Why I am uncomfortable with the label “pacifist”: a missiological-messianic critique of universal ethical theories

For all practical purposes, I am indeed a pacifist: I do not believe Christians can or should serve in the military; I reject war and the use of harmful force as sinful, etc. And yet over the course of recent months, I have become more and more uncomfortable with the idea of pacifism or being a pacifist. The reason for my lack of comfort is analogous to Karl Barth’s concerns about universalism, namely, that a system (whether of salvation or of ethics) is erected in place of a person (Jesus Christ). This is a serious problem. The Bible does not present us with a system of doctrine or of ethics. What it presents is Jesus as Lord.

Now, of course, certain things follow from the confession that Jesus is Lord. Systematic theology has a necessary place within the life of the church (hence my pursuit of a PhD in systematic theology). But we have to be careful that our theological formulations are always a matter of intellectual fidelity to the Messiah. For this reason, in theology, we begin with the event of God’s self-revelation, and our theology is a matter of “thinking-after” this event. Once we establish the revelatory norm, our theology becomes an interpretation of this normative reality for our particular contexts here and now under the guidance of Holy Scripture. Certain things, of course, will remain unshakeable, e.g., the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, or the fact that reconciliation with God is purely an event of divine grace. But the overall interpretation of this divine revelation will take on distinctly different forms within particular cultural locations. My conception of what God did and does cannot simply be transposed into an alien cultural environment without being reinterpreted. Missiologists are keenly aware of this issue, as are biblical translators. The conservative polemic against “dynamic equivalent” translations is quite idiotic, since all translation, by the very nature of being a translation, includes dynamic equivalency. The question is not whether dynamic equivalency is involved, but rather whether this dynamism is faithful to the event of revelation within the cultural context of the translators.

I would say something similar is the case for Christian ethical action. The temptation into which the church throughout history has fallen prey is that we will construct a system of morals (often proof-texting the Bible along the way) that we can then apply to any situation in any culture within any time and place. This is substantially analogous to the situation with systematic theology. Fidelity to the Messiah is replaced with replication of an event. The whole thing can be compared (albeit over-simplistically) to Catholic vs. Protestant ecclesiologies. In Catholic ecclesiology, mission involves the extension of an ecclesial structure which is already fixed and established apart from any cultural particularity. In Protestant ecclesiology, in its modern missiologically informed variants, mission involves the translation of the church into a unique cultural situation. The gospel is reinterpreted for a new community.

The problem with “pacifism” is the problem with any ideological system: one becomes faithful to a system that is defined in abstraction from one’s cultural location. For those familiar with the terminology, the problem with pacifism is that it is anti-missional. The same problem is involved in the traditional ecumenical creeds of the church. Mere repetition of these creeds without theological translation is doctrinally equivalent to a Catholic ecclesiology of structural extension.

What I am advocating is fidelity to the messianic event of reconciliation in Jesus of Nazareth—in both noetic and ethical terms. This act of messianic fidelity will take the form of cultural translation/interpretation under the normative guidance of Scripture, always within the obedience of faith in response to God’s self-attestation and illumination through Word and Spirit. Such fidelity will certainly mean that particular actions are, for the most part, ruled out from the beginning. Committing violent and exploitative acts falls within that scope, as does taking an oath of obedience to anyone apart from Christ (which precludes participation in the government and military, for example). Thus, for all practical purposes, fidelity to Christ will look and smell like pacifism. But what we cannot do is construct some moral-ethical system that says what can or cannot be done in every possible situation. We cannot substitute some rule—“all violence is always wrong”—in place of what Paul calls the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).

I take it that my position is in basic conformity with Paul’s overall theology within the (undisputed) NT letters, in which he rejects the erection of some new law in place of the old law. Paul instead engages in a radical annihilation of ethical systems of law, replacing the entirety of the old ethical codes with the one rule “love your neighbor as yourself,” since “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 10:9-10). What does this look like in each unique context? Well, that’s where the difficult work of translation becomes necessary.

Paul’s concern is not with figuring out a list of new laws and rules that conform to the gospel; instead, his concern (which should be ours as well) is with the new human person, the new creation, which is ontologically constituted in Jesus and becomes an existential reality for us in the Spirit’s gift of faith. This new creature lives within the power of the Spirit, who bestows the gifts of the Spirit so that we might live in correspondence to the life of Jesus. These gifts are not new laws; rather, they are the elements which constitute life under the eschatological reign of God. They define what it means to be a new creature. Here and now, then, we are to live as a new creation within our particular cultural context. In ourselves we are still part of the old creation which surrounds us. But insofar as we submit ourselves in obedience to Jesus, insofar as we become servants of the Messiah, our old existence is actualized in the Spirit as a moment of the new creation’s in-breaking.

In conclusion, I propose a messianic-pneumatic theology of evangelical fidelity to the apocalyptic event of the eschatologically new creation. Our life of messianic fidelity will take the existential form of “ad hoc” correspondence to Jesus. In other words, in place of an ethical-moral system, I propose that we respond in each new moment in obedience to the Messiah; in each new time and place, we are to hear and respond in faith to Word and Spirit. This fidelity to the gospel will establish a form of life that has certain basic contours—including, e.g., life in community, self-donating love for both neighbor and enemy, rejection of violence, giving and sharing of material property, etc. This is messianic and pneumatic because, as Paul says, “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with the Messiah; and it is no longer I who live, but it is the Messiah who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:19-20). And this life is a life in the new creation, because as Paul says elsewhere, “If anyone is in the Messiah, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), “for neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” (Gal. 6:15).

C. K. Williams on poetry and the Iraq War

Witnessing to peace in the midst of tragedy

Today’s New York Times contains a story about a peace-advocating Methodist church in Connecticut trying to deal with the murder of a mother and two daughters who were active in the church. The church’s consistent stand against the death penalty places them in a very difficult position. On the one hand, this situation presents the perfect opportunity to put Christ’s command to “love your enemies as yourselves” into practice. On the other hand, no one wants to turn the tragedy of a person close to the community into a political rally cry.

Complicating this matter further is the possibility that some in the church are changing their minds about capital punishment because of this experience. But that only exposes the fact that their conception of peace is born within a bourgeois framework of personal comfort. To speak out against the violent systems of evil in our world is no more challenging for some people than dropping dimes in a Red Cross bucket. That is why this situation is so interesting. Can a church that has denounced capital punishment and the use of retributive violence witness to this gospel of peace in the midst of tragedy?

For those of us who are not part of this church, how do you think your own local congregations would respond to a situation like this? Would the church cry out for punishment? Would people stay silent in order to respect those left behind? When is it appropriate to speak out publicly? How do you witness to peace in the midst of tragedy?

Our Bonhoeffer Moment

Jeff Leys, Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and a national organizer with Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project as well as the Occupation Project, writes the following in Common Dreams:

The Bonhoeffer Moment of nonviolent civil resistance and disobedience to the world war being waged by the United States is clearly at hand. As Congress considers an additional $190 billion to fund the Iraq - Afghanistan war through September 2008 and as the threats of war against Iran become increasingly loud, it is time for us to learn lessons from the German resistance to Hitler, to the Nazi regime and to the war waged by the German nation-state. We must engage in the Long Resistance to this current world war, using every nonviolent means to bring about its end.I was set to be tried on October 2 for an act of nonviolent civil resistance at the U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command. The judge dismissed the charge the day of the trial. Following is the closing statement I prepared for the jury trial in Waukegan, Illinois.

Our Bonhoeffer Moment:

In 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian engaged in resistance work to bring about an end to the Nazi regime, penned the following lines in his letter “After Ten Years”. He was in prison and under investigation when he wrote:

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?” ...

To read the rest of his statement, click here.

God is nonviolent

Aric Clark has a fascinating series on pacifism going on right now entitled, “God is Nonviolent.” After addressing certain methodological issues (e.g., terminology and hermeneutics), he is now delving into particular passages in Scripture. Here is the current index:

“God Is Nonviolent” Index (on Mined Splatterings):

Prolegomena:

• Introduction
• Linkfest

Definitions:

• Pacifism not Passivism
• God's Shalom

Hermeneutics:

• Historical-Critical Method
• Jesus is the Criterion

Violence in Scripture

• The Flood

Can we redeem Constantianism?

At Sub Ratione Dei, R. Gillingham is working on a series with the provocative title, Working With/For Babylon, Or, Can Constantianism Be Redeemed? So far, he has posted on the Schleitheim Confession and the Constantinian Temptation. The series is a critique of the views presented by Dan on his very stimulating blog, On Journeying with those in Exile, particularly the following two theses:

Thesis 1. Following the examples of Jesus and Paul, Christians should not seek to wield ‘power-as-force’ over those who are not members of the Church.

Thesis 2. Therefore, Christians should seek change within the world through the Church, which practices ‘power-as-invitation’, not through the government which practices power-as-force.

Gillingham calls these theses Schleitheimic, and will seek to critique the views of the Schleitheim Confession (and modern proponents, like John Howard Yoder) in the rest of the series. I am sure this will prove to be an excellent series worth engaging. While I find myself more-or-less in agreement with the Schleitheim Confession, I look forward to seeing how the dialogue progresses.

Here is the projected index of posts:

Part 1(a) - The Schleitheim Confession

Part 1(b) - The Constantinian Temptation

The Perfection of Christ

Politics and Violence/Political Citizenship

Where does the Church End?

Realism or Responsibility, Revolution or Reform

Bibliography

Evangelicals for Human Rights

From the home page of the Evangelicals for Human Rights (EHR):

Evangelicals for Human Rights (EHR) seeks to reaffirm the centrality of human rights as an unshakable biblical obligation fundamental to an evangelical Christian social and moral vision. We oppose the weakening of these commitments by the United States—especially (but not exclusively) in relation to the practice of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons detained by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the war on terror. This initiative is offered by Christians who agree that the threat against our nation’s security is real and who support our nation’s legitimate interests. We do not agree, however, with those who believe that national security may be secured by any and every imaginable means, such as the torture or cruel treatment of detainees. We believe that human rights protections apply in any and every situation, including the one we now face, and that the seeming necessity of weakening such protections in just this one exceptional case should be perceived as a temptation requiring determined resistance. We believe that any resort to torture is a violation of God-given human rights which Christians must strenuously resist.

EHR resources:

• EHR has an Evangelical Declaration against Torture which you can sign. It is well worth reading and passing along to others.
  
• There is a whole page of church resources, including articles, essays, links, and a Bible study on torture and the cross.
• David Gushee, the head of EHR, has an excellent page on “defining torture” and why the EHR has decided to not use a definition.
• There is also an excellent discussion of the so-called “ticking time-bomb” scenario that comes from Gushee’s article in Theology Today.
  

The War Racket

The conservative periodical, City Journal, has published a highly opinionated article denouncing the “peace programs” found at many major universities in the United States. The author, Bruce Bawer, calls these peace wackos the “Peace Racket.” Here is how he begins the article:

“If you want peace, prepare for war.” Thus counseled Roman general Flavius Vegetius Renatus over 1,600 years ago. Nine centuries before that, Sun Tzu offered essentially the same advice, and it’s to him that Vegetius’s line is attributed at the beginning of a film that I saw recently at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. Yet the film cites this ancient wisdom only to reject it. After serving up a perverse potted history of the cold war, the thrust of which is that the peace movement brought down the Berlin Wall, the movie ends with words that turn Vegetius’s insight on its head: “If you want peace, prepare for peace.”

This purports to be wise counsel, a motto for the millennium. In reality, it’s wishful thinking that doesn’t follow logically from the history of the cold war, or of any war. For the cold war’s real lesson is the same one that Sun Tzu and Vegetius taught: conflict happens; power matters. It’s better to be strong than to be weak; you’re safer if others know that you’re ready to stand up for yourself than if you’re proudly outspoken about your defenselessness or your unwillingness to fight. There’s nothing mysterious about this truth. Yet it’s denied not only by the Peace Center film but also by the fast-growing, troubling movement that the center symbolizes and promotes.

Call it the Peace Racket.

Bawer is an apologist for an individualistic, capitalistic, militaristic West. As a result, he stands steadfastly against the rising peace movement: “[The Peace Racket’s] opposed to every value that the West stands for—liberty, free markets, individualism—and it despises America, the supreme symbol and defender of those values.” Bawer simply takes it for granted that these are values worth defending, and that America is actually a defender of them. He goes on to vilify the founder of the International Peace Research Institute, Johan Galtung, as a “lifelong enemy of freedom,” because Galtung himself denounces the West’s “structural fascism” and America’s “neo-fascist state terrorism.” Once again, Bawer sees the world in black-and-white terms: America and “the West” are right, and the rest of the world is wrong. Anyone who contradicts this doctrine is clearly an enemy—not to mention downright nuts. In addition, like other advocates for peace, Galtung focuses his criticism against capitalism. Bawer writes, disapprovingly:

In 1973, explaining world politics in a children’s newspaper, [Galtung] described the U.S. and Western Europe as “rich, Western, Christian countries” that make war to secure materials and markets: “Such an economic system is called capitalism, and when it’s spread in this way to other countries it’s called imperialism.”

Bawer calls this criticism of capitalism “anti-Western.” The assumption is that capitalism and free markets are wholly positive. To criticize capitalism, in the mind of Bawer, is to reject the best of all possible economic systems. He goes on to summarize the teaching of peace studies programs in the following way:

First and foremost, they emphasize that the world’s great evil is capitalism—because it leads to imperialism, which in turn leads to war. ... Students acquire a zero-sum picture of the world economy: if some countries and people are poor, it’s because others are rich. They’re taught that American wealth derives entirely from exploitation and that Americans, accordingly, are responsible for world poverty.

Bawer does not offer any criticism of the points made by these proponents of peace. He takes it for granted, it seems, that what they proclaim is nonsense. In any case, his strategy is to divert attention away from the arguments themselves by employing ad hominem. Bawer’s primary criticism is that this “Peace Racket” is thoroughly hypocritical in its criticism of capitalism, because the people in these peace studies programs are products of the capitalist system. In other words, they are biting the hands that feed them. He does have a point: these peace studies programs are thoroughly bourgeois, and that certainly makes their stand on behalf of the oppressed a little hard to swallow. But this is no argument against the position of peace itself, just as the infidelity of a priest is no argument against the gospel. Even so, Bawer jumps on the opportunity to point out the irony:

If the image of tenured professors pushing such anticapitalist nonsense on privileged suburban kids sounds like a classic case of liberals’ throwing stones at their own houses, get a load of this: America’s leading Peace Racket institution is probably the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies—endowed by and named for the widow of Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, the ultimate symbol of evil corporate America. It was the Kroc Institute, by the way, that in 2004 invited Islamist scholar Tariq Ramadan to join its faculty, only to see him denied a U.S. visa on the grounds that he had defended terrorism.

Bawer’s article basically boils down to the following “thesis”: These “Peace Racketeers” are rich anti-American Americans who are disseminating nonsensical ideas against capitalism and warfare, when it is capitalism who has made them rich and warfare which has given them the ability to speak so freely against American policies. For all his overblown rhetoric, Bawer effectively raises the question regarding whether pacifism is an inherently bourgeois position—i.e., a position that takes for granted what warfare has accomplished in the past. I think that’s worth discussing, but it diverts our attention from the issue at hand—viz. whether people ought to study peace rather than warfare, reject capitalism rather than revel in it, and embrace other cultures rather than dominate them.

Bawer essentially presents two groups: the “Peace Racket” which hypocritically fights against capitalism and warfare while benefiting from them, and what I will call the “War Racket” which continues to advocate for both capitalism and warfare without any obvious hypocrisy. In other words, both groups benefit from the Western, American economic system, but one group argues against it while the other argues for it. The assumption is that the latter is right, because they are honest about their loyalty and dependence upon the capitalist system. But this is patently ridiculous. To accept the views of the “War Racket” would be like agreeing with casino gambling lobbyists because they admit their addiction to gambling over against those who have won money from the lottery but now argue against gambling altogether. Or, to use another example, it would be like agreeing with oil tycoons who admit their stake in oil over against advocates for an oil-free transportation system who still drive around in their cars. Just because one side is straightforward about their personal investment in a particular social system does not make their position right. Even if the other side is somewhat compromised, they may still have the correct view. Moreover, Bawer gives no indication whether the advocates for peace are actively trying to curb their own complicity in the capitalistic-militaristic system.

In the end, we desperately need to get beyond this superficial dualism. Not only does this dichotomy—between “Peace Racket” and the “War Racket”—create a false dilemma that ignores the arguments for and against the pursuit of peace rather than warfare, but it also obscures the fact that there are other options. The Christian church must be the third way: a way which confronts the evils of capitalism, American imperialism, and global violence, while at the same time embodying a life of peace and simplicity as the community of God’s “covenant of peace” (Ezek. 37:26). The confessing community must advocate on behalf of peace while leaving warmongers like Bruce Bawer no opportunity to use ad hominem attacks. As the church, we must say, “If you want peace, seek the God of peace.”

See Also: “Why Study War?” by Victor Davis Hanson: Since Bawer told us why we shouldn’t study peace, City Journal has another article discussing why we should study war. Here is the thesis: “democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.” This is really the companion piece to Bawer’s article. Hanson laments that there are so few war studies programs, which is the converse of what Bawer lamented. Nothing new; just more warmongering.

My Conversion to an Evangelical Pacifism

Nota bene: This essay on my “conversion” to pacifism was first posted at my friend Halden’s blog (Inhabitatio Dei) in an excellent series exploring pacifism from different theological traditions.

“The Most Dejected and Reluctant Pacifist in all America”

In his autobiographical memoir, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes himself on the night of his conversion as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (228-29). In a way, I share this with Lewis, in that I was probably the most reluctant convert to pacifism in all America.

I grew up in a stereotypical American evangelical home, in which all of the usual adjectives apply: Republican, conservative, inerrantist, literalistic, dispensational, creationist. But of all the various descriptors of the evangelicalism in which I was raised, pacifist is not one of them. I grew up rather in the kind of church that sang patriotic “hymns” on the Sunday closest to the Fourth of July. I watched (with approval) pastors and elders year after year pray over young men going to serve in the military, giving them the Lord’s blessing and asking for their protection (seemingly unaware that they were asking for the death of their “enemies,” though I did not realize this until much later). I did not bother reading the news or following politics, because I simply assumed that as long as there was a Republican majority in Washington, the right decisions would be made for this country. I viewed pacifists the same way I viewed Catholics and Democrats: they were hopelessly flawed humans whose minds were clearly corrupted by sin.

But that’s not all. I was not merely a non-pacifist; I was resolutely anti-pacifist. I argued in a casual high school class debate in favor of the death penalty. I argued against the appeals process, saying that people sentenced to death should be executed immediately without investigation. In response to the counter-argument that innocent people are often executed, I said that such mistakes should be overlooked since the death penalty has the bonus “virtue” of being a form of population control. Even up through my final year at Wheaton College, I remained thoroughly opposed to pacifism. When a friend of mine came across the arguments against pacifism by John Milbank, I latched onto them, even asking him to send me a copy of the text just so I could add it to my anti-pacifist armory. I never actually read the argument; it was enough that I had it in case I ever actually encountered a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. It was like insurance: the more one has, the safer one feels. (Interestingly, another weapon in my armory was the essay by Lewis, “Why I Am Not A Pacifist,” which was more an argument on the basis of name power, because the arguments in the essay are criminally weak.) But the one thing I never bothered to do was examine the actual arguments for and against pacifism. I never engaged in any investigation of the biblical texts or of the theological presuppositions. And thus my views remained relatively static until my final year at Wheaton College, when I started to read theology—i.e., when I consciously began my journey as a theologian.

The disintegration of my views on violence and peace was, for the most part, indirect. I did not read a book by Yoder or Bonhoeffer or Hauerwas that suddenly changed my mind. No single friend or professor challenged me with a cogent argument for nonviolence. The first direct influence came when I watched the film Romero about Archbishop Oscar Romero for my theology class at Wheaton. I did not realize it at the time, but the seeds for my eventual flip-flop on nonviolence and peace were planted then. In the end, the revolution in my own views was part of the larger disintegration of my relationship with American evangelicalism—at least the form in which I was raised. When the walls of the Religious Right “Jericho” came tumbling down—thanks in large part to Mark Noll, among others—my position against pacifism was dealt a fatal blow. All of this occurred within the past four years, and since then my views have only deepened through thorough study of theology and Holy Scripture.

My “conversion” to pacifism means that I must now face the kinds of arguments which I once used against people like myself. One of the most popular arguments raised against the pacifist position involves some version of the following scenario: A man breaks into your home and threatens your wife and children with death, and the only way to stop him is to kill him. The scenario is the most extreme case possible and is meant to coerce the obvious conclusion: kill the man. There are three problems with this argument: (1) first, the scenario is manipulative and circumvents the issues at stake by coercing a certain response; (2) second, the notion that we can discard the position of non-violence on the basis of an extreme case is highly problematic, since our ethical views should never be arrived at via contrived, manipulative situations; and (3) third, Jesus calls us to respond in a way that does not conform to the values of the world. We find in the Gospel of Matthew one of the hardest sayings of Jesus: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:37-39). It would be hard to find a more direct response to the situation. Certainly, Jesus does not respond in the way American evangelicals—who tend to worship unborn children, the nuclear family unit, individual rights, and protection of life and property—would like him to respond. But the call of Jesus is clear: we must follow him on the via crucis, on the way of peace and justice, the way of enemy-love and costly discipleship.

In the end, where does this leave me in terms of a tradition? I would like to call myself a Reformed pacifist—a mix between Karl Barth and André Trocmé. But I did not grow up in the Reformed tradition, and I am only Reformed in terms of my theological commitments and not in terms of my ecclesial commitments. I have leanings toward an Anabaptist ecclesiology, but I am uncomfortable with the lower christology and even lower sacramentology that goes along with this movement. I like elements of the Catholic social movements and the liberation theology born in Latin America (e.g., Oscar Romero), but I am neither Catholic nor Latino.

Where does this leave me? I suppose, when all is said and done, that I am an ad hoc pacifist. Karl Barth says of himself that he is a “chastened non-pacifist,” but then later in his Church Dogmatics he calls his position a “practical pacifism.” If Barth himself resides in the gray zone between these two positions, I myself would like to be a practical pacifist. I share Barth’s own discomfort with pacifism as a system, just as I am uncomfortable with universalism as a system. Both of them replace a person with a principle. I would rather place Jesus at the center of my faith and let him determine how I ought to think and to live. Instead of universalism, I confess that Jesus Christ is the Salvator Mundi, the savior of the world. Instead of pacifism, I confess that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, and that he has called his people to take up their crosses and follow him in the way of the cross. Practically, this makes me a pacifist. Personally, I think this makes me a Christian.

James Stephens: “enmity is at an end”

“In the Fullness of Time”

On a rusty iron throne
In the farthest bounds of space,
I saw Satan sit alone.
Old and haggard was his face,
For his work was done and he
Rested in eternity.

Down to him from out the sun
Came his brother and his friend
Saying, “Now the work is done,
Enmity is at an end.”
And he guided Satan to
Paradise that he knew.

Uriel, without a frown,
Michael without a spear,
Gabriel came winging down,
Welcoming their ancient peer,
And they seated him beside
One who had been crucified.

—James Stephens, quoted in Madeleine L’Engle, Penguins & Golden Calves: Icons and Idols in Antarctica and Other Unexpected Places (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2003), 226-27.

In God we trust: Psalm 56

As I was reading this morning’s lectionary passages, I came across Psalm 56. Almost right away I noticed that Psa. 56 contains the refrain “in God I trust” twice (italicized below). I could not find any suggestion online that Psa. 56 was influential in the wording of America’s national motto (in the KJV, it reads “in God I have put my trust”), but the psalm still provides an interesting resource for how we should understand this phrase. Here is the psalm in full:

Psalm 56:1-13

Be gracious to me, O God, for people trample on me;
all day long foes oppress me;
my enemies trample on me all day long,
for many fight against me.
O Most High, when I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I am not afraid;
what can flesh do to me?

All day long they seek to injure my cause;
all their thoughts are against me for evil.
They stir up strife, they lurk,
they watch my steps.
As they hoped to have my life,
so repay them for their crime;
in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!

You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your record?
Then my enemies will retreat
on the day when I call.
This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
in the LORD, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I am not afraid.
What can a mere mortal do to me?

My vows to you I must perform, O God;
I will render thank-offerings to you.
For you have delivered my soul from death,
and my feet from falling,
so that I may walk before God
in the light of life.

On the one hand, the psalm’s prayer for divine wrath seems to legitimate the kind of violent and retributive justice we see in the world around us. But on the other hand, the psalm makes it very clear that vengeance belongs to God alone, not to us. Today people use the phrase “in God we trust” as a way of trusting (or asking) that God will give us the victory. But in the psalm it is clear that this statement means trusting that the victory belongs to God. We are in God’s hands, and that may mean God rejecting what we want if it is contrary to God’s will.

I find it helpful to read this psalm in the light of Rom. 12:17-21:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

To confess “in God I (we) trust” is to say No to personal vengeance and Yes to living peacefully with others, No to being overcome by evil and Yes to overcoming evil with good, No to the way of violence and Yes to the way of peace.

Paying Attention to America: A Second Response to John Wilson

John Wilson of Books & Culture has written a third column touching on the issue of the “partisan captivity of the gospel” in response to the book by Charles Marsh. (I would, of course, like to hear him respond to my previous comments, but I’m not holding my breath.) In this latest column, Wilson quotes 2 Tim. 2:14 and challenges his interlocutors to “avoid stupid arguments.” In other words, one should make a solid case and present valid evidence, rather than simply repeat catchy axioms or speak from personal experience. What’s interesting about Wilson’s statement is that this is precisely the criticism I put forward against him in response to his first column about Marsh’s book. Certainly, if he thinks I am putting forward “stupid arguments,” I would like to know so that I can respond intelligently. Unless he makes his criticism clear to me, I will assume he refers to people other than myself.

Wilson then writes:

What are we in fact talking about? From my point of view—open to correction—that seems to have become rather blurred as the conversation has proceeded. Charles Marsh contends that the "partisan captivity of the gospel in the United States is the gravest theological crisis of the Christian faith in our time." That's a sweeping judgment, accompanied by similarly sweeping pronouncements in the course of Marsh's book. Is this central contention true? How should such a claim be assessed? What sort of evidence counts? (For instance, would it be relevant to look back at the cover stories from the last 12 issues of Christianity Today magazine? Would that be one small chunk of useful evidence?)

A charitable reading of this statement would be that Wilson wants to keep our conversation grounded in Marsh’s particular claims about the “captivity of the gospel.” (Of course, the conversation was never about Marsh’s own arguments; it was about Wilson’s rejection of Marsh’s arguments.) An uncharitable reading would be that Wilson is avoiding all the counter-arguments with which he disagrees by either calling them “stupid” or asserting that they are “blurring” the conversation (i.e., they are irrelevant). While it seems probable that the uncharitable reading is more accurate, I will give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and assume the charitable interpretation.

We are thus back at square one. After three columns, I had expected to get further along than this. Unfortunately, I am stuck answering the same questions raised the first time: Is there really a “partisan captivity of the gospel” in America? Is the problem as wide-spread as Marsh suggests? The only advance that I can see is that Wilson is no longer using his own personal experience as the trump card. He at least recognizes that the different sides in the debate need to put forward evidence and sound arguments. As Wilson notes, the obvious question arises: What counts as a solid argument or convincing evidence? Wilson suggests looking at the covers of Christianity Today. That’s certainly an interesting suggestion. But why not look at the covers of World or Focus on the Family. Somehow I get the feeling these might offer a more accurate (or at least complete) picture of contemporary evangelical politics.

My own evidence is quite simple: the widespread support for war (and the Iraq war in particular) and the death penalty among pro-life evangelicals. Why are so many evangelicals pro-life on some issues but not pro-life on others? What could possibly explain this obvious hypocrisy? I suggest that Marsh offers the correct diagnosis: there is a partisan captivity of the gospel among American evangelicals. In my recent critique of nationalism in American evangelicalism, I said that the problem with evangelicalism today is not a disregard for politics but rather a political engagement strictly along party lines. Evangelicals rightly think that the Christian faith has important ethical implications and thus calls people to social and political action. But many evangelicals have blindly superimposed the American two-party system onto Scripture, or, conversely, tried to squeeze the gospel into a Republican mold. Either way, far too many evangelicals arbitrarily abide by certain passages from Scripture while rejecting others—once again, along party lines.

To be clear, I think evangelicals who side with the Democratic party as the best articulation of the gospel are also in the wrong. The gospel does not conform to any political party—much less an American political party. I am thus skeptical of Jim Wallis and Randall Balmer, just as I am skeptical of any Christian who calls a particular party “my party.” I realize some will say that picking a party is like going to war: it is a necessary evil in our present situation. But I reject this line of argumentation (about both picking parties and going to war). The Christian life is a life of discipleship, in which we are called to bear our cross, to lay down our lives for our neighbors, and to love our enemies. We are not called to devise political schemes for the success of a particular ideology. The fight against abortion, for example, is not so important that we must be willing to wed the gospel with a particular party. In other words, to put it in starker terms, the fight against abortion is not so important that we must be willing to commit idolatry. If discipleship means anything, it means standing up for what is right (contra war, environmental destruction, economic and educational inequity, etc.), even if it means giving up political influence and the attention of a powerful president.

I generally side with people like Tony Campolo who advocate for a “seamless garment” pro-life position. American evangelicals, for the most part, advocate for life on only a few select issues—issues that are determined along party lines. As a result, the evangelical pro-life movement is all too often arbitrary and hypocritical, despite the recent commendable support of environmentalism as a pro-life issue. Do evangelicals go off to war on the basis of their Christian faith—a faith rooted in Scripture and a theologically robust understanding of the gospel? Or do they go off to war on the basis of a loyalty to their country? Are evangelicals Americans or Christians first? And does this change depending on whether they are in church on Sunday morning or at work or in school or celebrating the Fourth of July or listening to the president speak or at a Marine recruitment office or in Iraq? Is our identity shaped by Jesus Christ, our Lord and King (or President, to use modern lingo) or by the American president? Is our political perspective shaped by the gospel or by the two-party system?

As long as evangelicals continue to be selectively and arbitrarily pro-life, Marsh is quite correct to say that there is a “partisan captivity of the gospel.” Of course, Wilson is also quite correct to point that (as he did in a personal email) that the world of American evangelicalism is much more complex than one might conclude from reading Marsh’s book. But this is an empty argument, because it can be used against anyone. Are not all books oversimplifications of reality? Is there any book that actually captures the full complexity of human existence, much less American evangelical existence? I tend to think the argument used by Wilson has a dark side to it. Often people who denounce a book for oversimplifying matters are simply upset that the author has created a picture which one does not like or with which one does not agree. Would Wilson feel the same about a book which targeted the “liberal captivity of the gospel” in America? Don’t Hannity and Limbaugh and O’Reilly—not to mention Dobson, Robertson, and the late Falwell—oversimplify matters just as much if not much more so than Balmer and Marsh? The “oversimplification” argument is often useful, but it can also be quite sinister. It can disguise one’s own ideology while exposing another’s. And as I said in my previous post on this topic, I am firmly convinced that evangelical partisanship is the symptom and not the actual disease. I would very much like to hear Wilson’s response to that point.

At the end of his last column, Wilson asks: “To answer the questions raised by Marsh's book, we have to pay attention to the America we actually inhabit.” I wholeheartedly agree. And I think this is precisely what I have been doing. I am open to hearing how I can better pay attention to America. Even though I have been critical of Wilson in this post, I remain dedicated to carrying on the conversation. In his second column, Wilson asked: “Can we talk?” I believe that we can. But I have to hear any constructive feedback from those who take Wilson’s side. Perhaps the partisanship is not as pervasive as some might suggest. But surely that is no argument against the existence—even wide-spread existence—of such evangelical partisanship, or of its underlying causes. In the end, I agree with Wilson: no more stupid arguments.

The Spirit of the Lord, §10.3: Political Pacifism

Third, the vision of the New Jerusalem is politically pacifist. The term “politically pacifist” combines two ideas—political and pacifist. Each one is worthy of discussion in its own right, but in the passage from Micah, the two terms cannot be dissociated. The passage is political precisely in that it is a vision of peace. Peace is portrayed in fundamentally political terms—“nation shall not lift up sword against nation”—so that it becomes impossible to discuss the political nature of Micah’s vision without also discussing its radical vision of peace and justice. To place a wedge between the two ideas would be to distort the text. Peace throughout Scripture is a sociopolitical reality which has dramatic ramifications for everyday human life. No aspect of our creaturely existence is untouched by the reign of peace.

That said, Micah boldly proclaims a politically charged vision of a community of peace (communio pacis). The eschatological New Jerusalem will not be an inner kingdom of the soul but a sociopolitical kingdom of reconciliation in which the many nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” (Mic. 4:3). Micah presents the vision of a new world in which the bellicose become pastoral, in which weapons become agricultural instruments, and in which Armageddon becomes Arcadia. It is a vision of the impossible possibility that war shall be no more, that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, that no one shall learn the way of violence (via violentiae) any longer but instead learn the way of peace (via pacis). It is a vision which fundamentally alters the horizon of reality, which subverts the actual in favor of the possible, which transforms the very contours of a creation enslaved to violence, a creation in bondage to being incurvatus in se. It is a vision anticipating the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer: “your kingdom come; your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10; Lk. 11:2b). To paraphrase Gal. 6:15, according to Micah’s prophecy, neither war-making nor agriculture is anything; what matters is a new creation.

In the statements above, I should really say that the creation is only seemingly in bondage, because the event of Jesus Christ is the true cosmic reality which definitely liberated creation from its enslavement through his death and resurrection. At the eschaton, the bondage of creation will be revealed as the nothingness that it actually is, and God will be “all in all.” However, here and now, such bondage to sin and death is a palpable reality which enshrouds our lives in shadow, even though we know the Light has already come in Jesus Christ. For now, however, we await the day of the Lord when this Light will shine in fullness of glory, when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:10-11).

The reign of God is a reign of peace. The messianic prophecies proclaim peace as the mark of Christ’s reign. Isaiah not only declares that the messiah, the promised child, is the Prince of Peace, but just prior to this announcement the prophet proclaims: “For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire” (Isa. 9:5). The righteous reign of the messianic king will result in the annihilation of all instruments of warfare. As a result of his reign, “there shall be endless peace” (Isa. 9:7); in the presence of Christ, the very possibility of one nation rising up against another will be definitively destroyed. The Deus pacis declares a clear No to any human attempt to say No to a fellow human; God’s definitive No renders the No of one human against another utterly obsolete. God’s No is also for all the nations. The messiah not only demilitarizes the enemies of Israel; rather, all people are stripped of their weapons. No one is exempt from the divine judgment against violence.

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zech. 9:10)

God’s No is, of course, entirely in service to God’s Yes. The judgment against violence and warfare serves the establishment of human solidarity in peace. God denies the use of swords and battle bows—not to mention the use of machine guns, ballistic missiles, and the latest Future Force Warrior systems—in order that humans might serve their neighbors instead of subjugate them and love their neighbors instead of ignore them. God says No to the oppressive domination of nation against nation and neighbor against neighbor, and Yes to the universal liberating domination of the messiah who “shall command peace to the nations” and whose “dominion shall be from sea to sea.” God says No to human enslavement to the powers of death and Yes to human liberation for life in correspondence to the Word. God says No to homo incurvatus in se and Yes to homo extra se: No to humanity curved in upon itself and Yes to humanity outside itself. Humanity curved in upon itself is a humanity content with denying life and love to others; only humanity outside itself is capable of serving the other as Christ served us by taking the form of a servant and submitting to a violent death on a cross for the sake of a world lost in a maelstrom of violence.

The heart of the pacifist vision of the prophets is the covenant of grace. The prophet Zechariah follows the proclamation of God’s righteous and peaceful reign “from sea to sea” with the important declaration: “As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double” (Zech. 9:11-12). The Lord liberates on the basis of the covenant. The deliverance of the captives which we find in Isa. 61 is here rooted in the covenantal relation between God and the people of God. As a result of the covenant of grace established and maintained by the Lord, those who are presently imprisoned are paradoxically called “prisoners of hope.” A true “theology of hope” thus depends on a robust theology of the covenant: eschatological hope is covenantal hope, eschatological peace is covenantal peace.

The path of peace remains an impossibility. We cannot forget this. We cannot forget that no amount of ethical striving and political manipulation will make such peace a human possibility. There is no way from ‘here’ to ‘there,’ so to speak. But because it is the Lord alone who judges between nations, such peace is indeed an impossible possibility. Micah is quite clear: the Lord God “shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away” (Mic. 4:3). Micah’s vision is no social program or political platform that only awaits the human will to implement it. On the contrary, it is an eschatological vision, which is to say, it is a vision of divine possibilities. Micah speaks not of what humanity can accomplish through its own resources, but rather of what God alone can accomplish as the Judge and Arbiter between peoples. God alone is the source, preserver, and finisher of peace. The God who liberated Israel from bondage is the Deus pacis, and only as the community shaped by God’s covenant of grace can humanity flourish as the communio pacis. Only because we are judged by the Lord is true justice possible. Only because we are liberated by the Lord is true freedom possible. Only in light of the reconciliation accomplished by the Lord is there a message of reconciliation for all peoples and life everlasting in the eternal kingdom of Christ.

The epistle of Jude makes a striking connection between Israel’s liberation from Egyptian oppression and the person of Jesus Christ. In Jd. 5, the author writes: “Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, that the Lord, who once for all saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Here Jude explicitly says that the Lord is the one who delivered Israel from the hands of Pharaoh. That “Lord” refers specifically to Jesus Christ is made clear in the previous verse, in which Jude denounces the false teachers (“intruders”) who have “stolen in among you . . . and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (v. 4). (Not to mention the fact that a number of ancient authorities replace “Lord” with “Jesus” in v. 5.) In these two verses we thus have a brief glimpse of an early christology, which confesses Jesus Christ himself as the one who freed Israel from slavery. Like Paul, Jude affirms Christ’s preexistence, but whereas Paul speaks of Christ’s activity primarily in terms of election (Eph. 1:4-5) and creation (Col. 1:15-16), Jude goes a step further and establishes Christ’s involvement in the events narrated in the Old Testament. Christ is not only involved in pre-temporal eternity or in the origins of creation; he is also the active agent throughout salvation history. Jesus Christ, the one who definitively liberated humanity in his death and resurrection, is also the one who liberated Israel as a proleptic realization of what he would later accomplish on the cross. On the basis of this christological insight, we can supplement the exclusionist reading of the exodus put forward by Jude with a more christocentric account of divine reconciliation. While Jude is correct to point out that Christ is the one who liberates—in the past events of exodus and crucifixion, in the present event of the word proclaimed, and in the future events of redemption and glorification—we must remember that Christ’s saving work encompasses even those who were “destroyed” in the event of Israel’s deliverance. Jude denounces the “intruders” as the “ungodly” (vv. 4, 15), but we must confess along with Paul that “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6).

Film Review: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Spoiler alert: This review gives away major plot details—including, especially, the end of the movie—that some may wish not to know before seeing the film. If this describes you, bookmark this page and come back after you have seen the movie. Otherwise, keep reading!

The tagline of last year’s “fantastic”—in more ways than one—film, Pan’s Labyrinth, is: “Innocence Has A Power Evil Cannot Imagine.” And this is quite apposite.

Guillermo del Toro, the director of Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno or The Labyrinth of the Faun), is deeply interested in the themes of innocence, power, and responsibility. His comic-book adaptation, Hellboy, is about a demon who is brought to earth by Nazis but ends up turning against his hellish origins and fighting against evil. His otherworldly powers become the occasion for the victory of good over evil. Moreover, Hellboy chooses to take on human form out of love for humanity in his heart. Rather than an incarnation of evil, Hellboy is an incarnation of good. In a way, Pan’s Labyrinth must be understood in relation to this prior artistic project.[Fn1] However different the two films are, both are deeply concerned with the relation between innocence and guilt, good and evil. While both films are, in the broadest sense, mythical adaptations of the cosmic conflict between Good and Evil—and thus stand in a long line of artistic renditions of this primal story—Pan’s Labyrinth stands apart as a specifically Christological retelling of this salvific mission.[Fn2]

Pan’s Labyrinth is set in Spain in 1944, right after Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War, and at the height of Fascist repression of resistance forces. A young girl, Ofelia, comes with her pregnant mother to live with her mother’s new husband, Captain Vidal, the leader of the Fascist forces. The ruthless Captain is stationed in a remote area in northern Spain where the last vestiges of the resistance remain. The area is lush and verdant, but for the imaginative Ofelia, it is also ancient, magical, and full of foreboding mystery. From the moment she arrives, she encounters a harsh world of sickness, deception, and death in which the Captain reigns as the violent lord of evil. There, in the midst of hell, Ofelia discovers a second world—one in which she is a princess, in which she has a unique origin, and in which she has a mission to accomplish. I say “discover” quite deliberately. The second world is not a creation of her imagination; it is a world into which she stumbles as an innocent, wide-eyed little girl.

The film deftly transitions between narratives: the story of her mother’s troubled pregnancy, the story of the Captain’s attempt to rout the resistance forces, the story of those who work for the Captain but remain loyal to the resistance, and finally—woven throughout these stories—the magical narrative of Ofelia’s mission to establish her identity as Princess Morana. The last of these narratives begins when Ofelia stumbles into a labyrinth behind the home of the Captain. At the end of the maze, she meets a mysterious faun who tells her that she is a princess—or, at least, that is her proper identity. Her immortal regality remains, however, a potentiality that requires actualization—or, more properly, confirmation—through the accomplishment of three tasks. To this end, the faun gives Ofelia a magical book to guide her on our journey. And with this cryptic introduction, the adventure begins.

The particulars of each task are finally not all that significant. Each task sets up the next, culminating in the final, climactic end. Moreover, each task becomes more and more dangerous, paralleling the growing menace in the “real world” (the “scare-quotes” are quite deliberate). As the Captain continues to expand his inhuman reign of evil, and as the resistance fighters grow stronger and more confident, the ominous events in human “reality” compel Ofelia to pursue a deeper Reality—full of its own evils, yet with a telos in mind.

We would greatly misunderstand this story, however, if we were to impose an artificial dichotomy between the “historical-real” world and the “magical-fantastic” world, between an objective world and a subjective world.[Fn3] Pan’s Labyrinth is entirely unlike Finding Neverland in this regard. Ofelia’s adventures are not at all comparable to the daydreams of J. M. Barrie. Her tasks have ramifications for the historical world. The world of the faun is not simply a concoction of her young, imaginative mind. Pan’s Labyrinth presents no real-unreal dualism; rather, the distinction is between real and Real. The “second world” is the Real world. As one reviewer aptly states, Pan’s Labyrinth is “realer than reality itself.” According to del Toro in an interview with Terry Gross, “what [Ofelia] sees is a fully blown reality. … I believe her tale not to be just a reflection from the world around her, but to me she really turns into the princess.”

In an important sense, therefore, the film is a criticism of the finality that we associate with our reality. Part of this critique involves the all important insight—which del Toro stated in the aforementioned interview—that all reality is, in a very real sense, imagined:

The entire world we live in is fabricated: Republican/Democrat, left/right, morning/night, geography and borders—all these things are conceits. Borders are not visible from a satellite picture. The fact that you can have a civil war where two sides kill each other, and essentially from afar they look exactly the same. They are both the same human beings; they share the same taste for food; they sing the same songs. This imagined conceit can create such horrors.

According to del Toro, our entire existence is compassed with imaginary constructs: national borders, political divisions, economic trade, time, traffic, etc. Of course, as we act on our imagination, these things take shape in the world. The tangibility of reality, however, does not negate the imagined character of so much of our lives. In other words, what we experience objectively with our senses is not, by definition, unimagined, and conversely what we imagine is not, by definition, simply a subjective idea in our heads. The very structures of our everyday existence require a kind of imagination. The genre of fantasy, especially in the case of Pan’s Labyrinth, exposes the artifice of our everyday lives through the unfolding of what del Toro calls “spiritual reality,” which is not opposed to our embodied reality but rather transcends it. Del Toro’s thought on this matter bears a close affinity to the theological work of William Cavanaugh, who opens his book on Theopolitical Imagination by stating: “Politics is a practice of the imagination.” Cavanaugh stresses many of the same points about the imagined nature of national borders and our notions of space and time. But he, too, wishes to posit a spiritual reality—in this case, the reality of the Eucharist which “overcomes the dichotomy of universal and local.” The Eucharist, like Pan’s Reality, transcends the finite divisions and imagined conceits that define our imagined human existence.

As a “spiritual reality,” fantasy is also a critical reality—a Reality that critiques reality. In the same interview, del Toro said that there are two kinds of fairytales and two kinds of horror films: those that are in favor of the present world—“the Establishment,” as del Toro calls it—and those that are against it.[Fn4] One kind uncritically affirms our present reality; the other kind, the better kind according to del Toro, criticizes it with “a beautiful anarchy.” Along with his other films, Pan’s Labyrinth falls in the latter category. His films, del Toro said, are attempts at grappling with the brokenness of our world. Rather than romanticizing our existence, del Toro admitted that he prefers subversive art which stands radically apart from the world as we see it by means of “a destructive, iconoclastic, liberating sense of anarchy.” Liberation, rather than uncritical affirmation, governs the way his films interact with human existence. In a lesser way, this is true of Finding Neverland as well—in fact, of any story which presents the common impulse to escape the confines of our fallen human existence. Pan’s Labyrinth, however, does not rest content with mere critique. Beyond anarchy, del Toro’s films offer an even more radical alternative. Pan’s Labyrinth stands apart from critical-escapist narratives by positing a constructive alternative, in which reality is not only condemned but overcome by true Reality. We might classify Pan’s Labyrinth thus as a critically realistic fable of redemption[Fn5]—one which takes its basic contours from the biblical narrative of Christ’s mission of redemption.

While Pan’s Labyrinth is no allegory, it is nevertheless a creative retelling of the Christian narrative. Such an interpretation may seem at first glance an unfaithful reading of the film, but del Toro already demonstrated in Hellboy that he has an interest in biblical themes. Moreover, del Toro grew up as a Catholic and has carried with him the religious sensibilities inculcated in his youth. Here, in Pan’s Labyrinth, he adapts a more specifically Christian framework for the purposes of telling the story of Ofelia. In order to appreciate the story properly, we must be careful not to read more into the film than we are given; at the same time, we must also recognize the multiple levels on which del Toro is working, which often lead to surprising discoveries.

The film begins by setting up the mythical narrative within which Ofelia lives. The narrator tells of a princess who incarnates herself as a young girl in order to complete a particular mission; if it is left incomplete, then the princess will return at another time and another place. (For this reason, the historical setting of the film is finally unimportant; del Toro happens to have a special interest in the period encompassed by the Spanish Civil War and WWII due to his conviction that this is a period of our history neglected to our shame.) In Pan’s Reality, therefore, Ofelia is the incarnation of this princess who descends from her transcendent origin to enter the hellish reality of Fascist Spain for the purpose of fulfilling a regal mission. The nature of this commission is unclear until the final moments of the film, in which reality gives way to Reality. Ofelia’s three tasks lead her to a point of crisis: the faun declares that her final task requires that he take blood from her infant brother, since only the blood of an innocent will complete her mission. Ofelia must then choose between sacrificing the life of her brother for the sake of her own immortality or sacrificing her immortality for the sake of her brother. Ofelia chooses the latter. She relinquishes her own regal-divine identity for the sake of another. She denies glory and power for herself in order that her brother may live. In other words, she chooses the cross in his place and on his behalf. Ofelia elects death that life might come to others.

Ofelia’s death at the hands of the Captain is a tragic and deeply unsettling event.[Fn6] Like the crucifixion of Jesus, her death appears to be the victory of evil. She seems to have failed her final task, and her horrific death only compounds the already great sense of devastation. And yet it is her blood that becomes the innocent sacrifice. Her death is the completion of the mission. What seems like failure turns out to be, in fact, her greatest victory. Ofelia’s apparently senseless death is in fact the occasion for her brother’s life and her own ascension to the right hand of her father. With her death, Ofelia enters the throne room of the Real, the place where her father and mother sit in heavenly splendor, and where she takes her place as the princess she truly is. And as if the biblical allusions were not strong enough, Ofelia hears from her father what essentially amounts to, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

As that final scene indicates, Pan’s Labyrinth can also be interpreted from another angle entirely, in which Ofelia is not the princess-savior but the princess-pilgrim. Her pilgrimage begins not because of some wild imagination, but rather because of her childlike faith. She embarks on a journey that reveals itself to her due to the pure receptivity of her faith. But Ofelia, like any true human, is not perfect; like any other person, she makes mistakes and even falls to temptation in the second task. Ofelia is thus a kind of Everyman or Everywoman, and her life is in movement toward a telos that comes to her, finally, as a gift. When, at the end, she is reunited with her mother and father, we see that the three of them are connected both by a blood relation and, most importantly, by a kind of spiritual relation. All three of them gave up their lives in sacrificial love—the father as a tailor for the army who received no honor, the mother in giving birth to Ofelia’s infant brother, and finally Ofelia herself also giving away her life for her brother. The three are united in regal splendor because all three were “good and faithful servants.”

The film sharply contrasts the way of life characterized by Ofelia and her family and the way of life characterized by the Captain. Not only are the former marked by sacrificial love, they are also marked by a radical commitment to peace in the midst of war and violence. According to del Toro, “Everybody else here or there [in the film] chooses violence; the girl chooses not to exert [violence].” The contrast is not simply limited to peace versus violence, though this is a central motif throughout the film. The larger dialectic in the story is between “the way of life and the way of death” (Jer. 21:8). Ofelia chooses life, while the Captain chooses death (cf. Deut. 30:19). Ofelia is defined by bringing life to others (her first task involves bringing a dead tree back to life), while the Captain takes like away from others. Ofelia seeks peace for all, while the Captain seeks bellum totum—total war. Ofelia chooses to affirm the humanity of others, while the Captain chooses to dehumanize his enemies, which includes even Ofelia and her mother.[Fn7] For the Captain, all things in the world are means toward some other end: Ofelia’s mother is a means toward having a son, the captured rebels are tortured as a means toward military victory, and those who work for the Captain are means toward building his power and reputation. However, the film graphically and profoundly portrays the Captain’s proclivity for murder as the one act which has no rationale. Murder is utterly senseless, and the fact that Ofelia’s murder is really a life-giving self-sacrifice changes nothing about the Captain’s irrational brutality. Her sacrifice is simply a testament to the way Reality works in and through everyday reality, transforming violence into peace and death into life. In light of this tension between Ofelia and the Captain—between the way of life and the way of death—it is particularly interesting to note how insistent the Captain is that she call him “father,” and how persistently Ofelia denies him that title.

If we look at this film as a fantastical portrayal of Christian existence—that is, truly human existence—then we have in Ofelia a portrayal of what it means to live in obedience to one’s calling. Her life was entirely shaped by her mission—a peaceful mission of sacrificial, life-giving love. In the midst of a world crashing down around her, Ofelia pursued a new world: one in which the monsters of the underworld are both more real and more significant than the monsters of the human world; one in which she has a valuable role to play and her identity is affirmed as having inestimable worth; one in which she can truly bring about a change from evil to good and from death to life. This “new world” or Real world is not the perfect paradise we might secretly desire when we are caught in the midst of an earthly hell. On the contrary, the Real world Ofelia discovers is full of its own horrors and imperfections and dangers. It is not the world that she wants, but it is the world that she has. Similarly, in Gethsemane, Jesus comes to grips with the fact that the way of the cross may not be the world that he wants, but it is the world to which he is called. Ofelia discovers a world which is neither a dream nor a nightmare but simply a Reality that comes to her, unannounced and unexpected—a world in which she must find her way as a pilgrim who knows her true identity despite all appearances to the contrary.

In both my Christological and anthropological readings of Pan’s Labyrinth, the nature of identity thus remains the central emphasis. At the beginning of this reflection, I referred to Ofelia’s mission as an attempt to establish her identity, but the story is actually more complex than this. Before she even begins the first task, Ofelia discovers—based on the faun’s suggestion—that she has the mark of the moon on her shoulder. Her very identity as the princess is secure long before she completes the final task. In other words, her life is ordered toward a particular telos prior to and apart from the actual confirmation of this identity through her own actions. Ofelia is set apart for a mission that comes to her from without and does not depend solely upon her response. Ofelia’s identity is a gift, and as she discovers this new world unfolding before her, she also discovers herself.

If Ofelia is marked from the start in terms of her regal identity, she is also marked in terms of her mission. Here the film uses classical irony, meaning the audience knows something the character does not. The film actually begins, presumably, at the end; the opening scene shows a young girl dead, blood running down her nose. Much like the opening of Memento, time runs backwards and the blood returns to her body as the scene cuts and the narrative of Ofelia begins. One might read this opening scene in two ways: either this is the end of Ofelia, the girl that we meet subsequently in Pan’s Labyrinth, or this could be a previous incarnation of the princess which then sets up the story of Ofelia. Either way, the tragic death of the innocent encompasses the story. We begin and end with a horrific death. To draw another Christological parallel, in the same way that Jesus’ life is ordered from the moment of incarnation toward the cross, so too in Pan’s Labyrinth, we know from the very beginning that Ofelia’s life is ordered toward a terrible end. Her identity as Princess Morana comes with a mission that ends with her own cross.

I return now to the movie’s tagline: “Innocence Has A Power Evil Cannot Imagine.” The relation between Ofelia and the Captain is clearly the central protagonist-antagonist or thesis-antithesis relation in the film. Ofelia represents goodness and innocence and love; the Captain, evil and guilt and hate. In our everyday human world—a world thoroughly shaped by Nietzsche and the “will to power”—the Captain seems to be the one who wields power and influence. Ofelia seemingly represents weakness and impotence. And yet, contra Nietzsche, Pan’s Labyrinth reveals the subversive power of love. If one had to pick another tagline, it would have to be 1 Cor. 1:27-28:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.

This passage from Paul’s letter refers most directly to the proclamation of “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23) which demonstrates that “God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (v. 25). Again, the analogy between Ofelia and Christ is important. Ofelia, like Christ, is foolish and weak and despised in the eyes of the “real” world. She has no apparent power to alter the course of reality. Her subjugation to the Captain seems complete and her failure seems final. Her death, like the death of Christ, appears to be the victory of evil and the confirmation of Nietzsche.

Yet, according to Paul, it is precisely the crucified Christ who is the Lord of glory. The ignoble cross is the axis of history and the center of human existence. In precisely this way, Ofelia’s death is the event in which the weak shames the strong, in which innocence triumphs victorious over evil. Even more significantly, Paul writes that God chose “things that are not to reduce to nothing things that are.” Is this not exactly what we see in Pan’s Labyrinth? The fantastical world of “things that are not”—at least, according to the standards set by the human-historical world—is what reduces to nothing “things that are.” What seems to be nothing ends up changing everything. This is precisely how the film is a critically realistic narrative: the film does not merely criticize human strength, human violence, and human dehumanization; the film reduces such things to naught through the subversive victory of the new world—the spiritual, Real world—actualized in the life and death of Ofelia.

In conclusion, though Guillermo del Toro grew up as a devout Catholic, he eventually left the faith. He explains the transition from faith to doubt as follows:

I was a choir boy. I was a member of the Virgin Mary Society. And I was this and I was that. And then, when you reach your teenage years, I discovered that the world was much wider. I started working in a place where I had to go through the morgue. One day I saw such a horrifying sight at the morgue that instantly showed me there was no real order in the universe, at least not a conscious order dictated by a guy in white robes and a long beard. It really shook me. [Terry Gross asks: “What did you see?”] I saw a pile of fetuses that was about five feet tall. There was such a harrowing variety of things going on there on every level [at the morgue]. I just realized, I guess we are on our own, so we better make the best of it. It’s this world that I saw that made me love with a passion the world that I was creating.

What changed del Toro was the problem of evil.[Fn8] The haunting reality in which we live was simply too anarchic to be the domain of a loving, all-powerful God. And consequently he began to make films that were themselves anarchic in character, stories that were in rebellion against the rebelliousness of this present world. As he admitted, “horror and fantasy saved my brain” and “allowed me to survive” in the midst of such a difficult, violent, and confusing adolescence.

In the end, how did del Toro get so much of the gospel right in Pan’s Labyrinth, even though he got so much of the gospel wrong growing up? Del Toro has the mistaken view that Christianity is simply a religion that protects you from hell and conforms a person into a particular religious mold. And he is not alone in holding such a view. Christianity was and often still is part and parcel of the Establishment. As part of the cultural-historical framework, Christianity said Yes to the world; it was an uncritical faith that adapted and conformed to reality. Christianity blessed the world’s injustices rather than rebelling against them. All of this is still too often true today. Thus, del Toro feels compelled in his own artistic works to carry out the rebellion which religion failed to do. In doing so, he ended up discovering the gospel.

Pan’s Labyrinth is thus, in many ways, a testament to what the gospel truly is—a gospel of anarchic liberation. Christianity is properly a religion of rebellion and revolution. The Christian faith subverts the Establishment in the event of the cross and actualizes a new world in the event of the resurrection. Like the film, the Christian faith is a critically realistic narrative of redemption. The gospel does not uncritically affirm this world but instead looks wholeheartedly toward the eschatological coming of true Reality. As Karl Barth emphatically stated, “Christianity which is not wholly and completely and without remainder eschatology has nothing whatsoever to do with Christ.” The gospel of liberation says No at the same time that it says Yes: No to the old Establishment and Yes to the new world, No to injustice and oppression and Yes to righteousness and freedom; No to dehumanizing violence and Yes to rehumanizing peace; No to life-denying death and Yes to death-denying life. We find the same gospel of liberation in Pan’s Labyrinth: No to the world of the Captain and Yes to the world of Ofelia.

Pan’s Labyrinth is finally a testament to the power of art. The old adage, “All truth is God’s truth wherever it may be found,” is nowhere more evident than here. If there is anything this profound film demonstrates, it is that when we delve wholly into story, we discover the Story; when we seek reality, we discover Reality; when we pursue truth, we discover Truth. All of this, of course, is the gift of grace. And that is precisely what Pan’s Labyrinth is: a taste of grace in an often graceless world. For this, we should be truly grateful.

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Fn1. Del Toro’s other film, The Devil’s Backbone, sets up Pan’s Labyrinth historically because of its setting in the Spanish Civil War.

Fn2. The Christological parallels in Hellboy are obvious as well, but they are less developed and the incarnation is of a very different sort. Pan’s Labyrinth is more fully and profoundly a re-telling of the gospel in fairytale form.

Fn3. This false distinction between objective and subjective is precisely what Terry Gross of NPR consistently applied to the film in her interview with Guillermo del Toro—which he had to correct. Gross spoke of the conflict between the Captain and the rebels as the “reality part of the film,” and later, when del Toro rejected this statement by speaking of “the girl’s reality,” she continued to misunderstand him and talk about how we often feel the need to fabricate stories in order to get through life. This forced him to make much more explicit his rejection of the hard and fast distinction between reality and fiction. Del Toro also made the especially fascinating statement that whereas an adult “invites Jesus into her heart,” a young child “invites monsters into her heart.” There are two ways of reading this statement, as del Toro intimated. On one hand, you can view Jesus as just a subjective figment of the imagination. On the other hand, you can affirm monsters to be as real to children as Jesus is to adults. Del Toro prefers the latter interpretation.

Fn4. According to del Toro, the critical fairytales and horror films are ones that show the monsters in a favorable light and show the humans as the real monsters. In Pan’s Labyrinth, the Captain is the true monster.

Fn5. Another notable, though often unrecognized, film in this genre is In America. Finding Neverland is critical, but not realistic; that is, it posits the need for an alternative but cannot finally sustain such an alternative vision. The point of Peter Pan is that Neverland is not paradise but hell. A land where you cannot grow up is a land where you cannot mature; and thus it is finally a land where you cannot be truly human. The Narnia tales by C. S. Lewis reside somewhere between Pan’s Labyrinth and Finding Neverland—more realistic than the latter, but more escapist than the former. Compared to these other two stories, Narnia offers a truly dialectical alternative; that is, Narnia has its own autonomous existence. The world of 20th century Britain and the world of Narnia exist side-by-side with no necessary interrelation. Narnia is critical of the modern human world, but it is not realistic enough to impinge upon this world. That is, Narnia is more of an escape from the confines of modern social propriety rather than a constructive alternative which could conceivably impact how one ought to live in the world of humans. If there is such an effect, it is more accidental than necessary. Evidence of this strictly dialectical relation is confirmed by Lewis’ own admission that Narnia is not a retelling of our own world but rather an imaginative attempt to conceive of a separate autonomous cosmos in which Christ is a Lion rather than a human.

Fn6. From a theological standpoint, it is perhaps unfortunate—when reading this film Christologically—that the man who kills Ofelia, the Captain, is the very one who calls himself her “father.” For this very reason, we should be cautious about drawing the parallel too closely. Not only will do an injustice to the film; we will also do an injustice to the Christian faith. That said, we should point out that the Captain is not actually Ofelia’s father; he only claims the title, though Ofelia refuses to affirm it. We finally meet Ofelia’s father at the end of the film. An equally justified Christological reading of the film would be to see the Captain as a fictional embodiment of the Devil. Here the analogy to the Christian faith is not ideal, but it is at least a model of the atonement that finds some support in the ancient tradition.

Fn7. Del Toro: “That type of obedience, where you find refuge in the corporate, or when you find refuge in the political or religious majority, is such an absolutely despicable cowardice—the cowardice that the Captain displayed by making the others non-human so he can torture or kill them.”

Fn8. There was also a positive side to his experience of violence and evil: “[Violence] made me very conscious of dying, decay, and fragility. I think we live our lives sometimes believing we are immortal, and we’re not. And our lives actually gain more sense when we believe in pain and when we believe in mortality. I believe that it makes us better to connect with this dark side of life.”

The Spirit of the Lord, §8: Missio Dei and Missio Communionis

The mediation of Christ frees us from the impossible task of achieving the shalom which only the Messiah can accomplish for us and only the Spirit consummate in us. The mediation of Christ thus frees us from impossibility and frees us for limitless possibilities. The mission of Jesus Christ to reconcile the world to God frees the elect community for the mission of bringing salvation “to the end of the earth.” The missio Dei establishes the missio communionis—the mission of God establishes the mission of the community. To be sure, the two missions are not identical: the former reconciles humanity to God, while the latter proclaims the actuality of this reconciliation to the world. The former accomplishes the reality of shalom; the latter bodies forth this shalom into the world as the first fruits of the promised kingdom in which “righteousness and peace will kiss each other” (Ps. 85:10). The triune God fulfills the mission of reconciliation in order to free the community of faith for the mission of proclamation. The Deus pacis establishes the communio pacis (Rom. 15:33; 1 Cor. 14:33). Jesus thus proclaims to the disciples after his resurrection, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn. 20:21). As the Father sent the Son on the divine mission to definitively accomplish the peace of the world in his death and resurrection, so too the Son sends the faithful community into the world as the cruciform communion of peace. The God of peace (Deus pacis) sends forth the communion of peace (communio pacis) on a mission of peace (missio pacis).

If the missio Dei revolves around the promised Messiah, then the missio communionis must be understood in the closest possible relation to Israel as the original covenantal community of mission in the world. The church—as the ekklesia or assembly of those “grafted” onto “the rich root” of Israel (Rom. 11:17-24)—is called to live in conformity with the Israelite community, no longer as those in bondage to sin, death, and the law, but rather in bondage to Immanuel, God with us and for us in Jesus Christ: “my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Rom. 7:4; cf. Heb. 2:14-15).

We should notice three important details in this passage from Romans: (1) The death and resurrection of Christ correspond to our own death to sin and our own resurrection to new life, for he “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). In other words, as discussed earlier, (2) Christ’s death is actually our death. In his death to sin, we too died to sin; in his resurrection, we were raised to new life. To put this another way, the death of Christ is the negative side of reconciliation, and the resurrection is the positive side. Good Friday removes the “old self” in bondage to sin and death; Easter establishes the “new self” in bondage to God in faithful solidarity with the Israelite community. Finally, (3) because we are joined to Christ—forming the “body of Christ” (cf. Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 12:27)—we are also for that reason joined to each other. We died to sin in Christ’s body in order to belong to Christ as his body, and because we belong to Christ we also belong to one another, including our neighbor. We were elected in Jesus Christ in order to become the missional body of Christ through his once-for-all sacrifice—a communal identity newly actualized each moment according to Word and Spirit. By the grace of God we thus participate in Christ and become his ecclesial body through the awakening and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit for the sake of bearing fruit in the world. Our covenant fellowship with Jesus Christ according to the love of God and the power of the Spirit determines our corporate identity as the corpus Christi.