Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children
By John-Henry Westen
NEW YORK, December 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A review of New Line Cinema's The Nativity story by Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger of the Franciscans of the Immaculate in the United States, points out that the film, which opened December 1, misinterprets scripture from a Catholic perspective.
While Fr. Geiger admits that he found the film is "in general, to be a pious and reverential presentation of the Christmas mystery." He adds however, that "not only does the movie get the Virgin Birth wrong, it thoroughly Protestantizes its portrayal of Our Lady."
In Isaiah 7:14 the Bible predicts the coming of the Messiah saying: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel." Fr. Geiger, in an video blog post, explains that the Catholic Church has taught for over 2000 years that the referenced Scripture showed that Mary would not only conceive the child miraculously, but would give birth to the child miraculously - keeping her physical virginity intact during the birth.
The film, he suggests, in portraying a natural, painful birth of Christ, thus denies the truth of the virginal and miraculous birth of Christ, which, he notes, the Fathers of the Church compared to light passing through glass without breaking it. Fr. Geiger quoted the fourth century St. Augustine on the matter saying. "That same power which brought the body of the young man through closed doors, brought the body of the infant forth from the inviolate womb of the mother."
Fr. Geiger contrasts The Nativity Story with The Passion of the Christ, noting that with the latter, Catholics and Protestants could agree to support it. He suggests, however, that the latter is "a virtual coup against Catholic Mariology".
The characterization of Mary further debases her as Fr. Geiger relates in his review. "Mary in The Nativity lacks depth and stature, and becomes the subject of a treatment on teenage psychology."
Beyond the non-miraculous birth, the biggest let-down for Catholics comes from Director Catherine Hardwicke's own words. Hardwicke explains her rationale in an interview: "We wanted her [Mary] to feel accessible to a young teenager, so she wouldn't seem so far away from their life that it had no meaning for them. I wanted them to see Mary as a girl, as a teenager at first, not perfectly pious from the very first moment. So you see Mary going through stuff with her parents where they say, 'You're going to marry this guy, and these are the rules you have to follow.' Her father is telling her that she's not to have sex with Joseph for a year-and Joseph is standing right there."
Comments Fr. Geiger, "it is rather disconcerting to see Our Blessed Mother portrayed with 'attitude;' asserting herself in a rather anachronistic rebellion against an arranged marriage, choosing her words carefully with her parents, and posing meaningful silences toward those who do not understand her."
Fr. Geiger adds that the film also contains "an overly graphic scene of St. Elizabeth giving birth," which is "just not suitable, in my opinion, for young children to view."
Despite its flaws Fr. Geiger, after viewing the film, also has some good things to say about it. "Today, one must commend any sincere attempt to put Christ back into Christmas, and this film is certainly one of them," he says. "The Nativity Story in no way compares to the masterpiece which is The Passion of the Christ, but it is at least sincere, untainted by cynicism, and a worthy effort by Hollywood to end the prejudice against Christianity in the public square."
And, in addition to a good portrait of St. Joseph, the film offers "at least one cinematic and spiritual triumph" in portraying the Visitation of Mary to St. Elizabeth. "Although the Magnificat is relegated to a kind of epilogue at the movie's end, the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth is otherwise faithful to the scriptures and quite poignant. In a separate scene, the two women experience the concurrent movement of their children in utero and share deeply in each other's joy. I can't think of another piece of celluloid that illustrates the dignity of the unborn child better than this."
See Fr. Geiger's full review here:
http://airmaria.com/
One more thing..
About the verse(s) that posits that a man shall become one flesh with his wife.. in marriage.. One wonders if that is a metaphor referring to the Husband(Groom) and the Bride of Christ(wife).. The Husband being Gods Spirit(s) and the bride being the spirits of certain humans(church).. implied also in the last several chapters of revelation.. For the spiritual city is itself spirits not stuctures... God and man becoming one spirit like a husband and wife becoming one flesh.. Talk about harmony and oneness..
That is beyond anthropomorphiziation.. I think..
Spirits; with no need of shelter and all the other things physical bodies require for comfort and sensual delight or pain..
The Bible could be read with an anthropomorphizing attitude or read de-anthropomorphized.. two different books I think.. This is quite a subject.. Us being two Children of God playing in the Universal sandbox.. (( HUG ))... Betcha spirits have no need of gender either, why would they?.. Gender served a purpose on earth but not needed Universally, I think.. Gender could be the ultimate anthropomorphosis.. Ya.. think?..
"So, all the "saints" you meet have made a covenant "by sactifice?"
Saints are only saints because of The Sacrifice, foreshadowed before Christ by the sacrificial system and realized in Christ.
The last two chapters of revelation goes into the thinglyness of things in the "Spiritual Dimension"/realm.. Takes a bit of a spiritual shift to see that those things are the Spirits/spirits themselves.. I think.. Am looking forward to a dimensional shift myself.. Could make this four dimension thing (I've been living) quite boring..
Neither one of you has a real clue...
You don't even have a clue either...
This from the folks who's churches don't even preach following 1 Corinthians.
Faith in God, is indeed a sacrifice..
Rational thinking adults do not qualify for salvation...
What then is smart?.. The jump of faith then is rational.. although a sacrifice..
Could be, hosepipe! Could be....
What, exactly, is the biblical definition of
B L A S P H E M Y
???
Isn't it something along the lines of claiming something from the Holy Spirit is NOT of the Holy Spirit?
I Love The Spirit's expositions through your hands and mind.
Thx.
Indeed. Two books.
Though God The Father uses anthropomorphised metaphors for our benefit more than a little.
And, being somehow made in His/Their [Genesis "our"] image implies something more than 0.0% similarity.
Hmmmmm.
God is not a "thing" so He is nothing?
Does not compute.
Though, clearly, He is not a "thing" in our normal constructions on the word.
But He is infinitely more than nothing! LOL.
I grew weary of the tedius . . .
seeming denial/blindness/contentiousness/lack of respect for Scriptural clairty and truths coupled with seemingly compulsive assumptions, inferences, brazenly wild extrapolations . . .
May try and return to some of the issues for the sake of the lurkers . . . and others of reasonably good hearts and open mindedness.
At present . . . other priorities, irons in the fire.
Be at peace dear Sister. It's only about life and eternity! LOL.
"Thing" is a nebulous word.. many things can be thingly..
Even an idea can be a thing in a conversation.. or a Spirit/spirit..
What is a spirit made of?.. what is it?..
See what I mean......
Of course. Was having fun with you.
LUBBRO
I hear you on that lack of respect for scriptural clarity charge.
Folks who refuse to confess their sins as Scripture says to. Folks who feel it's okay for the church to forget what St Paul says in Corinthians with regard to women in church...
The list goes on and on...
Exactly.. About metaphorical inference...
If I say; "its raining cats and dogs"(metaphor)
And one goes running to "the window" to see pets falling...
That one has missed the point wouldn't you say..
Jesus spoke mostly/many times in metaphor.. sometimes anthropomorphised..
BUT many run to see the pets falling.. nevertheless..
Thats WHY I see this as quite a large subject..
And as A-G suggests part of the "observer" problem...
"I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "necessity." Are you speaking of it in a particular philosophical sense?"
I am using it in the Greek philosophical sense of "H Ἀνάγκη", "Necessity", an impersonal, wholly rationalistic, pre-existent, uncreated force which, it was posited, existed beyond the gods and to which the gods were subject. Both Plato and Aristotle dealt with it. "What do you think the following means? Hebrew 8:3 "Every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, and so it was necessary for this one also to have something to offer."" Of course this has to be read within the context of what Hebrews is teaching about and to whom it is written. The High Priest spoken of here is of course Christ. The role of the High Priests in the OT were to mediate in one manner or another between God and mankind, to act in a manner to bring the people to God. But their sacrifices didn't work (Psalm 40:6, 51:16, Isaiah 1:11, Amos 5:21; Jeremiah 6:20; 14:21 and Jeremiah 7:21). The OT does make clear what is an acceptable sacrifice, however, and how what motivated sacrifice is in fact "pleasing" or "acceptable" to God. As I have observed elsewhere, however, these acts are for us, not God. They change us, not God's opinion of us. At any rate, in order for Christ to be recognized by us men as the Hogh Priest, according to our understanding and nature, He had to have a "sacrifice" and that "sacrifice" was His perfect obedience in His human nature to God's will. "When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazurus that wasn't anthropomorphic, too, was is?" Nope, not anthropomorphic at all. The Holy Fathers at Chalcedon taught us that Christ is fully God and fully Man. Christ's human nature felt and experienced what humans feel and experience. It isn't anthropomorphic to decribe that humanity in human terms.
I love having fun..
(Adjusting eyepatch walking away with pegleg making clumping noises)..
(muttering to meself).. ARrgggh
No, kosta. It is not a big hurdle. Exactly what does being made in the image of God mean? What? Do we look like Him only? Do we smell like God? What is it?
God is a rational being. He has emotions (though He is not ruled by passions as we sometimes are). He has wrath. He has joy. He even sings. We are not making God like man when we describe Him thus. God made man similar to himself in many ways but inferior in all. God's emotions are not like our emotions. They are on a different plane that frankly, it is above our payscale to understand.
The God you describe is a feelingless robot. That is not the God of Scripture.
Rather, this is what Scripture says about God (not that one who is clearly anti-Scripture would care).
Psalm 7:11
God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.
Psalm 2:4
4He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.
Ephesians 4:30
And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Zephaniah 3:17
The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.
John 11:35
Jesus wept.
"I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." John 15:11
"... I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight." Jeremiah 9:24
"You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy." Micah 7:18
Exodus 20:5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
This issue of whether or not God has emotions given his unchanging nature is dealt with well at Spurgeon.org.http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/articles/impassib.htm
This article ends in this way which is very relevant to this discussion...
What Does Impassibility Mean, Then?
What about the charge that impassibility turns God into an iceberg? The complaint turns out to be bogus. In truth, mainstream classic theism has always denied that God is cold and remote from his creation. One of the earliest Church Fathers, Justin Martyr, said any view of God that sees Him as apathetic amounts to a kind of atheistic nominalism:
If any one disbelieves that God cares for [His creation], he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil. And this is the greatest profanity and wickedness.[17]
God isn't like a stone or an iceberg. His immutability is not inertia. The fact that He doesn't change His mind certainly doesn't mean He is devoid of thought. Likewise, the fact that He isn't subject to involuntary passions doesn't mean He is devoid of true affections. What it does mean is that God's mind and God's affections are not like human thoughts and passions. There's never anything involuntary, irrational, or out of control about the divine affections. Here's how J. I. Packer describes the doctrine of impassibility:
This means, not that God is impassive and unfeeling (a frequent misunderstanding), but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering and distress on him at their own will. In so far as God enters into suffering and grief (which Scripture's many anthropopathisms, plus the fact of the cross, show that he does), it is by his own deliberate decision; he is never his creatures' hapless victim. The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that God is a stranger to joy and delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.[18]
Notice Packer's emphasis: God's affections are never passive and involuntary, but rather always active and deliberate. Elsewhere, Packer writes,
[Impassibility is] not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in face of the creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God's experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.[19]
R. L. Dabney saw the doctrine in a similar light. He described God's affections as "active principles"—to distinguish them from mere passive emotions. He wrote,
These are not passions, in the sense of fluctuations or agitations, but none the less they are affections of his will, actively distinguished from the cognitions in his intelligence. They are true optative functions of the divine Spirit [expressions of God's spiritual desires and wishes].[20] However anthropopathic may be the statements regarding God's repentings, wrath, pity, pleasure, love, jealousy, hatred, in the Scriptures, we should do violence to them if we denied that he here meant to ascribe to Himself active affections in some mode suitable to his nature.[21]
Note that both Packer and Dabney insist, and do not deny, that God has true affections. Both, however, see the divine affections as always active, never passive. God is the sovereign initiator and instigator of all His own affections—which are never uncontrolled or arbitrary. He cannot be made to emote against His will, but is always the source and author of all His affective dispositions.
Edwards made another helpful distinction. He wrote,
The affections and passions are frequently spoken of as the same; and yet, in the more common use of speech, there is in some respect a difference. Affection is a word that, in its ordinary signification, seems to be something more extensive than passion, being used for all vigorous lively actings of the will or inclination; but passion for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, and the mind more overpowered, and less in its own command.[22]
Edwards was suggesting that passions are involuntary and non-rational; whereas affections are volitions and dispositions that are under the control of the rational senses.
Given such a distinction, it seems perfectly appropriate to say that whereas God is "without passions," He is surely not "without affections." In fact, His joy, His wrath, His sorrow, His pity, His compassion, His delight, His love, his hatred—and all the other divine affections—epitomize the very perfection of all the heartfelt affections we know (albeit imperfectly) as humans. His affections are absent the ebb and flow of changeableness that we experience with human emotions, but they are real and powerful feelings nonetheless. To suggest that God is unfeeling is to mangle the intent of the doctrine of impassibility.
So a proper understanding of impassibility should not lead us to think God is unfeeling. But His "feelings" are never passive. They don't come and go or change and fluctuate. They are active, sovereignly-directed dispositions rather than passive reactions to external stimuli. They differ in this way from human passions.
Furthermore, God's hatred and His love, His pleasure and his grief over sin—are as fixed and immutable as any other aspect of the divine character (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17).[23] If God appears to change moods in the biblical narrative—or in the outworking of His Providence—it is only because from time to time in His dealings with His people, He brings these various dispositions more or less to the forefront, showing us all the aspects of His character. But His love is never overwhelmed by His wrath, or vice versa. In fact, there is no real change in Him at all.
How can that be? We don't know. As humans we can no more imagine how God's affections can be eternally free from change than we can comprehend infinity itself. In Dabney's words, "Can we picture an adequate conception of [God's affections]? No; 'it is high; we cannot attain to it.' But this is the consistent understanding of revelation, and the only apprehension of God which does not both transcend and violate man's reason."[24] God's affections, like every other aspect of His character, simply cannot be understood in purely human terms. And that is why Scripture employs anthropopathic expressions.
Dabney also gave a wise word of caution about the danger of brushing aside the meaning of biblical figures of speech. While he acknowledged the widespread use of anthropopathism in Scripture, he was not willing to evacuate such metaphors of their common-sense implications. These may be figurative expressions, Dabney argued, but they are not devoid of meaning. Citing some verses that speak of God's delight and His wrath, Dabney asked, "Is all this so anthropopathic as not even to mean that God's active principles here have an objective? Why not let the Scriptures mean what they so plainly strive to declare?"[25]
Unlike the modern open theists, Dabney saw clearly both sides of what the Scriptures strive to declare: God is unchanging and unchangeable, but He is not devoid of affection for His creation. His impassibility should never be set against His affections. His immutability does not rule out personal involvement with His creatures. Transcendence isn't incompatible with immanence.
God is not a metaphysical iceberg. While He is never at the mercy of His creatures, neither is He detached from them. His wrath against sin is real and powerful. His compassion for sinners is also sincere and indefatigable. His mercies are truly over all His works. And above all, His eternal love for His people is more real, more powerful, and more enduring than any earthly emotion that ever bore the label "love." Unlike human love, God's love is unfailing, unwavering, and eternally constant. That fact alone ought to convince us that God's affections are not like human passions.
In fact, isn't that a basic principle of Christianity itself? Anyone who imagines the divine affections as fluid, vacillating passions has no biblical understanding of the steadfastness and faithfulness of our God. That is why I object so strongly to open theism's denial of God's impassibility. In the name of making God more "relational," they have undermined the constancy of His love; they have divested Him of yet another of His incommunicable attributes, and they have taken another giant step further toward refashioning Him in the image of His creatures. Who can tell where the campaign to humanize God will end?
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