The Death Of John Warwick Montgomery

When I was a teenager, shortly before the internet came along, I got a lot of my information about Christianity from television. One of the few individuals on Christian television (and television in general) who spoke highly of the evidence for Christianity and often articulated it well was John Warwick Montgomery. I remember occasionally seeing him on John Ankerberg's program, and I probably saw him elsewhere (maybe on D. James Kennedy's show, for example). Montgomery represented a more intellectual and generally more mature form of Christianity than what you typically encounter in modern Evangelical circles. He had a positive effect on my early thinking about religious issues, and I'm grateful for his influence in my life.

He died last week. Shane Rosenthal posted an article about Montgomery just after his death. In that article, Rosenthal links the audio of a radio program Montgomery appeared on with Rosenthal and others. I recommend listening to it. You can access it here. They interviewed some people at a pastors' conference (pastors, their wives, etc.) and asked the attendees some questions related to apologetics. The large majority wanted to use their conversion testimony or something similar in discussions with non-Christians rather than take an apologetic approach, made derogatory comments about apologetics, etc. Montgomery made a lot of good points in response, and the responses of the hosts of the program are often good. Here are a few examples of Montgomery's comments, but these aren't all of the good ones he made. I recommend listening to the whole program:

Television Fame

"After I had appeared on Thames Television's evening news discussing my fourth book, I was greeted excitedly by one of the counter staff at my bank with, 'Oh, I saw you on telly last night!' She had seen me at least once a week for a couple of years and never mentioned having read anything of mine. Now, after five minutes' chat on the screen, I was somebody famous. Television fame, I learned, meant being famous not for actually having done anything but just for being on television." (Guy Playfair, The Evil Eye [London, England: Jonathan Cape, 1990], 21)

When Religious Content Is Popular In Secular Contexts

I recently saw some people discussing the phenomenon of religious content being well received on a YouTube channel, television show, or some other context that's generally secular. And that raises the question of why religious content is so much less popular when it's placed in a more religious setting (e.g., a religious YouTube channel). I think the situation is multifaceted, and I'm not going to try to explain everything that's going on, but I want to mention a few of the factors that seem likely to be involved.

Upcoming Enfield Documentaries

There are two I know of that are on the way, and one of them should be out next month on Paramount Plus. See the section titled "Hauntings" here. The series is about more than the Enfield case, but Enfield is one of the cases they'll be covering. Judging by the photographs on the first page linked above, it looks like Rosalind Morris, Graham Morris, and Richard Grosse (Maurice's son) participated. A producer was in contact with David Robertson as well, but I don't know how much he'll feature in the program.

MetFilm seems to be close to finishing their Enfield documentary. The last I heard, it should be a three-part series. In an interview last month (at 17:06 on the page just linked), Melvyn Willin of the Society for Psychical Research said the documentary should be out within a few months.

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.

The Gospels as docudramas

Docudrama is a genre of modern television and videos that provides a useful lens for viewing certain narrative parts of the Bible, preeminently the Gospels.The techniques used in docudrama include the following: straightforward factual information or reportage as stated by the narrator of the documentary; commentary from the narrator; interviews with eyewitnesses or written statements by them; quotations from the writings of the subject of the documentary; video clips of speeches delivered by the subject of the documentary or excerpts from written copies of speeches; video clips that show the subject of the documentary interacting with other people (including both crowd scenes and scenes in which the subject interacts with an individual); and video clips of the physical places and landscapes in which the subject of the documentary performs important or customary actions.

Obviously there are no video clips of events that transpired in Bible times, but the genre of the docudrama is a helpful analogy to what we find in the Historical Books of the Bible and in the Gospels. These writings contain purely verbal versions of the ingredients that find their way into the docudramas that we view on television or in informational videos.  L. Ryken, A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible (Crossway 2014), 63-64.

Star Trek: Picard

1. Out of curiosity, I saw the pilot episode of Star Trek: Picard. I did it in part because the pilot episode can be viewed for free. If I cared enough, I could view the second episode for free by taking out the temporary subscription, then canceling it, but I don't care that much. It's not really fair to judge a series by the pilot episode, but I'll do it anyway. I was never planning to watch the entire series. 

2. I've been viewing Star Trek on and off since 1966. TNG was arguably the most successful of the spinoffs (some Trekkies prefer DS9), so if you're going to exhume one of the spinoffs, that's the obvious candidate. 

3. The newest iteration of the franchise is a star vehicle for Stewart. It will succeed or fail based on his ability to center it. Pushing 80, he looks and sounds his age. In his prime he was a larger-than-life stage actor squeezing into the role of a TV actor. You could often see the frustration as he had to hold so much in reserve. Occasionally he had a scene where he was free to cut loose and perform on a theatrical scale, but that was rare.

Now his situation is the opposite. At his age the reserves are gone. That sets a low ceiling in his ability to rise above a certain dynamic range. 

The Picard character was never all that sympathetic. Aloof and rulebound. For someone who made his career exploring alien civilizations, he was quite narrow, chauvinistic, and intolerant. He treated the Starfleet code of conduct as a universal norm. In one episode, Worf's wife is murdered. Worf exacts revenge by slaying her assailant. That's the Klingon honor code, but Picard disapproves.

However, Stewart's aging process has mellowed Picard. It lends poignancy to the character. 

In that regard, it's striking to compare Stewart, in his prime, playing an old man in "All Good Things…" to Stewart as an old man. Despite his formidable acting chops, Stewart's attempt to play his older self wasn't very prescient or convincing when you compare it to the real elderly Stewart. 

There is a certain irony in the fact that Chris Pine has been bypassed to go back Stewart and TNG. Especially for atheists, there's sentimental appeal to watching beloved actors over the years reprise old roles. Since they deny the afterlife, it gives them a sense of rootedness in their past.  

4. There's a silly fight scene at Stardleet Archives where a female android singlehandedly protects Picard from Romulan terrorists. Doesn't the Starfleet complex have surveillance and security? Can't they scramble/beam armed guards to the fight scene?

5. Picard is having paranormal/precognitive dreams. How does he have that ability? Will the source of his dreams be explained? Is this like hive mind telepathy, where his dreams are subconsciously tapping into other (alien?) minds? Even if that's the case, it wouldn't explain paranormal/precognitive dreams about androids, since their "minds" operate on a different basis, a different wavelength. 

6. The series will have guest stars like Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine. That betrays a certain lack of confidence on the part of the TV producers. She was the actress/character who rescued Voyager from ratings oblivion, so it's understandable that the producers wish to include her, but her character doesn't belong in the TNG timeline. 

7. The episode suffers from tired plot ideas. Data gave his "life" to save Picard. One goal is to revive Data. But was his positronic mind/memories destroyed? Is he gone forever? 

That recycles The Search of Spock, where Spock gave his life to save the crew. Can he be restored? They have a new body, but what about his mind? Vulcans have a soul or katra. But did he transfer his consciousness to someone else (McCoy) before he died? And can the T'Pau reunite the soul to the body? 

8. Another tired plot idea is the destruction of homeworlds. In Generations, a probe collapses the Veridian sun, wiping out inhabited planets in its solar system. In The Undiscovered Country, an explosion on Praxis dissolves the ozone layer of Kronos. In Star Trek (2009), Vulcan is destroyed by an artificial black hole inside planet. Now, in Star Trek: Picard, Romulus is destroyed when its sun goes supernova. This is lazy screenwriting. 

9. In addition, the destruction of homeworlds suffers from a tension in SF metaphysics: time-travel. In a genre where time-travel is feasible, the obvious, easy solution to the destruction of your homeworld is to go back in time and change a key variable, thereby averting the cataclysm and restoring the status quo ante.

10. Admittedly, it might not be possible to prevent a supernova, but that goes to another scientific absurdity. A sun doesn't go supernova overnight. Surely Romulus would become uninhabitable long before its sun went supernova, at that late stage in its lifecyle. So the Romulans had plenty of lead-time to evacuate and colonize another M-class planet.

11. Time-travel poses a dilemma for the SF genre. On the one hand it's one of the most appealing conventions of the genre, because it's such a nifty way to illustrate and explore hypothetical or counterfactual scenarios. On the other hand, the principle is too powerful, too flexible. If feasible, it would be overused and have a radically destabilizing effect. It would obliterate historical continuity as plenary or cosmic history keeps resetting to create alternate timelines that replace the last timeline. So SF writers are arbitrarily selective about the convention. 

Why write fiction?

I can't speak for other fiction writers, but speaking for myself:

i) I've seen or read countless stories in my lifetime. Most of them from movies or episodes in TV dramas. Former generations got stories from an oral culture, or novels and plays. But in modernity, film and television are the mass medium for stories–although there are literary types who primarily consume highbrow novels and plays. And for boys, comic books are another source. 

When you're exposed to so many stories, it makes you curious to try your own hand at the medium. If so many other people are storytellers, maybe you have a knack for it, too. Or maybe you don't. There's only one way to find out. 

ii) While it's enjoyable to read or see someone else's stories, especially if it's well-done, nevertheless, you're just a spectator. When you read their story or watch their movie, they make all the creative choice for you. Which is fine. But in addition to that, you may have a hankering to make your own creative choices rather than having it all decided by someone else. Up to a point it's fine to be the passive recipient, but there are times when you'd like to make your own creative decisions. Indeed, seeing them do it is a stimulus for you to give it a go. 

iii) Apropos (ii), sometimes, when I watch a movie or TV drama, it contains a promising idea, but after I've seen it I take it in a different direction in my imagination. I can play filmmaker in the private movie studio of my mind, and edit someone else's movie, or provide an alternate ending that's more to my liking. Maybe the film had a striking idea, an interesting dramatic premise, but I don't think it was developed to its full potential. It leaves me dissatisfied, but there's enough to it that I run with it. 

iv) In the real world, we must take reality as it comes to us–the good and the bad, interesting and boring, fulfilling and disappointing. In fiction we have the freedom to be selective. We can isolate the things we like, extend them, and reconnect them with other things we like. It's like designing your own world, where you're in control of all the variables. In the real world we have to rush when we'd rather linger and savor the moment–or, conversely, slog through the tedium to get to something enjoyable. But a fiction writer can linger over a scene he likes, as well as skipping over stuff that doesn't interest him.

Mind you, these need to be balanced. Consider the stereotype of the guy who spends all his leisure time playing video games. He needs more reality, not less. 

v) Fiction is a way to interpret experience. What makes life meaningful? What's important in life? Fiction is a sorting process. Because life is a gift, we have a duty to reflect on the value of life, not just take it for granted and fritter away the allotted time. Fiction is an effort to achieve understanding. There's experience in the raw, then there's the significance of what we experience. 

vi) Finally, when I'm out on a walk, sometimes a story idea just comes to me unbidden. I wasn't planning to write a story. I don't do it for any deeper reason than the fact that I suddenly have an idea for another story. 

The bachelorette

1. I hesitate to even comment on this. For one thing, I find shows like The Bachelorette too worldly. There are far better things to consider in life.

For another, I just don't care for these sorts of shows. I have never watched The Bachelorette or The Bachelor. Nor do I plan to. Not unless the bachelorettes and bachelors featured involve space aliens shooting space lasers at each other in space wars!

And even if these shows were valuable (which I'd say they're not), they're so ephemeral. Who's going to remember any of the contestants a generation from now? Rather the contestants would do well to heed Ecclesiastes' message: hebel. Life is a vapor. A mere breath. A chasing after the wind. Fleeting. Or as James puts it: "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes" (4:14).

2. That said, the latest season apparently starred a professing Christian bachelorette named Hannah Brown along with another professing Christian bachelor named Luke Parker. I saw a few clips of them. Evidently the most talked (gossiped?) about moment on the show was when Hannah kicked Luke off the show for (according to Hannah) "slut shaming" her for having had premarital sex multiple times, which she all but boasted about. Indeed she gave him the middle finger. And she insisted and continues to insist "Jesus still loves me".

3. I made comments about how either Hannah needs to repent of her sexual sin and live like a Christian or stop professing to be a Christian if she wishes to continue in her sexual sin. Hannah's legions of "sisters" came to her defense against me. All of them were likewise professing Christians. They seemed to take what I said quite personally and criticized me for what I said about Hannah.

4. All of them told me how judgmental I was (or words to that effect). Ironic how these women judge me for being judgmental...but Hannah gets a free pass, their sympathy, forgiveness, love, and acceptance from them. Of course, the Bible doesn't say we should never judge anyone, period. Rather the Bible teaches us we should "judge with right judgment" (Jn 7:24).

This and other things the professing Christian women said to me illustrated how biblically illiterate they are. That seems to be a growing trend. Christians should be a people of the Book.

5. The kind of Christianity espoused by Hannah and her sisters is more akin to moralistic therapeutic deism than biblical Christianity.

6. It's interesting how so many women often idolize other people. Take women at concerts. Jumping up and down, tearing their hair out, in a state of frenzy. I mean, men go to concerts too, but we don't go gaga over rockstars like women do.

As such, I suspect what's partly happening with these professing Christian women defending Hannah is that she's an idol for them. They identify with her. Or at the very least she's a heroine to them. A professing Christian like they are, trying to find true love. And criticism against Hannah is tantamount to criticism against them.

If so, I'd say these women need better heroines. Why settle for someone like The Bachelorette's Hannah rather than (say) the Bible's Hannah? Or the Bible's Sarah, Zipporah, Deborah, Jael, Rahab, Ruth, Esther, Anna, Elizabeth, Mary, the Samaritan woman at the well, Martha and her sister Mary, Lydia, etc. Or women like Anne Bradstreet, Christina Rossetti, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, Ann Judson, Amy Carmichael, Helen Roseveare, Corrie ten Boom, Bethan Lloyd-Jones, Susanna Wesley, Sarah Edwards, etc.

These are the sorts of women of whom the world was not worthy. By contrast, at this point in her life Hannah Brown strikes me as a woman indistinguishable from the world.

Mr. Rogers

I recently asked Prof. John Frame about Fred Rogers in light of the upcoming film with Tom Hanks. Prof. Frame's reply is below. (He kindly gave me permission to post it.)

Well, no, I never met Fred Rogers, though he was a big star on Pittsburgh TV—first "The Children's Corner," and then "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood."

By 1963 I had basically left the Presbyterian Church, USA. I did work in my home church (which was PCUSA at the time, now EPC) in 1965-66, after I graduated from WTS in 1964. But by the end of the decade I was OPC. In any case, Rogers was part of the liberal wing of Pittsburgh Seminary and of the PCUSA.

Being at PTS from 1960-63, he would have known some friends of mine. He would have known RC Sproul. He would have studied with John Gerstner and Bob Kelley, possibly Addison Leitch; so he would have gotten at least a taste of Reformed evangelicalism. But he never moved in conservative evangelical circles, so far as I know.

He has always fascinated me. After I moved to Orlando, I discovered Rogers was a graduate of Rollins College, a liberal arts school in the Orlando area. His name often appeared in the Orlando press. A couple years ago, my wife and I saw the documentary about him. I do hope to see the new movie with Tom Hanks.

His theology, whatever it was, was largely concealed in his shows. He had the view that you should never raise issues of violence or even agitation when you talk to children. He evidently thought that the more rowdy shows like "Howdy Doody" were not good for kids. I always disagreed. I think that a certain amount of rowdiness is good fun, and I think kids should be exposed to the dark side of things. But I was always glad that we had Mr. Rogers to show us that there was an alternate way of thinking and living. I don't know to what extent the Bible entered his world view. Some of his emphases resonate with Scripture and some don't.

Good Omens

Apparently some Christians have started a petition to cancel the tv show Good Omens:

1. I presume these Christians who started a petition to cancel Good Omens are well-intentioned. However, the petition is counterproductive if its aim is to get people not to notice let alone watch the show. If anything, this is going to drum up more viewers.

2. Good Omens is based on a book of the same name written by secular atheists or agnostics Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, though dedicated to "the memory of G. K. Chesterton" with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Both the book and the show are satire. Mostly satire against Catholicism (and/or high church Anglicanism), which is worth satirizing in many respects.

3. However, even as satire against Christianity in general, Good Omens doesn't get Christianity right enough to accurately skewer Christianity. The most obvious example is Good Omens pits good and evil, heaven and hell, and God and the devil against one another as if Christianity is a dualistic religion. Hence, even as satire Good Omens misses its mark if its mark is Christianity. Why get worked up over a work that so widely misses its target?

4. Perhaps some non-Christians believe Christianity truly is what the show depicts Christianity to be. If so, I presume they're most likely naive or ill-informed. I don't know that there's much that can be done for the naive. However, it's a different story for the ill-informed. That is, it's not necessarily a good idea to push to cancel the show, but I would think it's a good idea to use the show as a jumping off point to inform people about true Christianity.

5. It seems to me Good Omens is in the satirical tradition of Horace rather than Juvenal. It's lightly humorous satire that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's absurd by design. I suspect these Christians calling for the show's cancellation are mistaking Good Omens for Juvenalian satire.

6. Not to mention, in our political and sociocultural context (i.e. the US), the push to cancel a show because it doesn't agree with one's beliefs or values smacks of censorship or something like it. Of course, Christians in America would be opposed if secularists tried to petition to ban the Bible or Christian literature - or perhaps even a satirical work against atheism or evolution.

7. In any case, I think a better response might be to laugh off Good Omens as ridiculous fare rather than entertaining it in such a serious or sober manner as to call for its cancellation. After all, Gaiman himself has laughed off the petition, with the assumption that the petition is taking the show more seriously than he is. If the show's creator doesn't take his own show seriously, then why should Christians?

Dr. House

I'm going to expand on something Christopher Kaczor said in a recent interview. He was responding to a distinction between intellectual obstacles to Christianity and emotional obstacles to Christianity. 

In the TV series House, Dr. House in a willfully obnoxious, insufferable person. He's disrespectful to everyone: friends, colleagues, administrators, interns, and patients. In the series, he can get away with it because he's a medical genius. He's the best physician in an elite hospital. Normally, patients would quit after the first rude encounter. But because the patients are desperate, and he's the only physician who can cure them, they put up with him. 

Now, I don't think the series is very realistic. I doubt any physician, however gifted and "indispensable", would keep his job if he insulted everyone. But part of the appeal of the show is that he says what some people wish they could say but don't dare.

The point, though, is how this example illustrates a difference in the way people judge religion. Even if a patient has an unpleasant experience with a doctor, they don't boycott medical care. They may boycott that particular physician, but they simply find a different doctor. That's because they depend on medical care to survive and thrive. It's too important to let their emotions get in the way. And even if they couldn't stand a particular doctor, if he was the only physician who could cure them or cure their child, they'd suck it up and endure him because a cure is more important to them than their feelings about the source of the cure.

But that illustrates how irrational people are to walk away from the Christian faith, or never consider it in the first place, due to emotional obstacles. They have a different standard for religion than medical care. Yet your physical wellbeing is infinitely less importune than your eternal wellbeing. 

Superheroines

Recently, Bnonn did a provocative post on whether the superheroine is consistent with Christian theology:

https://bnonn.com/why-a-woman-bearing-the-sword-is-an-abomination-to-the-lord/

Actually, most of his post was a conventional defense of traditional complementarianism (although there's a token complementarianism promoted by the likes of Carl Trueman that's making the complementation label useless). 

That in turn generated a Facebook debate involving examples like Jael and Buffy Summers. This gives me a chance to take a break from fluffy posts on Trinitarian metaphysics to something truly meaty. There are two separate issues:

i) The social roles of real women

ii) Superheroines

Let's take these one at a time.

1. Jael

To begin with, she's exceptional. But there's also the question of how we should visualize her. Is she a shieldmaiden, a la Brünnhilde? A female counterpart to Viking warriors? If you were a director, filming Judges, would you depict Jael like a Valkyrie? 

What if Jael is more like Mata Hari? It's not a trade secret that some women can penetrate a man's defenses in a way that no man can. To begin with, a man doesn't expect a woman to be dangerous. 

In addition, a man will drop his guard around an alluring woman. He's automatically receptive to her advances. So she can come within striking range in a way he wouldn't allow a warrior from the opposing army. 

I once saw the pilot episode of a short-lived crime drama. There was a male murder victim and two homicide detectives. As I recall, the murder victim was knifed from the front. The male homicide detective was puzzled by how the killer was able to get within range. Since most killers are men, his unquestioning assumption was that the killer was a man.

But his female partner conjectured that the killer was a sexy woman. That's why the unsuspecting murder victim let the killer get so close. 

2. Buffy

It's been many years since I watched it, and I never saw the entire series. With that disclaimer out of the way:

i) Because Buffy has superpowers, she's credibly the physical superior of normal men. However, some female characters are given superpowers so that they can replace the male protagonist in actions films.

ii) Some superheroines fall flat because a pretty ingénue with no acting chops is cast to play the part. Buffy works, not just because the character is well-written, but because of Geller's performance. Same thing with Faith.  

ii) However, Buff retains her femininity. She's sassy, but some women are naturally sassy. And she's emotionally vulnerable. 

iv) However, her vocation comes at a cost. Since no human male is her equal, her boyfriend is the vampire with the heart of gold. In one sense they're a match because they both have superhuman abilities. But they're classic star-crossed lovers, so that can't last. 

As I recall, her fallback boyfriend is a defective supersoldier, so that doesn't work out. And in any event, the series orbits around the Buffy/Angel axis. So she's never able to strike the right balance. 

v) Faith is the rival Slayer. More than Buffy, she illustrates the instability of the superheroine hybrid. It's too damaging to her feminine virtue. 

No doubt there are fans who can expatiate more learnedly than I on the Buffyverse. My interest level is decidedly limited. 

Sensus plenior

Sensus plenior is a way some interpreters classify apostolic exegesis. They think NT writers discover meanings in the OT that aren't really there. Put another way, they think apostolic exegesis is at odds with grammatico-historical exegesis. At variance with original intent, the historical context, &c., I could give a more detailed definition, but that's not the point of my post. I think interpreters who apply that rubric to the NT have failed to think deeply enough about how NT writers arrive at their interpretations as well as the context of the OT passages they adduce. But that, too, is not the point of my post. And I've discussed the hermeneutics of typology and prophecy on many occasions. 

However, I think the sensus plenior rubric is applicable to a different genre. When I watch certain movies and TV dramas, especially ones that resonant with me, I mentally recontextualize them by viewing them through a Christian prism. They have a significance for me that goes beyond what the generally secular directors and screenwriters had in mind. I consider what the plot, characters, setting, and dialogue connote from a Christian frame of reference.

And that's not just the case of a viewer superimposing his own interpretive filter onto the story. For what makes a story significant, what makes anything at all important, is the Christian reality which even secular directors and screenwriters tap into. In a godless universe, no facts have greater moral or existential significance than other facts. It's all just stuff that happens. Nothing intrinsically or ultimately good or bad. In a Christian world, by contrast, every event is significant. When some people fritter away their lives in trivial pursuits, that's significant–because it squanders the gift of life. 

In addition, I sometimes mentally rewrite the plot. Contemplate unexplored alternatives. 

Or I interject myself into the plot. What if I found myself in that situation? What would I do? 

In one sense, directors and screenwriters want to involve the audience in that way. Want the  audience to identify with the hero or anti-hero. 

But this is also a way for Christians to engage and appropriate stories that are often not intentionally Christian, and certainly not consistently Christian. Ironically, we can find more value in some stories than the storyteller could justify from his own viewpoint. And that's not just a case of foisting extrinsic value onto the story. A story only has value insofar as it derives from reality that can underwrite the moral and existential significance of human lives.  

Cringe-a-thon

http://godawa.com/the-handmaids-tale-the-delusionary-hysterical-fear-of-a-christian-theocracy/#more-6313

Game of Thrones

This is a sequel to my prior post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/08/beach-evangelism.html

1. Game of Thrones (hereafter GOT), which has occasioned so much debate, was hovering in the background of my post, but I didn't comment on the series, and my position can't be inferred from my post.

There are lots of articles about "Should Christians watch Game of Thrones"? I've skimmed a number of these articles, which didn't affect my own position. Some social conservatives like David French and Ben Shapiro defend it while critics like John Piper, Kevin DeYoung, and Matt Walsh deride it.

It may not be coincidental that French is a former Marine. 

From what I can tell, religious pundits roughly subdivide into regular viewers who defend it, those who attack it unseen, and those who attack after having sampled it.

2. There is nothing necessarily wrong with prejudging something based on secondhand information. I will never watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, or the Saw series. A synopsis or movie review can be sufficient to form a preliminary judgment about whether that's suitable viewing. 

However, it does put critics like Piper and DeYoung at a certain disadvantage, inasmuch as they can't be very specific about what's wrong with the series. 

For the record, I watched the first two seasons, then bailed. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't watch it at all. I could say the same thing for some other movies I've seen. Occasionally I start a movie or TV episode, then stop before I see it all, because I just don't like what I've viewing. 

To say I wouldn't do it again isn't an admission of guilt. It's one of those dilemmas where you don't always know in advance what to expect. In the case of GOT, I was curious what all the fuss was about. 

3. So why did I drop out after two seasons? Critics focus on the "pornographic" material, but before we get to that, there are other problems. It's not like I think GOT is a firstrate drama if only we could edit out the sex scenes. Rather, I think fans greatly overrate the dramatic quality of the show. 

It's not that GOT is bad from a dramatic standpoint. To judge by the first two seasons, it's a cut above much TV fare. But in my opinion, fans who defend GOT because they think it's so outstanding unwittingly reveal their lack of sophistication. At a purely artistic level, there are much more intelligent dramas. La Femme Nikita (1997-2001) was much more intelligent. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) was much more intelligent. The (underrated) reboot of The Prisoner (2009) was much more intelligent. Fans of GOT would be bored by dramatic excellence. 

I don't say that as a general putdown. I don't judge people by their artistic taste. On the one hand there are saintly believers with kitschy taste. Take devout Christians who buy Thomas Kinkade. By the same token, Michael Brown recently used schmaltzy 50's fare like Lawrence Welk, I Love Lucy, and Lassie Come Home as his standard of comparison. To each his own.

On the other hand, there are degenerates with impeccable taste. Anthony Blunt was an eminent art historian. In addition, he was a raging homosexual, KGB recruiter, and the architect of the Cambridge spy ring. To be a world authority on Poussin doesn't make you virtuous. He was vile. But I am critical of people who flatter themselves by defending GOT on artistic grounds, when their defense betrays them to be far less discriminating than they fancy.

4. From what I saw, GOT basically reflects pagan morality and pagan mythology. It's a fairly accurate depiction of how pagans behave. It reminds me of I, Claudius (1976), which was superior to GOT. GOT depicts the old Roman virtues as well as the old Roman vices. 

One reason I didn't stick with GOT is that it has too few admirable characters. And the prevailing worldview is nihilistic. There is no eschatological justice, so there's no incentive to be virtuous. I don't object to depictions of evil, but I prefer a redemptive context. Not wallowing in evil. Not evil for evil's sake. 

5. It's fatuous to defend GOT on the grounds that Christians need to be in touch with the evils of a fallen world. No doubt. But you don't need to read or watch fiction to know about evil. The daily news provides saturation exposure. Not to mention personal experience. 

That doesn't mean we should avoid dramas that unsparingly depict evil. But there's plenty to choose from. And there are better examples than GOT. 

6. Christian critics generally accentuate the sex and nudity. I'll get to that, but their emphasis lacks balance. As I recall, GOT opens with a graphic decapitation scene. Why don't Christian critics have more to say about "gratuitous violence"? Maybe it's just because most of them haven't actually seen it, so they can't single out specific scenes. 

I don't think we can say anything worthwhile about cinematic violence in general. Whether that's justifiable or unjustifiable is context-dependent. There's a difference between "gratuitous" violence and violence that serves a dramatic function. It depends, moreover, on the vehicle. Take a film with a redemptive theme like To End All Wars (2001).

7. Then there's profanity. GOT uses a certain amount of profanity. That's realistic, but I don't care for the profanity. It's not that I consider profanity to be inherently objectionable. It's just that if I don't like the story in which violence or profanity is embedded, then there's nothing to mitigate the violence or profanity. 

To take a comparison, Ordinary People (1980) tells the story of a family falling apart after one son died in a boating accident. It depicts the different coping strategies of the survivors: mother, father, brother. There's a certain amount of profanity between the brother and his classmates. I don't have a problems with that because it's fitting in context, and the story is a good story. But GOT lacks those compensatory virtues, so I don't have the same indulgence. 

8. What about the sex and nudity? I don't think artistic nudity is intrinsically objectionable. Take Rodin's The Kiss. That's erotic art, but it's very tasteful. A common grace celebration of God's gift of sexuality. There can be ennobling as well as ignoble representations of sex and nudity. Although pornography and erotica overlap, they are sometimes distinguishable, and they ought to be distinguishable. Botticelli's Birth of Venus is another case in point. 

By contrast, Rodin's Eve is not erotic, but tragic. Ghiberti's Adam and Eve panel is a reverent and dignified representation of the first couple in Gen 2-3.  

In one of the early episodes, possibly the pilot episode (I forget), there's a scene of Daenerys Targaryen emerging from her bath. It's like female nudes in Western art. 

There's a difference between nudity and a sex scene. There's no simulated sexual intercourse. It's just the image of a beautiful female nude. Unless you think the human body is an inherently unsuitable subject for artists to admiringly portray, I don't think that, in itself, is objectionable. Sex appeal isn't intrinsically degrading. Heterosexual appreciation for the body isn't intrinsically degrading. So I wouldn't classify that particular scene as pornographic.

Mind you, the nudity in GOT is intentionally pornographic, in the sense that the director and producers are using that as a come-on. But depending on the context, their intentions are separable from what is shown in its own right.

However, I think this scene is exceptional in that regard. I'd say most-all of the other nude scenes are pornographic.

9. Let's take another example: in one of the episodes, Bran is crippled after he's thrown out a window, when he was caught spying on Cersei and Jaime having incestuous intercourse. 

In theory, the sex scene could be justified on the grounds that one thing leads to another. Bran likes climbing. He was climbing the tower when he saw Cersei and Jaime in flagrante delicto. To dispose of the witness, he's hurled from the tower. He survives, but is crippled by the fall. But as compensation, he develops second sight. So there's a certain dramatic logic to it. 

However, that's a weak justification. To begin with, he needn't be pushed to fall. He could accidentally fall when climbing. It's naturally hazardous to climb up the tower. 

And what, really, is the point of seeing Cersei and Jaime have sex, much less incestuous sex? Even if Bran's a tattletale, yet given the prevailing social mores of GOT, is there anything scandalous about Cersei and Jaime? Do they have a reputation to preserve? The social world of GOT is awash is decadence.

Beach preaching

1. There's been an explosion of Christian material on pornography. But from what I've read, there's a lack of clarity in how the issued is delineated. Many of the stock arguments are weak arguments. In fairness, people can sometimes instinctively sense that something is wrong, even though they don't have a readymade arguments at their fingertips. But some sifting is in order. If you use bad arguments, there are people who can see through bad arguments, and that's counterproductive.

Admittedly, I haven't done in-depth study of the issue. It doesn't interest me that much. And there's such a plethora of material on the subject in Christian circles that it's hard to know where to start to derive a representative sample of the arguments. 

The Handmaid's Tale

I haven't watched The Handmaid's Tale or read the book, but to judge by reviews, this is a liberal fantasy about Christians. Here's a good review:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/447118/what-fans-handmaids-tale-prefer-ignore

I'd like to make a few additional points: 

i) Apparently, the dramatic premise of the story is that an ecological disaster has rendered most women of child-bearing age infertile, so that procreation has fallen far below the replacement rate necessary to sustain the human race. As a result, the remaining fertile women are commandeered to be breeding stock. 

Consequentialism is a standard position in secular ethics. If the human race was on the verge of extinction, forcibly impregnating women would be entirely justifiable from a secular standpoint. Which takes precedence: consent or the survival of the human race? 

Likewise, evolutionary ethics is a standard position in secular ethics. Well, procreation confers a survival advantage. Transmitting your smart genes to the next generation.

There's nothing distinctively Christian about the scenario in The Handmaid's Tale. To the contrary, that would be a far more realistic eventuality under a totalitarian secular regime. 

ii) Ironically, many secular couples are childless by choice. If atheism became prevalent, procreation would drop below replacement levels. That's already happened in secularized nations.

iii) From the standpoint of Christian ethics, it's an interesting hypothetical question whether an infertility pandemic would justify the reinstitution of something like Levirate marriage. 

Moreover, it doesn't require sexual intercourse. A more efficient alternative under that dystopian scenario might be sperm banks and in vitro fertilization. 

The cult of dead celebrities

Our culture has developed something of a cult of dead celebrities, where there's national mourning when favorite pop stars die. 

Up to a point, that's understandable. You can wax nostalgic about a celebrity you associate with your coming of age. 

Likewise, the nature of drama is for the audience to vicariously identify with the characters. That's fine so long as we retain the critical detachment to realize that this is, after all, just fiction. 

To some extent, though, this reflects a displaced religious impulse. Absent of a Christian center of gravity, celebrities are something many people share in common, because we saw the same movies and TV shows. 

When a popular movie star (or rock star, or whatever) dies, people go on social media and share their experiences. Their favorite songs, movies, &c. 

That can be fine up to a point, but it often reflects the vacuity of people who have no deeper social bond. The lack of shared vision and values in something–or someone–transcendent. This is accompanied by making the lives of dead celebrities more significant than they really were. 

Perhaps this also reflects a culture of broken homes and mobility. In the past, it was more common for close relatives to be heroes and heroines. That's harder for kids whose parents divorced, or whose grandparents, aunts, and uncles live out of state.