque. 

Chap 16 Sky city (cf. chaps. 6,8)

Chap 17 Whore of Babylon

Since the whore bestride the beast is a symbolic synecdoche of the wicked city and godless world order, should the director show a whore bestride a beast, or something like the red light district of a metropolis with alternating scenes of lavish wealth, poverty, cruel, obscenity, blasphemy, and decadence? 

chap. 19 Rider on white horse 

This resumes the Christophany in Rev 1. Jesus is no longer on Patmos but acting as a warrior king to reclaim the world from the diabolical usurper. 

Chap. 20 Lake of fire

i) The lake of fire might suggest a sea of molten lava. For the original audience it might evoke the nightmarish fate that overtook the ungodly cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Or it might hearken back to the iconic destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The body of water is superheated by meteor showers or a submarine volcano. Consider the volcanic eruption spilling into the sea in Rev 8:8-9. 

ii) The image of the sea giving up its dead might suggest skeletons miraculously surfacing and regenerating (Ezk  37) to face the final judgment, for better or worse. 

Chap 21-22 the ski city lands

i) The new Jerusalem is a symmetrical city, fortified on the outside but with a parklike interior (a stream lined with trees of life). 

ii) In the absents of sunlight, the city is not illuminated from the outside or overhead. Rather, it's illuminated by the Shekinah ("glory of God"). But where's the locus of the Shekinah? Is the city illuminated from the inside rather than the outside?

The throne room is illuminated by lightning. Is that equivalent to the Shekinah? Suppose the throne room is at the city center. Suppose it has twelve windows or open doors. Shafts of light beam out of the throne room into courtyards and even through the city gates to the surrounding countryside. 

Or maybe the Shekinah suffuses the city, the way it suffused the tabernacle and temple during their dedication. Unlike lightning, the Shekinah a emits a steadier light. 

In any case, light seems to emanate from the city rather than from exterior light sources (sunlight, moonlight). This might suggest the surrounding countryside, beyond the city gates, is bathed in a well of light. But it may also imply a borderland between light and shade, a perpetual twilight zone, where the radiance of the city doesn't reach. Where the pool of light is swallowed by shadowy valleys or obstructed by mountain ranges facing away from the city. 

Of course, that may go beyond what John saw in his vision. It's just something for a director to think about to fill in the picture. 

Terminator's dark fate

I haven't seen the newly released Terminator: Dark Fate. I've just been reading some reviews.

1. It seems like the reviews of this movie are mixed. On the one hand, it sounds like this is the best sequel to the first two Terminator movies.

   On the other hand, it sounds like it still falls short of T1 and T2. Apparently there's nothing seriously wrong with the characters and the presentation, per se. Also, the CGI is said to be first-rate (e.g. flawlessly de-aging Ahnuld and Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in an introductory scene). But evidently the story suffers. Indeed, the story seems to be the main problem.

2. If so, I suspect that means there's little left to say that hasn't already been said. T1 and T2 pretty much said it all. What more can a franchise say about the dangers of A.I., killer robots, time travel, and strong female protagonists? At least a secular worldview can't say much more. If so, this illustrates the limitations of a secular worldview.

3. Take a worldview based on naturalism and neo-Darwinism. What's the significant difference between an A.I. cyborg and a human being? Aren't we both essentially meat machines?

   What room is there for supposedly human distinctives like free will and consciousness? Given naturalism and neo-Darwinism, free will is an illusion. Both A.I. cyborgs and human beings are hardwired to do what we do, either by preprogrammed neural circuitry from a computer programmer working in tandem with a robotics engineer or by natural selection and random mutations acting on our species across the eons to give us the genome we have today +/- the social conditioning we've been raised with. Either way, how does free will really exist?

   Furthermore, consciousness is most likely an emergent property of the physical brain. Consciousness is reducible to the physical brain. Likewise, other creatures could have consciousness. Other creatures could evolve to be conscious like we are. Perhaps someday, after Homo sapiens have long died out, the Earth will be ruled by sentient dolphins. That's not necessarily a joke, not if naturalism and neo-Darwinism are true!

4. By contrast, if the Terminator series could have Christian theistic foundations, then there would be far more to work with.

   Given a Christian worldview, even if a robot seemed to be as conscious as a human being presumably due to similar or superior intelligence (i.e. intelligence is more like a "symptom" pointing to an underlying consciousness), that doesn't necessarily mean they are conscious. A.I. could be as intelligent as our supercomputers (e.g. Summit, Sierra), or indeed far more so, and even more intelligent at calculating this or that than Einstein, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are conscious in the same way humans are conscious. I presume humans are conscious because we have a God-breathed spirit. At the very least, a Terminator movie could play with these ideas.

   Likewise, on a Christian worldview, one could write a story based on the debates between free will theists like Arminians vs. Calvinists. There are many directions this could go.

5. Another idea is personal sacrifice. It's moving to see Ahnuld sacrifice himself to save a human being, but if we think more deeply about it, why should we care about a self-sacrificial cyborg? Indeed, on naturalism and neo-Darwinism, why should we care about a self-sacrificial human being? Sure, they took one for the team, but at the end of the day, so what? It's not the individual who counts, but the collective species.

   On Christianity, self-sacrifice would have far more depth of meaning. For one thing, it could point to the fact that there are some things worth dying for. Moreover, this in turn could imply this life isn't all there is. There's something more.

   This stands in stark contrast to secular self-sacrifice where sacrifice is either something we were preprogrammed to do for the greater good of the population as a whole or something we would be foolish to do if we could avoid it since the individual self is everything. It's all about passing on one's genetic material. It's all about living longer and better than the next guy.

The joy of solving Rubik's cubes

Some loosely and tenuously connected musings, nothing more:

1. Let's divide scientific investigation into two categories: the experimental sciences and the historical sciences.

   Generally speaking:

   The experimental sciences involve experiments which can be setup under predetermined conditions and repeated. This in turn can be done by teams of different scientists at different places and different times. The cumulative repetition, if the experiment is successful in proving a hypothesis or theory, fosters greater confidence in its accuracy.

   By contrast, the historical sciences involve a singularity. A one-time event which cannot be repeated. Consider the big bang in cosmology or the origin of life and evolution in the biological sciences. We can't playback the big bang or how life originated and evolved. Closer to home, I have in mind historical and archeological research, SETI, and forensic medicine.

   This doesn't necessarily mean one can't be as confident in theories investigating singular historical events as one can be in theories based on experiments. For example, inference to the best explanation arguments can be quite reasonable.

2. Atheists often demand evidence for God in answered prayers and miracles. They want God to demonstrate to them that he exists.

   Perhaps some atheists would be willing to see some "extraordinary" miracle like God writing something like "the Bible is true" with the stars. Although I recall a prominent atheist (it might've been Peter Atkins) who said that even if God performed an extraordinary miracle, he would chalk it up to a neurological dysfunction and disbelieve what he saw.

   In my experience, though, most atheists demand repeat experiments to test whether an answered prayer or a miracle is truly from God.

   However, why should prayers or miracles be subject to repeat experiments? We'd be treating God like a mechanical miracle dispenser. That's not how personal agents work. If I want to test someone and see if they will give me something, I don't ask them to sit in a controled environment, under the watchful eye of people hired to record his every action, and repeat my question to him over and over again to see if there'll be a different result.

   Instead, I think prayers or miracles might be better investigated using the tools of investigation in the historical sciences rather than the experimental sciences. Such as inference to the best explanation. Consider the people, circumstances, related events, etc., in and around a purported answered prayer or miracle, on a case by case basis, rule out other possibilities, and so on.

3. On a completely different note:

   Most people enjoy reading, listening to, and/or watching stories.

   At the same time, we enjoy re-reading a good story or re-watching a good movie, even though we know the entire story including ending. We love to re-experience our favorite stories over and over again. For example, many people love to re-watch their favorite movies or television episodes.

   However, this isn't true for every story. There are some good stories which we wouldn't want to re-read or re-watch even if we could. Perhaps the stories are good but they're too personally difficult or even traumatic to read or watch again.

   Also, there are often stories which we find delightful that we couldn't watch again. Take murder mystery or detective stories. We might enjoy Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, but once the case has been solved, we're not all that interested in going through it again.

   I presume that's at least partly because it wasn't so much the story itself that was captivating but finding out what the ending was. Discovering whodunnit. The joy was primarily in untangling the thorny knot of the mystery.

   Similar things could be said for other things besides literature. Take the sciences or math. Some scientific or mathematical problems are fun to do on one's own even though everyone knows the answer or how they'll turn out. Other scientific or mathematical problems are more like solving a Rubik's cube or finishing a crossword puzzle.

   Just as there different types of scientific investigations, such as investigations focused on repeating and reproducing the same experiment as well as investigations focused on solving a mystery or a puzzle, it's interesting there are stories we enjoy re-experiencing time and time again as well as stories we enjoy but could only read or watch once.

A good movie in a bad movie

Perhaps it's the amateur fiction writer in me, but I seem to see or look for different things in a film than professional film critics or most movergoers. Sometimes, when I'm watching generally bad movie, I think to myself, "There's a good movie trapped inside this bad movie." Of course, most bad movies are just plain bad, but there are exceptions. 

Paradoxically, a bad movie with a good movie struggling to get out can be much more interesting than a conventionally good or even great movie. For instance, Casino Royale (2006) is a great movie of its kind. Flawless craftsmanship in terms of acting, smart dialogue, clever plot, exotic locations, and all that. So many movies suffer from shoddy indifferent craftsmanship because they're made for a quick buck, so it's refreshing to see a movie where real care went into every element of the movie. But it's a pity that the flawless execution is wasted on a Bond vehicle. At the end of the day it's just an high-end popcorn film. 

Now let's compare it to Skinwalkers (2007), a low-budged werewolf flick. It was panned at Rotten Tomatoes. Indeed, I don't know that any major movie critic even deigned to review it. It was beneath them. 

Yet it has some compelling dramatic ideas. Much more interesting than a better film like Casino Royale:

• A Golden Child (Timothy) who's a savior or natural-born healer

• The Golden Child was heralded by an ancient oracle

• The curative power lies in his unique blood type

• His blood can break the curse of lycanthropy

• But his life is threatened by werewolves who don't want to be cured

• Several characters sacrifice their lives to protect the Golden Child 

• The film has a conspicuous number of Christian names: Adam, Caleb, Huguenot, Jonas, Rachel, Timothy

I think many people panned the movie because they're too theologically illiterate to recognize the sublimated biblical motifs. Admittedly, given the widespread animosity to Christianity, they might pan the movie if they did recognize the biblical themes. 

It's striking how often secular films will appropriate and allegorize Christian theology. There are variations on the theme of humans facing a plague or mass extinction, but one person has a curative mutation, viz. Children of Men (2006) and "The Nest" (The Outer Limits). 

As we approach Advent, I've been listening to Handel's musical setting of Isaiah 9 ("For unto us a child is born…"). There are obvious parallels between the Christchild and the character of Timothy in Skinwalkers. Ironically, some secular filmmakers unintentionally do what C. S. Lewis intentionally did, by encoding Christian motifs in stories, which slip under the radar. 

One change I'd made to the movie is that in the original, Timothy is hunted by Varek, who doesn't realize that Timothy is his son. Varek bites him, but ingesting the blood restores his humanity. Biting Timothy is a simple efficient plot device to get the cure into Varek's system.

However, I think it would be more dramatically effective if, when Varek is about to attack Timothy, as he comes within striking range, he senses a mysterious affinity between them, which restrains him from attacking Timothy. Later he finds out that Timothy is in fact his son. Perhaps at that point he willingly accepts the gift his son offers. 

There are many improvements that could be made to the film. The point, though, is that it has some elemental themes that transcend the material and the execution. It could be turned into a much better film because some of the raw material is so potentially powerful, whereas there's nothing to work with in the case of Casino Royale. That's as good a film as you can make, given the raw material. It can never transcend its intrinsic superficiality. What you see is all you'll ever get, whereas there's more to Skinwalkers than meets the eye if you know what to look for. Watching Skinwalkers, I think it myself, "There's a good movie trapped inside this bad movie!" Someone like Brian Godawa might be able to extract the core elements and rework them into a powerful film. 

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.