Age-Old Problem : Portrayals of Christ Tempt Controversy

Guess which movie is being discussed:

--”A direct attack on Jesus Christ . . . in such a way as to destroy the whole basis of Christian faith.”

--”Blasphemous” . . .”vicious” . . . “immoral.”

--”The portrayal of Christ shows him as a weakling--terrified, uncertain, searching, meditative, mystical, a guru-type Jesus--definitely not the strong Christ of the Scriptures.”

These could easily be quotes from the current protest aimed at the film “The Last Temptation of Christ,” scheduled for release this fall, but they are not.

Broader, More Intense

The angry criticisms were made in the 1970s when a spate of movies about Jesus Christ distressed some religious leaders. Opponents quoted above were decrying, respectively, “The Passover Plot” (1976), the Monty Python spoof “Life of Brian” (1979) and Franco Zefferelli’s TV mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977). In 1973, movie renditions of the musical productions “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell” also stirred objections.

But while there are echoes of previous complaints in the current furor, the outcry is broader and more intense this time, perhaps for two reasons. First, unlike other films on Jesus, “Last Temptation” apparently--the as-yet uncompleted film has not been screened for the press--depicts Jesus as dreaming of having sex with Mary Magdalene. Second, conservative Christian groups that have been at the forefront of the protest have grown in strength in the 1980s, mainly through religious broadcasting.

Nonetheless, the fact is that for centuries the story of Jesus has been the topic of various interpretations, starting with the Gospels themselves, and often those interpretations have inspired controversy.

Curiosity About Jesus

Literature and art have long attempted to satisfy curiosity about the life, purposes and relationships of Jesus. The 1955 novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” by Nikos Kazantzakis, upon which the Martin Scorsese/Universal Pictures movie is based, was in that tradition--right down to the nearly 1,900-year-old speculation that Jesus was enamored with a follower named Mary.

Artistic, imaginative interpretations of Jesus after the 1st Century tend to be elaborations on the four Gospels in the New Testament. But when fictional works appear to stray from the Gospel accounts, especially in provocative ways, many Christians object that deviating from the “historical record” of Jesus’ life is offensive and, at worst, blasphemous.

In fact, the consensus among mainstream New Testament scholars--those who apply contemporary critical and historical methods to Bible study--is that Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are not historical accounts in the modern sense, much less eyewitness reports. Rather, these scholars say, the Gospels are the products of creative evangelists in the last third of the 1st Century--well after the death of Jesus in about AD 30.

These scholars generally accept that Mark’s Gospel is the earliest in origin and that it was rewritten and expanded separately by Matthew and Luke. Mark is believed derived from various oral and written sources that had already been shaped, if not made up, by various wings of the early Christian church, according to critical scholarship.

There is basic narrative agreement among the Gospels on Jesus’ ministry, trial, crucifixion and Resurrection.

The Gospels’ harmonized view of Jesus depicts him as a clever teacher of wisdom, a healer and exorcist, a divine revealer from heaven, an apocalyptic Messiah figure, a Jewish religious reformer and the worship focus of Eucharistic rites.

Significant Differences

But there are also significant differences among the four stories. In the Gospel of John, for instance, Jesus speaks very differently than he does in Mark, Matthew and Luke. In John, he is a heavenly redeemer who describes his own identity in metaphors (“I am the light . . . the truth . . . the way . . . the door. . . .”) rather than dwelling on the central message of the Kingdom of God as he does in Mark, Matthew and Luke.

“Scholars have struggled for over 200 years with the fact that the four (New Testament) Gospels differ in their presentations of Jesus in significant details,” said Dennis Smith, who holds a doctorate of theology from Harvard Divinity School and teaches at Phillips University Graduate School in Enid, Okla.

The Gospels “certainly contain historical data, but it has been so covered over with theological reinterpretations that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to recover that which is historical,” Smith said.

Such analysis is disputed by evangelical scholars, who argue that the Bible, church doctrine and believers’ experiences of the Holy Spirit assure Christians that the Gospels do not contain invented sayings or false information. Moreover, such confidence in the Bible’s undiluted truth, evangelicals say, is in the classic, orthodox tradition of Christianity and not peculiar to American Protestantism.

Debate Among Believers

Regardless of the differences over scholarship, the New Testament is the authoritative source for Christians’ faith in the man they regard as the son of God. Thus, the debate among believers is whether certain books and movies--including “Last Temptation”--have departed so far from accepted images of Jesus that their very publication and production amounts to a grievous affront to Christians.

Nevertheless, creative elaborations on the biblical story of Jesus have long been a part of Western culture.

Churches in the early centuries produced many apocryphal works such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which told of miracles done by the child Jesus, or stories of the resurrected Jesus appearing (often in disguise) to the apostles.

Speculating about affection between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, described as a follower of Jesus in the Gospels, is not unique to “The Last Temptation of Christ.” The notion has deep roots in apocryphal Christian lore and later artwork.

In “The Gospel of Mary,” a Gnostic Christian text of the 2nd Century, Mary is someone whom the Savior “loved” more than the rest of his followers and to whom he gave a special revelation. In “The Gospel of Philip,” a text of similar origins, possibly from the 3rd Century, it is said that the Savior loved Mary Magdalene “more than (all) the disciples (and used to) kiss her (often).” The kiss in that text was apparently the “holy kiss” of fellowship exchanged between Christians, a practice also mentioned in the New Testament, according to scholars of early Christianity.

The theme of affection between Jesus and Mary Magdalene “threads its way” through Christian art, according to Jane Dillenberger of Berkeley, author of “Style and Content in Christian Art.” “It occurs in a number of paintings,” she said.

Similarly, “Christ and the Magdalene,” a sculpture by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), shows a nude Mary Magdalene clinging to the body of Christ on the cross.

Authors Ignore Doctrine

In literature, some well-known authors have deviated from biblical doctrine. John Milton in his epic poem “Paradise Regained” (1671) does not have Christ overcome the effects of original sin through his death on the cross, but rather through resisting Satan who tempts him in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13).

Jesus in William Blake’s “The Everlasting Gospel” (1818) is one “who stands for pride and free love” and rejects the Old Testament laws. D. H. Lawrence’s “The Man Who Died” (1931) imagines that Jesus did not die and that Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility, becomes his bride.

Scholars on the writings of Kazantzakis (1883-1957) see the author’s own spiritual odyssey reflected in “The Last Temptation of Christ.” After six months of spiritual exercises at a Greek Orthodox monastery attempting to make contact with the Savior, the youthful Kazantzakis returned to a savior he had found in studies at Athens and Paris--German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

According to a commentary that translator P. A. Bien wrote for the 1960 English edition of “Last Temptation,” Kazantzakis “was thereafter to renounce Nietzsche for Buddha, then Buddha for Lenin, then Lenin for Odysseus. When he returned finally to Christ . . . it was to a Christ enriched by everything that had come between.” Bien said Jesus embodies both Nietzsche’s “superman,” who by force of will achieves a victory over matter, and the ancient Greek hero Odysseus.

For Kazantzakis, Bien said, “it is paramount that Jesus be constantly tempted by evil in such a way that he feel its attractiveness and even succumb to it, for only in this way can his ultimate rejection of temptation have any meaning.”

Focus on Human Weaknesses

In the novel, and apparently in the movie as well, Jesus is tormented by what he only slowly realizes God wants him to do. His mother wants him to marry and have children, and Jesus struggles with that “last temptation” in a dream while on the cross. Eventually, he accepts the martyrdom that Christianity says redeemed humankind.

Kazantzakis’ focus on human weaknesses that he imagined in Jesus emphasizes one half of the standard Christian doctrine that Jesus is fully man and fully God. That has pleased some liberal Christians who contend that churches tend to overemphasize the “otherworldly Jesus.”

“The main thrust (of the novel) is that Jesus went through all the struggles of a human being and that it did not come easy,” said a United Methodist minister, Joseph W. Brownrigg, who has used the book in college and local church study groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Traces of those struggles can be seen in the Gospels, namely Jesus’ pre-arrest anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane and skepticism of Jesus’ family toward him, according to Brownrigg, who is currently teaching at the School of Theology at Claremont. One Gospel declares that Jesus’ family accepted the claim from a crowd that Jesus was crazed (Mark 3:21).

If the film by Scorsese is anything like the novel, Brownrigg said it will be one of the first motion pictures to “take seriously” the biblical portrait of Jesus’ humanity.

“The only film that comes close to that,” Brownrigg said, is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” distributed in this country in 1966.

Archbishop Critical

Brownrigg said that an extreme example of an otherwordly Jesus was in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965): The Christ played by Max von Sydow had shaved armpits.

But Roman Catholic Archbishop Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said in a recent statement that if an author or film maker wanted to highlight the humanity of Christ more fully, “then the focus should have been on the known human qualities so dear to all disciples of the Lord Jesus.”

Mahony cited Gospel narratives that depict Jesus crying openly when Lazarus dies, demonstrating compassion for a woman grieving over the loss of her son, the mercy he felt for a man born blind and his loneliness when leaders of the time rejected him.

The best-remembered film portrayals of Jesus go back to D. W. Griffith’s ambitious classic “Intolerance” (1916) and Cecil B. DeMille’s silent version of “King of Kings” (1927), which was remade in 1961. The 1927 film was an extravaganza that opened with Mary Magdalene’s lavish and lascivious life style and her later trip to Galilee to see “the vagabond carpenter” who took her suitor Judas from her.

Gospel Musicals

When “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell” set the Jesus story into modern settings and a musical framework there was considerable grumbling from some churches. But the films were hailed in one religious journal in 1975 as works which broadened “the freedom with which Jesus can now be treated on the screen.”

That observation may have been premature in light of the furor raised principally by fundamentalist Bob Jones III in 1977 over the NBC-TV miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth.” General Motors dropped its commercial sponsorship under that pressure, which was mild compared to the current outcry. Yet, the rather devout treatment was well-received and makes seasonal returns on TV.

Limited theater showings of “Hail Mary,” a 1985 French film by Jean-Luc Godard casting the Holy Family into a modern setting (the Virgin Mary was the daughter of a gas station owner), drew Catholic pickets but relatively little comment from evangelical Protestants, perhaps because of the special place of the Madonna in Catholicism.

But “The Last Temptation of Christ,” in touching upon the sexuality of Jesus, stirred concern among both Protestants and Catholics who saw an early version of the script. A screening of the “work-in-progress” film July 12 in New York drew mixed reactions from mainline church officials, but few of them backed the campaign to pressure Universal to not release the movie.

Protests Urged

Religious broadcasters James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Paul Crouch and Mother Angelica (of the Eternal Word Television Network) have urged viewers and listeners to write letters and make telephone calls to the studio to demand that it be withheld. Others have organized picketing at Universal and threatened boycotts of enterprises related to Universal and its parent company, MCA Inc.

One argument is that the film amounts to an attack on conservative Christians--a segment of Americans that has been largely frustrated this decade in efforts to change abortion laws, clamp down on pornography, reinstitute prayer in schools and rid classrooms of texts that allegedly promote secular humanism.

“It seems to me to be the latest example of that kind of disrespect and insult that could not be expressed to any other minority group in the world,” said Dobson on his “Focus on the Family” radio program. He said Muslims, blacks and other groups would not stand for equivalent treatment of one of their revered figures.

The boldest gesture to stop the film’s release was made July 15 by Campus Crusade Founder-President Bill Bright of San Bernardino, who offered to reimburse Universal’s investment in the movie if the studio would turn over all copies to be destroyed.

Universal Rejects Offer

In full-page newspaper ads, MCA Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Pollock rejected Bright’s offer, saying the movie is a work of fiction and a reflection of Catholic-raised Scorsese’s “own personal exploration.” To accept the offer, the ad said, would be to neglect “the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religious expression.” MCA is the parent company of Universal.

Campus Crusade, more than any other evangelistic organization, regards the Jesus story on film as a powerful tool for conversion. Worldwide evangelism by Campus Crusade pivots on a 1979 movie distributed by Warner Bros. called “Jesus” that closely follows the Gospel of Luke.

Campus Crusade and other missionary agencies have dubbed the movie into more than 100 languages.