Theologian: Christian Leaders Fooled by Noah Film as biblical

Brietbart ^ | 1 April 2014 | John Nolte

[GreyFriar]

I inferred that the “Christian Leaders” reference was to all those who have been quoted in various and assundery articles and news reports as being against it. Rather then him providing an actuall list of names.

[MrB]

Yeah, who was fooled?

In just some cursory osmosis of news about it, I knew it wasn’t biblical, despite the claims in the advertising.

[dmz]

I tend to believe that if a single, big name, Christian leader was promoting the movie as Biblical, it would be in the headline of the article.

The absence thereof leads me to think that it’s hard to find a Christian leader with any name recognition that is promoting this movie.

JMO.

[Alex Murphy]

Dr. Brian Mattson, a theologian with a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the University of Aberdeen who now serves as Senior Scholar of Public Theology for the Center for Cultural Leadership, has written a scathing review of Darren Aronofsky's "Noah" that takes special aim at the numerous Christian leaders who endorsed a film "direct from Kabbalist and Gnostic sources" that has zero to do with the Bible.

That "scathing review" cites example after example of the "Kabbalist and Gnostic sources" that were used to add detail to the Noah story, the most disturbing of which to me is this story element:

The action opens when Lamech is about to bless his son, Noah. Lamech, rather strangely for a patriarch of a family that follows God, takes out a sacred relic, the skin of the serpent from the Garden of Eden. He wraps it around his arm, stretches out his hand to touch his son—except, just then, a band of marauders interrupts them and the ceremony isn’t completed. Lamech gets killed, and the “villain” of the film, Tubal-Cain, steals the snakeskin. Noah, in other words, doesn’t get whatever benefit the serpent’s skin was to bestow. The skin doesn’t light up magically on Tubal-Cain’s arm, so apparently he doesn’t get “enlightened,” either. And that’s why everybody in the film, including protagonist and antagonist, Noah and Tubal-Cain, is worshiping “The Creator.” They are all deluded....

....Many reviewers thought Noah’s change into a homicidal maniac on the ark, wanting to kill his son’s two newborn daughters, was a weird plot twist. It isn’t weird at all. In the Director’s view, Noah is worshiping a false, homicidal maniac of a god. The more faithful and “godly” Noah becomes, the more homicidal he becomes. He is becoming every bit the “image of god” that the “evil” guy who keeps talking about the “image of god,” Tubal-Cain, is. But Noah fails “The Creator.” He cannot wipe out all life like his god wants him to do. “When I looked at those two girls, my heart was filled with nothing but love,” he says. Noah now has something “The Creator” doesn’t. Love. And Mercy. But where did he get it? And why now? In the immediately preceding scene Noah killed Tubal-Cain and recovered the snakeskin relic: “Sophia,” “Wisdom,” the true light of the divine. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Sadly, Mattson fails to back up his headline by not naming a single "Christian Leader" who was "fooled" by the film. Instead, what he says about those unnamed leaders is this blistering critique:

So let me tell you what the real scandal in all of this is. It isn’t that he made a film that departed from the biblical story. It isn’t that disappointed and overheated Christian critics had expectations set too high. The scandal is this: of all the Christian leaders who went to great lengths to endorse this movie (for whatever reasons: “it’s a conversation starter,” “at least Hollywood is doing something on the Bible,” etc.), and all of the Christian leaders who panned it for “not following the Bible”… Not one of them could identify a blatantly Gnostic subversion of the biblical story when it was right in front of their faces.