Hollywodd's Prophetic Voice

Throughout his career, Woody Allen has had somewhat of a prophetic voice in Hollywood. Though his own theological convictions are ambiguous at best, Allen works with theological categories, which for the most part have been completely absent in modern cinema. In his latest film, 2007's Cassandra's Dream starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, I was struck by the fact that there was a God-referential sense in which the characters acted. While by and large panned by critics, the film tells the story of two brothers in financial trouble who are offered an opportunity to get out of their situation if they murder a personal enemy of their rich uncle. To a certain extent I can understand the reasons why the film was panned (some poor over-acting, a simplistic story, mis-casting, and it was a bit morality play-ish), yet I walked away feeling as if I just sat through a modern-day Hitchcock.
In dealing with the existential crisis of murdering another human being, despite the brothers having no concept of God, the character played by Colin Farrell is haunted by the idea that this life may not be all that there is. What if the God who he has never believed in actually exists and there will be judgment to face when he dies? For the amount of films dealing with the subject matter of murder, the fact that Cassandra's Dream at least offered the idea that there may be a God of wrath upset with murder came as a breath of fresh air.
To use another film as contrasting example, last year's No Country For Old Men (NCFOM) had one of the most chilling villain's in years, brutally murdering people with a cattle gun. While the two films ultimately can't be compared from an artistic standpoint (in my opinion NCFOM was probably the best movie in the last 10 years) there was no sense of a just God who just might exist and one day make things right. One of the overarching themes of NCFOM was the banality of evil (especially murder), but you have to ask if this also plays into one of the overarching themes of society at large, the banality of human existence. Woody Allen, throughout his career has at least offered the possibility that there just might be a God after all. Because of this, he offers us the category of sin. The idea that murder is more than just mean and cruel because it interrupts my pursuit of personal happiness and pleasure but also violates the law of God is a category missing in modern films. This isn't a category that has always been missing in film though, one only has to put on Hitchcock or (even better) Westerns and realize that other cinematic killers have one day feared the concept of a God who says "vengeance is mine."
Casandra's Dream may not be a great movie, but at least through some over written dialogue and mediocre acting it conveys a message larger than its story.

Barth Had Mozart, I Have Sigur Rós

I picked up the latest release from Sigur Rós this week, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust and it's fantastic. While quite a bit different than previous releases (with only a couple of 9+ minute epic arrangements) when i hear the utter beauty of their music I can't help but think of Barth's "secular parables," especially analagous to his love of Mozart. It is safe to say that the band members themselves have no concept of what I'm talking about, yet to use Barth's words, they don't "will to proclaim the praise of God.  (They) just do it."  With their beautiful, grandiose arrangements and instrumentation they are secular parables to God's goodness to the world in creation.  With spectacles of faith we see that the beauty found in creation ultimately points to the one who is archetypally beautiful.  We understand that all we have now is a taste far too small to satisfy our longings, but if anything they exist to keep us hungry for more.

T. D. "Primetime" Jakes

brilliant blurb from the Riddleblog on the future television ministry of T. D. Jakes:

Dr. Phil likes T. D. Jakes. So Dr. Phil is helping Jakes get his own national T.V. talk show in the Fall. Swell. How will Jake's version of modalism and his prosperity gospel help TV viewers? I can just see Jakes now, walking back and forth, wiping his sweaty brow, ranting, "Viewer, Thou Art Loosed Loosed!" "Reposition Yourselves."

(you got to admit Osteen's pretty square)

Current Soundtrack

its raining, that's a beautiful thing
Bon Iver makes my heart melt

Top Albums of 2007

I know it's late, the problem was every time I sat down to write my list I discovered something else. '07 was a pretty exceptional year of music. This is especially apparent relative to 2008 thus far. So here it is, my top 10 albums from 2007 in order.

1. The National - "Boxer"
Everything a rock n' roll album is supposed to be. Also put me over the edge and made me a fully devoted convert to horn parts in rock music. It appears the Boss was on to something after all. "Mistaken for Strangers" was probably my favorite song of the year which helps it claim the top spot. Who can beat this line anyway, "You wouldn't want an angel watching over you. Surprise, surprise they wouldn't want to watch." Isn't that the truth.

2. Arcade Fire - "Neon Bible"
How do you surpass "Funeral"? You don't. But this won't hurt. Besides, somehow a band of mostly Canadians keeps playing Obama rallies. Move over Fleetwood Mac.

3. Feist - "The Reminder"
Leslie Feist has soul.

4. Radiohead - "In Rainbows"
Nothing ground breaking, but soooo good.

5. Panda Bear - "Person Pitch"
I've never been a big Animal Collective fan. Perhaps its my sub-conscious allegiance to the Great Tradition of Boethius and Co. But Panda Bear's complex and beautiful album of Beach Boys on acid inspiration is great.

6. Steven Delopoulos - "Straightjacket"
Fantastic album. Beautiful folk music. Kind of like the best of Cat Stevens without the hokie album fillers and conversion to fundamentalist Islam.

7. LCD Soundsystem - "The Sound of Silver"
I'm a sucker for dance music what can I say?

8. Bon Iver - "For Emma, Forever Ago"
You'll find this in the dictionary under "beautiful and haunting." I think the problem with most singer songwriters these days is that they don't go spend time alone in the woods and write and record music. In my head this is the musical companion to Sean Penn's excellent film Into the Wild.

9. Bowerbirds - "Hymns for a Dark Horse"
I've read that this can be considered Appalachian folk music. Works for me.

10. Once - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
This has some of the best song writing I've ever heard on one album. The film was good but the music made the film for me so I decided to plop it on this list.

Honorable Mention:
Derek Webb - "The Ringing Bell"
Jens Lekman - "Night Falls Over Kortedala"
Menomena - "Friend and Foe"
Okkervil River - "The Stage Names"
The Tough Alliance - "A New Chance"
Spoon - "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"

"Biblical Theology relieves to some extent the unfortunate situation that even the fundamental doctrines of the faith should seem to depend mainly on the testimony of isolated proof-texts" - Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Carlisle, reprint 1975) 17.

With the prevalence of emerging/ent theology in the American church the concept of propositional theology is commonly decried as obsolete. To a certain extent I am sympathetic to this view after doing time at a fundamentalist Bible college where systematic theology was often nothing more than the memorization of proof texts for various doctrines. Yet a real alternative to propositional theology is confessional theology that is undergirded by the sort of biblical theology that would be developed by Vos a couple hundred years after the Westminster Divines. "What is the chief and highest end of man?" asks WLC 1. The correct answer does not rely on chapter and verse, using Scripture as some kind of divine dictionary or key. Instead, we find the answer from Genesis to Revelation and reply "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever."

Christians & Film

Film is far and away the most prevalent artistic medium that our society interacts with and therefore it is no surprise that one of the fastest growing theological disciplines is that of theologies of film. Sadly the direction this field is headed (or is already in) is a bit concerning. Over the winter break I read through the most popular evangelical introduction to the theological analysis of film in Robert Johnston’s Reel Spirituality. Johnston, an evangelical uses his own "transcendent" experience he had while watching Becket with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole to argue for film being an important avenue for experiencing the Divine. Working (dubiously) with Barth’s concept of “parables of the kingdom," Johnson describes the cinema as a place where God can meet men and women on their own turf. Since many in our society no longer see the need for church, movies are a legitimate medium for spiritual experiences.
Johnston along with other pioneers in the emerging discipline of theology and film rely on the work of Paul Tillich and Jürgen Moltmann. For Tillich the Divine Spirit is manifest in the human spirit in both morality and culture. In relation to film when we witness the power and ingenuity of the human spirit on screen we experience the uppercase "S" Spirit of God. Drawing upon the work of Moltmann the Spirit's work is extended to all of creation where we are faced with the paradox of "immanent transcendence" in all of life. Johnston interacting with Tillich and Moltmann writes, "If the Spirit is active in and through the human spirit, then the potential for the sacred is present across our human endeavor. Yet Christian theology, though it might give lip service to the presence of the Spirit in all of life, continues largely to ignore such works of the Spirit in the mundane, the ordinary experiences of life" (Reel Spirituality, 97).
It is interesting and rather predictable that the church’s relationship to Hollywood seems to be on a pendulum that swings from total abstention and disdain to sacramentalizing the big screen. What this tells me is that for those of us who love the medium of film and understand that for the forseeable future it isn't going away, we have the important task of teaching our people how to be movie watchers. The question isn't whether our people will be seeing movies, but rather what movies will they be seeing? Those of us who see the artistic value of film and recognize that it isn't going away any time soon must teach our people to go to the cineplex able to discern both artistically and theologically what they are seeing before them. Theological presuppositions such as a robust view of common grace and the image of God must undergird the experience of going to the movies. We don't go to movies to find God but to experience the artistic gifts of men and women made in the image of God. Like a great novel we go to films to understand human nature better. To experience worlds unimaginablly different than our own.
To conclude, Kevin Vanhoozer best describes our role as Christians as we seek to better engage the culture around us. "The church is to be a community of interpreters. The church interprets what is going on in culture by offering theologically thick descriptions that inscribe our everyday world into the created, fallen, and redeemed world narrated in Scripture" (Everyday Theology, 55). More later on what it means to make our people better interpreters of film and all of life.