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CHRISTIAN
RESEARCH PROJECTS |
Mel Gibson's Passion Undermines The Deity of Christ
In the midst of the furor that has accompanied
the release of Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, there is an
important theological issue at stake that is surprisingly being overlooked by
most Christians and critics of the film. The issue is this. If Jesus
Christ is truly God, as Christians claim Him to be, how can He be portrayed in
a motion picture when, as God, He expressly forbids the making of images of His
person in Exodus 20:4? “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (See Leviticus
19:4;Deuteronomy 5:8; 27:15; Isaiah 40:18-20; 42:8; 2 Corinthians 6:16)
Furthermore, if Jesus Christ is at this very moment seated at the right hand of
The Father in heaven (Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34-36; Ephesians 1:3, 20; 2:6;
Hebrews 1:3, 13; 8:1; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22), then the making of an image of His
person is again expressly forbidden. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged
Dictionary of the English Language defines an image as “a physical likeness
or representation of a person, animal or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured,
or otherwise made visible.” In addition, if Jesus is a member of the
Godhead as 1 John 5:7 states “For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one,”
then any material representation of any member of the Godhead is
forbidden.
In Deuteronomy 4:12-16, God warned Israel that
since they had heard only a voice, but saw no form
on the day He spoke to them from the mountain, they were not to corrupt
themselves and make an image of Him in the likeness of a male or female. And in
the New Testament, the apostle Paul defines idolatry in Romans 1:23 as changing
“the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible
man” In other words, changing the image of the eternal God into the image
of sinful man, who is subject to decay.
During His earthly ministry, Jesus told the
religious leaders of His day in John 8:24 "I said therefore unto you,
that you shall die in your sins: for if you believe not that I AM he,
you shall die in your sins." (See also Isaiah 43:10, 13, 25; 46:4;
48:12) Therefore, by using the expression “I AM”, Jesus was identifying himself
as Yahweh God of the Old Testament, The I AM THAT I AM, The
Self-Existing, Eternal God who spoke to Moses in Exodus 3:14 and gave
the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel from Mt. Sinai prohibiting any
reproduction of the Divine in Exodus 20:4. Later in John 8:59, these same
religious leaders attempted to stone Jesus because they clearly understood the
theological implications of His claim to be the “I AM.” In their reasoning, He
had blasphemed the name of the LORD (Yahweh) and was, therefore, worthy of
death by stoning. (Leviticus 24:16)
Additionally, nowhere in the Scriptures is there
a written record of Jesus’ physical appearance while he walked the earth.
And although the apostles, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, (2 Peter 1:20-21) claimed to have heard,
seen, looked upon and handled that which
was from the beginning, THE WORD OF LIFE, (Jesus Christ)
they have given us no indication whatsoever of what Jesus looked like. (1 John
1:1-2) Yet, the Scriptures declare that Jesus Christ is the image of
God. He is both the revelation and manifestation of the true and living God (Colossians
1:15; Hebrews 1:3; 2 Corinthians 3:18) and in Him dwells the fullness of the
Godhead in bodily form. (Colossians 2:9) How then can a lifeless picture or
image, devised by the fanciful imaginations of men, capture or convey the
incomparable glory and majesty of Christ? (John 1:14; 2 Peter 1:16) The apostle
John writes in 1 John 5:20-21 “And we know that the Son of God has come, and
has given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we
are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God,
and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” Since Jesus Christ is both the revelation and
manifestation of the true and living God, John warned believers in the first
century to refrain from making material representations of His person. Wouldn’t
then an image claiming to represent Jesus therefore be, by definition, “another
Jesus?" (2 Corinthians 11:4)
Those who have truly come to know Jesus Christ
through the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit as He is revealed in the
Scriptures need no pictures or images to convey to them the true knowledge of
God. They know that Jesus Christ is the express image of
the invisible God. When Philip asked Jesus, “Lord show us the Father
and it will satisfy us?” Jesus answered, “Have I been so long with you and you
have not known me, Philip? He that has seen me has seen the Father.” (John
14:8-9a) Jesus said to the doubtful apostle Thomas, in John 20:29 “Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
By creating pictures and images of Christ in
artwork, books, videotapes, films, and on the stained glass windows of
churches, men have corrupted the true knowledge of God and added to the
biblical revelation of Christ. Yet, God warns against adding to His Word in
Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Proverbs 30:6 and Revelation 22:18.
Moreover, since the
gospel is concerning Jesus Christ, (Romans 1:1-4), then what Jesus is being
presented to people through these false images that are featured prominently in
books, videotapes and films? Wouldn’t these pictures be by definition
counterfeits, since the Scriptures provide us with no written record whatsoever
of Jesus’ physical appearance? Moreover, how can a God who condemns images of
His person, be represented by an image?
Tragically, centuries
of religious tradition have so corrupted the minds of many within Christendom
to the extent that when they speak, and think, of Jesus, they think of Him in
terms of these false images and pictures that have been deeply engraved on
their subconscious minds from their youth. That is why Mel Gibson’s film can be
so widely embraced by so many evangelicals without even the slightest
objection. When children grow up having these false images of Christ reinforced
upon their impressionable minds as a result of the images and pictures they see
portrayed in books, video tapes and on the stained glass windows of their
churches, they subconsciously begin to accept these images as authentic
representations of the Divine. And sadly, it is all based upon a lie that many
have come to embrace as the truth.
The earliest Christians, however, in obedience
to God’s commandments, had no use for pictures or images of Christ. Philip Schaff in his eight volume work The
History of The Christian Church, under the title Images of Christ, points
this out when he writes, “The primitive church...had no images of Christ,
since most Christians at that time still adhered to the commandment of Moses
(Ex.xx.4); In addition, the church was obliged for her own honor, to abstain
from images, particularly from any representation of the Lord, lest she should
be regarded by unbelievers as merely a new kind and special sort of heathenism
and creature-worship…. The first representations of Christ are of heretical
and pagan origin.”1
Frederic W. Farrar, in his monumental work The
Life of Christ As Represented In Art, supports Schaff’s conclusions.“It
may be fearlessly asserted that for more than four centuries after the
Ascension, orthodox and well-instructed Christians of every condition, rich and
poor, learned and unlearned, regarded it as an act of irreverence, if not
actual profanity, to paint Christ in His purely human aspect.”2 He goes on to point
out that it was the Gnostics who first created pictures of Christ. “In point
of fact, the use of pictures or other representations of Christ invaded the
Church from a very tainted source. Simon Magus is charged with having been the
first to introduce images. Irenaeus tells us that images of Christ were unheard
of, till the Gnostics – especially the corrupt Carpocracians – pretended that
such an one had been made by Pilate.”3
In his thought-provoking book, The Vanishing
Word: The Veneration of Visual Imagery in the Postmodern World,
Arthur Hunt further explains how the images of pagan gods came to be incorporated
into the worship of the church. “Pagan idols were also rechristened…images
have always been a staple of paganism…Jesus and John the Baptist were the
first to appear over the church altar, then Mary (Queen of Heaven and Earth),
the saints and the angels. The pictures and statuettes were all too familiar
with the older system. Jesus looked like Horus, the Egyptian sky god; and Mary
bore an uncanny resemblance to Isis, the goddess of royalty…The unlearned
received their ideas about religion from the mosaics, paintings, sculptures and
stained-glass windows adoring the churches. It was here that paganism and
Christianity were visually reconciled.”4
If God expressly forbids the making of images to
represent Him, and Christians in the early church had no use for pictures of
Jesus Christ, who was responsible for legitimizing the use of such images in
the practice of the church? History records that it was the Roman Catholic
Church, who at the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 787 AD, legitimized
the use of images of Christ. The Council decreed, "We decree with full precision and care that…the
revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable
material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments
and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways. These are the
images of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.. The more frequently they are
seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember
and long for those who serve as models, and pay these images the tribute of
salutation and respectful veneration. . Indeed, the honor paid to an image
traverses it, reaching the model and he who venerates the image, venerates the
person represented in that image.”5
The Council further
pronounced anathemas upon those who were opposed to the use of deity images. "If
anyone does not confess that Christ our God can be represented
in his humanity, let him be anathema.
If anyone does not salute such representations as standing for
the Lord...let him be anathema.”6
Therefore, every
church, Christian ministry, book-publishing house and film production company
that uses these false pictures and images of Christ derives their authority to
do so, not from God’s Word, but from the authority of the Roman Catholic
Church.
It is indeed ironic that Mel Gibson, a
traditionalist Catholic, has produced this film with a false image of Christ
that is based on the apparitions of the Catholic mystic, Anne Catherine
Emmerich, who claimed to have seen visions of the passion, death and
resurrection of Christ which were recorded in her book The Dolorous Passion
of Our Lord Jesus Christ. In a brief summation of her book, it is stated
that Anne Catherine Emmerich’s visions “are highly detailed and highly
descriptive, revealing to us more information about the Life of Jesus Christ
besides what we read of Him in the Bible.”7
Interestingly,
a new Catholic website Catholic Passion Outreach has this to say about the
film. “Mel Gibson’s forthcoming epic film, The Passion of the Christ, will
soon hit movie theatres around the country. Evangelical Christian churches are
viewing this movie as ‘the greatest opportunity for evangelization in
centuries.’ Until now, the Catholic Church has been slow to respond. The question
that needs to be asked is, ‘Will a very Catholic movie created by a Catholic
director result in Catholics leaving the Church due to proselytizing by other
churches?’”8
It is obvious that Roman Catholics see this film
as an excellent vehicle to “spread, strengthen and share their (Catholic)
faith.” In an interview with Peter Boyer, published in September 15, 2003
edition of The New Yorker, Gibson stated “there is no salvation for those
outside of the (Catholic) Church.. I believe it…that is a pronouncement from
the chair. I go with it.”9
Yet, it is shocking to
see so many evangelicals enthusiastically embracing this film, even though
Gibson believes that these same evangelicals are strangers to eternal salvation
as long as they remain outside of the Roman Catholic Church. More importantly,
however, The Passion will further engrave the image of a counterfeit Christ
upon the minds of millions of moviegoers, further obliterating the distinction
between the Creator and the creature, the human and the Divine.
If evangelicals truly
believed that Jesus Christ is Yahweh God of the Old Testament, who spoke from
Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20:4, prohibiting the making of material representations of
His person, then they would not be widely endorsing a film that promotes
idolatry. Regrettably, their widespread endorsement of The Passion illustrates
that they REALLY do not know who the biblical Jesus truly is.
It was Jesus Christ
Himself who said in John 8:24 “for if you do not believe that I AM he,
you will die in your sins.” Jesus is stating emphatically to the Jewish leaders
of his day that if they did not believe that he was Yahweh God of the Old
Testament (who prohibited the reproduction of the Divine in Exodus 20:4;
Deuteronomy 4:12-16) they would die in their sins. What fate awaits those today
who, while claiming to believe that Jesus Christ is the Eternal God
effectively, deny His deity by picturing Him in books, videotapes, films and on
the stained glass windows of their churches? Tragically, many have placed their
faith in a counterfeit Jesus; a god who can be pictured, but who cannot save. If
the God of Christianity can be pictured, then this is not the faith that was
once for all delivered unto the saints. (Jude 3) Could this be one of the
reasons for Jesus’ sobering words that are recorded in Matthew 7:21-23?
In Acts 17:29-31, the
apostle Paul, speaking to the Athenians of his day, called upon those who were
guilty of worshipping God by means of images to repent. "Forasmuch then as we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is
like unto gold, silver, or stone, graven by art or man’s device. At the time of
this ignorance God winked at, but NOW is calling on all men everywhere
to repent (of idolatry) because He has appointed a day when He will
judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has ordained; whereof He has
given assurance unto all men, in that He has raised him from the death.”
Lorin Smith
Editor
Christian Research
Projects
Footnotes
1.
Philip Schaff, The History of The Christian
Church, in The Master Christian Library, Version 6, Ages Digital Library,
Volume 3, Chapter 8, Images of Christ, p.432
2.
Frederic W. Farrar, The Life of
Christ As Represented In Art,
(New York, N.Y: Macmillan and Co., 1894), p. 5.
3.
Ibid., pps. 59-60
4.
Arthur W. Hunt III, The Vanishing
Word: The Veneration of Visual Imagery in the Postmodern World,
(Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), p. 61
5.
HistoricalDiscoveryPresentsCouncilsoftheChurch,
www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/8920/churchcouncils/Ecum07.html.
6.
Ibid
7.
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, www.emmerich1.com/DOLOROUS_PASSION_OF_OUR_LORD_JESUS_CHRIST.h
8.
Catholic Passion Outreach,
http://passion.catholicexchange.com/press_editor.html
9.
Peter J. Boyer, “The Jesus War: Mel
Gibson & ‘The Passion’ The New Yorker, September 15, 2003.
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