The Spirit and the Screen: Pneumatological Reflections on Contemporary Cinema (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) 9781978714649, 9781978714663, 9781978714656, 1978714645

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The Spirit and the Screen

THEOLOGY, RELIGION, AND POP CULTURE Series Editor: Matthew Brake The Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies, sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square, Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in common: love for popular culture. Select Titles in the Series The Spirit and the Screen: Pneumatological Reflections on Contemporary Cinema, edited by Chris E. W. Green and Steven Félix-Jäger Bob Dylan and the Spheres of Existence, by Christopher B. Barnett Theology and Protest Music, edited by Heidi M. Altman and Jonathan H. Harwell Animated Parables: A Pedagogy of Seven Deadly Sins and a Few Virtues, by Terry Lindvall Theology and Batman: Examining the Religious World of the Dark Knight, edited by Matthew Brake and C. K. Robertson Theology, Religion, and Dystopia, edited by Scott Donahue-Martens and Brandon Simonson Theology and H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Austin M. Freeman Theology and Breaking Bad, edited by David K. Goodin and George Tsakiridis Theology and the Star Wars Universe, edited by Benjamin D. Espinoza Theology and Black Mirror, edited by Amber Bowen and John Anthony Dunne Theology and the Game of Thrones, edited by Matthew Brake Theology and Spider-Man, edited by George Tsakiridis René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture, edited by Ryan G. Duns and T. Derrick Witherington Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination, edited by Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead Theology and Prince, edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

The Spirit and the Screen Pneumatological Reflections on Contemporary Cinema Edited by Chris E. W. Green Steven Félix-Jäger

L E X I N G T O N B O O K S / F O RT R E S S A C A D E M I C

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781978714649 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978714663 (pbk) | ISBN 9781978714656 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

‌‌Chapter 1: Introduction: Beginnings and Aspirations (or: The Spirit Glows Where It Wills) Chris E. W. Green PART I:  THE SPIRIT AND THE NATURE OF FILM(MAKING)

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‌‌Chapter 2: The Move of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Temporality in Malick’s Cinema Chris E. W. Green

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‌‌Chapter 3: Feed the Birds: Mary Poppins, Film Musicals, and the Spirit of Life Kutter Callaway

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‌‌‌‌Chapter 4: Traditioning and the Spirit in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story Jeffrey S. Lamp

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‌‌Chapter 5: Power of the Spirit: Sayers and Cinema Crystal L. Downing PART II: SPIRIT FIGURES



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‌‌Chapter 6: POWER. GRACE. WISDOM. WONDER.: The Paraclete in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman 71 Steven Félix-Jäger ‌‌Chapter 7: Exegeting Samwise the (Brave) Advocate Lucia M. Sanders

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Contents

‌‌Chapter 8: Paciencia y Fe: The Spirited Presence of Abuela Claudia in In the Heights 99 Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo ‌‌Chapter 9: The Spirit and the Bride Say, “Come”: A Pneumatological Exploration of Te Fiti in Disney’s Moana D. Coleby Delgado PART III: THE SPIRIT-LED LIFE



‌‌Chapter 10: The Hospitality of the Spirit in Encanto “Joey” Alan Le

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‌‌Chapter 11: “Leave Six Inches for the Holy Spirit”: Lady Bird Comes of Age Gaye Williams Morris

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‌‌Chapter 12: Spiritus Absconditus: Listening to the Holy Spirit in Des Hommes et des Dieux 167 Sid D. Sudiacal ‌‌Chapter 13: A Hidden Life: Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and the Spirit of God in an Age of Totalitarianism Robby Waddell ‌‌Chapter 14: Conclusion: Collective Themes and Common Threads Steven Félix-Jäger Index

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About the Editors and Contributors



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Introduction Beginnings and Aspirations (or: The Spirit Glows Where It Wills) Chris E. W. Green

Several years ago (the pandemic has forever altered my experience of time, so I cannot recall exactly how long), Steven hit upon the idea of launching a new interest group for the Society for Pentecostal Studies, and convinced me (without much difficulty, I must say) to join him in making it a reality. The following year at the annual meeting, we hosted a screening of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (Fox, 1940). And after watching the film together, several of us, including Jeffrey Lamp, Blaine Charrette and Kimberly Alexander, shared brief remarks on the film, and opened the floor for conversation. Several of the authors in this volume were present at the screening. The upshot of that experience convinced us we needed to dedicate ourselves not only to further work on theology and film but specifically to the question of the Spirit and cinema. What you are reading now is a first-fruits of that dedication—thankfully, others have agreed to share that original commitment with us! It is worth pausing here at the beginning to ask ourselves what, and whom, we mean when we speak of “the Spirit.” The Christian doctrine of the Trinity identifies God as the one who is Spirit, Son, and Father, three “persons” in one “nature,” their personal distinction revealed in and through their essential oneness. In the language of the Nicene tradition, particularly, the Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son—equally glorious, equally worthy of worship, eternally co-operating with and infinitely participating in the Father’s work in and with the Son. The Holy Spirit, in other words, co-operates with and participates in all that the Father is and does in the Son, completing, as it were, the at-one-ing being and work of the Lord who is one. 1

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Startling as those claims may be, the truth is that the Christian tradition, right from the start, has identified the Spirit as the creator and sustainer of all things. As can be seen, for example, in the writings of Paul and John, the Spirit has been worshipped as the source not only of all inspired/prophetic speech, but also of all goodness, truth, and beauty. When Christians confess their confidence in the Spirit, they affirm the Spirit as “Lord and giver of life”—the source, guide, and goal of all things. They also confess the Spirit as the one who rests upon and dwells in Christ, through whom all things are reconciled and perfected, and the empowerer and guide of God’s People, the one who is always and in every way making possible their relation to God and neighbor, “anointing” believers for their share in Christ’s intercessory and sacrificial service. Thanks to the teachings of Jesus, and the apostolic witness to his life, Christians have always understood themselves to be living lives not only from and to the Spirit but also in the Spirit, carried along from first to last by the movements of God, enlivened by the jubilant liveliness of the triune life. Thus, praying in the Spirit, and trusting that the Spirit also praying for them in ways they do not know how to pray, Christians invoke the Spirit as the accomplisher and bringer of final restoration and the renewal of all things that all creatures desire. And it is this confidence in the Spirit as creator that undergirds, energizes, and pilots Christian engagements with human creativity. For these reasons, we believe pneumatology can be an especially generative theological starting point for studies concerning culture and the arts. And we consider it unfortunate that this line of inquiry has been by and large neglected. Although there are several books positing theological engagements with cinema,1 and works without end that speak of “Christ figures” in film, there are no major works that engage cinema pneumatologically—with a concern for the Spirit as Spirit.2 So, what you will find in the following pages is an attempt to redress that misfortune. Robert Jenson has argued that Christ is the Father’s art. In his own words, “the Son is the Father’s labor on a real world which obtains just in that this experiment is conducted; and that the Father is indeed an artist, the artist from whom all artists take their name, in that he knows the real world precisely and only by the experiment the Son is.”3 The Spirit, for Jenson, is the possibility—the Freedom—in which this artistry plays. And to live by faith is to live with abandon, trusting to that Freedom: “It is to ride the great Painter’s brush, to skip about between the great Composer’s hands on the keyboard.”4 Arguably, however, the Spirit is not only the condition or “atmosphere” of true art and artistry for God and creatures; the Spirit is also both art and artist—always, everywhere, acting with the Father and the Son in and through and upon all things. And if that is true, then films, actors, writers, filmmakers, critics, and viewers are all called both to rest in and to body forth the Spirit’s

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freeing, non-anxious presence, trusting that their own work belongs somehow in the mystery of grace to the works of the God who is Trinity. Bearing all that in mind, the goal we set for ourselves as editors and those who agreed to collaborate with us was this: we aspired to engage contemporary films from a pneumatological perspective and with a concern for celebrating the worthiness of the Spirit, in hopes of affording theologies of culture fruitful new perspectives, perspectives that begin and end with the Spirit rather than with the common theological contact points—Christology, soteriology, ethics, etc. This project explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film, as well as literary devices that draw allusions to the Spirit. Thus it offers three main contributions, which have shaped the arrangement of the book: first, it explores how Christian understandings of the person and work of the Spirit illuminate the nature of film and film-making; second, it shows that there are in fact “Spirit figures” in film (as distinct from but inseparable from Christ figures), even if sometimes they’re not intended as such, “Spirit-led” characters, are moved to act “prophetically,” against their inclinations and in excess of their skill or knowledge and with eccentric, life-giving creativity; third, it identifies subtle and explicit symbolizations of the Spirit in pop culture, symbolizations that requires deep, careful thinking about the Christian doctrine of the Spirit and generate new horizons for cultural analysis. Historically, the emphasis has been on Christ figures in film or on “incarnation” as a principle for film-making. So, it is no small shift for this project to emphasize Spirit figures, seeking to show how the Spirit—as distinct from although inseparably related to Christ—might gain our focus of attention. The chapters in the following pages seek to identify and reflect on characteristics of the Spirit and what might be called “the en-Spirit-ed life” in film, raising a number of charged theological questions about the Trinity, the knowledge of God, and the limits of theological inquiry, as well as renewing not only our appreciation, enjoyment, and criticism of art but also our theology, preaching, and praying. Structurally, the book is arranged in three main parts: the first is more philosophical and historical, devoted to the Spirit and the nature of film/film-making; the second is primarily theological and exegetical, devoted to Spirit figures; the third is mostly pastoral and ethical, devoted to explorations of the Spirit-led life in popular films. Taken together, the chapters work to present a kind of mosaic, portraying the Spirit in ways that are often unexpected, offbeat—but just for that reason full of fresh promise. And the several readings offered here have something to say both to cinephiles and theologians, as well as believers living in and between the worlds of art and theology.

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When aesthetics was invented in the eighteenth century, “the thought was that art contributed beauty, hence gave pleasure to those with taste.”5 But the late twentieth century middle-America Pentecostals who reared me put no store by “taste”—and they had less than no time for aesthetic pleasure. Indeed, they, like Moses of old, aspired to forsake all the pleasures of sin— including the pleasures of movies and TV. We loved craft, to be sure, but we were suspicious of “art,” at least much of it. Our deepest worry, however, the thing that truly fretted us, was entertainment; we feared it would not only distract us from the prize but out-and-out corrupt us, body and soul. Strangely, that was not quite true of the first Pentecostals, the mothers and fathers of the movement out of which my churches sprang. As Walter Hollenweger observed, theirs was a blood-and-wound mysticism, a devotion to Jesus as the friend in adversity, an eagerness to be with him elsewhere, out of this world, finally free of all troubles. Paradoxically, out of that seemingly otherworldly mysticism arose not only a new theology but also new arts, new artistic sensibilities.6 In a sense, then, the Hegelian pattern was reversed in them: art did not open out toward the religious, but the religious could not help but create art—like a volcano makes lava or a tornado leaves destruction in its wake. The anti-aesthetic aesthetic I knew as a child had precious little left in it of the verve of that original or originative blood-and-wounds Pentecostalism. We did not want to change the world or save it; we wanted to be changed by the Spirit, made peculiar—to be saved from the world. We awaited the Rapture, and ached for the little raptures of revival in the meantime. I say all that to draw attention to the fact that this book, edited by two Pentecostal theologians, and full of contributions from scholars of various Christian traditions, testifies to the fact that much has changed—I believe much for the better. But the hope is that these essays signal something of a turn in pneumatological scholarship vis-à-vis popular culture, and a creative return to the heart of Spirit-saturated spirituality, which the first Pentecostals would have recognized as “the move of God.” It should be said, however, that while The Spirit and the Screen pursues distinctively Christian and renewalist interpretations of the Spirit, our concept of the Spirit, insofar as we are faithful to it in our reflections and constructions, does not delimit us from ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. The Spirit is the Spirit who speaks by the prophets, after all. Thus, the repertoire of symbolization within Christian thought has been broad and wide-ranging, not only resisting rigid dogmatization but actively subverting it. Precisely because we assume that the Spirit is holy—that is, free from any and all would-be creaturely control—Christian pneumatology can orient itself openly and undefensively in relation to other traditions and the unique

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perspectives their theologies make possible. The particularity is precisely what makes the inclusivity possible, intelligible, and sustainable. Finally, this book is dedicated and addressed to theologians who care about film and film enthusiasts who are also concerned with matters of Christian belief and practice in cinema, as well as theological and spiritual issues related to broader popular culture. With those aims in mind, therefore, the book offers not only a new sort of theological engagement with film, but also raises a platform for scholars to speak to perennial themes and pressing current affairs in a different light. We are glad to have had the chance to give space to these voices, some of whom have a long track-record in the theology-and-film or faith-and-culture conversations, and others who have not previously engaged in them at all. Our hope is that this work as a whole will not only equip believers for thinking more carefully and more appreciatively about the relation of pneumatology and cinema, but also spur readers to praise of and participation with the creator Spirit. NOTES 1. See, e.g., Clive Marsh, Theology Goes to the Movies (London: Routledge, 2007); Christopher Deacy and Gaye Williams Ortiz, Theology and Film (Hoboken: WileyBlackwell, 2008); Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz, Eds., Explorations in Theology and Film (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 1997); Robert Johnston, Ed., Reframing Theology and Film (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007); Kelton Cobb, The Blackwell Guide to Theology and Popular Culture (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005); and Douglas Beaumont, The Message Behind the Movie (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2009). 2. While there are no major works that look at the Spirit in film, Birgit Meyer utilizes sociological tools to assess how film is being used globally. See Meyer and Moors, Eds., Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Meyer, “‘Praise the Lord’: Popular Cinema and Pentecostalite Style in Ghana’s New Public Sphere,” American Ethnologist, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2004), pp. 92–110; Meyer, “Pentecostalism, Prosperity and Popular Cinema in Ghana,” In S. Brent Plate, Ed., Representing Religion in World Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Other works are more devotional by nature and look to see the Spirit’s work in Hollywood. See Lisa Jones Townsel, “When the Holy Ghost Moves on the Big Screen,” Charisma, Vol. 40 (2014), pp. 60–66; Taylor Berglund, “How the Holy Spirit is Producing in Hollywood,” Charisma, Vol. 41 (2016), pp. 50–56; Troy Anderson and Anne Mount, “Hollywood, Jesus and the Holy Spirit,” Charisma, Vol. 40 (2015), pp. 20–34. 3. Robert W. Jenson, “Christ as Culture 2: Art,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6.1 (2004): 69–76 (74). 4. Robert Jenson, Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation, Stephen John Wright, ed. (Eugene: Cascade, 2014), 196. 5. Arthur Danto, What Art Is (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), x.

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6. See Daniel Castelo, Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Castelo, Daniel. Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. Danto, Arthur. What Art Is. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Jenson, Robert W. “Christ as Culture 2: Art.” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6.1 (2004), 69–76. ———. Theology as Revisionary Metaphysics: Essays on God and Creation. Stephen John Wright, ed. Eugene: Cascade, 2014.

PART I

 The Spirit and the Nature of Film(making)

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The Move of the Spirit Pneumatology and Temporality in Malick’s Cinema Chris E. W. Green

Times lose no time . . . They work strange operations on the mind. St. Augustine

Donald MacKinnon suggests that artists, inasmuch as they are true to their calling, “enlarge our understanding of the human world, awakening us to unnoticed depths, to its irregularities, sometimes bitter, sometimes comic, sometimes both at once.”1 Terrence Malick’s art works this magic, and it does so primarily because he adores the sanctity and sanctification of time. To frame it in theological terms, it is because his scripting, direction, and editing trusts time’s comings and goings as movements of Spirit, his films take time, make time for time, and so redeem the times. Perhaps sometimes in ways he does not and even cannot intend, his work is both utterly and unutterably doxological. Refusing the didactic or moralizing, his films are messengers, not messages—ministering spirits, flames of fire. Precisely because they do not “say” anything, they “sing.” And we, if we remain present, are moved. This fact is both evident and easily overlooked: human beings are not only creatures of time, living in time, through time, but also creatures in whom time lives—primarily through story.2 In Ricœur’s words, “Time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode. . . .”3 Although not always aware of it, we are always necessarily striving to establish the “appropriate relationship among the past, present, and future, i.e., among memory, decision, and hope,”4 which is to say we are always making 9

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a story of what we have lived. Christian theology, if it is to be true to its calling, must reckon with “the temporal character of human experience.”5 But it must also reckon with the temporal character of divine revelation, because for Christians it is only in the relation of the divine and human in time that story—the story—becomes possible. Terrence Malick’s work does not reduce to a philosophy of time or a philosophy of spirit. It can, however, work to free us up from reductive thinking about temporality and the ethics of timing as the moves of the Spirit.6 In the following pages, then, following the program set by Sarah Coakley’s théologie totale,7 I want to consider the import of Malick’s cinematic vision, asking how his art challenges and promises to change the ways we speak about the Spirit’s acting in, upon, and through time for us and for our good. THE REALITY OF TIME AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF CINEMA No filmmaker has reflected more insightfully on the nature of cinematic time than Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian auteur and poet/philosopher. The virtue of cinema, he contended, is that it “appropriates time. . . .”8 If one compares cinema with such time-based arts as, say, ballet or music, cinema stands out as giving time visible, real form. Once recorded on film, the phenomenon is there, given and immutable, even when the time is intensely subjective. . . . Cinema . . . is able to record time in outward and visible signs, recognizable to the feelings. And so time becomes the very foundation of cinema: as sound is in music, color in painting, character in drama.9

The essence of the director’s work is “sculpting in time.”10 By capturing the “very movement of reality”11 in images that create “the illusion of the infinite,” the artist allows the absolute to “make itself felt,”12 and just in this way to “shape the spiritual structure of the soul,” fulfilling art’s highest calling.13 For Tarkovsky, time is not an abstraction. “In what form does cinema print time?” In the “factuality” it records.14 If, say, a director films an event (a kiss or a leap from a bridge), the movement of an actor (walking form one side of an emptied pool to another, holding a candle), or an object (a cup or a stone), that filming is necessarily the appropriation of a particular time, a time with its own peculiar rhythm inherent in the nature of the “fact” being filmed. The director’s task, then, is essentially to recognize that time and its rhythm, and then to serve it as best she can throughout the filming and editing processes. Convinced of time’s reality and cinema’s responsibility to time, Tarkovsky challenges the montage theorists, insisting that it is time and the relation of

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various times that makes a film mean what it means. This comes abundantly clear, he argues, by the severe lengthening of a shot, which stretches out the viewer’s experience unnaturally. “If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.”15 He offers as an example a ten-minute film by the French actor and director, Pascal Aubier, which consists of only one shot: First it shows the life of nature, majestic and unhurried, indifferent to human bustle and passions. Then the camera, controlled with virtuoso skill, moves to take in a tiny dot: a sleeping figure scarcely visible in the grass, on the slope of a hill. The dramatic denouement follows immediately. The passing of time seems to be speeded up, driven on by our curiosity. It is as if we steal cautiously up to him along with the camera, and, as we draw near, we realize that the man is dead. The next moment we are given more information: not only is he dead, he was killed; he is an insurgent who has died from wounds, seen against the background of an indifferent nature. We are thrown powerfully back by our memories to events which shake today’s world. You will remember that the film has no editing, no acting and no decor. But the rhythm of the movement of time is there within the frame, as the sole organizing force of the—quite complex— dramatic development.”16

A film simply cannot be true to itself, Tarkovsky believed, if it does not take time, if it does not allow time to be itself. Hence, editing, rightly done, seeks to “bring together shots which are already filled with time,” and precisely in this way to “organize the unified, living structure inherent in the film.”17 “Editing does not engender, or recreate, a new quality; it brings out a quality already inherent in the frames that it joins.” To do her work well, the editor must discover the “time-truth”18 by sensing the rhythms of the “time-pressures”19 that already exist in the various shots before her in the editing room—and then editing in ways that do justice to those rhythms, that truth. THE WAY OF NATURE, THE WAY OF GRACE David Bentley Hart described The Tree of Life, Malick’s fifth film,20 as a “strange, beautiful, perhaps slightly mad, deeply Christian . . . and almost alarmingly biblical” film.21 Roger Ebert, in his review, wondered at the “vast ambition and deep humility” of the film, which he named a prayer. He explained how he was especially moved by the film’s depiction of the O’Brien family’s day-to-day life in small-town, mid-century Texas:

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I don’t know when a film has connected more immediately with my own personal experience. In uncanny ways, the central events of The Tree of Life reflect a time and place I lived in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick’s gift, it would look so much like this. His scenes portray a childhood in a town in the American midlands, where life flows in and out through open windows. There is a father who maintains discipline and a mother who exudes forgiveness, and long summer days of play and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the meaning of things.22

Ebert, unlike Hart, was comforted; the scenes smelled of home for him. Even so, he sensed an “unsaid” urgency, the same force, I suspect, that so gracefully uneased Hart. Tarkovsky’s reflections on time’s truths help us to identify this unnamed and unnamable force, attuning us to strains in Malick’s music we would not otherwise hear. What is “alarmingly biblical” in Tree of Life is the time it takes for grace to made good of nature. In Ebert’s words, it is life—Life!—that “flows in and out through open windows.” Tree of Life tells the story of Jack O’Brien (played by a transcendently wearied Sean Penn), a high-achieving, middle-age architect, haunted by the death of his younger brother, R. L., who died many years ago. The story unfolds over the course of a single day, the anniversary of his brother’s death, a day since given to remembering. In the film’s opening sequence, we see the divine flame and hear the sound of waves. We hear Jack, in voiceover, make a confession, “Brother. Mother. It was fate who led me to your door.” After a cut to black, we hear Jack’s questioning thoughts forming as prayer: “How did you come to me? In what shape? What disguise?” He stops to light a votive candle, the flame hearkening back to the film’s opening image. “I see the child I was. I see my brother. True. Kind. He died when he was nineteen.”23 He takes the elevator up to the top floor of his high-rise steel-and-glass office building. Then, seated, staring out the window on the city, he descends into the caves of his memories. In the unreachable center of his heart, he reels through the wilderness, suddenly stumbling upon his brother, who beckons: “Find me.” Having wandered away from the wonder he knew as a boy, Jack has lost himself in the loss of his brother. And, as Leithart says, “the rest of the film is Jack’s attempt, on this one day, to be restored to his brother, to be reconciled to his brother’s fate, and thereby reconciled to the universe.”24 Jack finds his brother, eventually. But only by first finding himself. Following an anonymous, womanly guide, a sign of paracletic Spirit, Jack is led deep into the wilderness within, down and through wasteland canyons, his remembered younger self always running ahead, finally leading over a rise. At last, Jack reaches a severe beach (as Augustine knew, the geography of the soul is unmappable), met by R. L., his mother, and the other defining figures

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of his childhood. Jack rests his hand on his father’s shoulder, walking along the beach, much as his father had embraced him in the garden when he was a boy. We are shown the tree of life. Then, a shot of the door named in the film’s opening sequence, the door of letting go and letting be. The guide uncovers the eyes of Jack’s mother, helps her make a prayer. Mrs. O’Brien lifts her arms and opens her hands in release. “I give him to you. I give you my son.” The “Amen” is sung. We see Jack coming down the elevator of his office building; outside, he twirls, just like his mother had done so often, and smiles. Some critics misread this final scene as happening in “heaven.” Ebert saw it as “a vision of an afterlife, a desolate landscape on which quiet people solemnly recognize and greet one another, and all is understood in the fullness of time.” But what the film gives is a vision of the reconciliation of Jack’s present to his past in the (guided/Guided) exploration of his memories. As Leithart says, “Jack’s memories are healed by penetrating back to the beginning of all beginnings, and when they are joined with hope for the end beyond all endings.” The film itself begins with a citation from Job 38:4,7: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth. . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” In this challenge is the revelation of a reality “before” and “after” time, a time that gives time its timeliness and timefulness—and promises an eternal joy. For Malick, as for Augustine, “memory is the seat of human self-transcendence.” By moving inward, into the depths of memory, one is led to move upward, to the God who is beyond.25 On this particular day, as he follows the Guide’s leading, Jack finally crosses to the limit not only of his loss but also of his creatureliness, an encounter that enables him finally to release his brother to God. Finding R. L. by remembering him otherwise, remembering him as his mother did, is the form “letting go” necessarily takes. And that release, made possible by a kind of symbolic recollection, frees Jack to live in the way of grace, rather than in the way of nature.26 THE PRINCE’S PROGRESS If Tree of Life is concerned with the “dialectical tensions” between nature and grace lived out in Jack’s conflictedness (“Mother. Father. Always you wrestle inside me”), To the Wonder is concerned with showing nature in the light of grace, nature lit up, as it were, from within.27 “The film seems to ask and image how grace perceives, lives, and endures (the fallen state of) nature.”28 Knight of Cups (2015), which makes, perhaps, a final film in a trilogy, discloses nature’s need for and pull toward grace, showing that human life is held together at last only by the holding out of hope for grace’s inevitability.29

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Knight of Cups follows the unmaking of Rick (Christian Bale), a listless So-Cal screenwriter. We watch his excessive, indulgent life unravel, and see how living hollows him, strips his liveliness away. The prologue section overtly orients the film as a pilgrimage. . . . Rick’s own opening sentence—and his opening physical position in a desert between mountains and highway—indicates his simultaneous presence and absence in his life. He is lost, wandering. . . . in a state of forgetfulness that mirrors that of the prince in his father’s story. The rather chaotic montage of the film’s first few minutes can be seen to match Rick’s ontological fragmentation, and then his split subjectivity, not because subjectivity is an illusion . . . but because to be human is to be torn between sensuality and sensuousness, between absorption in the world (signaled by the lure of sex) and the lure of grace or guidance (signaled by the sensuous givenness of the world). The film’s phaneroscopy conveys both—the sparkly temptations of the immanent and the nutrient base of meaning and purposiveness that exceeds and grounds the immanent.30

On its release, Knight of Cups divided critics. Many panned it (“it amounts to two hours of amoral cavorting”; “[it] nudges into self-parody”), and even some who celebrated it found it baffling. Matt Zoller Seitz, for example, described it as a film “fighting a losing battle to make sense of itself. . . . Not a young man’s movie, an old man’s.”31 At least one old man, Richard Brody, showered it with praise: Perhaps no film in the history of cinema follows the movement of memory as faithfully, as passionately, or as profoundly as Terrence Malick’s new film, “Knight of Cups” . . . [It] is one of the great recent bursts of cinematic artistry, a carnival of images and sounds that have a sensual beauty, of light and movement, of gesture and inflection, rarely matched in any movie that isn’t Malick’s own. Where “The Tree of Life” is filled with memories, is even about memory, “Knight of Cups” is close to a first-person act of remembering, and the ecstatic power of its images and sounds is a virtual manifesto, and confession, of the cinematic mind at work.32

The film’s title comes from the tarot deck. But the story itself is a narrative of journeys, quests, odysseys—all which lead toward the beginning of a pilgrimage. Like Tree of Life, it opens with a black screen and a voiceover. This time, the voice speaks lines from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: “The pilgrim’s progress from this world, to that which is to come: delivered under the similitude of a dream. Wherein is discovered, the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey, and safe arrival at the desired country.”33 We see Rick in the desert at dusk and hear him say in what is little more than a whisper:

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“All those years, living the life of someone I didn’t even know.” Then we hear the voice of Rick’s father (an appropriately “heavy” Brian Dennehy): Remember the story I used to tell you when you were a boy? About a young prince, a knight, sent by his father, the King of the East, west into Egypt to find a pearl. A pearl from the depths of the sea. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup that took away his memory. He forgot he was the son of the king. Forgot about the pearl . . . and fell into a deep sleep. The king didn’t forget his son. He continued to send word . . . messengers . . . guides. But the prince slept on.34

Near the end of the film, in its last chapter (“Freedom”), we hear Rick’s father whisper again: “Find the light you knew in the East, as a child. The moon, the stars, they serve you. They guide you on your way. The light in the eyes of others . . . the pearl.” Moments later, we hear Rick’s wife inviting him to “wake up . . . turn . . . look . . . come out.” Then, his father’s voice again: “My son, remember.” The last word in the film is spoken by Rick: “Begin.” He drives into a lighted tunnel. ALL WHO DO NOT WONDER ARE LOST In To the Wonder, the middle film of the trilogy, Fr Quintana (a grave Javier Bardem) struggles against despair, and mostly fails. He breaks free of it, at last, but only by a series of guiding experiences. Early in the film, an older congregant lets him know that she is praying for him to receive the gift of joy. His response suggests both that he needs the prayer and that her words have done anything but fulfill her desires. Then, he encounters an older, heavily bearded Black man who is cleaning the windows and stained glass. The man asks if Fr Quintana feels lonely, then suggests he needs “a little more excitement,” a jolt of “power.” At this point, the man excitedly breaks into tongues, resting his hand on the stained glass: “I can feel the warmth of the light, brother. That’s spiritual. I’m feeling more than just natural light. Feeling the spiritual light, see? I can almost touch that light, coming right from the sky.” Fr Quintana places his hands on the glass, too. But he feels nothing. The light works through him, nonetheless. As if he himself were the stained glass. As he realizes who and what he is leaving by moving from his current parish (in rural Oklahoma) to the newly assigned one (in rural Kansas). The light in him and around him deepens as he breaks the news to his parishioners, one by one. “I saw you. Again,” he says. Through the final scenes of the film, we hear him pray in Spanish a prayer that echoes the prayers of other saints: “Christ, be with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ

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in me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ on my right. Christ on my left. Christ in the heart. Thirsting. We thirst. Flood our souls with your spirit and life so completely that our lives may only be a reflection of yours. Shine through us. Show us how to seek you.” Fr. Quintana’s prayer is truly priestly. In ways he does not see, and could not know, his own breakthrough to joy somehow creates freedom for his parishioners, Neil (Ben Affleck) and his ex-wife, Marina (Olga Kurylenko), whose love story is the focus of the film. The story does not come to a storybook ending. After what appears to be a final separation, Neil and Marina are shown together in an airport and she says, “I want to keep your name.” It is that act of grace that keeps their divorce from dividing them. Having released her husband, loosing, rather than merely losing him, Marina is freed and frees him to continue toward the wonder. And the editing of the film’s closing scenes suggests that they are somehow freed because Fr. Quintana is bound to his work. THE TIME OF THE SPIRIT/THE SPIRIT OF TIME Stanley Cavell insisted that Malick’s first two films, Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978), did not simply evoke philosophical reflection, but were themselves works of philosophy. He went so far as to describe Malick’s films as “Heideggerian cinema.” If that is true, then these three films, Tree of Life, To the Wonder, and Knight of Cups, are rightly hailed as Augustinian cinema, and not only theological but also works of theology in their own right. Malick’s cinematic time illuminates the truth of what counts as Spirit’s time, the times of Spirit in which all things are made beautiful. We can, therefore, take away from the experience of Malick’s films, and our reflections on that experience, not only new thoughts about time, times, and the Spirit, but also new attunements to the Spirit who makes time for us, stirring up a new readiness to live in ways that redeem the time we have been allotted. Times happen to us in the course of time: times of grief; times of joy; times of plenty; times of lack, high times and low times; easy times and hard times. Each has a different signature, exerting different pressures (sorrow is slow, heavy, and long; boredom drags; fun makes time fly). Christians stand convinced we are meant to live all these times in what St. Paul calls “freedom,” not at the mercy of those pressures, but at the mercy of the Spirit who takes the pressure off. Scripture promises “our times are in God’s hands” (Ps. 31:15) that God “makes all things beautiful in his time” (Eccl. 3:11). Nothing less than that is what we hope for ourselves and for all creation. Christians also stand convinced that the fullness of human being is identical with the fullness of time. Jesus, the Last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), the archē of

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New Creation (Col. 1:15), was sent from the Father “in the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) to die “at the right time” (Rom. 5:6). It is not so much the passing of time that threatens us, or even the awareness that our days come to an end. What threatens is the elusiveness of self in the comings and goings of time’s times, our inability to be ourselves, to be fully present, at decisive moments in our lives and the lives of others. The past is never truly behind us. The future is never merely ahead. We can, for example, in any given present remember what we imagined the future would hold or anticipate what in the future we will regret about the present. We are rarely if ever fully present in any given moment (“I wonder where I was all that time”). This is why Qoheleth grieves the human condition: God “has put a sense of past and future into [our] minds, yet [we] cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccl. 3:11). The times that happen to us again and again expose how our past, present, and future do not yet make one story. But we must imaginatively narrate our lives toward a livable coherence. As Ricoeur says, our lives demand “emplotment.”35 Where such narrated reconciliation does not happen, we find we are estranged from ourselves and from God. As Malick’s style reminds us, however, we should not expect stories, especially the stories of our lives, to fit neatly linear narrative structures and arcs. Like Kierkegaard’s Abraham, we must fight with our fear of time to keep our faith,36 because without faith in time as the Spirit’s gift, being-present is impossible.37 Malick’s films suggest we fight this fight by attending rapturously to the grace that natures nature and by re-storying ourselves in the light of that grace. MacKinnon recognized a hard truth, a truth difficult for any of us to face: “Temporality is a form of growth, but also inevitably a form of estrangement.”38 He argues that even Jesus experienced it: “For Christ there is the estrangement involved in abandoning his human origins, in tearing his life up by the roots to put himself at the disposal of the men and the women to whom he believed himself sent. The marks of that estrangement are upon him, reflected in the harshness of his rebuffs to his mother, and to his brothers.”39 For Christ there was no “loss of compassion,” MacKinnon says, no bitterness for past hurts or sorrow for an imagined future that has been lost.40 And surely that is right. But he is mistaken, I think, to say Jesus’s life was torn up by the roots. Just the opposite is true, is it not? The roots of his life are nothing other than the good the Father intends and desires for us in him. And that means Jesus experienced temporality not as we do but as we may and shall, thanks to his sacrifice. The marks that are on him are the marks of our estrangement. Unlike us, Jesus was not swept along by the pressures of time. He lived in the present as the presence of God, shedding the light of Sabbath. Because he never forgot that his “hour,” which was his future, was

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precisely as such the meaning of his past, Jesus was free to be fully present in every moment presented to him. ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL Malick’s cinema suggests the tightest possible relationship between time and beauty. The beauty of objects, movements, and events; the beauty of landscapes and of light; the beauty of structures, natural and man-made, and the beauty of bodies (especially faces and hands); the beauty of motion; the beauty of compassion and of resignation—these all take time within Malick’s films, and just in this way Malick shows the beauty of time itself, the beauty that time can bear, when time is in its fullness. In classical Greek the word for beauty, ὡραῖος, is related to the word for hour, ὥρα. Originally, the term referred to that which is timely, in season. From this came metaphorical notions of seasonable, or due and proper, ripe, blooming. Later still, the word came to mean “beautiful.” In everyday English, we talk about glorious moments, lovely times, beautiful timing, the appropriate time. These habits of speech indicate an awareness that time and beauty can and sometimes do conspire, although not always and never predictably. When they are estranged, bad desires emerge. When they do conspire, however, they make love; that is, they move with desire. And that movement is identical with the movement of the Spirit. Time in its fullness, bearing beauty, awakens good desire, desire for the joy of the Lord. The conflict of good and bad desire shows itself in one of Rick’s father’s stories, one which echoes lines from Plato’s Phaedrus: Once the soul was perfect and had wings. . . . Brave. It could soar into heaven where only creatures with wings can be. But the soul lost its wings and fell to Earth. There it took an earthly body. And now, while it lives in this body, no outward sign of wings can be seen. Yet the roots of its wings are still there. And the nature of wings is to try to raise the earthbound body and soar with it into heaven. When we see a beautiful woman, or a man . . . the soul remembers the beauty it used to know in heaven. And wings begin to spout, and that makes the soul want to fly, but it cannot yet. It is still too weak. So the man keeps staring up into the sky like a young bird. He has lost all interest in the world.

That last line delivers us to an aporia: time, in the moments that it is made beautiful, lifts us out of time, above the world, so to speak, so that we find ourselves drawn to the transcendent, the “eternal,” which bounds time and gives it its meaning. In the experience of the beautiful, we move “to the wonder,” just as Dante, finally seeing Beatrice in all her heavenly glory,

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finds his desire and will turned to “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” But this turning is not a turning away from Beatrice, but a turning to her differently. Transfiguration, if it is in fact worked by Spirit, and not by “flesh,” does not so much un-self and de-world us as re-self and re-world us. Creatures are never more creaturely, never less “fleshly,” than when filled with the fullness of the Spirit. The Wonder does not obliterate the creaturely but limns and enlivens it. We need not forget our Beatrice to see the Love; to see the Love is to be moved toward her again, anew. Malick’s trilogy suggests we need guides to make sense of the story of our lives. Without his father’s prayers and the mercies of his lovers who are to him what Virgil and Beatrice were to Dante, Rick has no hope of remembering his destiny, no chance of even beginning his journey home. Without his brother’s beckoning and his mother’s release, Jack cannot any more find his way to “the door.” Jack had, after all, been pouring over these same memories for years. What makes this day different? The presence of the guide.41 That said, beauty, like the God it serves, is often found by those who do not seek it (Rom. 10:20). At any moment, even in the absence of any identifiable guide, “an experience of reality can open to an experience of God.”42 In telling the story of how he came to write his poem, “From a Window,” Wiman reminds us that grace is not only unforeseen but sometimes at least wholly unlooked-for. “I wrote the poem one day out of anguish, emptiness, grief—and it exploded into joy. I sought refuge in the half-conscious play of language and was rescued by a weave of meaning I never meant to make.”43 What makes the difference between, say, seeing a tree through a window and seeing a tree through a window?44 Somehow, Spirit. NOTES 1. D. M. MacKinnon, The Problem of Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 162. 2. Thus, Paul Ricœur (“Narrative Time,” in Brian Richardson [ed.], Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames [Cleveland: Ohio State University, 2002], 35) speaks of the “structural reciprocity of temporality and narrativity.” Temporality, according to Ricœur, is “that structure of existence that reaches language in narrativity.” And narrativity is “the language structure that has temporality as its ultimate referent.” As Andre Gingrich (“Time, Ritual, and Social Experience,” in Kristen Hastrup and Peter Hervick [eds.], Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge [London: Routledge, 1994], 125–34 [131]) explains, “the experience of time is deeply rooted in bodies and emotions.” 3. Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 52.

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4. Mark C. Taylor, “Time’s Struggle with Space: Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Temporality,” Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 311–29 (329). 5. Ricœur, Time and Narrative Vol. 1, 4. 6. In our efforts to think temporality theologically and philosophically, we must not confuse “historicality” with “temporality” as such, chronological time with narrative time, or spatialized time with life-time. See Ricœur, “Narrative Time,” 35–46; see also, Taylor, “Time’s Struggle with Space,” 311–29. 7. Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 88–92. 8. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 94. 9. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 118–19. 10. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 63. 11. Christian Wiman, Every Riven Thing (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010), 24. 12. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 38. 13. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 41. 14. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 63. 15. Quoted in Bearden Coleman, “Digital Devotion,” n.p.; available online: http:​//​ www​.alayafilm​.com​/ digital-devotion/; accessed: 13 February 2017. 16. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 114. 17. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 114. 18. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 119. 19. Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 119. 20. The film was released in 2011, following Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005). 21. David Bentley Hart, “Seven Characters in Search of a Nihil Obstat,” n.p.; available online: https:​//​www​.firstthings​.com​/web​-exclusives​/2011​/07​/seven​-characters​-in​ -search​-of​-a​-nihil​-obstat. 22. Roger Ebert, “A Prayer Beneath the Tree of Life,” n.p.; available online: https:​ //​www​.rogerebert​.com​/roger​-ebert​/a​-prayer​-beneath​-the​-tree​-of​-life​#:​​~:​text​=What​ %20will​%20be​%2C​%20will​%20be​,box​%20of​%20space​%20and​%20time. 23. Tree of Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Los Angeles: Searchlight Pictures, 2011. 24. Peter Leithart, Shining Glory: Theological Reflections on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (London: Cascade Books, 2013), 3. 25. Paula Fredriksen, “Augustine on God and Memory,” in Alan Rosen (ed.), Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion, Ethics (Syracuse, NY: University of Syracuse Press, 2005), 131–38 (134). 26. Steven Chase (“Recollection,” in Philip Sheldrake [ed.], The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005], 525–26) defines recollection as “a varied and flexible form of prayer and devotion” that intends “not to suppress turmoil or pain of this world, but rather to let it go.” Both in its active and passive forms, recollection aims at “self-abandonment to divine providence and unifying grace.”

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27. To the Wonder. Directed by Terrence Malick. New York: Film Nation Entertainment, 2012. 28. M. Gail Hamner, “‘Remember Who You Are’: Imagining Life’s Purpose in Knight of Cups” in Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston (eds.), Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick (Routledge, 2016), 251–74. 29. Knight of Cups. Directed by Terrence Malick. New York: Film Nation Entertainment, 2015. 30. Hammer, “Remember Who You Are,” 255. 31. Matt Zoller Seitz, “Knight of Cups,” n.p.; available online: http:​ //​ www​ .rogerebert​.com​/reviews​/knight​-of​-cups​-2016. 32. Richard Brody, “Terrence Malick’s ‘Knight of Cups’ Challenges Hollywood to Do Better,” The New Yorker (Mar 7, 2016), n.p.; available online: http:​//​www​ .newyorker​.com​/culture​/richard​-brody​/terrence​-malicks​-knight​-of​-cups​-challenges​ -hollywood​-to​-do​-better. 33. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s adaptation of Bunyan’s Progress provides key parts of the film’s musical themes. 34. As many critics and scholars have noted, the story seems to be drawn from the Hymn of the Pearl found in the gnostic Acts of Thomas. 35. As Karl Simms (Paul Ricœur [London: Routledge, 2003], 86) explains, “Emplotment mediates between . . . (1) our understanding of the world that we have already, and that we bring to the narrative in order to understand it . . . (2) the understanding we have of the world after we have read the narrative” and (3) the configuration of meaning. 36. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (London: Penguin Classics, 1985), 52. 37. Openness to the transcendent is openness to endless possibility; as Kierkegaard (The Sickness Unto Death [New York: Doubleday, 1954], 62–63) puts it, “in order to pray, there must be a God, there must be a self plus possibility, or a self and possibility in the pregnant sense; for God is that all things are possible, and that all things are possible is God; and only the man whose being has been so shaken that he became spirit by understanding that all things are possible, only he has had dealings with God.” 38. Donald MacKinnon, “Some Notes on the Irreversibility of Time,” Explorations in Theology 5 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock), 90–98 (97). 39. MacKinnon, “Some Notes on the Irreversibility of Time,” 97. 40. MacKinnon, “Some Notes on the Irreversibility of Time,” 97. 41. Leithart, Shining Glory, 22–24. 42. Christian Wiman, Every Riven Thing: Meditation of a Modern Believer (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013), 58. 43. Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 58. 44. Wiman, Every Riven Thing, 58.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY A Hidden Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Potstdam, Germany: Studio Babelsberg, 2019, Streaming. Badlands. Directed by Terrence Malick. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros., 1973, Streaming. Brody, Richard. “Terrence Malick’s ‘Knight of Cups’ Challenges Hollywood to Do Better.” The New Yorker (2016). Available online: http:​//​www​.newyorker​.com​ /culture​/richard​-brody​/terrence​-malicks​-knight​-of​-cups​-challenges​-hollywood​-to​ -do​-better. Coleman, Bearden. “Digital Devotion.” http:​//​www​.alayafilm​.com​/digital-devotion/. Chase, Steven. “Recollection.” In Philip Sheldrake, Ed. The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005, 525–26. Coakley, Sarah. God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay on the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Days of Heaven. Directed by Terrence Malick. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1978, Streaming. Ebert, Roger. “A Prayer Beneath the Tree of Life.” https://www.rogerebert.com/ roger-ebert/a-prayer-beneath-the-tree-of-life. Fredriksen, Paula. “Augustine on God and Memory.” In Alan Rosen, Ed. Obliged by Memory: Literature, Religion, Ethics. Syracuse: University of Syracuse Press, 2005, 131–38. Gingrich, Andre. “Time, Ritual, and Social Experience.” In Kristen Hastrup and Peter Hervick, Eds. Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1994, 125–34. Hamner, M. Gail. “‘Remember Who You Are’: Imagining Life’s Purpose in Knight of Cups.” In Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston, Eds. Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick. New York: Routledge, 2016, 251–74. Hart, David Bentley. “Seven Characters in Search of a Nihil Obstat.” https:​//​www​ .firstthings​.com​/web​-exclusives​/2011​/07​/seven​-characters​-in​-search​-of​-a​-nihil​ -obstat. Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling, London: Penguin Classics, 1985. ———. The Sickness Unto Death. New York: Doubleday, 1954. Knight of Cups. Directed by Terrence Malick. New York, NY: FilmNation Entertainment, 2015, Streaming. Leithart, Peter. Shining Glory: Theological Reflections on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. London: Cascade Books, 2013. MacKinnon, D. M. “Some Notes on the Irreversibility of Time.” Explorations in Theology 5. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 90–98. ———. The Problem of Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. The New World. Directed by Terrence Malick. Burbank, CA: New Line Cinema, 2005, Streaming. Ricœur, Paul. “Narrative Time.” In Brian Richardson, Ed. Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames. Cleveland: Ohio State University, 2002.

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———. Time and Narrative Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Seitz, Matt Zoller. “Knight of Cups.” http:​//​www​.rogerebert​.com​/reviews​/knight​-of​ -cups​-2016. Simms, Karl. Paul Ricœur. London: Routledge, 2003. Song to Song. Directed by Terrence Malick. New York, NY: FilmNation Entertainment, 2017, Streaming. Taylor, Mark C. “Time’s Struggle with Space: Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Temporality.” Harvard Theological Review. No. 66 (1973): 311–29. Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. The Thin Red Line. Directed by Terrence Malick. Los Angeles, CA: Phoenix Pictures, 1998, Streaming. To the Wonder. Directed by Terrence Malick. New York, NY: FilmNation Entertainment, 2012, Streaming. The Tree of Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Los Angeles, CA: Icon Film, 2011, Streaming. Wiman, Chrisitan, Every Riven Thing. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. ———. My Bright Abyss. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

‌‌C hapter 3

Feed the Birds  Mary Poppins, Film Musicals, and the Spirit of Life Kutter Callaway

Winds in the East, mist coming in Like something is brewing, ‘bout to begin. Can’t put me finger on what lies in store But I feel what’s to happen has all happened before. Bert The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. John 3:8

It all begins with an invitation, or, to be more precise, an overture: “Feed the birds.” At once the title for the opening musical number in Disney’s 1964 Mary Poppins and a summons bursting forth from the screen, as if unbidden, it is a piece of music that—like most film music—calls for a response. The first time it appears, however, it sounds and resounds as a wordless, inarticulate call. Given its prominence as the originating sound from which all else follows, there is no doubt that this music is significant, but precisely how and in what way remain unclear and uncertain—mysterious even. Underscoring images of turn-of-the-century London, “the music seems to intuit connections that are beyond immediate rational comprehension.”1 Indeed, as the opening credits roll and the wandering eye of the camera eventually happens upon a 25

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woman perched on the clouds, hovering above the London skyline with her umbrella and carpetbag in tow, it becomes clear that “rational” and “logical” will be inadequate categories for the journey ahead, for this is the realm of the para-rational and para-logical. As the character Bert rightly discerns, the disruptive winds carrying Mary Poppins in from the East are not merely signs of the changing times (although they are that). They are rather portents of an event that has already happened but is still yet to come. And all the while, the music insists: Feed the birds. Although a small handful of identifiable genres have existed since the advent of film (e.g., the Western, film noir), one of the earliest and more enduring genres is the film musical. Mary Poppins is but one of the most well-known examples. Now considered a classic, it was by no means exceptional at the time for a film musical to receive such critical acclaim (it won five Oscars including Best Leading Actress, Best Song, and Best Score). Yet, in spite of the vast number of musicals that Hollywood has produced over the past century, those contributing to the exploration of the interaction between theology and film rarely consider the musical a genre worthy of examination. There may be a number of reasons for this lack of critical attention, but it is certainly the case that the scholarship on theology and film has tended to focus more on the narrative elements of film than the musical-aesthetic and, by extension, performative dimensions of cinema as an event. In fact, to invoke the language of the “cinematic event” is already to move somewhat beyond the methodological capacities of the theology and film discipline as it currently exists.2 This essay thus makes both a general and a particular claim. In the first place, it argues that film musicals are not merely entertaining, but are in fact theologically significant, in part because of (and not in spite of) their capacity to function as a commonly held resource for navigating the ongoing upheavals of contemporary life. Secondly, and more specifically, through a close reading of the Disney film Mary Poppins (1964), this chapter suggests that, by effectively employing the genre-specific conventions of the Hollywood film musical, Mary Poppins does more than simply present audiences with thematic content that is theologically pertinent. Rather, as a musical event, the film itself functions as a form of a/theological encounter with the Spirit—a mode of theological insight that, to borrow from John Caputo, addresses the event that is taking place in the name (of) “God.”3 MARY POPPINS AS FILM MUSICAL Regardless of the genre in question, the aesthetics of film often take a back seat to technological and economic concerns. Indeed, one of the main reasons

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film musicals were so common in the early age of cinema was that the very technological advances that enabled filmmakers to transition from so-called “silent” film to sound film (e.g., the ability to record music and sound live on set) raised anew the question of how sound in general and music in particular related to the narrative and visual elements of film, not to mention the small matter of how to create an audiovisual story that was realistically plausible from the perspective of the audience (e.g., where is all this music supposed to be coming from?).4 The backstage musical (or “show category”) emerged as one of the most straightforward ways to overcome this technologically motivated challenge. After all, when the story itself is about a musical stage production (e.g., The Broadway Melody [1929], Gold Diggers of Broadway [1929]), it is much easier to justify the presence of music, song, and dance without violating the constraints of film’s realist aesthetic. The formula “worked” insofar as it addressed the perceived need for song and dance numbers to be rooted in the diegesis, but it also highlighted the problems that can and often do arise by moving directly from one artistic medium to another (i.e., from live stage production to film).5 It is also the case that, in addition to addressing the challenges presented by new sound technologies, studios had substantial commercial interests in the music produced for and featured in film musicals, whether or not that music was ever heard in the context of an actual film exhibition. As Mervyn Cooke points out, “towards the end of 1929 no fewer than 90 per cent of the most popular songs in the USA were directly related to films.”6 In other words, aesthetics and artistic visions aside, musicals were a huge money maker for those who held the keys to the film industry because they generated multiple revenue streams that expanded the consumer base beyond the individual audience members who attended the cinema. Thus, in order to understand film musicals as both a product and source of a broader system of production, distribution, and consumption, it is necessary to examine how filmmakers and film studios create, manage, and leverage audience expectations and how, in turn, audiences internalize those expectations. It is for this very reason that genre criticism serves as a helpful analytical tool for exploring not only the cultural significant but also the theological significance of film musicals, and this is particularly true of Mary Poppins. Rather than abstract types that clearly delineate one kind of film from another, genres are conventional sets of codes or patterns that establish expectations for filmmakers and film audiences both formally and phenomenologically.7 As a consequence, the primary question that one asks when approaching a film in terms of its genre is how a particular movie either meets or subverts the expectations established by the conventional codes and patterns of the genre. For example, even though it originated in part as a narrative solution to a technological problem, the backstage or “show” category of

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films established certain expectations and narrative patterns that have become indicative of the broader genre known as “Film Musical.” The notion that a group of complete strangers eating in a restaurant might suddenly break into song and participate in a well-choreographed dance is patently absurd on its face. But in the context of a film musical, it isn’t absurd at all. In fact, it is precisely what the audience expects. According to film music historian Rick Altman, a number of related patterns and expectations like these eventually coalesced into three principal sub-genres of the American film musical: The Show Musical, The Folk Musical, and The Fairy-tale Musical.8 Although their boundaries are porous and overlapping, films situated within each of these categories exhibit a few unique elements. As mentioned above, show musicals frequently locate the film’s plot within a number of backstage scenarios, which are typically framed by a series of stage routines and, in later films, fantastic dream sequences. Fairy-tale musicals, however, developed from the operetta’s waltz-dominated style, which tended to pit contrasting character types against one another in a kind of binary opposition that was performed in and through vocal duets and partnered dance numbers (e.g., Shall We Dance [1937]).9 In these films, a character’s distinct singing and dancing style functions as the on-screen embodiment of a form of difference that quite literally steps in time with its opposite—whether that difference is related to sex (e.g., male vs. female), attitudes (e.g., work vs. play, seriousness vs. fun), or class (e.g., the bourgeoisie vs. the proletariat). Moving in a slightly different direction, folk musicals typically integrate their musical numbers into the film’s narrative as one of its core elements. Rather than participating in a series of discrete, stylized performances, the characters in folk musicals most often sing as a natural expression and plausible extension of the singer, and they join together with a chorus of others who sing and dance as part of their ongoing everyday activities as well (e.g., Oklahoma! [1955]).10 Seen from this perspective, Mary Poppins succeeds as a film not only because of its capacity to leverage the conventions of the fairy-tale genre in building a world that is at once fantastic and plausible to viewers, but also because, much like a folk musical, it demonstrates a “commitment to the narrative importance of songs rather than merely treating them as vehicles for display.”11 Yet, the music in Mary Poppins is not simply integral to the story. As a fairy-tale, the music functions magically, perhaps even mythically. To borrow from James Buhler, the music in Mary Poppins has restorative properties both for the characters and the audience, namely, “the magical ability to transform social discord into communal harmony.”12 As the opening frames of the film make clear, the figure who eventually prompts this magical transformation is a mysterious nanny who hails from a transcendent space high above the mundane lives of the folks below. But the film’s music—as

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music—suggests that the transformation-that-is-yet-to-come will only ever come about through immanent means. In other words, on a purely formal level, the origin of the music is immanent to the film’s narrative and remains anchored in the immanent frame, even if and when it points beyond the diegesis proper. Thus, in the terms set forth by the film itself, moving from discord to harmony requires nothing less than an immanent transcendence— a transcendent other that breaks through the immanent frame of the diegesis without undoing the internal logic of the film. MARY POPPINS AS FAMILY FILM The various ways in which film musicals either adhere to and/or disrupt the conventions of their genre and the internalized expectations of their audiences all come to bear on Mary Poppins, especially as it concerns the primary focus of the film’s narrative. To wit, Mary Poppins is not only a movie produced by Disney to be a wholesome and uncontroversial piece of entertainment explicitly for viewers of all ages, but it is also a film about a disintegrated family that has been socially constructed as dysfunctional and thus in need of restoration. And in the terms established by the film musical genre, as the family goes, so the society goes.13 Indeed, as playful as the story is at times, the film itself is neither frivolous nor childish. Rather, much like other great family films in different genres (e.g., Hugo, The Iron Giant, Finding Nemo), Marry Poppins is broadly accessible (and enjoyable!) to both children and adults. It is thus capable of serving as a story that viewers from a wide-range of ages can hold in common. Of course, the possibility that the film might function in this way is only heightened by its music, which, as I’ve argued elsewhere, works to create a “communal womb” within the cinematic event that brings about an affective fusion both between the film and the audience and among the filmgoers within that audience.14 That said, the suggestion that Mary Poppins might be a shared narrative for contemporary persons carries with it a number of theological implications, particularly within a broader societal context struggling to identify a common set of resources that might orient our shared lives together. So the question is not so much whether the film is capable of functioning as a shared narrative in every instance, but how it creates the conditions that would even make this a possibility. Unsurprisingly, the answer is music. Returning to the conventions of the genre once more, as Altman points out, the Hollywood musical is concentrated in the figure of the audio-dissolve: The audio dissolve reconciles differences in the actual world by transposing them to an ideal space where those differences have no force. This transposition

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occurs on the soundtrack with the shift of diegetically motivated sound (say, a piano) into a supradiegetic register (where we hear apparently diegetic singing but a non-diegetic orchestra). . . . The presence of supradiegetic music is the sign—indeed the promise—of what is not yet present.15

Nearly each and every one of the musical numbers in Mary Poppins performs this kind of transposition from the actual world to an ideal space as a way of reconciling the primary differences explored in the film, namely, male vs. female, seriousness vs. fun, and work vs. play. Because it is a fairy-tale musical, these differences are made explicit early on, embodied as they are by the unique musical stylings of the various characters (e.g., Mr. Banks vs. Mrs. Banks, Marry Poppins vs. Uncle Albert, Mr. Dawes vs. Bert, adults vs. children). As the narrative unfolds, the accumulation of the various audio dissolves begins to reveal the thematic concerns of the film, which, as a reminder, is situated from the very start within a time of acute instability and change. Indeed, for all of the movie’s lightheartedness, ominous forces lurk around every turn, whether in the form of a rain storm, magic run amok, or a belligerent banker. It’s almost as if something far beyond the reaches of this one nuclear family is at stake, even though, at the very same time, the fate of this family unit is linked inextricably with the larger whole in which it is set. Music as Magic It is here, at the nexus of multiple overlapping societal and familial instabilities that the music begins its work. And in Mary Poppins, it does so first and foremost as magic. Whether tidying up the children’s nursery with a simple snap of the fingers or floating to the celling of Uncle Albert’s house for a laughter-filled tea party, music serves as a kind of magical technique or incantation. Just as “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” so too does music enable a shift into a kind of magical realism. Mary seems to be able to exert some manner of control over the magical power of music, but when others attempt to do so, the magic becomes unwieldy and even contagious. For instance, Uncle Albert may “love to laugh,” and this laughter in the form of a song may very well serve as the means by which he and his guests are able to float high above the ground, much to their collective delight. But at a certain point, uncontrolled laughter verges on madness and sober minds must prevail, at least according to the epitome of sober-mindedness herself, Mary Poppins. Regardless, in both cases, the music serves as a magical device that not only acknowledges the tensions between work and play, seriousness and fun, but in certain respects, helps the characters overcome these dichotomies. The above two musical numbers notwithstanding, the most glaring example of music functioning as magic can be found in the audio dissolve that

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gives rise to the extended fantasy sequence that takes place inside one of Bert’s chalk drawings. This nearly 20-minute-long section of the film, which features a number of song and dance numbers (including “Super-cali-fragilistic-expi-ali-docious”), is an audio dissolve par excellence, for it quite literally ushers the characters into an ideal space where the differences they are constantly negotiating in the actual world have no force. In this (animated) realm, medicine is unnecessary, chores do not exist, and even hunted animals come to no harm. But as the ensuing rain reminds both characters and audiences alike, all good things must come to an end. The magic can only hold for so long. It can only symbolize a reality that has yet to arrive, at least not in full. Music as Metaphor The symbolic role of music extends beyond those instances when it functions as magical tool or technique. In the narrative world of Mary Poppins, music also functions metaphorically, perhaps nowhere more so than in the sequences highlighting gender and class differences. For example, most of the audio dissolves featuring Bert begin with him laboring in one of the many odd job he pursues as part of the lower-class citizenry of London. Yet, the material constraints of working as a chimney sweep (or a one-man band or street artist) are not so much reconciled as they are completely dissolved (and perhaps disregarded) in the ideal realm of “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” Here, the music functions as a metaphor for the ways in which class differences are addressed in the actual world governed by capitalist logics, which is to say, not at all. The contrast between the chimney sweeps and the white-collar bankers who control the means of production is stark, and often glaring, but these power differentials have no purchase in the supradiegetic realm where chimney sweeps soar high above the rooftops in collective song. The same can be said for the women in the film, each of whom navigates a diegetic world controlled by men at every turn. It is quite telling, for example, that the very first audio dissolve in the film is Mrs. Banks’s “Sister Suffragette,” which features an explicit critique of systemic sexism (“and though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid”). And yet, Mrs. Banks is not only interrupted mid-song by the demands of her caretaking and homemaking obligations, but neither her song nor her political project is ever explicitly referenced again, other than in a brief moment when Mrs. Banks finds the chimney sweeps dancing in her house to the music of “Step in Time.” The plights of women and the lower-class are thus linked, but it is evident whose interests remain at the bottom of the social stratum. In terms of class differences, the music of Mary Poppins does indeed serve as a metaphor for a possible world that is not yet present. But it seems

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to hold out no such hope for women. Despite the magnetism of Julie Andrews or the fact that she plays the titular character, the audio dissolves featuring the women in the film make one thing abundantly clear: Mary Poppins is not about women; it’s about Mr. Banks. That said, the suggestion that the overarching narrative of Mary Poppins is “about” the character of Mr. Banks does not have to be determinative. Like other forms of art, films are often more sophisticated than their creator, and this is especially true of enduring works like Mary Poppins, which invite thick interpretations. What is more, from the perspective of genre analysis, because audience expectations play such an integral role in determining both what and how a film means, it is quite possible to read against the grain of its narrative constraints. Meaning thus emerges from the dynamic interaction that takes place between the story world of the film and the filmgoers who encounter that story. But on a phenomenological level, the introduction of music problematizes any kind of straightforward reading of this film-audience dialogue, which is one of the great benefits of musical analyses. For instance, in film musicals, music typically does originate “from” the film’s narrative world and is principally “for” the audience who hears it, but as music, it is fundamentally superfluous, gratuitous even. In other words, however much it “means” and whatever it is “about,” film music is always already signaling an inexhaustible excess that exposes the limits of the film’s narrative and its visual imagery. Indeed, when heard in the context of a film, music points toward a “something more” that cannot be contained—by the filmmaker, the audience, or the film critic. But it is this very unwieldiness that allows film music to function not simply as a metaphor, but as an uncontrollable presence capable of transforming the world of the film and the world of the filmgoer from the inside-out. Music as Means As Buhler has rightly pointed out, in film musicals, the “broken” family is a sign of a community no longer able to sustain itself. Thus: [i]ncomplete, broken or dysfunctional families are quite common in musicals, especially those focused on children. . . . The narrative drive in such films is toward completion or correction of the broken or fragmented family unit. Healing the breach, often accomplished through a romance of surrogate parents, stabilizes the family so that its members can be reintegrated into a unified whole.16

As mentioned above, Mary Poppins is indeed the titular character, and the inciting incident for her arrival appears at first glance to be two unruly

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children in need of a gifted nanny and perhaps even a wife, who has become distracted from the maternal duties society has assigned to her. But these “disorders” are not root causes. They are merely signs or symptoms of a deeper imbalance. What is truly disordered and disintegrated, at least from the perspective of the film’s narrative, is Mr. Banks. Indeed, as the more recent movie chronicling the film adaptation of Mary Poppins rightly suggests, the entire narrative hinges upon Saving Mr. Banks (2013). That is, the film is principally concerned with reintegrating the father figure into a stable familial and, by extension, social context. Importantly, music serves as the principal mechanism by which the film calls, invites, and, at times, even compels Mr. Banks to recognize how disordered and misdirected his life has become. Mary’s primary task, then, is not to get Mr. and Mrs. Banks simply to sing, but, as Buhler notes, to direct the songs they are already singing first toward their family and then their community-at-large, a scenario best exemplified by “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”17 In the film’s final audio dissolve, Mr. Banks has finally awoken to the various ways in which he has abdicated his calling as husband and father. As a result, he rejoins his family (and eventually the entire community/cast), kisses his wife, and takes them all outside to participate in what appears to be a community-wide kite flying event. It is not necessarily magical (kites really do fly), nor entirely metaphorical (he really has prioritized time with his family over his work). Rather, music functions here as the means for realizing this communally directed desire. But as it is once again located in a supradiegetic register, it can only serve as a sign or a promise of something that is not yet present. For, in theological terms, music’s power—whether as magic, metaphor, or means—is always proleptic. Mr. Banks’s salvation is already here, but his full restoration (and the restoration of society) remains “not yet.” MARY POPPINS AS CALL This may all be fine and well insofar as the overarching narrative is concerned. But the “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” sequence also contains a brief bit of dialogue between Mary and her parrot-shaped umbrella handle that problematizes such an easy resolution, and recalls a prior moment in the film that cannot be unheard: Umbrella: That’s gratitude for you. Didn’t even say goodbye. Look at them. They think more of their father than they do of you. Mary: That’s as it should be.18

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Perhaps. But perhaps not. In certain respects, yes, things are as they should be. Harmony has been restored to the Banks family and, by extension, to their broader community. But in another sense, a deeper sense, things are very much not as they should be. The harmony they have secured is fragile at best, and perhaps even fleeting—a fact of which we are reminded as Mary departs on the very same winds of disruption that brought her into the Banks’s world. In the film’s final moments, the underscoring features an orchestral version of “A Spoonful of Sugar,” but the visual imagery recalls the opening sequence, during which “Feed the Birds” is first heard. We could not have known it at the time when the music first appeared in the opening credits, but “Feed the Birds” audio dissolve functions as the major turning point in the movie (tonally, musically, and narratively). While discussing the children’s upcoming trip into the city with their father, Mary tells Michael and Jane that “sometimes a person we love, through no fault of his own, can’t see past the end of his nose.” She holds up a snow globe containing a miniature version of a cathedral that Mr. Banks passes each day on his way to work at the Bank. Nonplussed, Jane exclaims, “father passes that every day. He sees that.”19 In response, Mary begins singing. Importantly though, the majority of the lyrics she sings belong not to her but to a woman who sells wares on the steps of the cathedral. As the orchestral underscoring moves to the foreground, signaling an audio dissolve, the camera dives into the snow globe to reveal the woman, sordid and surrounded by pigeons. Mary’s voice can still be heard, but as the song’s lyrics echo inside and around the snow globe that now consumes the entire visual field, the relationship between sound and image begins to fracture if not entirely collapse. Are we to understand the source of these words as the Bird Woman or Mary (or both)? Does the Bird Woman live in a diegetic world (the snow globe) within a diegetic world (the story world of the film), such that the song is both supradiegetic and diegetic at the same time? Or is the snow globe simply a lens through which Mary and the children see their own world (i.e., the “actual” world of the diegesis), such that the music is providing illustrative commentary on the visuals? Furthermore, given the presence of orchestral accompaniment that has no anchor in any of these diegetic realms, in which direction are we to understand the audio dissolve flowing—from the children’s bedroom to the snow globe, from the globe to the actual world of industry and commerce, or from the actual world of economic inequality to some other imagined space (or some combination of the them all)? There are no easy or straightforward answers to any of these questions. But to quote Mary Poppins, “that’s just as it should be.”20 Nevertheless, in spite of these complexities, it becomes clear that, whatever else might be taking place, difference is not reconciled in “Feed the Birds,” whether through a transposition to an “ideal” space or otherwise. Rather, in contrast to the film’s

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other audio dissolves, the force of difference is amplified, perhaps even reified, for this song explicitly connects the possibility of Mr. Banks’s familial restoration to a prior and more elemental call to social and economic justice. Somehow, and in some way, this call issues from a location beyond/outside/ beneath the diegesis (the same realm from which Mary hails?), but its insistent voice impinges directly upon the diegetic world, and in certain respects, pierces directly through the diegesis, revealing the fundamental opaqueness of its origins. Put differently, “Feed the Birds” is neither diegetic nor superdiegetic, but something else altogether. It is not merely the sign or even the promise of that which is not yet present. Instead, it functions as the presence of an immanent transcendence.21 It is a fundamental call that addresses everyone, arising as it does from the immanent frame of the diegesis, but it can only be heard by those who have developed the capacity to respond (“though her words are simple and few, listen, listen, she’s calling to you”).22 In this way, the song, much like Mary Poppins herself, not only affects the world of the narrative, but the world of the viewer too (albeit indirectly). Yet, strictly speaking, the song Mary sings cannot be understood as originating from above, beneath, within, outside, or beyond the various worlds inhabited by the characters or the audience. Indeed, especially as it concerns the orchestral underscoring that appears out of thin air and without explanation, this music cannot be said to “originate” at all. It doesn’t “have” a source within the diegesis or elsewhere. Rather, it functions as the sound of what happens to us, both characters and filmgoers alike. In other words, both within the film proper and the cinematic event it occasions, music functions as the presence of the animating Spirit—the breath of life—that creates the conditions for everything else. In this way, to borrow from philosopher John Caputo, the music doesn’t “exist.” It insists.23 Of course, like the winds of change that carry Mary into and out of the story world, it is difficult to anticipate the movements of this music, much less its effects. But unpredictability is precisely what one would expect when entering the domain of the wind, the breath, the Spirit of life. Indeed, as Bert telegraphs for anyone with the ears to hear, “winds in the East, mist coming in, like something is brewing, ‘bout to begin. Can’t put me finger on what lies in store. But I feel what’s to happen has all happened before.”24 Or, to borrow from Jesus, “[t]he wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

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MARY POPPINS AS IN-SPIRITED EVENT To invoke the Spirit is to shift from a more formal and thematic interpretation of the film to a decidedly theological one. Like numerous Hollywood musicals that preceded it, Mary Poppins reveals and calls attention both to its own constructed-ness and the tension between theatricality (i.e., stylized performance) and realism (i.e., film’s realist aesthetic), which problematizes how the audience accepts and understands the cinematic experience.25 In addition, because it is a fairy-tale musical, Mary Poppins highlights the rhythmic organization of quotidian life (expressed in dance), but draws this dance into a supradiegetic realm through music.26 In doing so, it establishes a discursive space that is structurally analogous to the form of poetics that theology observes—the poetics of the event that is occasioned by the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God.27 So even while “something we know not what” pervades the diegesis at every turn (i.e., the Spirit), it nevertheless remains a “fantasy.” As a fantasy, the film avoids irresolvable paradoxes or illogical contradiction by operating in the realm of the “para-logical” and “para-rational,” enacting as it does the possibility of the impossible. For instance, in the “Feed the Birds” sequence, we can hear the film’s call to an all-encompassing justice—an impossible possibility if there ever was one. As a consequence, the film’s music is always a sign and a promise of what is not yet present— the presence of an absence. Justice (i.e., wholeness for family and society brought about by equity) is always “to come.” Much like the kingdom of God that is already-but-not-yet, this incompleteness is a structural element of the audio dissolve and the (in-Spirited-ed) event it harbors. To be clear, Mary Poppins is a Hollywood film. It makes no attempt to “figure out” God or religion. Rather it offers a figurative means for expressing what is happening to us when we come under the influence of disruptive winds, whether those winds signal societal upheaval, the call of justice, or the movement of God’s Spirit in the world (or all of the above). Put differently, it is a genre tailored for the present age, one that establishes the necessary conditions for the Spirit to happen to us (which, whether acknowledged or not, are conditions only made possible in and through the Spirit’s ongoing presence and activity). As such, it is not an orthodox articulation of Christian theology, but rather a form of proto-religion. It places the audience in the accusative, addressed by the call of an immanent transcendence—a call that invites a response. And just as Mr. Banks discovers, the most appropriate response to this call is to participate—to join with the movements of the Spirit—which sometimes is as simple as saying (and singing) “Let’s go fly a kite.”

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NOTES 1. James Buhler, “Star Wars, Music, and Myth,” in James Buhler, ed., Music and Cinema (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 44. Buhler is speaking here of the first time the Force theme is heard in Star Wars: A New Hope, but as will become evident, according to my reading of “Feed the Birds,” the music in Mary Poppins functions in a similar capacity. 2. For an elaboration on the “cinematic event” as a conceptual category and heuristic device, see Kutter Callaway, Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012). 3. John Caputo, The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (Salem: Polebridge Press, 2016). 4. For a helpful overview of the historical development of the film musical, see James Eugene Wierzbicki, Film Music: A History (New York: Routledge, 2009). 5. As critic Alexander Bakshy pointed out at the time, “[on stage, a musical] disregards the absurdities of the plot or the antics of the characters, because it never associates them with real life . . . [but film equivalents] place their characters in perfectly natural surroundings, and introduce them as perfectly normal people, and then make them behave as if they were escaped lunatics.” Alexander Bakshy, “Screen Musical Comedy,” The Nation, February 5, 1930, in Mervyn Cooke, A History of Film Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 146. 6. Cooke, A History of Film Music, 148. 7. For a consideration of how genre criticism might inform theological reflection on film, see Robert K. Johnston, Craig Detweiler, and Kutter Callaway, Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019). 8. Cooke, A History of Film Music, 151. 9. Rick Altman. The American Film Musical (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987). 16–27. 10. Cooke, A History of Film Music, 152–53. 11. Cooke, A History of Film Music, 162. 12. James Buhler, “Everybody Sing: Family, Community and the Representation of Social Harmony in the Hollywood Musical,” in A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home, ed. Murray Pomerance (New York: Wallflower, 2008), 41–42. 13. I owe this insight to Buhler, “Everybody Sing” 14. Callaway, Scoring Transcendence. 15. Buhler, “Everybody Sing,” 30–31. 16. Buhler, “Everybody Sing,” 36. 17. Buhler, “Everybody Sing,” 42. 18. Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson (Burbank, CA: The Walt Disney Company, 1964), Streaming. 19. Mary Poppins. 20. Mary Poppins. 21. The connection I am making between a robust pneumatology and God’s “immanent transcendence” has been greatly informed by Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).

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22. Mary Poppins. 23. I am borrowing here from John Caputo’s formulation of the unconditioned event that takes place in the name (of) “God.” See Caputo, The Folly of God. However, I owe my conceptualization of the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God as the breath of life to Robert K. Johnston, God’s Wider Presence: Reconsidering General Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014). 24. Mary Poppins. 25. For a helpful discussion on the relationship between theatricality and realism in the Hollywood musical, see James Buhler, David Neumeyer, and Rob Deemer, Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 26. I am indebted here to Buhler, Neumeyer, and Deemer, Hearing the Movies. 27. As Caputo puts it: “God’s transcendence is a matter of the transcendence of the event that transpires in the name of God. . . . The transcendence of God is not that of a fist that smashes, but of a Spirit who breathes, who inspires, and whose gentle breath urges us on.” John Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 38.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987. Buhler, James, David Neumeyer, and Rob Deemer. “Everybody Sing: Family, Community and the Representation of Social Harmony in the Hollywood Musical.” In Murray Pomerance, ed. A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home, 29–43. New York: Wallflower, 2008. ———. Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. ———. “Star Wars, Music, and Myth.” In James Buhler et al., eds. Music and Cinema, 33–57. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2000. Callaway, Kutter. Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012. Caputo, John. The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional. Salem: Polebridge Press, 2016. ———. The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Cooke, Mervyn. A History of Film Music. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Johnston, Robert K., Detweiler, Craig, and Callaway, Kutter. Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019.

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Johnston, Robert K. God’s Wider Presence: Reconsidering General Revelation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Wierzbicki, James Eugene. Film Music: A History. New York: Routledge, 2009.

‌‌‌‌C hapter 4

Traditioning and the Spirit in Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story Jeffrey S. Lamp

This chapter will examine Martin Scorsese’s “documentary” (2019) of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975–1976 with an eye toward the filmmaker’s use of source material from the tour, consisting of concert footage as well as footage from Dylan’s film project Renaldo and Clara (1978) shot during the tour, along with later scenes created by Scorsese. The focus will be on the process of “traditioning,” in which previous material is appropriated and modified to create fresh meaning. The argument will be that the process employed in the film is illustrative of the manner in which the Spirit works to create fresh appropriations of scriptural and other traditions into a living tradition in the church. What follows will not be a deep analysis of the film. Rather, the focus will be on how the film was composed, what seemed to be driving its shape, and how the final product serves as an example of traditioning that has analogies with how tradition is formed and functions in the church. First, however, we must provide some context for the film, beginning with a brief look at the tour itself. WHAT WAS THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE? Early in the film, a clearly uncomfortable Bob Dylan has this to say about the Rolling Thunder Revue (RTR): “I’m trying to get to the core of what this Rolling Thunder thing is all about, and I don’t have a clue because it’s about 41

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nothing! It’s just something that happened forty years [ago]—and that’s the truth of it. I don’t remember a thing about Rolling Thunder. It happened so long ago I wasn’t even born.” This is a fairly typical response one should expect of “Bob Dylan” when one looks back over his sixty-year career. Dylan is a master of personal “transfiguration”—a term he frequently uses to describe the many phases or personae he has adopted throughout the creative odyssey he has pursued.1 To say “he wasn’t even born” is simply to say that this event took place in one of his phases that has been followed by several others. Thankfully, there are other means of uncovering what the RTR was, how it came to be, what it was to accomplish, and even what it means. The tour itself took place in 1975 and 1976, divided into two legs, one in each year, though the film covers only the far more interesting leg of 1975.2 To understand the origins of the RTR, we must have some historical context of Dylan’s career at the time. In 1966, following a hectic period of creative and performative activity in large part fueled by various pharmaceuticals, Dylan was involved in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, NY. Dylan biographers have debated the seriousness of the actual crash itself, even to the point of questioning whether the whole event is apocryphal, but it marked a dramatic shift in his life, both personally and professionally. Following the accident, Dylan refrained from touring until 1974, at which point he embarked on a commercially successful tour with his erstwhile backing and recording band, The Band. That tour is widely hailed as an exemplar of 1970s live rock performance. Dylan was once again in the spotlight of the rock music world. A couple of new creative influences emerged that would greatly influence the presentation of the RTR. In 1974, Dylan took painting lessons from Norman Raeben, son of Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem, whom Dylan credits with teaching him how to look at songwriting as a process akin to painting a picture. This approach to writing a song such that one can see it all at once, as one might look at a painting, took actual shape in the recording of his album Desire, released in 1976. The songs on this album were largely co-written with Jacques Levy, a theater director whose influence complemented Raeben’s by helping Dylan craft more narratively rich songs. It was no accident that the 1975 leg of the RTR featured yet-to-be-released songs from Desire, where the rich textures of the songs’ narratives were presented within the visual spectacle of the live performances. In fact, Levy would serve as the stage director of the RTR. At the same time, however, the tranquility of Dylan’s domestic life experienced from the time of the motorcycle accident until the 1974 tour began to unravel, hints of which are evident in what many consider to be his greatest album, Blood on the Tracks, released in January 1975. In fact, Dylan himself attributes some of the cause of the dissolution of his marriage to his time



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learning from Raeben, after which Sara, Dylan’s wife, found it increasingly difficult to understand him. All of these factors created a context in which Dylan felt a need to do something different, a sensation that had often led to dramatic changes in his career to this point. The story goes that Dylan visited his friend and fellow musician, Roger McGuinn, formerly of The Byrds (a band that made much mileage on covering Dylan songs in the 1960s), and voiced the idea of creating a new kind of performative format, one that could go on endlessly and would be “like a circus.”3 In an insightful analysis of the RTR, Andrea Cossu notes that Dylan seemed disenchanted with the performative format of his tour with The Band the previous year, conforming as it did to the mode of rock music performance typified in the mid-1970s, with large venues and demonstrative, high energy stage production.4 Dylan wanted to do something antithetical to this, and his solution was to stage something that drew upon the traditional format of the revue, a circus-like traveling troupe that went from town to town, with little advanced publicity and sale of tickets just days before the performance was scheduled. It was indeed a true revue in the sense that Dylan was not listed as the headliner in promotional handbills, but as one of many performers. In fact, Dylan would not typically take the stage until an hour into the show. The shows typically lasted four hours, with Dylan usually performing three sets, two with the collection of musicians referred to as Guam, and one set with Joan Baez, in which they performed nostalgia from their joint performances from the early 1960s. The shows would open with various individual band members singing solos, followed by Bobby Neuwirth and Ronee Blakley singing a song or two. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, a connection to the folk era via his friendship with Woody Guthrie, Dylan’s early mentor, performed four songs. It was then Dylan came on stage for his first set. The shows typically featured impromptu performances by musicians who would join the tour along its many stops, among them Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, and Gordon Lightfoot. One feature that quickly characterized the RTR was Dylan (and Joan Baez as well) appearing in whiteface. At the beginning of his first set, Dylan would appear wearing a Richard Nixon mask, which he would quickly discard to reveal his face painted white. The first night of the tour, October 30, 1975, in Plymouth, MA, occurred almost exactly eleven years after a notable performance Dylan played in Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan on Halloween Night, when he announced to the audience that he was wearing his “Bob Dylan mask.” As noted earlier, Dylan is a master of changing personae, and the RTR’s circus-like aura helped contribute to this phenomenon. In the opening moments of Scorsese’s film, Dylan is interviewed and he states that a person only tells the truth if he’s wearing a mask. At this stage, we might

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ask whether Scorsese is masking, unmasking, or remasking Dylan in the film. As Cossu notes, a mask both conceals the person wearing the mask, but also draws attention to the person.5 This suggests that the RTR is something that is telling the truth in connection with the person performing the songs. We will address this issue when we look at Scorsese’s film. This all brings us back to the matter of the circus. Why might Dylan wish to revert to a rather old traditional format in an age of commercialized rock music performance? Cossu argues that the answer resides in what the circus provides.6 The circus is that which exists at the margins of society, a space that allows performers to move between the boundaries of the playful and the serious in a way that does not threaten the larger society. The masks, the whiteface, provide Dylan a way to navigate the serious, to tell the truth, in such a way that remains playful and less threatening, but nevertheless apparent to those with eyes to see. A second answer Cossu asserts is that this is a way for Dylan to continue his trajectory of remaining authentic in his own artistic and performative pursuits.7 Whether in his earlier persona as a folk-prophet “finger-pointing” singer-songwriter, or in his transfiguration into a more introspective songwriter who brought a seriousness to rock and roll music, or in his more domestic country crooner who brought an end to the psychedelic stage of rock music, Dylan has always strived to be authentic to the muse moving him at the moment. The RTR brought him to a place where he sought to reassert his own authenticity, recalling the roots of his own musical emergence and bringing them into conversation with the state of rock music in the 1970s. The circus provided the setting for this conversation, merging strands of tradition from all eras into one energetic mode of performance. The RTR was a reenactment of the revivalist show, capped with a hootenanny-like performance where the whole cast of performers sang Woody Guthrie’s anthem “This Land Is Your Land.”8 Of course, no review, no matter how brief, of the RTR would be complete without mention of a concurrent project Dylan had in view at this time. Dylan had always envisioned himself as a filmmaker to some extent. He had previously been the subject of documentary projects—among them D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back (1967) of Dylan’s United Kingdom tour of 1965, and Pennebaker’s follow-up: the unreleased Eat the Document of Dylan’s 1966 United Kingdom tour—and he made his acting debut in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (1973). The RTR, however, would be the setting for Dylan’s first attempt at being a filmmaker. The tour would provide the context for making his film Renaldo and Clara, which was released in 1978. This film would include footage from the various performances of the RTR, but also scenes staged during the travels of the troupe along the tour. The film would have a limited theatrical release (no official version was distributed in video formats following its release), and it



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was widely panned critically as being self-indulgent and without a coherent plot.9 What the film represents is a “set of characters [in] a citationist translation of Marcel Carné’s 1940s masterpiece Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise) and Dylan’s Renaldo is modeled after the mime Baptiste, who is one of the main protagonists of Carné’s account of life, anguish, unrequired love, and theater in the 1830s.”10 Many of the characters were also performers on the RTR. Since Dylan wore whiteface in the RTR performances, the fact that the character he plays in Renaldo and Clara is a mime in whiteface (Renaldo) makes a strong connection between his film project and the RTR, especially in its appropriation of aspects of Carné’s film.11 With this brief survey of the RTR, we turn to Martin Scorsese’s film of the event and its take on traditioning. WHAT IS MARTIN SCORSESE’S ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY? Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is not director Martin Scorsese’s first foray into the field of Dylan documentary. In 2005 Scorsese directed No Direction Home, a documentary that examined Dylan’s life and career through his epochal tour of the United Kingdom in 1966. Rolling Thunder Revue had been in the works for about a decade. An initial problem hindering work was the realization that despite the massive amount of footage that had been shot during the RTR for inclusion in Renaldo and Clara, the negatives were lost. However, a trove of 16mm footage was discovered and restored as much as was physically possible, resulting in a film that both reflected the 1970s yet transcended the technological limitations of the era to provide a more modern aesthetic, giving the film a timeless effect.12 The first cut of the film resulted in what Scorsese would call a “conventional” documentary.13 It consisted of restored concert footage and later interviews with many of the original members of the RTR troupe, adopting much the same format of No Direction Home. Scorsese was dissatisfied with the film. In a brief interview coinciding with the release of the film, Scorsese said that he wanted to capture something of the “mythology” of the event, going beyond a mere telling of the event.14 At this point an idea, whose point of origin remains unclear, emerged. There would be inserted into the film at various points purely fictional scenes, composed with actors who were not present during the RTR. These scenes were placed alongside the original footage and presented as if they really took place. The presence of these persons at key junctures in the film would speak to certain elements in the film as the story emerged.15 The performances of these actors was so convincing, as was Dylan as he was interviewed and played along with the gag, that viewers,

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unless they were deep-dive fans with a thoroughgoing knowledge of the RTR, were taken in and thought the scenes were genuine documentary.16 Many responded positively, attributing it to Dylan’s penchant for creative misdirection regarding his portrayal of his persona, whereas many reacted negatively, feeling deceived that a respected director like Scorsese would stoop to this level of fabrication. What were the scenes in question? There were five major scenes that were purely fictional:17 • Sharon Stone joining the RTR. In the film, Sharon Stone is “interviewed” about her presence on the tour when she was nineteen years old. The interviews and Forrest Gump-like photographic tricks made it appear that a young Sharon Stone was a part of the tour for a time, with innuendo that there might have been a romantic liaison between her and Dylan. In fact, Stone recounts a story wherein Dylan tells her he just wrote a song for her, which turns out to be “Just Like a Woman,” originally recorded in 1966. She was flattered until she found out Dylan was playing a trick on her. Of course, the entire episode is fictitious. Stone was actually seventeen at the time of the RTR. • Dylan gets the idea for whiteface at a KISS concert in Queens. The inspiration for adopting whiteface for is performances during the tour, Dylan said, came from attending a KISS concert in Queens with his violinist, Scarlet Rivera. Rivera was an ephemeral presence, her persona and playing evoking a gypsy mysticism that was entrancing. Dylan could not help but go to the concert with her. The problem with this story is that KISS had not played a concert in Queens since 1973—by 1975, the band was far too popular to play the small venue suggested in the scene. Also, as noted earlier, the inspiration for the whiteface came from the film Children of Paradise. • Stephen van Dorp directed the original footage from the RTR. A figure named Stephen van Dorp appears sporadically in the film, complaining that he did not get proper credit for his direction of the footage that was used in Scorsese’s film. As noted earlier, the film footage used in Scorsese’s film was shot during the tour for Dylan’s film project Renaldo and Clara. Moreover, Stephen van Dorp was played by actor Martin von Hasselberg, one part of a performance art duo The Kipper Kids and Bette Midler’s husband. It is noteworthy that Midler also has a cameo early in the film. Again, no such person existed and the event never happened. • Congressman Jack Tanner attends an RTR performance in Niagara Falls through the influence of President Jimmy Carter. In the film, Michigan Congressman Jack Tanner claims that due to some changes



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in travel plans, he found himself in Niagara Falls on the night the RTR was in town. Tanner is told by President Carter that he can arrange for his friend Bob Dylan to get him into the show, which of course happens. Tanner, however, is a character played by actor Michael Murphy, who first appeared in director Robert Altman’s mockumentary Tanner ’88, written by Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau. • Jim Gianopulos promoted the RTR. In the film, Gianopulos appears to relate how the business plan for the tour was virtually nonexistent and how the tour was financially disastrous. Gianopulos is an actual person who was at one time the co-chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment for twelve years and at the time of the release of the film was CEO of Paramount Pictures. But at the time of the RTR, he was in law school. Of course, the burning question is, why would Scorsese do this? It is important to keep in mind that this is indeed Scorsese’s vision portrayed in the film. Sure, Dylan is interviewed in what is clearly relatively recent footage, but as Rolling Stone journalist Andy Greene reveals, at the time the film was completed, it had been about twenty years since Scorsese had personally spoken with Dylan.18 So what we see in the film is Scorsese’s story about Bob Dylan, as the subtitle of the film indicates. Journalist Owen Gleiberman assesses the possible reasons why Scorsese may have included these scenes in his otherwise standard documentary.19 Perhaps Scorsese is using these fictionalized scenes to draw a connection between the 1970s and the current era where media pretends to be “reality” but really is not. Perhaps it is a cynical nod to the cult of celebrity, and thus the presence of Sharon Stone in the film. Perhaps it is a reminiscence of the 1970s, where Scorsese himself, in a cocaine-fueled period of creative freedom, made many of his signature films and thus made the transition to a world of acceptance in the Hollywood machine. The film thus presents not so much Dylan’s own story, but Scorsese’s, a story of Scorsese’s bridge between two eras, “[T]he wild and pure meets the corporate and celebrity-driven. He’s imagining that they could somehow be one. Of course, he’s also saying: What a joke.” Such a dive into Scorsese’s psyche at this point may be intriguing, but it is also unnecessary. As noted earlier, Dylan was at a personal and creative crossroads in 1975 and wanted to create a tour that would break the boundaries of what rock performance could be. In doing so, he drew on the traditional form of the circus to couch the performances, and pulled from all phases of his own performing career to present an eclectic show. Moreover, the context of America at the time is important to consider. It was a post-Watergate, post-Vietnam War, pre-Bicentennial celebration moment. Into this context emerges the RTR, and from this Scorsese draws in creating his Bob Dylan story as he does. So in some sense Scorsese is telling his story in the way

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Dylan performs his tour, using a “mosaic” approach to pull together various elements to tell the story of the RTR for a new audience, to create new meaning out of old footage.20 So what does the film show us? It would be tempting to say something like Ann Powers when she says that at a time when America was examining its own sustaining yet destructive national myths, in which “American voices always engage in myth-making, hucksterism and strategic lies,” Bob Dylan returned to the stage to “put a mirror up to the nation, revealing its carnivalesque soul.”21 This speaks perhaps more to Dylan’s motivations, but if one recalls the release date of the film, 2019, and the years leading up to the release, it may be that the film’s purpose is to expose and explore the failure of American mythology and myth-making in the present. In its use of fabricated scenes viewers are provided a cautionary tale never to blindly trust leaders,22 including a respected director making a “documentary” of a shape-shifting Nobel Prize winner. In my opinion such speculations are helpful, but don’t account for all of what appeared in the movie to tell the story. It is my contention that the film does more to tell a story about Bob Dylan than it does to provide a commentary on American society, though it does indeed do that. We need to take seriously Scorsese’s own words noted earlier, that he wanted to tell an unconventional story that in some way captures the “mythology” of the event, and in the process contributed to the myth of Bob Dylan. In so doing, Scorsese provides us an insight into the development of tradition. The final section of this discussion turns to examine how Scorsese’s film develops the tradition of Bob Dylan in a way that is analogous to how Christian tradition has developed. SCORSESE AND TRADITION Of course, to pursue this line of discussion, we must have a sense of what Christian tradition is and how it develops. This is an immensely complicated subject. However, we will rest content to draw on a recent study by David Bentley Hart to provide the contours for this discussion.23 In many ways, Hart’s discussion of tradition is an apophatic exercise. That is, it begins largely by describing what Christian tradition is not. What it is not, according to Hart, is an ossified body of dogmatic declarations more or less arbitrarily codified once for all at some point in history. This he terms “traditionalism.”24 Moreover, what tradition is not is neither a random process of connected historical events that emerge and dictate the shape of the alleged tradition (a historicist perspective) nor a superimposition of dogmatic decrees over against the events of history (a dogmatist perspective).25 Rather, tradition



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may be described, at the risk of reductionism, as a living teleologically-driven apocalypse (“apocalypse” seen in its true sense as a revelation of what is not previously knowable).26 Hart uses the imagery of a seed to illustrate this conception.27 The seed in itself contains all of what is necessary to bring a fully mature tree into being, but initially this cannot be seen. Of course, the growing tree is a living thing, and it will be challenged and shaped for good or ill by the historical exigencies in which it lives, but it is nevertheless teleologically driven to become that mature tree. For Hart, the seed in this illustration is that nexus of original historical events in which the Christian story is grounded (e.g., the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus) and in which may be seen the eschatological kingdom of God toward which the living tradition is ever-moving.28 This teleological impulse of tradition is what keeps the often spurious history of Christian tradition from a simple characterization as either a chain of connected historical happenstances or arbitrary authoritative doctrinal proclamations. The tradition strives to attain its eschatological destiny. As living, tradition is able to engage its historical contexts from its apocalyptic framing in a way that is faithfully grounded in its origins and faithfully anticipating its future. Conspicuous throughout Hart’s discussion is the paucity of references to the Holy Spirit. This is due to Hart’s reticence to engage in a “God of the gaps” approach to carry the story when the historical evidence of the Church’s faithfulness to its grounding and guiding story is sorely lacking. But Hart is insistent that if indeed the tradition is a living thing, it is due to the guiding presence of the Holy Spirit, whom the Creed identifies as “the Lord, the giver of life.”29 This presence is typically unseen by the faithful who must remain just that: faithful. The fingerprints of the Spirit on the tradition may ultimately be knowable only when the tradition’s goal of the kingdom of God is attained. Scorsese’s working method is similar to this process. At first glance, his original historical source material, the “seed” in Hart’s illustration, would be the footage, but as we have seen, the footage is itself a stage in the developing tradition of the Dylan persona. The “seed” at the root of this tradition would be Robert Zimmerman’s adoption of the Bob Dylan persona, constructed from factual and fantastical stories crafted around his appearance on the folk scene in Greenwich Village in 1961. The RTR then is a stage in that tradition that Scorsese appropriates in the form of the footage and further shapes to tell the story. Into that story Scorsese inserts fabricated scenes (not unlike the parables that Jesus speaks that were included in the telling of the Gospels’ stories) that weave seamlessly into the footage such that they develop the central figure of the tour and the film, who in his whiteface character does not portray “Bob Dylan,” but rather Renaldo. In other words, the fabricated scenes develop further the elusive, shape-shifting persona of the performer whose

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own career is in a constant state of transfiguration. We cannot know anything about the real “Bob Dylan,” for it is all a six-decade-long piece of performance art. Scorsese’s inclusion of original footage, fake scenes, and snippets from actual interviews with participants of the tour give us a look at the tour, but does so in a way that shows us we cannot know it completely and thus cannot know the subject of the film completely. And yet this is the very story Scorsese wants to tell. Bob Dylan is ultimately unknowable, a persona always changing, and this is by design, this is the tradition. To this tradition Scorsese contributes, providing fodder that further keeps Dylan from being knowable, that further masks the artist in a way that Dylan has not overtly addressed or appropriated since the making of the film, but that nevertheless adds to the masking for those observing this tradition. As noted earlier, Scorsese cannot attribute the source of this inspiration, much like the presence of the Spirit is indiscernible in the course of history, but as it turned out, the inclination to pursue this path proved fortuitous. And the tradition is richer for it. NOTES 1. A particularly intriguing interpretation of Dylan’s many transfigurations is found in the ten-part podcast series by Jake Brennan in which the fictionalized voice of Bob Dylan recalls his recovery from his motorcycle crash of 1966 and looks at his past and future personae. Jake Brennan, “Blood on the Tracks Season 3: A Bob Dylan Story,” Double Elvis, March 2–April 28, 2022, https:​//​bloodonthetrackspod​ .com​/episodes. Clinton Heylin, The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941–1966 (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021), 1–15, provides a brief synopsis of Dylan’s ever-evolving fake autobiography, with special attention directed to the RTR. 2. Accounts of the RTR are found in the many biographies of Dylan, e.g., Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986), 450–75; and Howard Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 255–305. The best first-hand account of the tour is given by Larry “Ratso” Sloman, an embedded Rolling Stone reporter, in On the Road with Bob Dylan (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002). 3. Sid Griffin, Shelter from the Storm: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Years (London: Jawbone Press, 2010), 34–35. Roger McGuinn confirmed this account in a conversation-performance presentation at the inaugural World of Bob Dylan conference held in Tulsa, OK, May 31, 2019, under the auspices of the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies of the University of Tulsa (I was in attendance at this event). 4. Andrea Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe: Bob Dylan and the Performance of Authenticity (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), 71–95. 5. Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe, 76. 6. Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe, 72–73. 7. Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe, 84–89.



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8. Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe, 80. 9. Probably the best explanation of the meaning of Renaldo and Clara is James Dunlap, “Understanding Bob and Renaldo,” in 20 Years of Isis: Bob Dylan Anthology Volume 2, ed. Derek Barker (New Malden, UK: Chrome Dreams, 2005), 201–17. 10. Cossu, It Ain’t Me, Babe, 75. Cossu would further characterize the film thusly: “The cohort of side characters makes Dylan’s movie a modernized-Americanized version of Carné’s movie (minus narrative consistency)” (75). 11. Interestingly, there is a character in Renaldo and Clara named Bob Dylan, though Ronny Hawkins places this role. Sara Dylan, Dylan’s wife, plays Clara, while Ronee Blakley plays Mrs. Dylan. 12. Andy Greene, “The Inside Story of Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese’s New ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Doc,” Rolling Stone, June 10, 2019, https:​//​www​.rollingstone​ .com​/movies​/movie​-features​/the​-inside​-story​-of​-bob​-dylan​-martin​-scorseses​-rolling​ -thunder​-revue​-doc​-844268​/. 13. Greene, “Martin Scorsese Hasn’t Spoken to Bob Dylan in Twenty Years,” Rolling Stone, December 5, 2019, https:​//​www​.rollingstone​.com​/music​/music​-news​/ martin​-scorsese​-bob​-dylan​-922912​/. 14. Netflix Film, “Director Martin Scorsese on What Inspired Him to Make Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,” YouTube video, 4:04, June 12, 2019, https:​ //​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=EBMAxDDQqxM. 15. Greene, “Martin Scorsese Hasn’t Spoken to Bob Dylan in Twenty Years.” 16. I was in attendance at an advanced screening of the film in Tulsa, OK, on June 11, 2019, where Larry “Ratso” Sloman was present for a Q & A session following the showing, and he convincingly played along with the gag as well. 17. Greene, “A Guide to What’s Fake in ‘Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story,’” Rolling Stone, June 12, 2019, https:​//​www​.rollingstone​.com​/tv​-movies​/tv​ -movie​-news​/rolling​-thunder​-revue​-bob​-dylan​-story​-doc​-whats​-fake​-847231​/. 18. Greene, “Martin Scorsese Hasn’t Spoken to Bob Dylan in Twenty Years.” 19. Owen Gleiberman, “Why Did Martin Scorsese Prank His Audience in ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’? Even He May Not Know,” Variety, June 15, 2019, https:​//​variety​ .com​/2019​/film​/columns​/why​-did​-martin​-scorsese​-prank​-his​-audience​-in​-rolling​ -thunder​-revue​-1203243856​/. 20. Ann Powers, “To Capture Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Martin Scorsese Had to Get Weird,” NPR, June 10, 2019, https:​//​www​.npr​.org​/2019​/06​ /10​/731305441​/to​-capture​-bob​-dylans​-rolling​-thunder​-revue​-martin​-scorsese​-had​-to​ -get​-weird. Dylan’s songwriting technique, especially in recent decades, has been likened to composing a “mosaic” by assembling various pieces of language into something new. 21. Powers, “To Capture Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Martin Scorsese Had to Get Weird.” 22. Matthew Mosley, “How Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese Reinvented the Concert Film with ‘Rolling Thunder Revue,’” Collider, May 15, 2022, https:​ //​ collider​.com​/rolling​-thunder​-revue​-martin​-scorsese​-bob​-dylan​-why​-its​-good​/​?fbclid​ =IwAR0kBH3ZEVZGSey6e1V​_o7rDaJxykqq4Xjri​_AD2q5b​_9​_ssdLuOXy2​-j3o.

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23. David Bentley Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002). 24. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 12–14, 179. 25. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 74. The explication of this theme occupies the discussion in chs. 2–5 (23–131). 26. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 143. In fact, the final chapter of the book is titled “Tradition as Apocalypse” (153–88). 27. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 24, 28–29. 28. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 104, 127–28, 139, 151. 29. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 130–31, 157, 187.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Brennan, Jake. “Blood on the Tracks Season 3: A Bob Dylan Story.” Double Elvis, March 2–April 28, 2022. https:​//​bloodonthetrackspod​.com​/episodes. Cossu, Andrea. It Ain’t Me, Babe: Bob Dylan and the Performance of Authenticity. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2012. Dunlap, James. “Understanding Bob and Renaldo.” In 20 Years of Isis: Bob Dylan Anthology Volume 2, edited by Derek Barker, 201–17. New Malden, UK: Chrome Dreams, 2005. Gleiberman, Owen. “Why Did Martin Scorsese Prank His Audience in ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’? Even He May Not Know.” Variety, June 15, 2019. https:​//​variety​ .com​/2019​/film​/columns​/why​-did​-martin​-scorsese​-prank​-his​-audience​-in​-rolling​ -thunder​-revue​-1203243856​/. Greene, Andy. “The Inside Story of Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese’s New ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Doc.” Rolling Stone, June 10, 2019. https:​//​www​.rollingstone​.com​ /movies​/movie​-features​/the​-inside​-story​-of​-bob​-dylan​-martin​-scorseses​-rolling​ -thunder​-revue​-doc​-844268​/. Greene, Andy. “A Guide to What’s Fake in ‘Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.’” Rolling Stone, June 12, 2019. https:​//​www​.rollingstone​.com​/tv​-movies​/tv​ -movie​-news​/rolling​-thunder​-revue​-bob​-dylan​-story​-doc​-whats​-fake​-847231​/. Greene, Andy. “Martin Scorsese Hasn’t Spoken to Bob Dylan in Twenty Years.” Rolling Stone, December 5, 2019. https:​//​www​.rollingstone​.com​/music​/music​ -news​/martin​-scorsese​-bob​-dylan​-922912​/. Griffin, Sid. Shelter from the Storm: Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Years. London: Jawbone Press, 2010. Hart, David Bentley. Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002. Heylin, Clinton. The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless, Hungry Feeling, 1941– 1966. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021. Mosley, Matthew. “How Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese Reinvented the Concert Film with ‘Rolling Thunder Revue.’” Collider, May 15, 2022. https:​//​collider​ .com​/rolling​-thunder​-revue​-martin​-scorsese​-bob​- dylan​ - why​ - its​ - good​ /​ ?fbclid​ =IwAR0kBH3ZEVZGSey6e1V​_o7rDaJxykqq4Xjri​_AD2q5b​_9​_ssdLuOXy2​-j3o.



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Netflix Film. “Director Martin Scorsese on What Inspired Him to Make Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story.” YouTube video, 4:04. June 12, 2019. https:​//​ www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=EBMAxDDQqxM. Powers, Ann. “To Capture Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, Martin Scorsese Had to Get Weird.” NPR, June 10, 2019. https:​//​www​.npr​.org​/2019​/06​/10​/731305441​/to​ -capture​-bob​-dylans​-rolling​-thunder​-revue​-martin​-scorsese​-had​-to​-get​-weird. Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986. Sloman, Larry “Ratso.” On the Road with Bob Dylan. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002. Sounes, Harold. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. New York: Grove Press, 2001.

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Power of the Spirit Sayers and Cinema Crystal L. Downing

Not many people would associate the name Dorothy L. Sayers with either film theory or pneumatology. A founding member of London’s exclusive Detection Club during the Golden Age of detective fiction, Sayers is primarily known as the creator of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, who appeared in multiple novels and short stories between 1923 and 1939. Though adeptly solving mysteries in eleven novels, Sayers’s protagonist had little interest in the mysteries of Christianity. Identifying himself as nonreligious, Wimsey revered the beautiful forms of church architecture and liturgy far more than their content. Sayers actually got angry when readers suggested “Lord Peter will end up as a convinced Christian,” retorting “He exists in his own right and not to please you.”1 Her response informs this essay, which explores how the Holy Spirit shaped Sayers’s view of creativity, a view that I will illustrate with the 2006 film Stranger than Fiction. FROM CINEMA TO SALVATION Sayers herself enjoyed film, exuberantly writing home about silent movies she screened during her years at Oxford University (1912–1915). Before she published her first Lord Peter novel, she even tried her hand at screenwriting, having met a film producer who encouraged her to adapt a Spanish novel for the screen. She loved writing silent film scenarios, as they were called, retreating from the task only because she needed a surer source of income. She, in fact, started writing her first detective novel, Whose Body? (1923), to provide a living wage so that she could focus on screenwriting. 55

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Even after she became a bestselling novelist, Sayers did not lose touch with film, actually buying a house next door to a cinema in the London suburbs. Her best friend in the Detection Club, Helen Simpson, wrote dialogue for Alfred Hitchcock, making it highly likely that Sayers met the auteur director, who adapted novels by several of Sayers’s colleagues in the Detection Club. In the 1930s, Sayers agreed to write a Lord Peter story that a film studio could (and did) turn into a movie: an experience that led her to publish an essay in Sight and Sound, the highly respected journal published by the British Film Institute. And a decade later she discussed film adaptation with Michael Powell, the famous British director who mentored Oscar-winning Martin Scorsese. Not surprisingly, then, references to cinema recur in her Lord Peter novels and short stories. References to the Holy Spirit, however, are all but absent. And then her life changed. In 1936, organizers of the Canterbury Festival, who had commissioned T. S. Eliot to write a verse play for their 1935 gala, asked the bestselling Dorothy L. Sayers to write a play for the 1937 festival. Though enjoying live theater, Sayers hesitated before accepting a writing project that differed so radically from the craft that had made her famous. Rather than pure fiction, the Canterbury Festival plays, performed inside the Cathedral Chapter House, were meant to focus on the history of the cathedral, as with Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral about the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket. Sayers eventually agreed to the commission, choosing to write about the twelfth century architect who rebuilt the cathedral after a fire destroyed part of it, naming her play The Zeal of Thy House. Focusing on doctrine that inspired construction of the cathedral, Sayers was forced to think about her own commitment to Christian orthodoxy. In the process, the Holy Spirit entered into the play as well as into Sayers’s life. TRINITARIAN CREATIVITY The daughter of an Anglican rector, Sayers knew Christian dogma well, as did most Oxford University graduates of her era, whether they believed it or not. Though never renouncing her faith, Sayers tended to marginalize it, glad that her college at Oxford did not require chapel attendance. With the Canterbury commission, however, she was forced to think seriously about Christian doctrine and how it applied to something that she had begun to explore in her detective fiction: the integrity of work. She therefore made the architect in Zeal of Thy House, William of Sens, similar in sensibilities to Lord Peter, valuing the beauty of Christian architecture without submitting to the Incarnate God that inspires it. What matters most to William is the quality of his work, which he considers more important than Christian doctrine.

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However, after a fall from scaffolding cripples him, William finally confesses his sin, acknowledging that Creator God is the source of all creativity. To emphasize this point, Sayers adds to The Zeal of Thy House her own theological reflections about Genesis 1:27, which proclaims that God created males and females in God’s own image. Known as the imago Dei from the Latin translation of the verse, the image of God, Sayers suggests, is fulfilled by human creativity. After all, the God described in the first chapter of Genesis is a Creator, and if humans are created in God’s image, human creativity must manifest that image. But Sayers didn’t stop there. At the very end of her play she establishes that, because the Creator celebrated by Canterbury Cathedral is a Trinity, human creativity must be triune as well. As a result, Sayers discusses the Holy Spirit for the first time in her life. At the end of Zeal of Thy House, Sayers has an angel state that “the adorable Trinity . . . hath made man in His own image, a maker and craftsman like Himself, a little mirror of His triune majesty.” And then the angel explains how this works. Like Father, Son, and Holy Ghost simultaneously participating in the act of creation, so Creative Idea, Creative Energy, and Creative Power simultaneously participate in human creativity. Artists’ original ideas, in other words, are incarnated in the energy of writing or painting or filming them, and the resulting power affects the reader/viewer. However, the first to be affected by the Power are the Creators themselves, who revise or redo first drafts, which inevitably affects the initial idea: the three are one in the act of creation. Corresponding to the Holy Spirit, then, is Creative Power, which Sayers’s angel defines as “the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul.”2 The Spirit, in other words, moves in mysterious ways through the arts—including cinema. An Anglican priest who read a print version of The Zeal of Thy House wrote Sayers to say that she needed to expand her exciting theory into a book length study, which she did, calling it The Mind of the Maker (1941): a book that C. S. Lewis once called “indispensable.”3 Not surprisingly, Sayers alludes to cinema multiple times to build her argument, her unusual approach to Trinitarian creativity being especially helpful to film criticism. Indeed, one theologian illustrates Sayers’s understanding of the consubstantiality of Idea, Energy, and Power by citing a twenty-first century film critic who “defines a bad movie by how weak it is in concept (which parallels the Idea in Sayers’s model), execution (similar to the Energy), or what she calls a ‘whammo combination of both’ (which would affect the Power).”4 Bad movies, then, what Sayers calls “debased and debasing cinema films,” are usually made for the love of money more than for the love of creation, as when studios show movies to test audiences not to assess their Power but in order to guarantee better box office earnings. As Sayers bemoans in The Mind of the Maker, “what

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writer whose trinity was strongly coordinated would even dream of revising his work to conform with the majority report of a committee?”5 For Sayers, creativity on the screen synthesizes Idea (as conceived by screenwriters and directors) with Energy (as incarnated through filming and editing), culminating in a finished work that generates the Power of creative reflection in receptive viewers. The initial viewers, of course, are the writers, producers, director, and actors who watch the “rushes” or “dailies”—the unedited product shot each day—in order to make changes in their work: Idea, Energy, and Power all engaged in the work of creation. Whether filmmakers are Christians or not is beside the point. Sayers asserts that even atheists who are committed to what she calls “the integrity of the work” have experienced the three-fold nature of creativity.6 The real problem for her occurs when makers, whether Christian or non-Christian, disregard one or more persons of the triune imago Dei. CINEMATIC HERESIES In the tenth chapter of The Mind of the Maker, titled “Scalene Trinities,” Sayers explores various ways her triadic model gets warped, comparing such imbalances to heresies about the Trinity that developed in the early centuries of Christianity. For example, followers of Arius in the fourth century asserted that Jesus was not consubstantial with God the Father. After all, they could argue, Paul tells the Colossians that Jesus is “the first born of every creature” (1:15, KJV). This Arian Heresy is echoed in what Sayers calls “artistic Arianism,” which she defines as “all technique and no vision.”7 Examples of cinematic Arianism are obvious, especially in superhero and comic book movies. Offering little more than spectacularly impressive CGI, jaw-dropping special effects, graphic sex and gore, and/or heart-pounding chase scenes, “Arian” movies provide not a single insight about human nature or culture, emphasizing Energy to the detriment of Idea. The opposite extreme, all vision and no technique, Sayers aligns with the Manichaean Heresy. Inspired by a third century Persian prophet, Mani, these heretics align spirit with goodness and light, while dismissing matter as the source of darkness and evil, rendering the Incarnation—God becoming flesh—anathema. Manichaean art, then, is so message-oriented that it disregards artistry in the material medium. Such imbalance helps explain why many films that garner accolades and multiple Oscars in their own day are not considered artistic classics decades later. Merely foregrounding an Idea that was hip, groovy, cool, with-it, or woke in the year they premiered, the movies’ artistic reputations are as ephemeral as the jargon used to describe

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them, reviewers failing to recognize the need for Idea to be incarnated by the Energy of artistic excellence. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the great Father of Christian theology, Augustine, was attracted to Manichaeanism for many years. Even to this day, Christianity has a tendency to perpetuate Manichaean dualism in the arts, elevating the Spirit of message over the materiality of the medium. In an essay written while The Mind of the Maker was going to press, Sayers gives the example of movies made by Christians who ignore “the integrity of the work” in order to promote an evangelistic message. Arguing that “God is not served by technical incompetence,” Sayers states, “The worst religious films I ever saw were produced by a company which chose its staff exclusively for their piety. Bad photography, bad acting, and bad dialogue produced a result so grotesquely irreverent that the pictures could not have been shown in churches without bringing Christianity into contempt.”8 In addition to being an embarrassment to Christianity, such Manichaean movies undermine the very doctrine the filmmakers seek to promote. Ecumenical Councils in the early centuries of the Church Universal established that Jesus was the material medium of salvation while still one with Father God—despite the protests of Arians. At the first Ecumenical Council in 325 CE, Church leaders, guided by the Holy Spirit, proclaimed Christ to be both/and, not an either/or. The same is true of cinema at its best: it is both medium and message, and only then does it have Power. But Power can have its own imbalance. Like people who say “I am spiritual but not religious,” preferring psychological uplift to substantive doctrine, “ghost-ridden” makers, as Sayers calls them, wallow in the “emotion” generated by their attempts at writing or filmmaking, thinking their own emotion will transfer to others. Such makers operate “without undergoing discipline of a thorough incarnation, and without the coherence that derives from reference to a controlling idea.”9 Power, however, does not function on its own; like Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the three are one. PROCESSION OF THE POWER When Sayers discusses the third component of the imago Dei, the Power, she echoes ancient Christian leaders who argued over the nature of the Holy Ghost at the second Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 381 CE. Even to this day Christians disagree about how God the Holy Spirit relates to God the Father and God the Son. Eastern Orthodox Christians still follow the doctrine established at Constantinople, which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father.” In the late sixth century, the Western Church went in a different direction by endorsing the Filioque Clause, filioque meaning “and

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the Son,” in order to argue that the Holy Spirit proceeds from “the Father and the Son.” Sayers therefore follows the Roman tradition, referencing the “filioque clause” in The Mind of the Maker to argue that Power proceeds from Idea and Energy.10 She does so to argue that anytime makers allow technique to suppress vision, or else promote their own ideology with no concern for artistic integrity, Power is destabilized. Power affects anyone who responds with openness to the hypostatic union of Idea and Energy. Just as the Holy Spirit touched those who believed Jesus was God with tongues of fire during Pentecost, so the Power falls upon film viewers when they recognize the consubstantiality of medium and message in a work of art. Nevertheless, like Christians so obsessed with the euphoria of glossolalia that they ignore the interpretation of tongues and the discipline of following Christ, many people go to the movies merely to revel in screen sensations, from graphic images to what Sayers calls “sob-stuff.” Such viewers end up endorsing “a kind of false Pentecost, thrilling and moving the senses but producing no genuine rebirth of the spirit.”11 Christians who write about film often have the opposite problem. Like filmmakers who suppress Power by elevating Idea over Energy, viewers do the same anytime they extract Christian messages from movies while failing to discuss the Energy of cinematic form. Talking only about an Idea in the film, they make no mention of the way techniques in the medium—such as a close-up, graphic match cut, tracking shot, tilt, or pan—are one with the message. Thus reducing cinema to what we might call an “Idea delivery system,” such viewers echo the Docetic Heresy, wherein Jesus was considered a mere apparition, God taking on the appearance of man in order to preach the truth. Rather than a flesh and blood medium, Jesus, for Docetists, was an Idea delivery system. Not surprisingly, Sayers repeatedly denounces “that Docetic and totally heretical Christology which denies the full Humanity of Our Lord.”12 In terms of her triune imago Dei, then, any viewer who disregards structural aspects of the cinematic medium heretically suppresses the Incarnational Energy of creation. After all, as Sayers explains in The Mind of the Maker, “the visible structure of the work belongs to the son.”13 Hence, viewers who celebrate the consubstantiality of Idea and Energy in a film generate more Power: “If you react to it creatively, your response will again assume the form of: an Idea in your mind, the manifestation of that Idea in some form of Energy or Activity (speech, behavior or what not), and a communication of Power to the world about you.”14 Sayers thus echoes the experience of Power recounted in Acts 2: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (v. 4). As Sayers summarizes in The Mind of the Maker, the “Power—the Spirit—is thus a social power.”15

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ARTISTIC CREATION AS PRO-CREATION While developing her theology of Trinitarian creativity, Sayers saw its relevance to other issues essential for Christian orthodoxy. Take, for example, the truth that God created humans as autonomous beings with freedom to choose to serve either self or their Creator. Grappling with the problem of evil, Sayers asks, “Why did God create his universe on these lines at all? Why did He not make us mere puppets, incapable of executing anything but His own pattern of perfection?” And she explains that “The one person who might be able to give some sort of guess at the answer is the creative artist . . . since he is accustomed to take all creative activity as its own sufficient justification.” Indeed, the “Church asserts that there is a mind which made the universe, that He made it because He is the sort of Mind that takes pleasure in creation” for its own sake.16 She therefore celebrates, as part of the imago Dei, artists’ “desire to create something that will have as much free will as the offspring of procreation.”17 Sayers speaks from experience. When asked, in 1936, to explain how she invented Lord Peter Wimsey, she described him as independent from her control almost from the start: “My impression is that I was thinking about writing a detective story, and that he walked in, complete with spats, and applied in an airy don’t-care-if-I-get-it way for the job of hero.” Tired of his “breeziness” after four novels, she developed “the infanticidal intention of doing away with Peter, that is, of marrying him off and getting rid of him.”18 However, once she created a fictional woman worthy of him, she couldn’t follow through with her plan. The Power generated by her newly created female protagonist, Harriett Vane, convinced Sayers that Harriett deserved a man better than Peter, necessitating more novels to make him worthy of her. As a creator, then, Sayers allowed her creatures to have personalities independent of her control; she allowed them free will. Though Sayers received numerous letters from theologians praising The Mind of the Maker, not all embraced her perspective on the imago Dei. Some worried that Sayers may have been influenced by Pelagius (c. 355–c. 420 CE), a British follower of Christ who suggested that, due to God’s grace, all humans have the ability to choose the good. Famous Swiss Calvinist Karl Barth (1886–1968), an avid reader of Peter Wimsey novels, identified Pelagianism in Sayers’s theological work as early as 1939, two years before the publication of The Mind of the Maker. As Barth well knew, Pelagius and his followers were declared heretical by Augustine, who believed original sin so inescapable that a baby dying before baptism will automatically go to Hell: an end predestined by God.

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To grapple with the tension between predestination and free will in Sayers’s Trinitarian view of creativity, we might consider Marc Forster’s 2006 film Stranger than Fiction, which focuses on a creator who, like Sayers, had infanticidal intentions toward her pro-creation. CREATION IS STRANGER THAN FICTION In The Mind of the Maker, Sayers argues that, just as God did not precede Jesus in time, Idea “cannot be said to precede the Energy in time, because (so far as that act of creation is concerned) it is the Energy that creates the time-process.”19 As though acknowledging this truth, Stranger than Fiction opens with a close-up on a beeping wristwatch, its energy igniting the film’s time-process. As a man reaches out from under bed clothes to turn off the watch alarm, a woman speaks in voice-over, “This is a story about a man named Harold Crick”: Idea for a story has taken Energy on the screen. The voice-over continues as we witness a typical day of the extremely methodical Harold, computer codes superimposed on our screen as implied projections of his mental processes. We watch Harold, played by the very funny Will Ferrell, brush his teeth while the voice-over explains, “Every weekday, for nine years, Harold would brush each of his 32 teeth 76 times: 38 times back and forth; 38 times up and down.” Soon, however, the voice-over intones, “On Wednesday, Harold’s wristwatch changed everything.” It is as though a Spiritual force has broken into the temporality of his world. The film then includes two baffling inserts: first, a young boy receives a brand-new bike as a gift; second, a middle-aged Black woman circles newspaper employment ads. As with speaking in tongues, the film language is not immediately decipherable and requires the gift of interpretation. The shot then returns to Harold methodically brushing his teeth, when something even more baffling now occurs to him: he suddenly starts to hear the same narration that we have been hearing. When he stops doing what the narrator describes, the narration stops; when he goes on, it continues in voice-over. By having non-diegetic sound break into the diegetic world of Harold Crick, Stranger than Fiction draws attention to its own status as a creative medium, the makers doing something unusual with the Energy of film form. This unique technique has Power over viewers, as though, like Harold, we are hearing tongues for the first time. Indeed, it is not mere coincidence that famous film theorist Christian Metz titled his groundbreaking book about the medium of cinema Film Language.20

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ENERGY OF THE MEDIUM Addressing the importance of the medium in The Mind of the Maker, Sayers states that “the artist does not see life as a problem to be solved, but as a medium for creation.”21 Ironically, Harold Crick sees life as a problem to be solved, signaled not only with mathematical equations imaged on his bathroom mirror, but also by his surname, taken from that of a famous mathematician who helped solve the structural problem of DNA. Not considering himself a “medium for creation,” Harold bristles at an unseen narrator who anticipates his every move. When he hears the voice-over describe him “cursing the heavens in futility,” he yells into the sky, “No I’m not! I’m cursing you, you stupid voice! So shut up and leave me alone!!!” At this moment, the film cuts to a high-angle crane shot over the shoulder of a woman standing on a skyscraper ledge. Her outstretched hand hovers over the street far beneath her, as though controlling all action below. Suddenly, entering the shot from the woman’s point of view, we see the young boy on the bike and the black woman on foot—as though the outstretched hand controls them as well. Then, to our shock, the woman jumps off the building to the busy street below. In the scene that follows, we discover that the woman is the source of the voice-overs that Harold has started hearing. Named Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) she is an author who has created a protagonist named Harold Crick for her current novel. Wanting to kill off her protagonist, she jumps off the building not literally but in her imagination, seeking to conceptualize how it might feel as a form of suicide. Not long afterward, Harold hears another passage from Kay’s novel about him: “For as he reset the time of his watch, little did Harold know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would ultimately result in his death.” Harold’s despair over this revelation illuminates the film’s theological implications. Struggling to accept his determined end, he consults a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and finally a literary critic (Dustin Hoffman), whom he asks, “Is my life going to be a comedy or a tragedy and who makes that decision?” In other words, Harold seeks to understand what it means to be conceptualized by the Mind of a Maker. Eighteenth century deists responded to this conundrum by suggesting that God created the universe, winding it up like a watch to run on its own without divine interference. As Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith summarizes, “just as watches are set in motion by watchmakers, after which they operate according to their pre-establish mechanism, so also was the world begun by the God as creator, after which it and all its parts have operated according to their pre-established natural laws.”22 Or, as Sayers puts it, “The idea is that God simply created a vast machine and has left it working till it runs down for

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lack of fuel.”23 Both analogies inform the diegesis of Stranger than Fiction. Explicitly tied to the mechanism of his watch, Harold’s life is also connected to a fuel-driven machine. In one visually evocative scene, he rides a bus while sitting at the juncture where two bus lengths have been joined by elasticized accordion material, creating the look of a “vast machine.” Seated with his back against the flexible juncture, Harold, unlike other passengers, moves back and forth whenever the bus turns a corner, his seat pushed and pulled by the expansion and contraction of the accordion material. The visible structure of the film thus encourages us to ask a question that Sayers asked the year before she wrote The Mind of the Maker: “Are we helpless puppets in the hands of irrational forces . . . ceaselessly speeding hither and thither without direction?”24 The answer for both is clearly “no.” Despite having no control over the determined movement inside the bus, Harold knows where the bus is taking him, having freely boarded with a specific destination in mind: a powerful visualization of the intersection of free will and determinism. UNDERSTANDING THE WORD OF CREATION Nevertheless, the more Harold listens to the voice of his creator, he loses confidence that he can control the timing and direction of his life story, which will end, ironically enough, when he is hit by a bus. He therefore decides to read the book that explains his existence, ultimately submitting his life to the mind of his maker. Arranging to meet his creator, Harold tells Kay that he finds the design of her story powerful, saying, “There is only one way it can end. I love your book.” Finally understanding the purpose determined for him, he freely chooses to fulfill his creator’s plan, recognizing its Power. Nevertheless, the Power of the plan remains hidden from film viewers until they see Harold freely step in front of an oncoming bus in order to save the life of the boy from the baffling early insert, who, now riding his bike, becomes distracted by the job-seeking woman. Fulfilling famous film theorist Sergei Eisenstein’s sense of “the montage-built image, embodying the theme” of the film,25 the images collide in a predetermined moment in time: the time of the creator. Significantly, as Harold’s creator imagines his death scene, she narrates that his “wristwatch would delight in the feeling of the crisp wind rushing over its face.” The odd employment of the words wind and face reminds us of the creation account that opens Genesis, when “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,” the Hebrew word for Spirit, Ruach, also meaning wind. In fact, the NRSV actually translates the phrase, “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” In case we didn’t get it the first

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time, Kay repeats the phrase with wind and face later as she describes to her assistant a photograph taken of a suicide victim: “There’s blood around her head . . . like a halo . . . But her face is so serene. So at peace . . . And I think it’s because when she died . . . she could feel the wind against her face.” Thus connecting the wind to both Harold’s wristwatch and a suicide victim, Kay implies that Harold’s death follows her spiritual timeline and not his. Indeed, as his body dies on the street, blood circles his head, like a halo signifying his saintly act. THE POWER OF CREATION Ironically, due to Harold’s submission to her will, Kay rewrites the ending of her novel so that Harold recovers from his injury. Having given Energy to her Idea, Kay recognizes a Power that affects both Idea and its Energy: the three are one in the process of creation. As she explains to the literary critic, “If a man does know he’s going to die, and dies anyway . . . dies willingly, knowing he could stop it . . . you tell me . . . isn’t that the type of man you want to keep alive?” After substituting female pronouns for Sayers’s original male pronouns, we have a cogent explanation of Kay’s motivation: “the creator’s love for her work is not a greedy possessiveness; she never desires to subdue her work to herself but always to subdue herself to her work. The more genuinely creative she is, the more she will want her work to develop in accordance with its own nature, and to stand independent of herself.”26 Unlike a watchmaker disconnected with her creation, then, Kay Eiffel remains active in time, her loving act of creation, like that of God, a continuing process. Therefore, immediately after we see Harold’s body and blood on the tarmac, a brilliant white light washes the screen, dissolving into a shot of Harold alive on a hospital bed. Because of his willing heart, Harold is granted what his heart freely wills: time to deepen a relationship with his girlfriend (Maggie Gyllenhal). Determinism becomes qualified by free will as Harold’s creator changes the determined ending to his life. Furthermore, Kay rewrites her novel so that Harold’s watch saves his life. As a doctor explains to Harold, “Amazingly, a shard of metal from your watch became lodged in the artery, causing your heart rate to slow, keeping your loss of blood down enough to keep you alive.” Time, which is as external to Harold as is his creator, becomes symbolically internalized. By submitting to the timing of his creator, Harold internalizes his determined end, exercising free will in such a way that he is born again. In Stranger than Fiction, then, we witness “the complete independence of the creature, combined with its willing co-operation in his purpose,” which, as Sayers explains in The Mind of the Maker, echoes “the

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perfect relation of Creator and creature, and the perfect reconciliation of divine predestination with free created will.”27 Like our both/and Savior, who offers the gift of salvation to all who would accept it, reconciliation with our Creator is both divinely predestined and freely chosen. It is highly unlikely that the filmmakers meant Stranger than Fiction to be a Christian allegory. Instead, screenwriter Zach Helm probably experienced the phenomenon reported by many writers, wherein fictional protagonists start taking on lives of their own, behaving in ways that their authors did not originally intend. As Sayers explains in The Mind of the Maker, “This experience of the creative imagination in the common man or woman and in the artist is the only thing we have to go upon in entertaining and formulating the concept of creation.” Hence, by creating a fictional movie about the creation of fictional characters, the makers of Stranger than Fiction unwittingly reflect a profoundly theological truth: “material creation expresses the nature of the Divine Imagination.”28 By arguing that human creativity echoes the Trinity’s relationship with creation, Sayers provides Christians with a legitimate reason to see theological implications in films that seem to have nothing to do with God. After all, she would argue, the Power of trinitarian truth is stranger than fiction.29 NOTES 1. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (1941; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987), 131. Wimsey says “I have nothing much in the way of religion” in Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935; New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 496. 2. Sayers, The Zeal of Thy House in Four Sacred Plays (London: Gollancz, 1948), 103. 3. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 101. 4. Laura K. Simmons, Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 92–93. 5. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 204, 161. 6. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 223, 224, 225. 7. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 173. 8. Sayers, “Why Work?,” in Creed or Chaos? (Manchester: Sophia Institute, 1974), 80. 9. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 154. 10. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 171. 11. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 150, 152. 12. Sayers, Introduction to The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1943; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 2. 13. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 162, emphasis mine. 14. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 122.

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15. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 121. 16. Sayers, “The Triumph of Easter,” in Creed or Chaos?, 13–14. 17. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 64. 18. Qtd. in James Brabazon, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography (New York: Scribner’s, 1981), 120; Sayers, “Gaudy Night,” in The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Howard Haycraft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), 210. 19. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 38. 20. Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, trans. Michael Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 21. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 188. 22. James K. A. Smith, Science and the Spirit (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 54. 23. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 58. 24. Sayers, Begin Here: A War-Time Essay (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 48–49. 25. Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today” in Film Form, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), 253. 26. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 130. 27. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 138. 28. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 42. 29. Passages in my analysis of Stranger from Fiction are borrowed from Baker and Downing, “Theology Is Stranger Than Fiction,” 38.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, Sharon and Crystal Downing. “Theology Is Stranger Than Fiction.” Books and Culture. Vol. 13, No. 5 (2007): 38. Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography. New York: Scribner’s, 1981. Eisenstein, Sergei. “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today.” In Film Form. Ed. and Trans. by Jay Leyda. 195–256. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: Macmillan, 1947. Metz Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Trans. by Michael Taylor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Sayers, Dorothy L. Begin Here: A War-Time Essay. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941. ———. Gaudy Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. ———. “Gaudy Night.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Howard Haycraft, Ed. 208–21. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946. ———. The Man Born to Be King: A Play-Cycle on the Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979. ———. The Mind of the Maker. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987. ———. “The Triumph of Easter.” In Creed or Chaos? 11–18. Manchester: Sophia Institute, 1974. ———. “Why Work?” In Creed or Chaos? 63–84. Manchester: Sophia Institute, 1974.

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———. The Zeal of Thy House. In Four Sacred Plays. 15–103. London: Gollancz, 1948. Simmons, Laura K. Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. Smith, James K. A. Science and the Spirit. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

PART II

Spirit Figures

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‌‌C hapter 6

POWER. GRACE. WISDOM. WONDER. The Paraclete in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman Steven Félix-Jäger

Summer of 2017 marked the long-awaited arrival of Wonder Woman, the first female-led superhero film from either of the DC or Marvel cinematic universes.1 The now iconic first official movie poster came out the summer prior to help promote the film. The poster presented a stately, partially-silhouetted Wonder Woman gripping a sword backed by an epic, kaleidoscopic sky. Toward the bottom of the poster read four words in all caps: POWER. GRACE. WISDOM. WONDER. These words came to perfectly epitomize the character of Wonder Woman who, in Western pop culture, has become a cultural icon. Rather than reducing Wonder Woman to her physical features or abilities, these words focus on her virtuous characteristics, epitomizing what has made Wonder Woman so admired.2 Wonder Woman, the symbol of grace and courage, has finally made it to the silver screen. Those that are theologically minded might have noticed that three of those words—power, grace, and wisdom—are commonly associated with the Holy Spirit. In 1 Cor. 2:4–5, Paul links the power of the Spirit with wisdom: “My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” Then in v. 12 Paul talks about the reception of the Spirit as a gracious gift that endows us with spiritual gifts: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us 71

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by God.” Furthermore, some of the gifts of the Spirit manifest as signs and wonders (2 Cor. 12:12, Rom. 15:19, Heb. 2:4), and we can even view the Spirit’s ineffability as a wonder (Jn. 3:8). As evidenced by the two descriptions above, Wonder Woman’s character profile links up nicely with a New Testament understanding of the Spirit. While this chapter does not presume the comic creators or screenwriters intended to have Wonder Woman’s characterization parallel a Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit, it does offer a theological reading of Wonder Woman’s story that can help us understand God’s sacrificial and mediating presence in the world. Many superhero characterizations follow the messianic archetypes of Christ figures, but this chapter argues that a theological reception of Wonder Woman’s characterization in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman (2017) can be viewed literarily as a Spirit figure—as a paraclete who advocates for humanity. THE CHRIST FIGURE AND THE SPIRIT FIGURE IN SUPERHERO FICTION The “Christ figure” originated as a literary device used in modern literature to draw allusions between a story’s protagonist and the biblical Christ.3 These characters are typically messianic figures that sacrifice themselves for the liberation of others. Christ figures regularly share personal characteristics with Jesus as well. For instance, Christ figures are often ostracized, work in the miraculous, and display other-worldly wisdom.4 Although Christ figures have been expressly used and studied in modern literature, semblances of Christ figures and proto-Christ figures are as old as Western literature.5 Likewise, the cinematic Christ figure has been around as long as films have been made.6 Since Christ figures are characteristically messianic,7 it makes sense that superhero fictions readily utilize this literary device to nuance the heroics of their protagonists. One can easily spot allusions to Christ in any of the heroes that risk their own lives to save others. Sometimes the Christ figure allusions are rather heavy-handed. For instance, the 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness pictures a scene where Stephen Strange turns a glass of water into wine at Christine’s wedding reception before asking “a little too on the nose?”8 This action mirrors Jesus’s first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding as recorded in John 2:1–11. Later, emulating Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness (Matt. 4–11), Scarlet Witch tempts Strange with his deepest desires if only he refrains from interfering with her fiendish plans. Strange is even raised from the dead, albeit in a horrific, zombified guise, in order to save America Chavez from Scarlet Witch. While Doctor Strange is

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the obvious Christ figure in this film, similar tropes can be recognized by countless superheroes in their respective stories. The quintessential Christ figure of comic-book lore, however, is also the first costumed superhero to ever appear in a comic book: Superman.9 Superman’s story begins as two Kryptonians Lara and Jor-El send their baby Kal-El to earth on a spaceship to escape their planet’s impending doom. On earth, Kal-El is taken in and raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent and he assumes the name Clark Kent. Clark grows up to become Superman—a beacon of hope for humanity. One of the most obvious parallels to Christ’s incarnation is evidenced by some of the dialogue from the 1978 film Superman. As Jor-El bids farewell to the infant Kal-El he says, “You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life. You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son. This is all I . . . all I can send you, Kal-El.”10 This is reminiscent of John 10:38b where Jesus says “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Later in the film Clark discovers his Kryptonian heritage and sees a message left to him by Jor-El about the people of Earth: “They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you . . . my only son.”11 Here Kal-El is called the “only son” whose mission was to be the light of the world. Zach Snyder’s cinematic rendition of the character also clearly views Superman as a Christ figure. Starting with Man of Steel (2013), Kal-El’s Kryptonian origin is depicted, and later at the age of twelve Clark is seen saving his classmates on a school trip. The age twelve is not incidental—the only biblical story of Jesus’s childhood after the birth narrative is when he went to the Temple on his own at that age of twelve (Lk. 2:41–52).12 Later in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Superman becomes a discordant figure before he sacrifices his own life to save the world from the villainous Doomsday. Finally, in Justice League (2017) and Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), Superman is resurrected by the remaining Justice League members to once again save the world from peril. Taking these together we see the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ all taking place in Snyder’s version of Superman. Because Superman is the archetypal hero of superhero fictions, one can see how being a Christ figure has become a paradigmatic feature of this genre’s classic hero. Nevertheless, there are many cases in superhero fictions where heroes or antiheroes do not overtly display characteristics of Christ, and at times some heroes even display attributes that contradict the characteristics of the biblical Jesus—yet they’re still considered heroes. While it’s easy to see sacrificial, messianic attributes in characters like the Flash, Supergirl, Captain America, or Spider-Man, can we straightforwardly see Christic qualities in

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heroes like Storm, Shang-Chi, the Hulk, or Wolverine? Such characteristics are even more difficult to spot in antiheroes like Harley Quinn, Rorschach, Deadpool, or Moon Knight. While there are also non-sacrificial features that typify some superhero characterizations (ie., a burden to protect people, a desire to inflict justice, an internal struggle of identity, etc.), this chapter contends that there’s another biblical paradigm that can typify a superhero’s characterization. A great example of a hero that is not a Christ figure yet displays characteristics congruent with a biblical portrayal of God is Wonder Woman. Is Wonder Woman a Christ figure or something different? In his book From Star Wars to Superman, James Papandrea looks at Christ figures in popular science fiction and superhero films. Instead of simply looking for messianic, self-sacrificial characters, Papandrea additionally looks at how closely these characters represent creedal Christology. He looks at the actions, personal characteristics, and the mythos behind these figures to determine if they present orthodox depictions of Christ or heterodoxical characterizations. Looking at Wonder Woman’s mythical Greek origins, Papandrea argues that she best resembles a Gnostic Christ figure. He writes, Wonder Woman would be a metaphor for what I call ‘hybrid Gnosticism.’ This is the Christ as Cosmic Mind, the point being that the cosmic (or divine) entity takes on a more tangible existence. This version of Christ still saw Him as an illusion, because He was not at all human, but in this case He was thought to be more of an inhabitation by a divine entity. But as in docetic Gnosticism, He is seen as a god who appears to humanity but never become one of us.13

As a nonhuman goddess, Papandrea argues, Wonder Woman’s characterization is not incarnational. She’s a savior who empathizes with humanity, not a god who enters humanity to save it. While Papandrea utilizes clever methods for teaching readers about Christological heresies, he seems to disregard what Christ figures actually set out to accomplish in literature or film. Christ figures are not typically oneto-one parallels between protagonists and the biblical Jesus. Rather, they are messianic characters that typically display some significant characteristics with Jesus. Writers do not typically use Christ figures as a means for Christian allegory,14 but as a way to add narrative weight to a character’s sacrificial actions. Because Western culture has long been dominated by Christian ideology, Christ’s story and characterization figures prominently in the Western zeitgeist. Alluding to Christ, then, gives the audience a sense of familiarity to the character’s motives. Perhaps we should not try to fit Wonder Woman into the Christ paradigm at all. As we will see below when discussing Patty Jenkins’s films, Wonder Woman does not save humanity as a messianic figure, but as an advocate. She is never forced to sacrifice herself, although she

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denies her own desires. She fights to protect the innocent, but would rather counsel her enemies toward reform. Like the words power, grace, wisdom, and wonder, these characteristics better associate with the Holy Spirit than Christ. We might say, therefore, that as a literary character Wonder Woman is a “Spirit figure.” Although Wonder Woman in many ways epitomizes female strength and has become a feminist icon,15 it’s not her gender, but her full characterization that renders her a Spirit figure. Before making this point, however, it should be noted that although the Spirit displays myriad personal characteristics that can be associated with either gender, the Spirit does demonstrate feminine characteristics that are particular to the third person of the Godhead. Theologian Jürgen Moltmann points out that the early church frequently saw the Spirit as feminine.16 Imperial Rome instilled a patriarchal influence onto Christianity, but before the time of Constantine Christians commonly applied the image of the mother onto the Spirit.17 Believers are “born” of the Spirit, and as paraclete, the Spirit comforts believers like a mother who comforts her children.18 Moltmann writes, The metaphor of rebirth or new birth makes it seem natural to talk about an engendering Deity. Here God is experienced, not as the liberating Lord but as ‘the well of life.’ Giving birth, nourishing, protecting and consoling, love’s empathy and sympathy: these are then the expressions which suggest themselves as a way of describing the relations of the Spirit to her children. They express mutual intimacy, not sovereign and awful distance.19

If the first Person of the Trinity is seen as wholly other while remaining the ontological source of all things, “God-as-father” could be relationally distant to believers. The second Person, however, is truly Emmanuel when “God-as-brother” incarnates and liberates humanity from the bondage of sin. The third Person, however, is nearby and present, always protecting and nurturing her children as “God-as-mother.” These images are, of course, metaphorical, and cannot be viewed as completely conclusive depictions of God. God is three and one—the triune Persons are, above all, unified even as each person relates to humanity uniquely. Both men and women can and should reflect all the biblical characteristics of God. Even as the images are engendered, we should all be loving, protecting, nourishing, and empathetic like the feminine Spirit. After all, Paul calls all Christians to walk in the Spirit and to display the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23). Similarly, Christ figures are not limited to masculine portrayals. In his book Imaging the Divine, Lloyd Baugh dedicates a chapter to filmic Christ figures that were portrayed by women such as Joan of Arc (i.e., The Messenger, 1999) or Thérese of Lisieux (i.e., Thérese, 1986). Again, it is not their gender,

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but their characterizations that render them Christ figures. To this point Baugh writes, “the woman saint is a Christ figure because she lives fully her Christian vocation to be imitatio Christi, because she quite consciously conforms her life and her death to the pattern of the life and death of Christ.”20 Likewise we can view Spirit figures as characters that, regardless of gender, conform their lives to the patterns of the life and ministry of the Spirit. Throughout the Old Testament the Spirit is associated with sustaining the created order (Ps. 104:29–30, Isa. 42:5, Eccl. 12:7), inspiring prophetic speech (Ex. 28:3, Num. 11:17, 1 Sam 19:20–24), empowering people (Hag. 2:5, Zech. 4:6, Jud. 14:5–6), granting special skills and anointing people (Gen. 41:1–38, Num. 11:25, Ex. 31:1–5), and as signaling a time for restoration and renewal (Joel 2:27–29, Isa. 32:15). The life and ministry of the Spirit in the Old Testament is characterized by the Spirit’s inspiration, sustenance, and empowerment. People are motivated to do the work of the Lord and to live according to God’s precepts. The New Testament does not negate these characteristics but pushes them further. While the gospels, Acts, and Pauline texts are consistent with the Old Testament regarding the Spirit’s role in inspiration, sustenance, and empowerment, life in the Spirit is far more nuanced in the New Testament. The Spirit reveals and leads us toward the will of God (1 Cor. 2:10–15), and empowers believers to witness and serve in Christ’s mission on the earth (Acts 1:1–11). The Spirit co-operates in and continues the activities of Christ (Jn. 14:26), advocates for us (Rom. 8:16), and sustains the church through gifts toward love (1 Cor. 12–14). The Spirit sanctifies believers (Rom. 15:14–21), guiding them to all truth (Jn. 14:15–18). The Spirit in the New Testament is God as advocate and counselor. As advocate the Spirit applies salvation to us. The Spirit’s presence marks us as belonging to Christ, providing the necessary assurance that we will be finally and fully redeemed. As counselor the Spirit guides and convicts us, and reminds us of Jesus’s words. The Spirit transforms our minds which leads us to new life (Rom. 8:5–8). The Spirit aids in putting to death the old ways of sinful life (Rom. 8:13), and intercedes for us, since the Spirit knows the mind of God (Rom. 8:27). A superhero who is a Spirit figure is a different type of hero. Such a hero is one that inspires people toward love and reconciliation. Reflecting on the character of Wonder Woman, Patty Jenkins writes, “She inspires hope and love at the same time she fights evil and hatred; she helps bring good into the world, transcending eras or historic events. She is a rare creation, a forever character.”21 Thus, a central characteristic of Wonder Woman is her ability to inspire and bring good to the world—she is as an advocate for those in need. While Christ figures lead people toward redemption, Spirit figures leads people toward reconciliation and renewal. These works go hand in hand, but differ situationally. Christ figures deliver people from dire circumstances

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whereas Spirit figures help people flourish. While victims need both, a Spirit figure is more predisposed to nurture the latter. The way Jenkins described her vision for Wonder Woman’s heroics clearly signals the motivation of a hero-advocate: But what is it to really be a hero? Is it defeating the bad guy? Yes, sometimes. But it’s more than that, because it ultimately ends up being about what any of us in adulthood end up discovering. Being the hero is often not a proactive state of being, of going and punching somebody out and therefore things being over. It ends up being so much more on an everyday scale about understanding and love and forgiveness and the complexity of life, and how one uses your power, as an adult, in a wise and kind way. So that’s what the movie is about to me. It’s about how we take a hero whose intentions are not violent at all and put her in a world where her power can make a difference.22

Jenkins sees heroism as constituting empathy, love, and forgiveness.23 Her sense of heroism aligns with Paul’s description of the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5:22b–23: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” While these characteristics are not commonly associated with superheroes, they are intentionally applied to Wonder Woman’s characterization, making her the quintessential Spirit figure of superhero fiction. The rest of this chapter looks at Jenkins’s Wonder Woman, highlighting when and how Wonder Woman functions as a Spirit figure. WONDER WOMAN AS ANOTHER PARACLETE Throughout John 14–16 Jesus uses the term “paraclete” or (paraklētos) to describe the Holy Spirit. Paraclete has been translated many ways including “helper,” “comforter,” “counselor,” “friend,” and “advocate.” These translations hover around the idea that the Holy Spirit as paraclete is God who is with us by our side aiding us. Jesus says in John 14:15–17 that Christ will send them the Spirit of truth, another paraclete that will be with them forever. Jesus seems to indicate that he is the disciples’ present paraclete (helper, advocate), and that the Father will send them another paraclete—the Spirit—when Christ is no longer physically with them. This passage shows the unity of the Trinity, as the Spirit of truth is Christ’s Spirit with them. Jesus is the truth and the Spirit, as paraclete, guides them into all truth (14:15–18; 15:26; 16:12–14). Thus the Spirit co-operates in and continues the activities of Christ with the disciples. The paraclete brings to remembrance Jesus’s words (14:26), testifies of Jesus (15:26), discloses truth from the Son and

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the Father (15:26; 14:26; 16:13), and is sent by the Father in Christ’s name (14:26). So while the Spirit has many names and descriptions throughout the New Testament, it is this notion of paraclete that speaks so clearly to Wonder Woman’s characterization as a Spirit figure. One can clearly see how Wonder Woman’s heroics are defined through advocacy in Jenkins’s films Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman: 1984 (2020). Wonder Woman (2017) opens with a voice-over monologue from the titular character. In this brief discourse, Wonder Woman frames the film’s narrative core; it’s a character’s journey from naïve innocence to maturity. She states that the world is indeed worth saving, but her basic notions of a person’s moral agency between good and evil were too simplistic and strikingly reduced. A pertinent line in her monologue states, “What one does when faced with the truth is more difficult than you think.”24 The film sees Wonder Woman develop a complex view of humanity and the world but still decide that people are worth saving. Throughout the film’s first act, a young Diana grows up as the only child of Themyscira, the idyllic island inhabited by the Amazons of Greek mythology. Early on the film’s mythic history is exposited through the mouth of Diana’s mother Hippolyta as she explains to Diana why the “world of man” is dangerous and to be resisted. The backstory states that Zeus made humans in his own image and that they were made to be good. Zeus’s son Ares, however, was jealous of them so he poisoned the hearts of man, persuading them to go to war with each other. Then the gods created the Amazons to “influence man’s hearts and restore peace in the world.”25 But this did not last as the Amazons were enslaved by the very people they were made to protect. Hippolyta led a revolt to free the Amazons from captivity, but meanwhile Ares killed the rest of the gods besides Zeus. In their final battle, Zeus used the last of his power to defeat Ares, but Ares was banished, remaining alive. Before his death, Zeus made the island of Themyscira to protect the Amazons from Ares, and left them with a weapon that could kill a god in case Ares ever returned.26 Several years later Steve Trevor crash-lands his plane on Themyscira. Diana saves him, but German soldiers follow him to the island. Steve’s presence changes everything for Diana as she learns about the outside world and that the nations are in the midst of World War III. After a series of events Hippolyta allows Diana to leave the island to defeat Ares and aid Steve in his war efforts. Toward the end of the second act Diana finds herself at the war front still believing that when she kills Ares the war will stop. She ends up killing General Ludendorff, who she believed was Ares in disguise. As it turns out, Ludendorff was not Ares—Ares was actually disguised as the seemingly benevolent character Sir Patrick.27 During her fight with Ares, Diana watches Steve from a distance die heroically in his own war efforts, which inspires

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and empowers her to defeat Ares. Steve’s sacrifice showed Diana humanity’s goodness, which gave her hope. In the battle’s final moments Diana says to Ares, “you’re wrong about them, they’re everything you say, but so much more.” Ares replies that they don’t deserve her protection, to which she responds, “It’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe, and I believe in love.”28 Empowered by love, Diana was able to fully tap into her potential and defeat Ares. Since the Amazons’ entire purpose was to influence man’s hearts and restore peace, a sense of advocacy was always present in Diana’s life. But the film shows Diana growing in wisdom and choosing to advocate for people that are deeply flawed. In fact, it’s because people hold propensities toward both good and evil that Diana can persuade them toward their inherent goodness. Theologically speaking, the film is ultimately about grace. Ares told Diana that people didn’t deserve the gods’ help because they were morally compromised. Diana chose to help anyways. She decided to perpetually inspire hope in people despite their shortcomings. As the one who inspires good, Diana functions as the spirit of grace among imperfect people. During one scene from the third act, Ares shows Diana the evil Dr. Maru who created devastating biological weapons for the Germans to use in war. Ares uses Dr. Maru as an example of humanity’s bent toward evil, demonstrating that people are not worth saving. But Diana shows Dr. Maru mercy, refusing to kill her. Through this act Diana demonstrates that no one is beyond redemption. Since the potential for good and evil exists in everyone, Diana opposes Ares, choosing to be the one who advocates for people and persuades them toward good. She’ll use her influence out of love, as a grace, regardless of the recipient’s desert. By the end of the film Diana realizes humanity does not need a savior, but an advocate. Humans are not mere innocents that need deliverance from a powerful evil force. Rather they are held captive by their own desires for greed, power, and subjugation. Yet, their struggle is an internal one, so the type of hero Diana needs to be is one that influences the good in people rather than one that delivers them from external evils. If anything, Steve Trevor was the Christ figure of Wonder Woman. He says “I can save today, you can save the world.” If we see Steve’s sacrifice as a Christic act, then Diana is the Spirit figure who universalizes Steve’s gift of salvation through perpetual advocacy. She becomes the universal advocate (she doesn’t age or die, and her work is global) to Steve’s particular sacrifice. The universalization of sacrifice is pushed even further in Wonder Woman’s sequel, Wonder Woman: 1984 (2020). In this film Wonder Woman is caught in a Monkey’s Paw story where she and anyone else who comes across an ancient, magically-endued29 “dreamstone” artifact can have their wish come true, but at a cost. The stone was created by Dechalafrea Ero, the deceptive

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god of mischief and treachery. The stone grants any wish, but comes at the price of whatever the person hold’s dearest. Not knowing the extent of the stone’s power, Diana wishes to reunite with Steve Trevor, but this wish costs Wonder Woman her powers. Diana was thus left with the decision to renounce her wish and lose Steve again, or allow the world to continue into chaos without the advocacy of Wonder Woman. Diana tells Steve: “I give everything that I have, everyday, and I’m happy to. But this one thing . . . you’re all that I’ve wanted for so long. You’re the only joy I have or even asked for.”30 Diana ultimately renounced her wish in order to save the world, altruistically putting the well-being of others in front of her own desires. In this way, Wonder Woman might be seen as God’s self-denial—a true vision of God’s sacrificial grace to humanity. At the film’s climax, Wonder Woman opposes Max Lord, the film’s main antagonist. Yet to defeat Lord she spoke directly to all the people around the world through a globally syndicated broadcast. Diana counseled the whole world, influencing everyone to renounce their wish for the sake of others. Significantly, Diana did not fight Lord to defeat him, instead she counseled him too, influencing him to do good. Lord was able to remember the love he had for his son, so he renounced his wish, went to his son, and turned himself in to the authorities. Here Wonder Woman as advocate influenced Lord and everyone to do good in the face of crisis. Her actions were literally universal since she was on a global broadcast. She brought to remembrance the love people had for each other, which inspired all to act sacrificially toward each other. This is the work of another paraclete. Wonder Woman has shown us that self-denial, fasting from desire, and the renouncing of rights are the only hope for humanity. This message stands in the face of our Western consumerist culture that has driven much of our greed, self-obsession, and power dynamics. Wonder Woman-as-paraclete contends that living for others is the true mark of humanity. However, if Christ figures become the archetype of our heroics, then our sense of helping others can easily turn into colonial interventionism. We fix problems that are not our own and try to change people into our own image. Perhaps our approach should be one of advocacy, influencing others to love and be loved. Could it be that in this day and age we need to be guided by a Wonder Woman rather than a Superman? CONCLUSION Wonder Woman is a hero that exudes power, grace, wisdom, and wonder, and is defined by an unwavering capacity to love. Reflecting on Wonder Woman’s character, Jenkins writes, “Love. It’s difficult and requires great bravery and

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acceptance. But to be strong enough to love in the face of darkness is the thing that sets Wonder Woman apart from so many before her.”31 Wonder Woman is a different type of superhero. She’s not a sacrificial Christ figure that liberates people from external oppressions, but she is an advocate that’s willing to deny herself out of her love for others. The Spirit of truth will lead us to God who is love. NOTES 1. Josh Spiegel, “‘Wonder Woman’ is a Milestone, But it Shouldn’t Be,” The Hollywood Reporter (2017), https:​//​www​.hollywoodreporter​.com​/movies​/movie​-news​/ wonder​-woman​-is​-a​-milestone​-but​-shouldnt​-be​-1010023​/ (accessed 4/10/22). 2. Comic book historian Tim Hanley points out that not only do these words perfectly capture the essence of the 80+ year old character, but it also avoids stressing her physical beauty or martial prowess. Tim Hanley, “New Wonder Woman Movie Poster Highlights Power, Grace, Wisdom, Wonder,” (2016), https:​//​thanley​.wordpress​ .com​/2016​/07​/22​/new​-wonder​-woman​-movie​-poster​-highlights​-power​-grace​-wisdom​ -wonder​/ (accessed 4/10/22). 3. Christine Downing traces the correspondence between the biblical Christ and contemporary Christ figures through a typological criticism that helps discern the connection. Her argument is that in Western literature Christ became a type that contemporary figures can emulate. See Christine Downing, “Typology and the Literary Christ-Figure: A Critique,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1968), 13–27. For some background on the literary function of Christ figures see Thomas Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, Revised Ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 128–30. 4. Some famous literary Christ figures include Jim Casy from The Grapes of Wrath, Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea, Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, and more recently Harry Potter from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Each of these characters function in messianic, self-sacrificial ways in their respective stories. 5. For instance Gawain from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is often viewed as a Christ figure from medieval literature. Moreover, some have argued for proto-Christ figures in ancient texts. Both Homer’s Hector and Odysseus can be seen as protoChrist figures (see Paul Krause, “From Hector to Christ,” The Imaginative Conservative (2019),  https:​//​theimaginativeconservative​.org​/2019​/08​/from​-hector​-to​-christ​ -paul​-krause​.html [accessed 5/7/22], and Bret Saunders, “‘Here I am, and I am as you see’: Why Odysseus is a Robust Christ Figure and Why it Matters,” Circe Institute (2016),  https:​//​www​.circeinstitute​.org​/blog​/here​-i​-am​-and​-i​-am​-you​-see​-me​-why​ -odysseus​-robust​-christ​-figure​-and​-why​-it​-matters [accessed 5/7/22]. 6. Lloyd Baugh, Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), ix. Famous Christ figures have occupied the silver screen as well, like Babette from Babette’s Feast, Luke from Cool Hand Luke, Neo

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from The Matrix series, and Obi-Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars saga, just to name a few. 7. The Christian, and Jewish, concept of “messiah” refers to an “anointed one,” or savior. Messiahs are often viewed as “the chosen one” who has a divine mission to be a deliverer. Messiahs typically bare special characteristics that help them carry out their mission, and are thus viewed as iconic and heroic. 8. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Sam Raimi (Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2022), Streaming. 9. Anton Zozlovic, “Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah,” Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2002), Article 5. 10. Superman, directed by Richard Donner (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1978), Streaming. 11. Superman (1978). 12. This passage might also be why some Western societies have relegated the age of 12 as the “age of accountability.” 13. James Papandrea, From Star Wards to Superman: Christ Figures in Science Fiction and Superhero Films (Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2017), 296. 14. Although this isn’t typical, there are cases when the Christ figure is part of a Christian allegory. An example of this is Aslan in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. 15. See ch. 9 in Tim Hanley, Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014); and Elizabeth Danna, “Wonder Woman Mythology: Heroes from the Ancient World and Their Progeny,” in B. J. Oropeza, Ed., The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 73. 16. In The Spirit of Life, Moltmann traces the earliest notion of the Spirit-as-mother metaphor to the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas, but the images were very prevalent throughout early Syrian theologians such as Aphraates and Mararios. See Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 158–59. 17. Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 35. 18. Moltmann, The Source of Life, 35. 19. Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 159. 20. Baugh, Imaging the Divine, 130. 21. Patty Jenkins, “Foreword by Patty Jenkins,” in Sharon Gosling, Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film (London: Titan Books, 2017), 6. 22. Patty Jenkins, as quoted in Sharon Gosling, Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film (London: Titan Books, 2017), 12. 23. Wonder Woman comic creator William Moulton Marston believed that these were some of the natural strengths of women, and thus wanted to create a hero that demonstrated these powerful, feminine characteristics. As Sharon Gosling writes, “(Marston) would, he decided, create a character that would embody his belief that women had the natural power to eradicate violence by gifting the fractious world of

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men with their inherent love, beauty, tolerance and understanding” (Sharon Gosling, Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film [London: Titan Books, 2017, 8]). 24. Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2017), Streaming. 25. Wonder Woman. 26. Diana thought the “god-killer” was a sword, but eventually found out that it was actually her, and that she was the daughter of Zeus. 27. Once Ares reveals himself he says he’s not the “god of war,” but the “god of truth.” He believes mankind stole the world from the gods and ruined it. Thus his goal is to inspire people toward their self-destruction, but he’ll only work in the realm of influence. Humans start wars all on their own. 28. Wonder Woman. 29. In this mythos, objects were able to be empowered by elemental forces. Wonder Woman’s lasso, for instance, was empowered by truth. The dreamstone was powered by deception. 30. Wonder Woman: 1984, directed by Patty Jenkins (Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2020), Streaming. 31. Jenkins, “Foreword by Patty Jenkins,” 6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baugh, Lloyd. Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. Danna, Elizabeth. “Wonder Woman Mythology: Heroes from the Ancient World and Their Progeny.” In B. J. Oropeza, ed. The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Directed by Sam Raimi. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2022, Streaming. Downing, Christine. “Typology and the Literary Christ-Figure: A Critique.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 36, No. 1 (1968), 13–27. Foster, Thomas. How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines, Revised Ed. New York: Harper Perennial, 2014. Gosling, Sharon. Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. London: Titan Books, 2017. Hanley, Tim. “New Wonder Woman Movie Poster Highlights Power, Grace, Wisdom, Wonder.” (2016). https:​//​thanley​.wordpress​.com​/2016​/07​/22​/new​-wonder​-woman​ -movie​-poster-highlights-power-grace-wisdom-wonder/ (accessed 4/10/22). ———. Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014. Jenkins, Patty. “Foreword by Patty Jenkins.” In Sharon Gosling, Wonder Woman: The Art and Making of the Film. London: Titan Books, 2017. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

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Papandrea, James. From Star Wards to Superman: Christ Figures in Science Fiction and Superhero Films. Manchester: Sophia Institute Press, 2017. Spiegel, Josh. “‘Wonder Woman’ is a Milestone, But it Shouldn’t Be.” The Hollywood Reporter (2017). https:​//​www​.hollywoodreporter​.com​/movies​/movie​-news​/wonder​ -woman​-is​-a​-milestone​-but​-shouldnt​-be​-1010023​/ (accessed 4/10/22). Superman. Directed by Richard Donner. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1978, Streaming. Wonder Woman. Directed by Patty Jenkins. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2017, Streaming. Wonder Woman: 1984. Directed by Patty Jenkins. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2020, Streaming. Zozlovic, Anton. “Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah.” Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2002), Article 5.

‌‌C hapter 7

Exegeting Samwise the (Brave) Advocate Lucia M. Sanders

Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has inspired and encouraged millions since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, easily becoming some of the most influential books in modern history. The twenty-first century continued to thoroughly embed The Lord of the Rings into the milieus of society as Peter Jackson’s film treatment cemented the stories into pop culture. Faced with adapting near 1,100 pages of text onto the screen, Jackson and his two cowriters, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, engaged in a labor of love to at once faithfully adapt while also creating an engaging film narrative for the twenty-first century audience. Of particular interest for this chapter is their adaption of the character Samwise Gamgee; it will be argued that Samwise is a Spirit figure, particularly demonstrating the Spirit’s roles as gift, paraclete, and the one who empowers. While I believe this Spirit-role is inherent in the book character of Samwise, I will be demonstrating that the director and visionary for the films, Peter Jackson, has a consistent and powerful view of who Samwise is, especially for Frodo, making the film versions a helpful example to explore for this book. As Jackson states: “he [Samwise] basically has a goal: what is more important for Sam is to help Frodo and to be there for Frodo. That, he is never going to question. He’s never going to cringe or wine [sic] because he has that solemn kind of support and character about him.”1 I will argue that Sam’s role was particularly emphasized within the films through specific script choices, allowing viewers to see a Spirit figure embodied on screen.

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METHOD AND SCOPE As an exegete by training and disposition, the method of argumentation for this chapter will be exegetical in nature. This strict exegetical exploration, I hope, provides a sample of how interdisciplinary focus between the arts and theology does not only have to be more broadly theological, but can be informed by in-depth examination of scripture. First, it will focus on how the biblical text presents consistent themes related to the Spirit’s roles to the believer, and then draw comparisons from the films to illustrate how Samwise fulfills these roles. Due to the scope of this chapter, the exegetical sections are brief in nature, barely sketching the exegetical grounds for the comparison before moving on. Before moving to the demonstration of Sam as Spirit figure, I will briefly examine what has been written on in relation to Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings films, and faith.2 HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION OF TOLKIEN This is by no means exhaustive, as there has been much written, but I will highlight specific conclusions and connections that will be helpful in understanding how this chapter fits into the wider conversation. The exploration of Christ figures has of course been a long-standing tradition of Christian Tolkien studies, but it is beyond the scope of this article to delve into the history of that interpretation. What will be said here is that different Christ figures have been suggested—the characters of Aragorn, Frodo, and Gandalf being the major propositions by the wider community. This attention on Christ figures in Tolkien follows the same pattern of wider interest in Christ figures in general: so much attention goes to these that there is no exploration of what characters, if any, embody the Spirit. Some scholars, however, have endeavored to explore Tolkien’s integration of Spirit-theology into his books. One work of note is by Gregory Hartley, “A Wind from the West: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Tolkien’s Middle-earth,” where his thesis is that the Spirit can be seen in Tolkien within the Secret Fire that Gandalf serves, with the presence of seeming spiritual gifts within enemies of Sauron, and within Tolkien’s consistent wordplay with “wind” and eagles as an important symbols.3 His treatment goes in depth regarding The Silmarillion and mines Middle-Earth lore for connections ranging from linguistic similarities between Tolkien’s Elvish and Genesis 1:2, to comparisons between the filioque and the Secret Fire, to the inspiration of prophecies in The Silmarillion.4 While I am not denying the presence, nor even the

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helpfulness of these studies, it is not the type of work this chapter, nor this book, is dedicated to. The largest difference is that the aim of this chapter is not just to search the text (or film in this case) for any evidence of the Spirit in the fabric of the media, but rather to search for an embodiment, and thus the personalization,5 of the characteristics of the Spirit (not solely his gifts as others have done, such as Jared Lobdell).6 When examining the reception of Jackson’s films, in particular by the Christian faith community, the data is less pervasive. One critic, Claire Valente, acknowledges that one of Jackson’s best adaptive decisions was highlighting Tolkien’s emphasis on friendship, going so far as to say: “Frodo’s quest to destroy the Ring depends heavily on friendship . . . above all, Sam[’s]. Sam’s devotion provides some of the most touching scenes in both book and films.”7 However, the same critic acknowledges that: “For all its magic, Jackson’s is a strangely secularized world.”8 I would agree with this statement in that Jackson does not acknowledge much of the mythos and spirituality binding and grounding Tolkien’s universe. One critic despairingly states: “I was utterly flabbergasted that, when I asked Peter Jackson if Tolkien’s theory of ‘eucatastrophe’ had been broached in story conferences, he replied, ‘No, what’s it mean?’”9 Despite this lack of intentional overt or even subversive elements of religion in the films, as this chapter argues, this does not mean that Jackson’s films are devoid of spiritual or religious symbolism. This symbolism is so deeply woven and ingrained into the basic story and characters that any proficient adaptation would not be able to escape, and Jackson’s adaptation is well beyond proficient. SAMWISE AS SPIRIT FIGURE I must be allowed one brief disclaimer before moving into the exegetical and comparative sections of this chapter. As with the Trinity itself, the Spirit’s roles are quite difficult to untangle from each other, as the Spirit is person and not simply one “mode” of God and works in unity with the Spirit’s self and with the other persons of the Trinity. Therefore, many of the examples and definitions below will have overlap and could be considered under other categories, and they are clearly roles embodied by both Christ and the Father as well. The reason for parsing the different roles out as I have done below is to try to explore many of the different areas that the Spirit is involved in the believer’s life, and to draw distinct parallels to the actions of Samwise. My hope is that by doing this, we gain greater appreciation both for how the medium of film can help us reflect theologically, and for how the Spirit specifically moves within the believers’ lives.

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SAMWISE AS GIFT One of the most consistent descriptors of the Spirit within the biblical text, throughout the New Testament is “gift” (Greek: “δόματα” Luke 11:13; “δωρεά” Acts 8:20, 10:45, 11:17). The uses in Acts are particularly of interest here, as the use of δωρεά signifies a gift for the benefit of the receiver. Examined in the word group’s original Greco-Roman context, these gifts were given to secure the loyalty and faithfulness of a soldier by a general.10 In a sense, the giving of δωρεά was to help ensure that the receiver would continue on the quest or task (a battle in original context) ahead. One of the most beautiful parts of this gift of the Spirit is that it is not a what, but a who that is given and sent. The personhood of the Spirit is an essential part of the Spirit’s ability to come alongside the believer and truly aid them in their journey of obedience and transformation. The parallels already begin to form themselves, as Samwise is in many ways given to Frodo as a gift for his journey by Gandalf in the earliest commissioning of his journey. This is a gift of the most superior kind: not an inanimate nor even animate tool, but a person, even more so one who becomes a friend, a companion, an advocate. This sent-ness of Sam becomes an important part of his character, giving him courage to stay with Frodo, even when the road gets challenging: “Sam: ‘It’s just something Gandalf said.’ Frodo: ‘What did he say?’ Sam: ‘Don’t you lose him Samwise Gamgee’ and I don’t mean to,” and again at the Council of Elrond: “Mr. Frodo’s not going anywhere without me.”11 In many ways, this gift of Sam bookends the arc of the first film—the plot picking up when Sam is gifted to and sent with Frodo out of Bag End, and then is wrapped with Sam’s declaration after desperately following Frodo as Frodo tries to leave him behind: “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise: ‘Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee.’ And I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.”12 It is certainly clear that Frodo views Samwise as a gift, and that Samwise’s presence enables Frodo to remain dedicated and loyal to his task, even in the midst of great suffering. SAMWISE AS PARACLETE Jesus, in the writings of John, gives the Holy Spirit a title, Paraclete (παράκλησις), which has defined, in many ways, some of the central roles of the Spirit when it comes to how the Spirit relates to the believer. Historically, paraclete has proven a difficult word to translate, due to its complexity and lack of one-for-one English equivalent. In only looking at how John uses it as a title for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit as paraclete teaches the believer (14:26),

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prompts the believer to remember what was taught by Christ (14:26), is connected to bringing truth (15:26), and is involved in conviction (16:8).13 When the interpreter widens the search to the related term, παράκλησις, she/he can notice that the term also carries with it a sense of encouragement/exhortation14 and comfort.15 To summarize these themes in a manageable way, the themes of comforter/encourager, counselor (teacher and bringer of truth), and convict-er will be explored in this subsection. Comforter The term παράκλησις in the biblical text, when carrying the nuance of “comforter,” is often contrasted specifically with moments of suffering. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Though the quality of comfort here is ascribed to the Father and more generic “God” (θεός), the link in Paul’s vocabulary, by the use of παράκλησις and Trinitarian theology, to the concept of the Spirit’s role as dictated by John cannot be ignored.16 In addition, Paul does acknowledge that the Spirit helps us in our weakness, when we are unable to process suffering (Rom. 8:26). It is important to note that this comfort does not remove the believer from the experience of suffering but is present and supportive during the suffering moments. In many places throughout the three films, Samwise acts as a comforter and encourager to Frodo when they are faced with the despair of physical and emotional suffering. The first clear example of this is not demonstrated in the spoken words of the script but shown on the screen by Sam’s clear devotion and comfort he gives to Frodo in the scene right when Frodo wakes for the first time in Rivendell, as Gandalf says: “Sam has hardly left your side.”17 Sam offers Frodo comfort by his physical presence and care for his physical needs. The consistent friendship, care, and presence demonstrated by Samwise in this moment and others certainly resonates with the comforting character of the Spirit. In other moments, Sam gives water to a thirsty Frodo in the midst of Mordor, drawing an interesting parallel between Sam and the Spirit which gives living water to a thirsty land (Is. 44:3) and acting as comforter not just to an individual, but to a collective. One other significant time that Sam serves as comforter is during a moment when tension in The Return of the King has been slowly ratcheting up, and Sam offers to help share Frodo’s burden of carrying the Ring. First in the scene, Sam gives voice to Frodo’s pain and suffering, as the Spirit does in Rom. 8:26, though in this case with simple words instead of groans: “No.

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No, You’re not all right . . . You’re exhausted. It’s that Gollum. It’s this place. It’s that thing around your neck.”18 Afterward, he offers to share the pain and suffering, or to “help [Frodo] in his weakness” (8:26). Sam is consistently a comforter figure in Frodo’s life, despite the times that Frodo pushes this comfort and help away. Counselor In addition to being an agent of comfort within the Godhead, the Spirit also acts as counselor, the bringer of truth and the one who teaches and reminds (John 14:26). This is tied, as stated above, to John’s use of pneuma (Spirit) in John 15:26 in an appositional statement: “The Spirit of Truth” (“τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας”). This phrase also appears in John 14:17 to describe the paraclete. In the Gospel of John’s case, this “truth” seems to be indicative of witnessing and revealing the impact of the Christ events to the believer.19 Combined with the idea of teaching used in 14:26, the Spirit is characterized as an agent of reconnection and realization—the Spirit is (re)connecting the believer back to Christ; for Samwise, I would argue he serves this same role in helping to reconnect Frodo back to himself and the truth of his journey. Sam is the Spirit of Advice (“‫ )”רוח עצה‬and the Spirit of Knowledge (“‫ )”רוח דעת‬that rests on Frodo (Is. 11:2), just as the Spirit rests on the prophesized root of Jesse. One of the most unforgettable scenes in the entire film series is of Sam acting as a counselor figure. This scene was added by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens in the screenwriting process, and therefore does not have a Tolkien textual basis. In order for the film versions to pace and carry the story appropriately and as clearly as possible, the decision to change Faramir’s character to be more dangerous to Frodo and Sam’s mission was made.20 This decision and others force Frodo to confront the darkness and weight of the Ring amid the siege of Gondorian Osgiliath. In the midst of this pressure, Frodo turns on Sam and is on the brink of killing him, so Sam had to “pull him back” as Boyens describes it.21 Sam does this by asking a simple question, “Don’t you know your Sam?” as one can imagine the Spirit does as it reminds and brings believers back to the truth (John 16:13; 14:26; 15:26). Sam goes further to give one of the most stirring speeches perhaps in cinematic history, reconnecting Frodo to himself and to his mission, as the Spirit would, to receive strength and ignore the “chances of turning back” as they fight back the darkness together for the sake of the world: “it’s worth fighting for.”22 In this way, Samwise brings Frodo back to the truth and reality that gives him courage, just as the Spirit consistently does in the believers’ life when the Spirit serves as a reminder and teacher of truth.

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An arguably even greater moment than the one mentioned above happens as, finally after the Ring is destroyed, Frodo falls off the cliff of Mt. Doom and is barely holding on, with the lava and flames of the mountain threatening underneath him. In this moment, Sam counsels him when he’s at his darkest. Already in the scene, Sam has been trying to counsel Frodo to make the right decision and throw the ring back into the fires of Mt. Doom. But it’s the end of this scene that differs greatly from what happens in the books. In the books, Gollum falls over the edge on his own, he is not wrestled over the edge by Frodo, and Frodo does not fall over the edge with him. Frodo takes more action in this scene by far in the film than in the book. By changing this scene, Jackson and his writing team were able to shine a further spotlight on what role Sam plays in Frodo’s life, particularly that of counselor. In the film, when Frodo is barely hanging on the edge of the cliff, he looks as if he’s thinking about letting go and ending it there. Sam, ever faithful to bring reconnection to self and good counsel, reaches over, looks him in the eye and says: “No! Don’t you dare let go!”23 Sam is able to convince Frodo to fully return to himself and rescues him from the cliff. At key points throughout Frodo’s journey, Sam provides counsel to try to bring Frodo back to himself, to truth, despite Frodo ignoring or even lashing out at Sam for doing so. Just as the Spirit, Sam is consistently faithful in his commitment to Frodo. Convicter Where the Spirit as counselor helps to bring a believer back to (re)connection with Christ, the Spirit as convicter turns this wisdom to help the believer by convicting with the hope of transformation. In this way, the Spirit is linked to the transformative process of sanctification. It is the Spirit as Paraclete who convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). One can see this theme in other places applied to the Spirit: the Spirit who is involved with cutting Peter’s listeners to the heart (Acts 2:37), the Spirit who is involved with counteracting and opposing the flesh in Romans 8 and Galatians 5. Returning to John, the meaning of ελέγχω [convict] in John 16:8 has been difficult to pin down for scholars, but John Aloisi provides solid exegesis to back up the definition of showing a person their sin, and convicting them to understand what they have been doing wrong and the consequences of not changing.24 In many ways, this more painful (for us) role of the Spirit is often overlooked, as David Beck eloquently states: “It is that these themes [of comfort and nurturing] can easily displace other, less palatable themes, to the point that we are left with a ‘vanilla’ third Person—a caricature in which the Spirit becomes overly friendly and benign. The danger is that the Comforter can become too comfortable.”25 This is one reason why seeing Sam as Spirit figure is so powerful for the viewer—it helps the believer to not only accept

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the comfort and encouragement of the Spirit, but also to listen to the Spirit’s voice when the believer hears it, even when it is uncomfortable. Sam does not shy away from telling Frodo when he is not on the right path and trying to convince him to turn from bad decisions, while always showing that this conviction stems from his care for Frodo. At first, this role starts off on a small scale. In one of the first interactions with one of the nine Ringwraiths on the road to Bree, the four hobbits hide on the side of the road under a tree root. As the Ringwraith searches for them, Frodo begins to be tempted to put the Ring on. He is stopped by simply Sam’s hand grabbing his wrist, warning him, and trying to steer him away from that decision.26 The films especially begin to portray Frodo’s relationship with the Ring as being fraught with temptation. Sam begins to fill the role of convicting Frodo when he is tempted to give in to the Ring’s influence. This role becomes more overt in The Two Towers, when Sam calls Frodo out directly. As Gollum fishes in a nearby steam, the two hobbits get in conversation about Gollum, which leads to discussing the Ring’s influence. Sam directly confronts and exposes Frodo’s succumbing to the temptation: “It’s the Ring. You can’t take your eyes off it. I’ve seen you; you’re not eating, you barely sleep. It’s taking ahold of you, Mr. Frodo. You have to fight it . . . Can’t you hear yourself? Don’t you know who you sound like? [implying that Frodo is beginning to sound like Gollum in how he talks of the Ring].”27 Unfortunately, Frodo does not, and perhaps cannot due to the Ring’s pervasive influence, take this conviction to heart and flees from Sam out of the conversation. This tension between them comes to a head in the next film. A significant moment that Samwise attempts to convict Frodo and bring truth to him is in The Return of the King film when Sam’s conflicts with Gollum come to a head. The tensions between Samwise and Gollum, while staying mostly humorous throughout The Two Towers other than the incident listed above, begins to become more serious as Gollum is shown to be scheming, a threat to Frodo. Gollum sets Samwise up, and turns Frodo on Sam, so much that Frodo eventually tells Sam to “Go home.”28 Sam tries once more in this interaction to convict Frodo, turn him from the influence of the Ring—“He’s [Gollum] poisoned you against me!” Frodo unfortunately refuses to listen once again, leading to Frodo and Sam parting ways. Once again, this scene and story decision was made by Peter Jackson and his writing team; in the books, Frodo never sends Samwise away. Not only does it serve as a way to increase the dramatic tension in the films, but this interaction serves to illustrate how Frodo seems to be resisting the Spirit figure in his life. Luckily, The Lord of the Rings, both book and film versions, as a story arc resolves with Frodo eventually coming back to himself, firstly when Samwise rescues him from the tower, and more completely after Frodo lapses inside of Mt. Doom. Both times, it is Frodo’s relationship with Samwise that

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helps to ground him, and leads him to be a more complete, connected version of himself. EMPOWERMENT Perhaps one of the most attested roles of the Spirit, with textual data from both Testaments, the Spirit is known to empower the believer to accomplish God’s mission. Within the Old Testament, many leaders are raised up by the Lord and His Spirit descends on them, empowering them to fight against Israel’s enemies, or to speak on His behalf. The Spirit empowers diverse groups of people—from judges, to political leaders, to artisans, to prophets.29 The theme is continued and heavily attested to in the New Testament as well, beginning in the Gospels with the Spirit and the power of God coming on Mary in the Annunciation, moving all the way through to Jesus linking the Holy Spirit directly to the empowerment of the Apostles in their commissioning in Acts 1:8.30 This power to complete the calling they have been given (Matt. 28:18–20; Luke 24:45–49) is demonstrated consistently as the disciples and apostles begin to bring the Good News to Jews and Gentiles alike. The theme of empowerment by the Spirit to participate with Christ on His mission is also picked up by Paul—in which “you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Eph. 3:16), and many others of his letters (Rom. 8:11, 15:19; 1 Cor. 2:4; 1 Thess. 1:5). In examining the films, this theme becomes especially evident the closer that Frodo and Sam get to Mt. Doom, when the mission of Frodo gets significantly more difficult. The first major significant story element that illustrates this shows an aspect to this empowerment that we do not often acknowledge: what happens when believers decide to not put faith in that empowerment and instead trust their own power. As referred to in the previous section, one of the significant changes to the story that Peter Jackson and his team made was to have Frodo enter Shelob’s lair without Samwise in order to give proper tension at the right time in their film narratives.31 This choice allows us to examine what happens to Frodo when he decides to send Samwise away from him, seeming to no longer have faith in Sam, a choice confirmed by Boyens.32 Though the result of Frodo being captured by the orcs and imprisoned in Cirith Ungol is the same whether book or film, the film’s decision for Frodo to enter alone emphasizes his desire for agency and throwing off of Sam’s loyalty, and thus his desperation and powerlessness without Sam because of his decision is highlighted to the audience. As a biblical scholar, I cannot help but notice that this carelessness and lack of trust by Frodo in the empowering nature of Sam to keep him going and to be a partner is so very similar to the story of Jepthah, the judge of Judges 11. As a brief overview, the Lord

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gives his Spirit to Jepthah to empower him for the task of defeating Israel’s enemies (11:29), but Jepthah, demonstrating a rash character and deciding to ignore this power given to him, tries to do the battle his own way, by making a reckless vow, despite it being right after receiving the Spirit in the narrative (11:30). The pattern in the book of Judges has been established of the Spirit descending on the judges and giving them what they need to fight their battles (3:10, 6:34). Any reader of this text would be able to see that Jepthah already had everything he needed for the battle because he had the Spirit, therefore the vow was unnecessary and an attempt to have control of his own battles in his own way. Both Frodo and Jepthah face the utter despair that results from their desire for agency, rather than trusting the Spirit empowering them. Luckily, Frodo gets other chances of acknowledging and surrendering to this empowerment later in his journey. This leads to the most blatant, and most dramatic instance of Sam empowering Frodo in the last moments of the journey to Mt. Doom, as Frodo’s physical struggles against the Ring come to a head. The films portray the literal weight of the Ring growing heavier and heavier, and Frodo shows his struggles against its power, including the physical effects of its influence. In sight of Mt. Doom, Frodo attempts to stay on his feet and complete the journey, but physical fatigue and mental-emotional distress weigh so heavily that he collapses. Even on the ground, Frodo shows his determination by attempting to crawl up the mountain. Though the film does not shy away from taking time to show this struggle, ultimately Frodo is powerless to complete his task. He goes as far as he possibly can on his own. Philippa Boyens, though still shying away from any overt religious symbolism, does acknowledge that: “Faith requires us to believe in a higher power . . . Frodo dragged himself to that point and failed. And another power intervened.”33 Samwise coming and delivering his line: “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you” is perhaps one of the most impactful lines of the entire trilogy, and completely encapsulates Samwise’s role as Spirit figure, supporting, encouraging, and empowering us when we reach the end of our own abilities, as we acknowledge—“‘It’s not by strength, not by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord” (Zech. 4:6). Though other members of the fellowship help carry Frodo at certain points of his journey, it is only Sam who goes the entire journey with him, sitting in his darkest moments, and illuminating his path. Frodo himself acknowledges this: “Frodo wouldn’t have gotten far without Sam.”34 CONCLUSION Throughout this chapter, I have argued that Samwise is a premiere example of a Spirit figure in film, as he demonstrates the key characteristics of the

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Spirit as gift, paraclete, and empower-er. Though Samwise is first and foremost a literary character, many of the choices made by the screen writers of the films, coupled with actor Sean Astin’s inspired portrayal, give the film audience a clear picture of what role the Spirit plays in our own lives. The screen has the ability to hold a mirror to us in ways that texts are often slightly removed from, and the theological truths that come from stories that penetrate to the heart should not be taken lightly. Seeing a picture of the Spirit demands us to ask if we let the Spirit play those roles in our own lives and lets us ask if we truly let the Spirit transform us. Will we deny the presence and transforming personhood, as Frodo fatefully does, or will we accept and recognize the help of the Advocate and be stronger in the Lord for it? NOTES 1. Steve Head, “An Interview with Peter Jackson,” IGN.com, May 19, 2012, https:​ //​www​.ign​.com​/articles​/2002​/12​/13​/an​-interview​-with​-peter​-jackson. 2. Due to the scope of this paper, I have chosen to not include a section on generic, non-Christian, Tolkien interpretations as the Christian focus is the most important for the topic at hand. However, there are some areas to examine if one is interested. See the journal Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, in addition to the Journal of Tolkien Research for most recent scholarship examining Tolkien’s works from both historical and literary perspectives. 3. Gregory Hartley, “A Wind from the West: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth,” Christianity and Literature 62, no. 1 (2012): 97–98. 4. Hartley, “Role of the Holy Spirit,” 99–100. 5. In many ways, the idea of embodiment of the Spirit for us believers runs against traditional thought on the Spirit, as Basil of Caesarea says: “So it is not possible when one hears this name of Spirit to conceive of a limited nature, which is subject to change and variation, or at all like any creature. On the contrary, we must raise our thought to the highest level and think of a substance endowed with intelligence, or infinite power, or a greatness which knows no limit, which cannot be measured in times or ages, and which lavishes its good gifts,” in Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sanco, IX, 22–23. Though the very nature of God as embodied could make us uncomfortable, especially considering outside the incarnation, a visual, embodied, personified figure helps to bring home the realities of the nature of the Spirit in ways that help make the Spirit’s actions more concrete and influential in our lives. 6. Jared Lobdell, The World of the Rings: Language, Adventure, and Religion in Tolkien (Peru, IL: Open Court, 2004). 7. Claire Valente, “Translating Tolkien’s Epic: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings,” Intercollegiate Review 40, no. 1 (Fall 2004), 36–37. 8. Valente, “Translating Tolkien’s Epic,” 41.b. 9. Greg Wright, Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power behind Cinema’s The Lord of the Rings: A Look at Hollywood’s Take on Tolkien’s Epic Tale (Burien, WA:

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Hollywood Jesus Books, 2004). For those unfamiliar, Tolkien’s Eucastatrophe is his theological conviction that there truly can be an unexpected happy ending, despite circumstances pointing very much to the contrary. Tolkien integrates this theological conviction into The Lord of the Rings in the circumstances of the Ring being destroyed, and Frodo and Sam being rescued by the eagles. Tolkien sees the greatest example of Eucastrophe within both the Incarnation and the Resurrection. See Tolkien’s essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” Oxford University Press, 1947. 10. John D. Griffiths, The Spirit as Gift in Acts: The Spirit’s Empowerment of the Early Jesus Community (Boston, Brill, 2022), 61–63. 11. Peter Jackson, The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition (New Line Cinema, 2001). 12. Jackson, The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. 13. Other exegetical scholars who have done much deeper studies than I have on this word would agree with my basic categories, see George Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John / George Johnston. Monograph Series (Society for New Testament Studies) 12 (Cambridge: University Press, 1970), 87. 14. Acts 13:15, 15:31; Rom. 12:8, 15:4–5; 1 Cor. 14:3; Phil. 2:1; 1 Tim. 4:13; Heb. 6:18, 12:5, 13:22. 15. Especially seen in 2 Corinthians in contrast to and in the context of suffering. 16. For an excellent treatment on the use of the term throughout Paul, see Reimund Bieringer, “The Comforted Comforter: The Meaning of Παρακαλέω or Παράκλησις Terminology in 2 Corinthians,” HTS Teologiese Studies/ Theological Studies 67, no. 1 (April 14, 2011): 7. It is beyond the scope of this paper to make a full exegetical argument about the ties of this term use by Paul to the Paul’s pneumatology and the Spirit’s role, but I believe it could be made by more fully examining the use of the term in the lists of gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans. 17. Jackson, The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. 18. Peter Jackson, The Return of the King: Extended Edition (New Line Cinema, 2003). 19. Luuk Van De Weghe and John Battle A., “Truth and Semantic Change in the Gospel of John,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 31, no. 2 (2021): 211–27 and Matthew Andrew, “What Is Truth?: A Johannine Theological Epistemology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 74, no. 2 (May 2021): 158–67. 20. Philippa Boyens, “The Two Towers Appendices: From Book to Script,” DVD, 2002. 21. Boyens, “The Two Towers Appendices: From Book to Script.” 22. Peter Jackson, The Two Towers: Extended Edition (New Line Cinema, 2002). 23. Jackson, The Return of the King: Extended Edition. 24. John Aloisi, “The Paraclete’s Ministry of Conviction: Another Look at John 16:8–11,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47, no. 1 (March 2004): 60, 69. 25. T. David Beck, “The Divine Dis-Comforter: The Holy Spirit’s Role in Transformative,” Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care 2, no. 2 (2009), 200. 26. Jackson, The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. 27. Jackson, The Two Towers: Extended Edition.

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28. Jackson, The Return of the King: Extended Edition. 29. The textual evidence for this theme is dense throughout just the Old Testament. To name a few such places, see Exodus 31:3–6; Numbers 11:17, 24:2, 27:18; Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, 13:2, 14:6, 19, 15:14; 1 Samuel 11:6, 16:13; 1 Kings 7:13, 14; 1 Chronicles 12:18, 28:11, 12; 2 Chronicles 15:17, 20:1, 14–17:22, 23, 24:20. 30. This empowerment of mission is explained concisely by theologian John Webster when he says, “Thus in the Lucan writings, Spirit and mission are inseparable: the giving of the Spirit by the exalted Christ enables the mission of the church as the agent through which Christ’s kingdom is extended,” in John Webster, “The Identity of the Holy Spirit: A Problem in Trinitarian Theology,” Themelios 9.1 (September 1983): 7. 31. Philippa Boyens, “The Return of the King Appendices: From Book to Script,” DVD, 2003. 32. Boyens, “Return of the King Appendices.” 33. Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, “A Coupla Kiwi Chicks Sitting Around Talking,” interview by Greg Wright et al., Hollywoodjesus.com, May 15, 2004, hollywoodjesus.com/lord_of_the_rings_interview_05.htm. 34. Jackson, The Two Towers: Extended Edition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aloisi, John. “The Paraclete’s Ministry of Conviction: Another Look at John 16:8– 11.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Vol. 47, No. 1 (2004): 55–69. Andrew, Matthew. “What Is Truth?: A Johannine Theological Epistemology.” Scottish Journal of Theology. Vol. 74, No. 2 (2021): 158–67. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1017​/ s0036930621000338. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sanco, IX in McGrath, Allister, ed. The Christian Theology Reader, 5th edition. New Jersey: 2016. Beck, T. David. “The Divine Dis-Comforter: The Holy Spirit’s Role in Transformative.” Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care. Vol. 2, No. 2 (2009): 199–218. Bieringer, Reimund. “The Comforted Comforter: The Meaning of Παρακαλέω or Παράκλησις Terminology in 2 Corinthians.” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies. Vol. 67, No. 1 (2011): 7. Boyens, Philippa. The Return of the King Appendices: From Book to Script. DVD, 2003. ———. The Two Towers Appendices: From Book to Script. DVD, 2002. Boyens, Philippa, and Fran Walsh. A Coupla Kiwi Chicks Sitting Around Talking. Interview by Greg Wright et al. Hollywoodjesus.com, May 15, 2004. hollywoodje sus.com/lord_of_the_rings_interview_05.htm. Griffiths, John D. The Spirit as Gift in Acts: The Spirit’s Empowerment of the Early Jesus Community. Boston: Brill Academic, 2022. Hartley, Gregory. “A Wind from the West: The Role of the Holy Spirit in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.” Christianity and Literature. Vol. 62, No. 1 (2012): 95–120.

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Head, Steve. “An Interview with Peter Jackson.” IGN.com, May 19, 2012. https:​//​ www​.ign​.com​/articles​/2002​/12​/13​/an​-interview​-with​-peter​-jackson. Jackson, Peter. The Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Edition. New Line Cinema, 2001. ———. The Return of the King: Extended Edition. New Line Cinema, 2003. ———. The Two Towers: Extended Edition. New Line Cinema, 2002. Johnston, George. The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John / George Johnston. [Electronic Resource]. Monograph Series (Society for New Testament Studies) 12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Lobdell, Jared. The World of the Rings: Language, Adventure, and Religion in Tolkien. Peru: Open Court, 2004. Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947. Valente, Claire. “Translating Tolkien’s Epic: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.” Intercollegiate Review. Vol. 40, No. 1 (2004): 35–43. Van De Weghe, Luuk, and John Battle A. “Truth and Semantic Change in the Gospel of John.” Bulletin for Biblical Research. Vol. 31, No. 2 (2021): 211–27. Webster, John. “The Identity of the Holy Spirit: A Problem in Trinitarian Theology.”  Themelios. Vol. 9, No. 1 (1983): 4–7. Wright, Greg. Peter Jackson in Perspective: The Power behind Cinema’s The Lord of the Rings: A Look at Hollywood’s Take on Tolkien’s Epic Tale. Burien: Hollywood Jesus Books, 2004.

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Paciencia y Fe The Spirited Presence of Abuela Claudia in In the Heights Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo

Wisdom not only comes in writings; it also comes through sayings.1 For some of us, such wisdom comes through the lips of our mothers and abuelas.2 Such an experience is not unique to the Latina3 community; nevertheless, it is a fact that women in our Latina community play a key role in shaping the identity of younger generations.4 This is clearly depicted in recent movies like In the Heights, Encanto, and the remake of West Side Story. A keen observer will recognize that regardless of the unique storylines and settings of these movies, women (mothers and grandmothers, especially) are central to the plot. It is women like Abuela Claudia, Abuela Alma, and Rita Moreno, who are directly and indirectly shaping the narrative. Time and space will not be enough to analyze all of them, thus, this chapter explores the pneumatic presence of Abuela Claudia in In the Heights. This chapter beings with a summary of the film and key scenes of Abuela Claudia pneumatic presence. Then, the chapter analyzes the role of Abuela Claudia in conversation with Kat Armas’s Abuelita Theology and the paraclete sayings found in the Gospel of John. IN THE HEIGHTS In the Heights is a Broadway musical written by Lin Manuel Miranda that was adapted into a film by Quiara Alegría Hudes and directed by Jon M. Chu.5 Located in the heart of the Washington Heights community, a New York City 99

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borough of Manhattan, the film depicts the life and realities of Hispanic/ Latina migrant families. The film highlights the life of Usnavi (a bodega owner and the story’s narrator), Rosario and Nina (a cab service owner and his daughter), Vanessa (an aspiring designer), and Sonny (Usnavi’s undocumented cousin). Each one, according to Usnavi, the main character, has a sueñito (little dream). This sueñito is what pushes everyone in Washington Heights to get up and face the daily struggles of the barrio, to work in jobs they don’t like, and to invest all of their savings for their children. Why? “Because one day the sueñito will come true.”6 It is important to clarify that the theme of sueñito is not synonymous to the idea of “American Dream.” The concept of the American Dream generally argues that any person who works hard will achieve a happy way of living. But sueñito—specifically in the mind of Usnavi—underscores the desire of a migrant to return to their place of birth. For some, happiness is never reached because they never get to return home. For others, they find comfort by recreating, remembering, and retelling the stories of the homeland in new lands. Yet, it seems, as described in the following paragraph, that In the Heights, caters to both, sueñito and the American Dream. Usnavi’s dream was to return to his beloved Dominican Republic. By doing so, he would also fulfill his dad’s dream. Rosario’s dream was to make the necessary financial means so that Nina could complete her bachelor’s degree at Stanford and be the first one in her family and the barrio to do so. Vanessa, on the other hand, though she works at Daniela’s hair salon, dreamt daily about opening a designer boutique. And Sonny, the youngest of all of them, dreamt of becoming a “dreamer”—“an immigrant youth who qualifies for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors.”7 In the end, some of the dreams come true, but not as expected. Other dreams and their fulfillment were left to the viewer’s imagination. Still, the viewer is left with the hope that these characters are on the path toward the realization of their dreams. ABUELA CLAUDIA Abuela Claudia is the voice of wisdom within the community. The movie does not follow her story. Notwithstanding, everyone else’s story has some sort of connection to her story, especially Usnavi’s. As mentioned in the introduction, Latina cultures still embodies a high view of the elderly community. Grandparents are not only loved but also revered and feared. I can attest that all three emotions flourished every Sunday afternoon when we visited Mamita, my paternal grandmother, in Loiza Valley, Puerto Rico. Thus, it is not a surprise that movies depicting the Latina community, including Lin

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Manuel Miranda’s, integrate characters like Abuela Claudia in their scripts. She stands in representation of the elderly voice of wisdom within the community. But for Usnavi, she is more than that; he describes her as his abuela.8 In order to grasp in-depth her role and impact within the community, I will share some scenes from the movie. The first time Abuela Claudia appears in the movie is in the overture. Through song and spoken word, Usnavi describes the stories and the struggles those who live in Washington Heights. It is fitting that Usnavi is the one guiding us into Washington Heights; after all, he is the owner of the bodega, and no one in the barrio begins their day until they get their café con leche or a lottery ticket from the local bodega. After presenting himself to the audience—“I am Usnavi and you prob’ly never heard my name”9—, pointing out his country of origin—“‘Cause I immigrated from the single greatest little place in the Caribbean: Dominican Republic”—, and sharing that he grew up without parents—“Ever since my folks passed on”—, Abuela Claudia enters the bodega. Like many others, she is looking for her first café con leche of the day and her ticket to happiness, the lottery ticket. But there is no leche, just café. The fridge broke and the milk was spoiled. But like any Latina abuela would do, Abuela Claudia looked for a remedy. She told Usnavi, “Ay Dios, try my mother’s old recipe: one can of condensed milk.” Then, after serving Abuela Claudia her coffee, he gives her a lottery ticket and she walks out of the bodega while she shouts out her punchline, “paciencia y fe” (patience and faith). As she walks out of the bodega, with her coffee and the lottery ticket in hand, Usnavi shares another important piece of information regarding Abuela Claudia. What he says is a key statement for this chapter. Usanvi says, “That was abuela, she’s not really my abuela, but she practically raised me, this corner is her escuela.” Claudia is the oldest among all the characters in the movie. Thus, she has not only seen the transformation of the barrio, but she also knows the stories of each character. That positions Abuela Claudia in a place of privilege. Such status defines the way she relates with each character. For Usnavi, the boy who grew up without his parents, she became his abuela. This is not something that Alegria and Miranda add to the script, but such practice is prevalent among Latina communities.10 The high view of belonging among the Latina people plays a major role in creating family bonds out of necessity and not just by blood. Hence, when Usnavi says “that was my abuela,” followed by, “she’s not really my abuela” he is not undermining her status as grandmother, rather he is doing the contrary. Usnavi is stressing the former by way of the latter. In other words, while some have biological abuelas, he calls her abuela by relational bond, that is, she took him under her care when no one else did.11

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The second point that Usanvi mentions about Abuela Claudia addresses how the experience of growing up in the barrio as a daughter of a migrant woman shaped and formed her. Usnavi says, “this corner is her escuela.” In other words, the street-corner is her school. It seems that Abuela Claudia, like the children of many who migrated from the Caribbean to New York in the early to mid 1900s, did not go to school, and those who did, dropped out early to help their families.12 Abuela Claudia confirms this in her final scene and song Paciencia y Fe. In the song she remembers the struggles she faced with her mom when they migrated from Cuba. In one of the lines, she states that their hands would be shaking due to the floors they had to scrub. According to Abuela Claudia, her life in New York was consumed within that reality, “The days into weeks, the weeks into years, and here I stayed.” But that reality shaped her character and strengthened her faith. As a result, though she did not go through formal schooling, the barrio—the family, the community, and the struggles—became her context of formation. The next scene that I want to call your attention to is the dinner at Abuela Claudia’s apartment. Everyone was looking forward for such a night. In the overture, Usnavi and Rosario admit that they can’t wait to eat what Abuela Claudia will cook. The reason for the dinner is that Nina, Rosario’s daughter, is back in town and they are throwing a party for her. She is one of the few who left the barrio to go to college, and that is a reason for celebration within the familia Latina. This scene is full of raw emotions that take us from the joy of reuniting the family, to the child-like coquetry of Vanessa and Usnavi, to the tensions of Benny confronting Rosario. Such confrontation brought the party to a bittersweet ending. When I saw this scene for the first time, it felt so real. I lived moments like this many times. But also, I thought of how others would interpret the scene. Especially those who didn’t grow up within the Latina community. Why is Benny confronting Rosario? Why does Nina respond to her dad? Why are they going at each other when others are sitting at the table? As mentioned in the previous section, Latina family ties go beyond bloodlines. Their context, stories, struggles, and presence of Abuela Claudia as their matriarch nurtured them as a family. This is not the first time they sat at that table, and even more, I am confident that this was not the first-time tensions flared among them. Nevertheless, as Ruben Blades states in his song, Amor y control, “familia es familia y cariño es cariño,”13 the scene demonstrates that the Latina table is dynamic. It is a place and a space where we eat, love each other, and confront each other. In other words, the Latina table not only nurtures our lives but also call us to sacrifice it. For the Latina community, the table plays a fundamental role in our formation. As long as I can remember, the table has been at center of every important decision I have made in my life. The table-formation experience is

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dynamic, while it offers something to those who partake of it, it also calls for something to be surrender. At times, such reciprocity happens overtly, like we see in the dinner scene. Other times, it happens in subtle ways. These aren’t mutually exclusive; one can move from one to another seamlessly, just as it happened in the dinner scene—in this case from subtle to overt. Furthermore, regardless of their role, everyone is partaking of the table—even the viewer. Everyone at the table is receiving something but also are sacrificing something. Therefore, the table is a place of nurturing and sacrifice. In other words, it is both table and an altar.14 The viewer can easily miss the presence of Abuela Claudia in this scene. As already mentioned, her story is not front and center. Some may label it a supportive or background role. Yet, her story and presence are undergirding the overall plot. Abuela Claudia grounds the stories of those sitting at the table. In a way, she is the common thread among them. And it plays out in different ways throughout the scene. First, it is her hospitality that unites them at the table. While Nina, Usnavi and others are helping, Abuela Claudia oversees the cooking and setting of the table. Second, when they are dancing in the family room, two things point to Abuela Claudia’s matriarchal presence. On the one hand, the camera angles keep her centered most of the time. On the other hand, they are dancing to the rhythm of the music coming from the vinyl player, which is playing her favorite song. Third, when Rosario is recalling how he began the cab service company, Abuela Claudia, interjects by saying, “two burgundy Cadillacs, that was your fleet.” One more time, the viewer is reminded that even Rosario’s story, who is a grow man with a daughter already in college, is part of Abuela Claudia’s acquired knowledge. Fourth, Abuela Claudia, in a subtle way, also tries to play a role as mediator throughout the heated conversation. The first time, Abuela Claudia mouthed “Ay, Dios mío.” This is a very popular phrase within the Spanish Caribbean community. It is both an expression of amazement and an expression of divine mediation. Both are true in the scene. Later, as Nina undermines Rosario’s decision to sell the cab company, Abuela Claudia speaks up and says, “Nina, say thank you, papi.” In addition, Abuela Claudia also intervenes with Rosario. As his temper bursts, she looks at him and with a subtle move of her hands, signals him to calm down. In the first intervention, Abuela Claudia serve as a mediator between the divine and those at the table. Not only amazed by what going on, but also praying for divine intervention. In the other two interventions, speaking to Nina and signaling to Rosario, she was mediating between those seated at the table, as she had done many times, trying to keep the unity and peace of the family. At the end of the scene, there is a camera shot that closes in to Abuela Claudia’s face. There is this sense of grief in her face, an ending that she was

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not expecting during their last meal together, at least for herself. Yet, amid that grief, there was the hope of a last sueñito. Abuela Claudia has an unbreakable hope, because her mom had taught her to live with paciencia y fe (patience and faith). This is not only her punchline throughout the movie, but it is the phrase that encapsulates her life-story. The viewer can clearly see this come to its climax when Abuela Claudia sings her solo, titled Paciencia y Fe. But to fully grasp Abuela Claudia’s final scene, the viewer needs to consider the previous two scenes. Following the dinner scene, the movie shifts to the dance party which then leads to the blackout. I’m not sure if Miranda and Alegría Hudes were thinking of this, but it is interesting that there seems to be some sort of parallelism between the dinner scene and the dance party. Both scenes move from a festive to a somber atmosphere; in the latter, the excitement of the dance party came into a halt with a blackout. Interestingly, the electrical power was not the only thing blacking out: Abuela Claudia’s life was also dimming. After the blackout, the main characters met at Abuela Claudia’s apartment. She was lying in her bed, watching her children from afar enjoying the night despite the blackout. Though she is close to her death, there is a smile on her face. They finally understood that even in the bleakest of moments they can find some hope. It is about having paciencia y fe. This is what we glean from Abuela Claudia’s final song. This song is the story of Abuela Claudia and her mother. A story of a family that left their homeland for the possibility of a better life. The song begins by contrasting Abuela Claudia’s innocence with her mother’s struggles. “Back as a child in La Víbora I chased the birds in the plaza praying, Mamá, you would find work.” In response to this reality, Abuela Claudia’s mother decided to move to New York, a place far away but one that offers job opportunities. When they arrived in New York, they faced many challenges, including a language barrier, racism, and lack of basic needs. Yet, as long as they found trabajo, they pushed those challenges to the side. As the song progressed, the main characters and the ensemble interjected with the phrase, paciencia y fe. This not only serves as an accompaniment to the song but I argue that is also serves as a “newyorrican” lament of hope. As they shout paciencia y fe, there is transference from Abuela Claudia to them. Her faith and wisdom are deposited in their life. Just as her dream comes true by living with patience and faith, the same can happen to them. Consequently, when this transference occurs, the song arrives to its climatic moment. It is only then that Abuela Claudia is ready to go. “Ay, alright, Mamá. Okay!” Abuela Claudia is ready to unite with her mother. And just as she lived all her life, she left sacrificially. Rather than taking the easy route, she took the stairs instead of the ramp, with paciencia y fe.

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ABUELITA THEOLOGY Before going any further, let us look into the theological category called Abuelita Theology. Here I will rely on Kat Armas’s work, Abuelita Faith.15 Though the word abuelita (grandmother) is used as a descriptor of the theological loci, Abuelita Theology also encompasses mothers and godmothers.16 They are not just symbols of care and nourishment, but they are “our connections to our culture, our language, and the country that birthed us. They are our wells of wisdom and memories­—both traumatic ones and those necessary for survival.”17 In most cases, Abuelita Theology comes to us hidden through sights and sounds. Armas states, Abuelita theology stems from their reality in Latine religious culture, matriarchal figures such as abuelitas preserve and pass along religious traditions, beliefs, practices, and spirituality. They function as ‘live-in ministers,’ particularly because the privilege to receive ‘formal’ religious instruction is often unavailable. Thus, abuelitas are the functional priestesses and theologians in our familias.18

Abuelita Theology happens! It is communicated in their daily conversations and narrated by their bodies. In other words, Abuelita Theology is a lived theology or as some Latina sisters call it, teología de lo cotidiano.19 Their faith and wisdom are enveloped in their everyday experiences, and even though we may fail to see and hear, it is still shaping us. Though Abuelita Theology is an emerging theological category, it comprises an old practice within the Christian faith in general and Latina faith, in particular.20 Two examples may explain this. On the one hand, we can recall the words of the Apostle Paul in his second letter to Timothy. He states, “For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well” (2 Tim 1:5). In this first example, Paul recognizes that Timothy’s faith experience runs from Abuela Lois and through his mother and then to Timothy himself. On the other hand, Roberto “Chao” Romero, argued in Brown Church21 that Hispanic/Latina spirituality and cultural identity shaped our grandmothers and mothers. Romero argues that Cesar Chavez’s social approach was pretty much informed by a form of Mexican popular Catholic spirituality. The source of Cesar’s spirituality, just as with Timothy, was shaped by the faith and wisdom of his grandmother, Mama Tella, and his mother, Juana.22 These abuelas played a significant role in the lives of Timothy and Cesar. Their faith and wisdom not only shaped them but also became launching pads for their vocations.

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Armas made a noteworthy connection between the Holy Spirit and Abuelita Theology. Building on the work of Latina theologians as María Isasi-Diaz, Loida Martell-Otero, Zaida Hernández, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, and others, Armas argued that the kind of Abuelita Theology she is proposing is rooted in “the feminine ‘Wild Child’ of the Trinity, la Espíritu Santa.”23 For her, just as the Holy Spirit presence brings freedom, the abuelas in our lives “seek that all [blood related and not] . . . are liberated to better serve one another and their neighbors and live into the freedom promised in la Espíritu Santa.”24 Armas’s argument finds resonance in a recently published book edited by Cheryl Bridges Johns and Lisa Stephenson, Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender.25 The book brings together the voices of Pentecostal women who “offer their Pentecostal feminist readings of biblical texts as well as their insights as to how women can navigate the paradoxical and sometimes troubling landscape of the Pentecostal movement’s response to women.”26 Furthermore, what is important for the present conversation is that Bridges Johns and Stephenson et al. argue that the Holy Spirit takes center stage, empowering them by reimagining the stories of women in the Bible and restoring the brokenness of creation.27 In other words, the Holy Spirit plays a key role in the retelling, reimagining, and restoring their stories. Thus, similar to Lois, Tella, Armas, Bridges Johns, and Stephenson et al., Abuela Claudia takes upon her the responsibility of keeping alive and reimagining her faith and wisdom with those within her reach. In a way, this is the heart of Abuelita Theology. In the words of Armas, “It is the practice uncovering and naming our abuelas who have inspired, taught and guided us in our process of becoming and belonging.”28 And in many ways, this uncovering and renaming, is what my sisters are bringing to the table through their Pentecostal “prophetic imagination.”29 While the work of Armas, Bridges Johns, and Stephenson has been helpful in integrating the role of Abuela Claudia with Abuelita Theology and the Holy Spirit, it was the Fourth Gospel and Jesus’s sayings of the Spirit that prompted the idea of this chapter. THE PNEUMATOLOGY OF ABUELA CLAUDIA The agency of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John is of much importance. John’s testimony depicts significant aspects of the Holy Spirit. Though, I will focus on the paraclete sayings, let me briefly mention a few of the aspects raised by John. John begins by speaking about the role of the Holy Spirit in defining personhood of Jesus. In other words, the Spirit plays a key role regarding the identity of Jesus (John 1:32–33).30 John also describes the

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agency of the Holy Spirit in the life of those who encounter Jesus. For John, the Spirit is the One who births newborn believers into the kingdom of God, who quenches the thirst, and nourishes the hunger for eternal life (John 3; 4; 6:3; 7:37–39).31 In chapters 14, 15, and 16, we encounter Jesus’s paraclete sayings. In this section, known as the farewell discourse, we find what John Christopher Thomas describes as “the bulk of the Fourth Gospel’s teaching about the Spirit.”32 And it is here, in the paraclete sayings, where I want to focus our attention. If my reading of this account is accurate, the importance of the discourse not only rests on Jesus’s promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit, but also Jesus’s words unveil characteristics of the Holy Spirit in relation to God, to Jesus and the disciples. These characteristics seem to be analogously portraited by Abuela Claudia’s character in In the Heights. In John 14:16–17 Jesus begins by affirming that the Father will send another paraclete, the Spirit of truth, and one who could be known and will abide forever with those who know him. The first descriptor that Jesus uses for Spirit is paraclete. Paraclete could be translated as helper, comforter, advocate, and intercessor. The second descriptor, the Spirit of truth, speaks to the “trustworthiness of the Spirit.”33 Such trustworthiness rests upon two important foundations. First, that the Spirit is another paraclete—of the same essence as Jesus. Second, the Spirit will witness to the truth of Jesus. The final characteristic within the first saying, speaks to the Spirit’s abiding presence. The Spirit would be “in”—abide with—those who have known and believed in the Spirit. Later, in the same chapter (vv. 25–27), we find the second mention of the paraclete. On this occasion Jesus says that the Spirit will teach all things and remind the disciples (and believers) the thing said by Jesus. It seems that the Spirit will play an important role in their understanding and memory-making. Both processes, according to Jesus, are informed by what Jesus had already said, but also by the things the Spirit will add.34 As the reader moves to chapter 15, we find Jesus describing that the Spirit will be a witness. Here we need to recall the language of “another.” If the Spirit is another paraclete, this means that Spirit’s witness is in essence like Jesus. Hence, the Spirit’s witness is not from a distance, but is in close proximity. While Jesus was a witness who lived among them, the Spirit will be a witness who abides in them. Furthermore, “the objective of Johannine witnessing,” according to Jackie Johns, “is to create knowledge and thereby increase faith.”35 The last two sayings appear in chapter 16. Beginning in verse 8, Jesus adds that the Spirit will convict the world. This conviction regards sin, righteousness, and judgment. In this instance, the paraclete, rather than standing

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alongside to defend, stands to confront those that are coming against those who know and believe in the Spirit. Finally, in verse 12, we come to the final paraclete saying. This saying relates to and expands the pedagogical nature of the Spirit. How will the Spirit teach the disciples? According to this final saying, by action (guiding) and word (speaking). And in doing so, the Spirit will glorify Jesus, by disclosing the future. After offering this summary, some connections will be drawn between Abuela Claudia, Abuelita Theology, and the paraclete sayings. The Holy Spirit is described as paraclete. This description carries a double meaning. In the first saying paraclete is defined as a helper. In the fourth, paraclete is defined as one who convicts. Thus, according to John, the Spirit both defends (helps) and offends (convicts). Armas raises a similar point in her research. The abuelas, not only stand for their children, but also stand against those who mean harm against their loved ones. This double agency of the Spirit is characterized by Abuela Claudia throughout the movie. For example, she became Usnavi’s paraclete. In the words of Usnavi, she practically raised him. Hence, she became his advocate. Also, during the heated discussion between Rosario and Nina, Abuela Claudia stood for and against both Nina and Rosario. The Spirit will teach and remind. Though these terms are harmonious, they have unique goals. The former, means to convey new knowledge. The latter seeks to recall something that has been learned. In many cases the abuelas are the first teachers that the children engage within the Hispanic/Latina community. I have seen this firsthand within my family. Like the Spirit, Armas argues, the abuelas are the everyday ministers that teach and remind their religious traditions, beliefs, practices, and spirituality. In the opening song, there is a simple exchange between Usnavi and Abuela Claudia. Usnavi is concerned because the fridge broke overnight, and the milk went bad. Not knowing what to do, he asks Abuela Claudia. In response, she recalls and old practice, “Ay Dios, try my mother’s old recipe: one can of condensed milk.” In recalling what her mom used to do, Abuela Claudia passes along something new for Usnavi. But more importantly, Abuela Claudia’s goal was to teach and reminded them that faith was the most important thing in their journey, it was about living with paciencia y fe. Like the Spirit, she not only reminds them of the faith and experience of their ancestors, but also expresses new ways to live out their faith. The Spirit will guide to and speak of the truth. In the Old Testament, the Spirit is connected to Sophia or wisdom. In John’s account, this wisdom comes to fruition through the Spirit’s activity and speech. Likewise, Armas argues that the abuelas are a symbol of wisdom within their families. This

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wisdom is shared through their hands, their bodies, and their stories. By drinking from the wells of their wisdom, we come to know the faith of our ancestors and the hope of the future. “They offered a path of spiritual wisdom, of conocimiento.” Abuela Claudia embodied this, even though her character played a supporting role. Her interventions were nuggets of wisdoms that enlighten the eyes of the characters that she speaks to. She was their guide! She spoke truth to them! In words of Usanvi, “When she was here, the path was clear.” CONCLUSION The art of film has the power to surface deep emotions, old memories, and, on this occasion, socio-religious experiences that must be rescued. In the case of In the Heights, it rescues its community’s cultural wealth gradually lost amongst the North American Latina diaspora. Speaking as a Latino, it is regrettable that the cultural assimilation and life mobility in which we live is overshadowing the dignity of the elderly in the Latina community. However, In the Heights dignifies the elderly amidst the Latina community. On the other hand, by approaching this film through a Latina Pentecostal lens, I can argue for the pneumatological role that our abuelas embody in their families and communities. In other words, Abuela Claudia, just as our abuelas, stands as a type of Spirit-led figure that contributes to the integral formation of those close to her, just like Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would do with the disciples in the Gospel of John. Paciencia y fe. NOTES 1. I dedicate this chapter to Kalani Sofia, our oldest. Hija, your love and passion for music and theatre reignited a fire that was almost extinct. ¡Te amo! Hopefully one day I will write about one of your characters. 2. Abuelas is the Spanish term for grandmother. 3. I will be using Latina and Latino interchangeably. 4. With this I am not undermining the contribution of men or the negative impact of machismo. However, mothers and abuelas spend more time with the children, hence, their presence becomes central in their development. 5. 5000 Broadway Productions, Barrio Grrrl! Productions, Likely Story, SGS Pictures, and Endeavor Content. 6. In the Heights. Directed by Jon M. Chu Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2021, Streaming. 7. https:​//​americasvoice​.org​/blog​/what​-is​-a​-dreamer​/.

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8. In the Heights is a show that tells the story of Lin Manuel’s experience life as a neighbor of the Washington Heights in the 1990s. Thus, the character of Abuela Claudia most certainly stands as representation of elders of the Hispanic/Latina community whom in their majority are firs generation migrants. 9. In the Heights. Directed by Jon M. Chu Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 2021, Streaming. All references of In the Heights in this paper are from the source. 10. See for example, Eldin Villafañe, The Liberating Spirit: Toward a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993); Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo, Hacia una eclesiología hispana-latina: Una respuesta al reto de la mcdonalización (Cleveland: CEL Publicaciones, 2019). 11. Though later in the movie we find out that Usnavi has an uncle. 12. Our mother stands as a testimony of this. 13. Family is family and love is love. Ruben Blades, “Amor y control,” 1992, track 7 on Amor y control, CBS Records, 1992, iTunes. 14. For more on the intrinsic relation between the table and the altar see, Chris E. W. Green, “The Altar and the Table: A Proposal for Wesleyan and Pentecostal Eucharistic Theologies,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 53, no. 2 (2018): 54–61; EstradaCarrasquillo, Hacia una eclesiología hispana-latina. 15. Kat Armas, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us About Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021). 16. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 36. 17. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 28. 18. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 33. My emphasis. 19. See for example, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, En La Lucha/In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women’s Liberation Theology, 40th edition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 95; Loida I. Martell-Otero et al., Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2013), 6. 20. This does not mean that other ethnic groups are excluded. In my research I was able to find some similarities among Hispanic/Latina and the African American community. 21. Robert Chao Romero, Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020). 22. Romero, Brown Church, Kindle Loc., 2000. 23. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 28. My emphasis. 24. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 28. 25. Cheryl Bridges Johns and Lisa P. Stephenson, eds., Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series, volume 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2021). 26. Johns and Stephenson, Grieving, Brooding, Transforming, 2. 27. Johns and Stephenson, Grieving, Brooding, Transforming, 2. 28. Armas, Abuelita Faith, 19. 29. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). As cited by Johns and Stephenson, Grieving, Brooding, Transforming, 5.

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30. John Christopher Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005), 158. 31. Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament, 159–66. 32. Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament, 166. 33. Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament, 167. 34. Jackie David Johns, The Pedagogy of the Holy Spirit According to Early Christian Tradition (Cleveland: Center for Pentecostal Ministries, 2012), 44. 35. Johns, The Pedagogy of the Holy Spirit According to Early Christian Tradition, 45.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armas, Kat. Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us About Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021. Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Estrada-Carrasquillo, Wilmer. Hacia una eclesiología hispana-latina: Una respuesta al reto de la mcdonalización. Cleveland: CEL Publicaciones, 2019. Green, Chris E. W. “The Altar and the Table: A Proposal for Wesleyan and Pentecostal Eucharistic Theologies.” Wesleyan Theological Journal 53, no. 2 (2018): 54–61. Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria. En La Lucha/In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women’s Liberation Theology. 40th ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Publishers, 1993. Johns, Cheryl Bridges, and Lisa P. Stephenson, eds. Grieving, Brooding, and Transforming: The Spirit, the Bible, and Gender. Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series, volume 46. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Johns, Jackie David. The Pedagogy of the Holy Spirit According to Early Christian Tradition. Cleveland: CPM—Center for Pentecostal Ministries, 2012. Martell-Otero, Loida I., Zaida Maldonado Pérez, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, and Serene Jones. Latina Evangélicas: A Theological Survey from the Margins. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013. Romero, Robert Chao. Brown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020. Thomas, John Christopher. The Spirit of the New Testament. Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005. Villafañe, Eldin. The Liberating Spirit: Toward a Hispanic American Pentecostal Social Ethic. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

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The Spirit and the Bride Say, “Come” A Pneumatological Exploration of Te Fiti in Disney’s Moana D. Coleby Delgado

Interestingly, a Google search for “Spirit and Cinema” yields a host of frightening thumbnails for suggested movie titles. These films, which Google broadly categorizes as “Horror,” tout related subheadings like “Movies about spirits” as well as “Fantasy movies about spirits.” At first glance, it appears that in the dominant cinematic imagination, s/Spirit connotes the “dark” indeterminate-forma that constitutes the more elusive and horrifying aspects of death, the occult, and the paranormal. However, a similar search for “Christ and Cinema” yields no such film suggestions or captivating cinematic images. What auto-populates instead is a curious number of direct and indirect links to Robert Barron’s chapter essay entitled, “Christ in Cinema: The Evangelical Power of the Beautiful,” followed by several additional links to articles, books, and blogs by various authors across disciplines, expertise, and religious affiliations. While further analysis is needed to prove this claim definitively, suffice it to say that generally speaking, most theological engagement with contemporary film is relegated to a niche EvangelicalFundamentalist Christocentric sphere, with no scholarly interest in a pneumatological approach. Along with the other essays in this volume, I favor a pneumatological perspective for broadening theological engagement and discussion around film and the arts. Using the Disney film Moana (2016) I employ a pneumatological approach in hopes of offering a more nuanced reading of the film. Here, I 113

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wish to assert that contrary to a redemptive narrative that centers on the lead character, a pneumatological exploration of Te Fiti (or Te Kā, sans her heart) reveals three things: 1) the energy and essence of Spirit as power that calls and convicts; 2) the devastation and suffering experienced when Spirit grieves (c.f., Ephesian 4:30–32); and 3) the call for humanity to partner with Spirit to bring about ecological liberation, reconciliation, and restorative justice. In thinking about faith and film, Robert Ellis reminds us that whether the consumer is aware of it or not, “films . . . raise some basic questions about religion, faith, and the way we look at the world.”1 Arguably, said consumers have resigned themselves to films including a Christ figure whose central role is that of savior/redeemer. Which means that finding and discovering the s/Spirit  figure in films is no small task. However, in Disney’s Moana I am convinced that the Earth Mother and goddess, Te Fiti/Te Kā, possesses dynamic resonances with Christian Pneumatology. Particularly, but not exclusively, as it pertains to the Spirit as the giver of life. As this project’s chosen Spirit figure, Te Fiti/Te Kā will serve as an illuminating object lesson of what it means to be called to a Spirit-led life in relation to gender, racial, and ecological justice. Cooperatively, I will show that the painful story of her journey from physical assault to full agentive restoration can provide much needed theological insight. THEORETICAL CONTEXT: PNEUMATOLOGY AS A THEOLOGICAL FRAME Generally speaking, s/Spirit denotes (1) the intelligent and immaterial part of the human person, thought to be connected to the Divine or that believed to be an Ultimate Reality, e.g., soul; (2) a superhuman being who is not subject to the restrictions imposed by time, space, and bodily frame; and (3) one of many created beings—good and evil—belonging to the spirit realm/spiritual order. Without question, the subjectivity of these definitions discloses the inherent challenges of using s/Spirit as a theoretical frame. This is especially true when s/Spirit is removed from a contextual reading that subscribes to a particular spiritual tradition, belief system, or religious identity, such as Christianity. Within the broader Christian tradition especially, a robust Pneumatology must be subject to the doctrine of the Trinity. Despite its gradual development during the earliest years of the church, the doctrine of the Trinity, which emerged with the Nicene Creed, was perfected, so to speak, at the first council at Constantinople and maintains that “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have a single Godhead and power and substance, a dignity deserving the same honor and co-equal sovereignty, in three most perfect hypostases

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or three persons.” Even as the tradition has conceded that the Trinity is a sacred mystery—and one beyond total human comprehension—orthodox Christianity maintains that the doctrine of the Trinity is the most central of Christian claims and thus foundational to all Christian truth. It is not surprising then that as part of a larger doctrinal constellation on the nature of God, pneumatology as a theological category does not stand alone. Instead, it is a mutually dependent and interconnected theological system that assumes other essential propositional claims, such as the Christological formulation that preserves the indivisibility of the triune God. Here, the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and therefore affirms the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ, and thus the Spirit of God. Likewise, by maintaining that the activity and power of the Holy Spirit are distinct from but also related to that of the Father and the Son, the Christian doctrine of the Spirit upholds broader yet equally essential claims about the perichoretic nature of the triune God. In other words, because the three persons of the Godhead coinhere (homoousion—whatever the Father is, so too are the Spirit and the Son), they share in the divine activity. Of great import, as it pertains to this discussion, and what will be considered further throughout, is not just that the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and Son, is to be worshipped and glorified, but that the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and the Son, is “the Lord and Giver of Life.” Christianity does not have a monopoly on s/Spirit. Nevertheless, as a theological category, its reflections on the Divine/Ultimate relationship between the natural and the supernatural (nature and grace) and the concomitant examination of diverse spirits/deities provide meaningful fodder for discussing sacred presence, activity, and absence as “real in experience and practice.”2 Anthony Godzieba’s Theology of the Presence and Absence of God travels the ebbs and flows of modernity and postmodernity’s tumultuous relationship with eminence and negation as it pertains to the presence and absence of God. Choosing to think through this subject in Christological terms of incarnation and sacramentality, Godzieba concludes that speaking about presence and absence means taking approaches to God that are both kataphatic and apophatic. The idea here is that humanity is to wrestle with “the delicate balance between God’s transcendent otherness (which prevents us from reducing God to our terms) and God’s presence (which touches our lives with the emancipative force of God’s love).”3 A major question that Godzieba is asking is, “how is the ineffable God available to us within our embodied, time-bound life?” For Godzieba, a reasonable response must be grounded in a Christocentric discussion on Trinitarian ontology (the revelation of God as a communion of persons in unity, peace, and love). Removing presence from the subjectivity of experience and grounding it in the Trinity not only makes for a more substantive

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response but also discloses presence as an expression of the universality of divine love; and, in so doing, articulates it as (1) more than an oppositional idea to divine absence, e.g., lack or emptiness;4 (2) an open invitation to participate in the divine life; and (3) revelation of God’s accessibility, realized within the human experience, via “mutual dependency, occasioned by divine discretion.”5 By treating presence and absence as part and parcel of revelation, e.g., God’s self-disclosure, Godzieiba, thinking alongside other theologians such as Walter Kasper, understands presence, vis-á-vis divine encounters, to be quotidian and thus an essential and involuntary aspect of our human existence. When Robert Orsi writes about presence and absence in Between Heaven and Earth and History and Presence, he is far less interested in traversing the wielding terrain of systematic theology. However, like Godzieba, Orsi’s starting point is the Catholic faith. By tackling presence and absence through an American Catholic narrative lens, Orsi not only broadens theological anthropological propositions and assumptions, but also those pertaining to pnuematology. Through the stories of mid-century Catholics in the United States, Orsi presents a deft analysis of the role of sacrality in modern culture, which, unlike Godzieba’s Christocentric systematic approach is an examination of modern culture’s “deep antipathy” toward sacred presence. Observing modern culture’s unfavorable attitude toward presence prompted Orsi to write, Of all aspects of religion, the one that has been clearly most out of place in the modernizing world—one that has proven least tolerable to modern societies— has been the radical presence of the gods [and goddesses] to practitioners. The modern world has assiduously and systematically disciplined the senses not to experience sacred presence; the imaginations of moderns are trained toward sacred absence.6

Despite this contemporary cultural tendency, Orsi maintains that the saints, gods, demons, ancestors, and so on are real in relationships between heaven and earth, in the circumstances of people’s lives and histories, and in the stories that people tell about them. Tethering history to presence via the study of religion enabled Orsi to assert that “[t]he gods never departed from lived experience.” Whether by self-possessed power, the sheer will of the human imagination, or a mix of both, the gods have always “insistently reached through the bars of language, law, and theory erected around them.” However, Orsi cautions that a return to acknowledging presence means a return to acknowledging that human interactions with the divine are messy, complex, and unpredictable. With presence comes questions about what is possible and the reality of good and evil. All of which establish the gods as agents “of succor and of pain.”7

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Even as Godzieba is reticent about categorizing absence as being in opposition to presence, Orsi’s proposition of the gods as agents of pain establishes just that. In other words, if presence refers to God’s self-disclosure as life made accessible through created order (past tense), creative immanence through sustainability (present tense), and ongoing divine activity by way of redemption (broadly characterized), then absence must be the opposite. In contrast to presence, absence evokes images of darkness, feelings of distance, and experiences with the deafening sound of divine silence. Absence connotes a cosmological disturbance that threatens even the most quotidian aspects of life—the human need for food, clothing, shelter. LITERATURE REVIEW—DISNEY’S MOANA, CHRISTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Arguably, the tension between presence and absence undergirds the story told in Disney’s Moana. For this reason, I am asserting that a pneumatological rather than a Christological approach is apropos. Nevertheless, my assertion is divergent from most scholars who prefer a Christological perspective that centers the lead character as the heroine and the Christ figure. In her article “Sacred Subtexts: Depictions of Girls as Christ Figure and Holy Fool in the Films Moana and Whale Rider,” Belinda du Plooy argues that theological exploration in cinema and even literature is part of a broader academic exercise known as sacred subtext. According to du Plooy, “engagement with sacred subtexts is a scholarly endeavor, grounded in hermeneutical interpretive practices, which serves disciplines such as film studies and literature particularly well, since it facilitates the critiquing and analysis of representational practices, such as recycling and adaption of mythologies, narratives[,] and symbols.”8 So even as du Plooy is concerned to explore sacred subtexts related to divergences in androcentric gender representation in what Alton Farl Kozlovic calls the “archetypal christic pattern,”9 her study establishes a template for considering theological engagement with film from other vantage points. Following Kozlovic’s theoretical framework, du Plooy examines Moana, the main character and protagonist for whom the Disney film is named, as a standard Christ figure who almost near perfectly aligns with the established trope. In the film, Moana is not just an indigenous princess in line with the Disney brand, e.g., purposed merely to marry well and secure her family’s legacy/kingdom in perpetuity through her beauty and wit. Instead, she is the carrier of her people’s redemption. Even though Moana’s redemptive work solidifies her designation as a Christ-like figure, du Plooy cautions us against conflating this designation with either the historical Jesus or the

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religio-cultural imperialism associated with Western colonial Christianity. Contrarily, Moana’s character represents a metaphorical “humanist Christimage.” Specifically, one that upholds the “tradition Christ-centric values” of love.10 Moreover, reading this type of gendered polymthic film alongside David Fillingin, du Plooy construes the film Moana as doing the work of “construct[ing] a complicated relationship between [Polynesian] spiritual tradition, christic narrative details[,] and feminist advocacy.”11 Although this reading holds and offers deft insight into some of the ways contemporary art challenges hegemony, patriarchal-sexism, and ahistorical western-centric grand narratives while reinforcing tradition and so-called racial, ethnic, and cultural norms, the emphasis on Christomorphic patterning obscures other theoretical possibilities. Namely, those involving s/Spirit. Such that, if we can rightly assume that “among the world’s spiritual and religious traditions, Christianity holds no monopoly on the valorization of self-sacrifice, and Jesus is not the only figure in the history of religion and mythology to undergo a death and resurrection,”12 then we can also say something similar about goddesses in relation to s/Spirit; and in so doing, promote a more generative discussion around presence and absence. Specifically one that critically engages Robert Orsi’s provocative inquiry, which rhetorically asks: “what is it about the gods who come and the humans who receive them that so often leads to enmity and destruction on earth, but that also may be the source of social cohesion, compassion, and generosity?”13 SYNOPSIS OF THE FILM: DISNEY’S MOANA Disney’s Moana is the story of a young Polynesian princess on the fictional island paradise of Motonui. Moana is the only daughter of a tribal chief and his recognized successor. Moana is distinct from her Disney princess counterparts because her people not only accept her as their future leader but celebrate her future and their destiny under her leadership. Throughout the film, Moana’s gender never appears to be a question, problem, or hindrance. Life is good among her tribe and within her nuclear and extended family. From the opening scenes, it is apparent that members of the tribe exist in harmony through a communal identity of care and other-regard. These values are enacted through subsistence living from the lush, vibrant, and abundantly fertile land on which they live and the calm yet lively sea that surrounds them. Disney films have always “dealt openly with death,”14 even from its beginnings. Undoubtedly, this means that these children’s fantasy films possess a distinct gravitas that makes way for dealing with morality, questions of life and death, and other significant aspects of the human experience.15 Although

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more sympathetic characters experience death, most often, it is the villains who die, and the heroes are vindicated—as they assume newfound independence that allows them “to face and conquer challenges without parental help” and have the power to influence their circumstances in a positive and virtuous way. Moana, however, is different. She does not lose a parent. Her demonstration of the virtues, albeit an act of independence, is not founded on the demise of a responsible caregiver. In fact, the experience of death that ultimately disrupts the island’s joy and peace is encountered when the community notices crop failure and a sudden reduction in available fish in the ocean. The ecological shift not only threatens their means of survival but also life as they know it. The disaster, ominously described as “The Great Darkness” denotes the potential severity of the moment, and signals the village’s need for a savior. Interestingly, while this story does not treat gender as an issue, age does not enjoy the same immunity. Amidst the looming ecological crisis, Moana, barely a teen, begins to exhibit all of the characteristics of a rebellious and headstrong teenager. Prior to The Great Darkness, she was beginning to feel bored with life on the island, stifled by her father’s undistracted watchful eye, and more curious about what lies on the other side of the ocean beyond the protective reef (the established boundary). In true Disney coming-of-age narrative fashion, adventure was calling and pulling on young Moana’s already restless heart. Throughout the film, Moana has a fair share of sidekicks, from her lovable yet quirky rooster Heihei to the infamous demigod, Maui. Unquestionably, Moana’s most vocal supporter is her grandmother. As the family matriarch, Gramma Tala is responsible for encouraging Moana to follow her heart, which leads her to an abandoned cave that houses their tribe’s ancestral boats. A discovery that results in Moana learning that her ancestors were seafaring people, thus aligning her inherent drive for adventure via the sea with her ancestors. The discovery also leads to Moana defying her father and running away with one of the old boats to cross the reef. Her campaign is twofold: to satisfy her thirst for adventure and save her people from the ecological disaster brought about by The Great Darkness. Initially, Moana sets out to find Maui, a demigod of the wind and sea, who, according to legend, is also responsible for stealing from Te Fiti, The Mother Island and procreator of all life, the magical greenstone heart, which holds the power of creation. For his crime, Maui was punished by the gods—banished to a remote island to live as a hermit. However, Moana soon learns that the stone, originally stolen as a gift for humanity, is now lost. From here, the film takes the viewing audience on a host of wild adventures, all in hopes of finding that stone—an effort resolved when it is returned to humanity via Moana by the sea. The offering proved that Moana was more than just her father’s successor. She was the chosen redeemer.

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Moana’s adventures continue as she sets out to return the greenstone to its rightful owner, Te Fiti. With Maui as her travel companion, Moana faces her toughest challenge: the violently enraged volcanic-like demon, Te Kā. While she is embroiled in the thick of a combative and seemingly futile campaign, Moana pauses. As she shifts her fiery determination to a quieted empathy, the sea parts, thereby permitting the two to come together. Face-to-face for the first time, Te Kā and Moana cease fire, and offer the traditional Polynesian greeting, hongi. After pressing their foreheads together as an act of trust and an exchange of power, the molten lava that once flowed and covered Te Kā begins to cool, harden, and crumble. As the former exterior falls away, Te Fiti, the mother and goddess of creation, appears. Du Plooy eloquently describes this powerful unveiling as the disclosure that “[l]ife and death, creation[,] and destruction are revealed to be one and the same.”16 The film ends by following the Disney formula for happy endings17 by bringing about reconciliation between Maui and Te Fiti, driving The Great Darkness away, and returning Moana’s village to its original state of fertility and sustenance. Ultimately, Moana returns home, where she is welcomed, celebrated, and embraced, along with the village’s ancestral seafaring heritage. A GENDERED READING TE FITI/TE KĀ, EARTH GODDESS, AS (HOLY) SPIRIT Moana is filled with moral messages, myths, and symbols fit for examination and study. As one of Disney’s major efforts in redefining the princess brand, gender takes primacy of place. For the sake of this work and its emphasis on fashioning a pneumatological perspective, it is important to think beyond socially constructed binaries to consider other related areas of import. Treating s/Spirit as an omnipresent driving force throughout the film, the following will consider how a gendered reading of Moana using a pneumatological approach reveals three things: (1) the energy and essence of Spirit as power that calls and convicts; (2) the devastation and suffering experienced when Spirit grieves; and (3) the call for humanity to partner with Spirit to bring about ecological liberation, reconciliation, and restorative justice. The Energy and Essence of Spirit as Power That Calls and Convicts As a critical apparatus for cultural and cinematic analysis that is open and inclusive but also multifaceted and dynamic, Spirit is unrestricted. As a theoretical frame, Spirit is apropos because, by nature its energy and essence,

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which includes but is not limited to power cannot be confined by social constructs like race, religion, and gender. Even before the viewing audience is formally introduced to TeKā, they experience her as s/Spirit traversing boundaries—blowing wherever she wills (c.f. John 3:8), and appearing in various forms. For example, in the film, s/Spirit is present and active through community more broadly and family more narrowly. Similarly, in the film land is essential, and proves to be another space where s/Spirit is encountered and made visible to viewers. Finally, and of particular import, is the films depiction of s/Spirit’s presence and power to call and convict through water. The sea, unlike the land, is much more anthropomorphic throughout the film. Repeatedly, we see the water emoting, holding, calling, and resisting. Arguably, in Moana, it is s/Spirit who moves on, in, and through the sea,18 and by the s/Spirit, we see the water “as a fluid space of co-ed and co-gendered and cross-generational unity.”19 Indeed, the sea was not simply animated, and it was more than just the proverbial altar on which Moana answered her messianic call. It was also where she encountered Maui, reunited with Te Fiti/ Te Kā, and returned her family to their communal identity. Furthermore, the water as the place of gender inclusion is an essential aspect of the film’s storyline. So much so that du Plooy especially reads Moana as a female-identified protagonist who is “presented as a result of this ecstatic seeding between land and sea, humankind and nature, as the future hope and continuation of their people, and [thus] the revitalisation of this greater ecological relationship of mutual love and care.”20 The film’s experiential emphasis on community, land, and water establishes the contextual frames for casting Moana as a young girl who is also a transformative leader, set on leading her community to renewal. For many, this was a welcomed approach by Disney and the Disney princess franchise. However, there were some who felt this lofty goal demanded further scrutiny, and others who dismissed such efforts entirely as another iteration of Disney’s ongoing gender tropes. According to Samantha L. Seybold, even as Disney’s portrayal of Moana is part of a larger effort toward developing female characters who shirk traditional gender roles and social norms, this female protagonist, in particular, is trapped in “‘the double entanglement’ of postfeminism.”21 Like many of her contemporary Disney counterparts, Seybold means that Moana is presented as a powerful female but with limited liberty. For Seybold, Moana is part of a larger schema of disparate messaging that stresses empowerment but only “within socially determined, gender appropriate bounds.”22 Including Disney’s Zootopia (2016) in this critique, Seybold writes: Zootopia and Moana employ an identical, three-part story arc that affirms a traditional power dynamic by granting the female protagonist success in her

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quest only when she allows her male costar to direct their partnership. These two films represent Disney’s continued integration of postfeminist ideas about female empowerment and individuality, which diverts attention from the ways in which Disney’s narratives continue to celebrate male dominance and female submission.23

Seybold notes that this is exacerbated by the fact that these male dominating counterparts are, in fact, men behaving badly—they are selfish, controlling, and lack a semblance of accountability.24 Because of Seybold’s intentionally set limitations, the article, “‘It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart’: Zootopia, Moana, and Disney’s (Dis)empowered Postfeminist Heroines,” does not consider gender dynamics beyond the male-female interactions of primary characters. Consequently, the relationships between Moana and the other female-identified characters in the film are not treated as trusted arbitrators of “the film’s gendered dynamics.”25 Despite the overall lack of reflection on the gender dynamics among the film’s female characters, it is here that I wish to consider Seybold’s theoretical use of postfeminist ideology to look again at the gendered dynamics in the film, but with an intentional gaze at Moana and Te Kā, later Te Fiti. Devastation and Suffering Experienced When Spirit Grieves (c.f., Rom. 8:26 and Eph. 4:30–32) Appealing to feminist scholar Angela McRobbie, Seybold understands protofeminism to a social “reaction against feminism [that] employs neoliberalist principles to shift social focus away from gender equality and onto female empowerment, which is attained by individual women through careful self-discipline and overtly sexualized feminine expression.”26 With the overall success of Moana and the ongoing public scrutiny of the Disney empire, it is not surprising that other scholars besides Seybold have expressed interest in examining the film using diverse theoretical lenses. However, many of these theoretical approaches limit the discussions to Moana as an unconventional Disney princess, with no regard for the other principal female character, Te Fiti/Te Kā. The exception is an essay by Madeline Streiff and Lauren Dundes entitled, “From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster: Gender Stereotypes in Disney’s Moana.” The piece offers a critical psychoanalytic perspective that includes an examination of Te Fiti/Te Kā. Concerned that the film portrayed Te Kā as a vengeful, infertile, havoc-wreaking lava monster who has lost sight of her more youthful fecund, nurturing, and vibrant-self (read Te Fiti), Streiff and Dundes consider the character a hegemonic trope fashioned under the gaze of the dominant culture’s overt obsession with what is young, beautiful, and fertile. Streiff and

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Dundes say that the Te Fiti/Te Kā character possesses stereotypical positive and negative traits, which speak to perceptions of women as sweet and kind until overwhelmed by fury when provoked. While perhaps viewers understand why the initial assault was worthy of anger, ultimately, the vengeful reaction of hurting innocent people and the destruction of botanical life is perceived as unbecoming. Indeed, Te Fiti reacted to the violent act against her body by becoming the lava-encrusted Te Kā, an incarnation so enraged that she is literally incapable of verbally expressing herself. However, Te Kā’s inability to articulate bears a striking resemblance to Paul’s words to the church at Rome, wherein he talks about the Spirit as being so interwoven with the infirmities suffered by humanity that the Spirit makes intercession for created order with indiscernible groans (c.f., Rom. 8:26). Sadly, while in this altered state, Te Kā does not attempt to retrieve the heart herself but rather remains infuriated and vengeful, a portrayal that conforms to notions of women as passive yet temperamental.27 Without question, Strieff and Dundes are less than underwhelmed by the character Te Fiti/Te Kā. Reading the film’s interest in her as Mother Island, the creator of all life, brings them great pause. Specifically, they see the film’s emphasis on fecundity as reifying problematic gender stereotypes that are a disservice to women, especially those who may be medically infertile or beyond childbearing age. Challenging this as the “archetypal female concern” leads them to construe Te Fiti/Te Kā, along with her scenes with Moana, as playing to a gendered trope that is not only one-dimensional but also harmful. Elsewhere they confirm this sentiment by sarcastically referring to Te Kā’s behavior as the lava monster as a “temper tantrum” complete with “a primordial reptilian-like gait” and look upon her restorative encounter with Moana as an anticlimactic patriarchal critique of women’s supposed propensity for irrationality.28 From their perspective, the matter is only worsened when Te Kā sheds her monstrous appearance in exchange for beauty and virginal passivity and becomes the more desirable and lush Te Fiti. Overall, their shared suspicions about the revised Disney princess franchise means that these two authors find few redemptive qualities. Their disdain for the movie’s sanguine ending and its failure to provide a female heroine whose priority was “conquering evil villains” as opposed to reifying accepted gender norms related to masculinity is palpable.29 Although this critical reading is valid, the conclusions appear short-sighted and narrowly androcentric. In other words, although Strieff and Dundes observe Te Kā’s stolen heart as part of a gendered trope around the dominant culture’s obsession with women as young fertile procreators, there is room to think about this violation along more complex lines that interrogate the realities of intersectionality; and thus, the pains associated with liberation, reconciliation, and restorative justice.

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The Call for Humanity to Partner with Spirit to Bring about Ecological Liberation, Reconciliation, and Restorative Justice Failing to problematize and find nuance in the story of Te Fiti/Te Kā is a missed opportunity, especially concerning issues related to gender, ecology, and race. So even as famed theologian James H. Cone commented, “[r]acism is profoundly interrelated with other evils including the degradation of the earth,”30 womanist scholar Delores S. Williams drew an even tighter line between race, gender, and ecology. In an essay titled “Sin, Nature, and Black Women’s Bodies,” Williams considers this topic, and convincingly determines that whenever gender, race, and ecology converge unjustly, it will always result in the “defilement” of the Black female body and the exploitation of the earth. She writes, Just as technology’s rapid and often unchecked contribution to the destruction of nature is rationalized on the basis of technology providing greater profits, comfort, and leisure for more Americans, the exploitation of the black woman’s body was rationalized to the advantage of white slave owners. Female slaves were beaten, overworked, and made to experience excessive childbearing in order to provide income, comfort, and leisure for slave-owning families.31

Unquestionably, Te Fiti/Te Kā is an animated interpretation of a Polynesian goddess. She is not one of the enslaved Black women of the antebellum era who Williams is writing about; but Te Fiti/Te Kā is also not a white woman of European descent. Therefore, employing misogynoir as a theoretical frame, albeit imperfectly, is useful for thinking critically about the violent physical assault suffered by Te Kā at the hand of Maui. Not only in terms of how women and “people of color are disproportionately affected by environmental pollution”32 but also for how “the sin of defilement manifests itself in human attacks upon creation so as to ravish, violate, and destroy creation.”33 Using these contemporary theoretical frames, we can submit that if Maui represents the oppressive patriarchal and hegemonic systems of environmental racism and sexism, then Te Kā’s violation is tantamount to the suffering endured by the land and the women who are identified with the most vulnerable communities exposed to toxic and hazardous waste. Just like the gendered dynamics between Moana and Te Fiti/Te Kā deserve greater attention, so does the film’s broader message about creation care. Here, we are helped by Catherine Keller and Laurel Kearns and what they appropriately call “the sacrality of terrestrial trust.”34 Their work in eco-spirituality calls us to appreciate the mutual cooperation between earth and spirit. In the introduction of their edited volume, Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophy for the Earth, the authors extend that call to include a collective

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(re)consideration of the fact that “[p]erhaps that subtle energy, that holy spirit—ruach or pneuma, breath and wind of life—is also suffering from our all too literal climate change.”35 The impetus is for humanity to find a way, by the Spirit “to live gratefully within,” rather than adverse to the created order,36 which brings about a life in the s/Spirit that also enjoys mutual cooperation. Despite its shortcomings, Disney’s Moana reveals many ways gender, race, and ecology, along with economics, politics, and spirit are interconnected. Thus, at least in this way, it aligns with Disney’s moral messaging and program for creating palatable media resources to foster discussion about hard things. In this case, environmentalism. In so doing, Disney included families of every ilk in what is often construed as a problem of privilege. In other words, by using a plethora of multiethnic/cultural Polynesian aesthetics, mythos, and referents, the film decenters white eurocentric identities and ways of being to harness a more inclusive, human and nonhuman, globally conscious, and socially aware discussion around environmental justice. Ultimately, the film, much like eco-spirituality, is an effort to move away from the assumption about ecology “as a pretext for privileged white hikers to enjoy escapes from the cities of suffering humans.”37 Pollyanna postracial utopian ideas aside, such moral messaging is critical to the so-called Christian West. For their part, Keller and Kearns assume the difficult task of pointing out an unsettling truth: “[Though we] hope . . . for a common terrestrial future . . . most Christians care little more about the planetary future of the earth—at least this earth—than do the most voracious secular corporations.”38 What does this mean in relation to a movie like Moana? How do those who subscribe to the Christian tradition read this aspect of the cinematic narrative? Ideally, such moral messaging would be received as a convicting call to those who claim to possess the love and light that proceeds from the Holy Spirit, who, along with the Father and the Son, is the Lord and Giver of Life, to uphold “The protection of earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty [in] sacred trust.”39 Said differently, such moral messaging should draw Christians to prioritize ecological liberation, reconciliation, and restorative justice as essential to a Spirit-led life. In an article originally published in The Christian Century (1998), entitled “The World as God’s Body,” Sally McFague suggests a new theological metaphor. Through this novel approach, McFague furnishes even the most resistant theological imagination with a construal of the Divine that promises a certain universalism that is neither exclusively Christian nor human. Nevertheless, McFague’s “imaginative construction” is dominated by Christian imagery and scriptural ideas (c.f., Ps. 22:3, Jn. 1:14, and Acts 17:28). In short, McFague treats God’s assumption of an earthly form as another iteration of the Incarnation, wherein God, in choosing to be like humanity is concerned with what concerns human beings, e.g., food, clothing, and shelter, vis-á-vis

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social, political, and economic matters. The metaphor, however, is distinct in that it redirects the focus of this particular Christian doctrine to consider how the Incarnation inherently includes risk, McFague writes: [W]ere we to imagine the world (the universe) as God’s body, then God would be, in some sense, at risk. If we follow out the implications of the metaphor, God becomes dependent through being bodily in a way that a totally invisible, distant God would never be. The world as God’s body may be poorly cared for, ravaged, and, as we are becoming well aware, essentially destroyed.40

Albeit provocative, this is a critical insight of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. God taking a body and becoming human is, in fact, God voluntarily pursuing “vulnerability, shared responsibility, and risk.” Consequently, God’s willingness to suffer means that the incarnate God is at risk in human hands. Within the context of the provided metaphor, our world is God’s body, and as such the Earth is inherently sacred (constituting presence) but is also woefully at risk (constituting absence). Arguably, there is less risk in taking on human form than being in close proximity to humanity and its utter disregard for the “destruction of natural processes in nature.” Therefore, a life led by the Spirit must see humanity’s proclivity toward “disrespect for the unity of nature’s placements”—whether trees, plant crops, or people—as the desecration of the holy and thus violation of the sacral body/bodies.41 Moana’s response to The Great Darkness was a demonstration of personal responsibility that did not relegate creation care to the Divine. Indeed, her sense of mission models what it means to tend, guide, love, and befriend the Earth for the sake of “the continuation of life” and the general welfare of all created order. In this way, Te Kā was not a dominating villain, nor was Te Fiti the sole benevolent source of the Earth’s good. Appropriating McFague’s metaphor of the world as God’s body and applying it to the Disney film, Moana allows us to (re)vision Te Kā not as an enraged vengeful barren monster but as a victim of risk brought about by a demigod (Maui) for human gain. Likewise, Te Fiti is more than just a beautiful and fertile alter ego fulfilling the culturally imposed fantasy of eternal youth. Instead, she is a revelation of presence (God/the Divine bodily) in the form of restorative ecological justice. As critical models for what could be, both McFague’s image of God and Moana’s Spirit figure Te Fiti invite us to think differently about the passage of scripture in Psalm 24:1 that declares that “The Earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof, the world, and all that dwell therein.” This text, albeit universal, implicitly attests to God’s preferential option for the poor. Specifically, those who face acute risks and vulnerability because of the threat of death and destruction brought about by social injustices resulting

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from technological advancements contributing to the ecological deterioration of natural resources, nuclear escalation, and a virtually uninhabitable planet. CONCLUSIONS Unquestionably, the mythic polytheistic world encaptured in Disney’s Moana is not captive to the strict monotheism of Western Christianity. Instead, it is part and parcel of a world in which animism constitutes presence: s/Spirit(s) inhabit creation, from the towering trees to the babbling brook. Within this schema, the world is inhabited, and humans and nonhumans seek diligently to placate it, even as they depend on it for food, clothing, and shelter. The shift away from Earth-honoring faiths and traditions that recognize the s/Spirit(s) of nature made it possible to violate and exploit the Earth and see it as absent of presence. Yet, a reclamation of a robust Christian pneumatology, specifically one that is grounded in a Trinitarian ontology wherein the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and Son, is the Lord and Giver of Life, can recover what expressions of Western Christian hegemony have tried to discard as pagan, idolatrous, and antithetical to the faith. If cinema is but another iteration of art imitating life, then even an animated film whose hero is barely beyond her tween years, can offer a critical word of knowledge. The moral messaging in Disney’s Moana is layered and, in many ways, complex. Even still, by applying a pneumatological approach, as opposed to a narrowed christological perspective that is wholly dependent on a Christ figure we open this film to more generative practical, inter-religious, and theological dialogue on gender, race, ecology, and justice. Said differently, by looking to Te Fiti/Te Kā as a Spirit figure we broaden our understanding of a Spirit-led life so as to include justice as essential to the revelation of life-giving, life-sustaining, life-changing presence. NOTES 1. Robert Ellis, “Movies and Meaning,” The Expository Times, Vol. 112, No. 9 (2001), 304. 2. Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 18. 3. Anthony J. Godzieba, The Theology of the Presence and Absence of God (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2018), 587. 4. Godzieba, The Theology of the Presence and Absence of God, 6131. 5. Godzieba, The Theology of the Presence and Absence of God, 6120. 6. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth, 12.

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7. Robert Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 251. 8. Belinda Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts: Depictions of Girls as Christ Figure and Holy Fool in the Films Moana and Whale Rider,” Feminist Theology, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2019), 86. 9. Belinda Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts,” 86. 10. Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts,” 91. 11. Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts,” 91. 12. Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts,” 91. 13. Orsi, History and Presence, 8. 14. John C. Lyden, Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals, 2nd Ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 184. 15. Lyden, Film as Religion, 184. 16. Belinda Du Plooy, “Sacred Subtexts,” 89. 17. See, John C. Lyden, “And They Lived Happily Ever After???!” in It’s the Disney Version!: Popular Cinema and Literary Classics, edited by Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2016) and Julie C. Garlen and Sandlin, Jennifer A. “Happily (n)ever After: the Cruel Optimism of Disney’s Romantic Ideal” Feminist Media Studies, Vol. 17, No. 6 (2017), 957–71. 18. c.f., Gen. 1:2. 19. Du Plooy, “Sheroes of the Sea,” 4. 20. Du Plooy, “Sheroes of the Sea,” 10. 21. Samantha L. Seybold, “‘It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart’: Zootopia, Moana, and Disney’s (Dis)empowered Postfeminist Heroines,” International Journal of Politics, Vol. 34 (2021), 70. 22. Samantha L. Seybold, “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart,” 70. 23. Samantha L. Seybold, “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart,”70. 24. Seybold, “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart,” 71. 25. Seybold, “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart,” 71. 26. Seybold, “It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart,” 70–71. 27. Madeline Streiff and Lunden Dundes, “From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster: Gender Stereotypes in Disney’s Moana,” Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. 91 (2017), 8. 28. Streiff and Dundes, “From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster,” 8. 29. Streiff and Dundes, “From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster,” 9. 30. James H. Cone, “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” CrossCurrents, Vol. 50, No. 1/2 (2000), 39. 31. Delores S. Williams, “Sin, Nature, and Black Women’s Bodies,” in Carol J. Adams, ed. Ecofeminism and the Sacred (New York: Continuum, 1993), 24. 32. Cone, “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” 40. 33. Williams, “Sin, Nature, and Black Women’s Bodies,” 25. 34. Catherine Keller and Laurel Kearns, “Introduction: Grounding Theory—Earth in Religion and Philosophy,” in Karen Baker-Fletcher, et al., eds., Escospirit: Religions and Philosophy for the Earth (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 3. 35. Keller and Kearns, “Introduction,” 3. 36. Keller and Kearns, “Introduction,” 13.

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37. Keller and Kearns, “Introduction,” 9. 38. Keller and Kearns, “Introduction,” 2. 39. Keller and Kearns, “Introduction,” 3. 40. Sallie McFague, “The World as God’s Body,” ​​https:​//​www​.religion​-online​.org​/ article​/the​-world​-as​-gods​-body, accessed on 7/11/2022. 41. Sallie McFague, “The World as God’s Body.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker-Fletcher, Karen et al. Eds. Escospirit: Religions and Philosophy for the Earth. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Cone, James H. “Whose Earth Is It Anyway?” CrossCurrents, Vol. 50, No. 1/2 (2000): 36–46. Doyle, Dennis M. What Is Christianity: A Dynamic Introduction. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2016. Du Plooy, Belinda. “Sacred Subtexts: Depictions of Girls as Christ Figure and Holy Fool in the Films Moana and Whale Rider.” Feminist Theology, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2019): 85–103. ———. “Sheroes of the Sea: A Comparative Reading of the Girl-Centred Films Moana and Whale Rider.” Gender Questions, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2019): 1–24. Ellis, Robert. “Movies and Meaning.” The Expository Times, Vol. 112, No. 9 (2001): 304–8. Fillingim, David. “When Jesus was a Girl: Polymthic Female Christ Figures in Whale Rider and Steel Magnolias.” Journal of Religion & Film Vol. 14, No. 1 (2010): 1–24. Godzieba, Anthony J. The Theology of the Presence and Absence of God. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2018. Harris, Melanie L. Harris. Ecowamnism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2017. Kozlovic, Alton Karl. “The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christ-figure.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 8. No. 1 (2004): 1–54. Kozlovic, A. K. “The Christ-figure in Popular Films.” Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media (2005). http:​//​www​.kinema​.uwaterloo​.ca​/article​.php​?id​ =264​&feature. Lyden, John C. Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, and Rituals, 2nd Ed. New York: New York University Press, 2019. McFague, Sally. “The World as God’s Body.” ​​https:​//​www​.religion​-online​.org​/article​ /the​-world​-as​-gods​-body. Accessed on 7/11/2022. Keller, Catherine and Laurel Kearns. “Introduction: Grounding Theory—Earth in Religion and Philosophy.” In Karen Baker-Fletcher, et al., Eds. Escospirit: Religions and Philosophy for the Earth. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Orsi, Robert. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

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———. History and Presence. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018. Seybold, Samantha L. “‘It’s Called a Hustle, Sweetheart’: Zootopia, Moana, and Disney’s (Dis)empowered Postfeminist Heroines.” International Journal of Politics, Vol. 34 (2021): 69–84. Streiff, Madeline and Lunden Dundes. “From Shapeshifter to Lava Monster: Gender Stereotypes in Disney’s Moana.” Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 91 (2017): 1–12. Williams, Delores S. “Sin, Nature, and Black Women’s Bodies.” In Carol J. Adams, Ed. Ecofeminism and the Sacred. New York: Continuum, 1993. Yong, Amos. Pneumatology and the Christian Buddhist Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow Through the Middle Way. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2012.

PART III

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The Hospitality of the Spirit in Encanto “Joey” Alan Le

The candle became a magical flame that could never go out, and it blessed us with a refuge in which to live. A place of wonder . . . An Encanto . . . (Abuela Alma).1

Encanto (2021) is a Disney animated film about a magically gifted family, the Madrigals, who live in a hidden valley in Colombia. The Spanish term “encanto” can mean “love, delight, joy, magic, charm, spell, and to sing.” Such concepts reside in the domain of the Holy Spirit. As Reformed Pentecostal philosopher James K. A. Smith maintains, a Pentecostal worldview is open to an enchanted theology of creation and culture. The Spirit is immanently and dynamically active in all of creation. Creation lives, moves, and has its being within the Spirit. Not only does the Spirit make nature super-natural, but the Spirit also forms culture, including politics, commerce, and art.2 The enchanted world of Encanto beautifully depicts how all creaturely life takes place within and by the Spirit. The magical flame—a biblical image of the Spirit3—animates the Madrigal casa (“house”) and empowers its members with miraculous and supernatural gifts. Ultimately, the entire town owes its very existence and culture to the protection, provision, and renewal to the encanto. Now, to my knowledge, the movie was not written with any Christian intentions.4 However, the screenwriters address universal problems that concern the human family. It is only natural to find thematic overlap between the film and Christian spirituality without doing any injustice to the work of art itself. 133

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This essay approaches Encanto from a Christian pneumatology of hospitality, envisioning the Spirit as the divine host. From a renewal standpoint, the magical flame is a manifestation of the Spirit of Pentecost. In the first place, the Spirit/encanto provides a home for the displaced, for those who flee enslavement, oppression, and death. Secondly, the Spirit/encanto endows gifts such that each member can contribute to the well-being of the whole community. Third, the Spirit/encanto establishes places of belonging for every individual. Lastly, the Spirit/encanto welcomes those who have been estranged and marginalized. Through these four activities, the film vividly displays how the Spirit opens the doors of God’s house wide for the homeless. The gifts of the Spirit are given to build the community. And where there is alienation and marginalization, the Spirit uses individuals on the margins to expand the social circle to include all members of the community. THE SPIRIT AND MAGICAL REALISM Encanto showcases a fascinating relationship between magical realism and Christian pneumatology. Magical realism is a style of fictional literature that blends the realistic and the everyday with the unexpected and unexplainable. The supernatural and the natural merge as if there is no difference between them. English and comparative literature professor Wendy B. Faris defines it as a combination of realism and the fantastic, such that “the marvelous seems to grow organically within the ordinary, blurring the distinction between them.”5 Faris further outlines five primary characteristics of magical realism: (1) an irreducible element of magic; (2) a strong presence of the phenomenal world; (3) the reader’s doubt in reconciling contradictions; (4) the merging of different realms; and (5) disruption of a sense of time, space, and identity.6 In a limited sense, Christians read the Scriptures the way one would read magical realism. Pentecostals, especially, read supernatural and miraculous events—a talking serpent, a sea parted, angels appearing and disappearing, a giant fish that swallows a man whole, water turning into wine, demons jumping into pigs—with the conviction that they really happened. Pentecostal hermeneutics, according to Kenneth Archer, persistently emphasizes experiences of the supernatural.7 The events recorded in the Christian scriptures are interpreted with a kind of spiritual realism akin to magical realism. The line between the natural and supernatural is blurred because the boundless Spirit of God actively works to unite earth to heaven. Time and space stretch and compress in the hands of an infinite God such that what appears as a work in progress for humans is a perfected fact from the divine perspective. For Pentecostals like New Testament scholar and theologian Craig Keener, God



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continues to act today through miracles and supernatural gifts as he acted in Scripture. Pentecostals assume that God is with, among, and within humanity. The whole world reflects God’s saving activity.8 The entire New Testament, from Jesus to Acts to Paul, envisions a church community that continues to perform supernatural miracles to strengthen the body of Christ.9 Ultimately, the Spirit is forming a sanctified people whose identity is centered on the image of Christ. While this does not explicitly happen in Encanto, a Spirit-centered hermeneutic can understand Encanto as a mirror of the church’s struggle to accept and appreciate each member and their respective gifts. By the end, Encanto provides a cinematic glimpse of what it might be like to live in, with, and by the Spirit—namely, a diverse and harmonious community united in love. Christlikeness manifests in Encanto as unconditional love, forgiveness, and embrace of the other. In this sense, Christian pneumatology shares a fruitful overlap with magical realism. AN UNEXPECTED GIFT Gifts in this film come with expectations. Therein lies the trouble and dysfunction for the characters of Encanto. A little expectation begets excitement and wonder. Too much expectation breeds frustration, isolation, alienation, and exclusion. The matriarch of the family, Abuela (“grandmother”) Alma, asks every child initiate: “Will you use your gift to honor our miracle? Will you serve this community and strengthen our home?”10 Honor and service are the burdens of the encanto. Given those burdens, a quandary forms when the encanto does not endow a person with a gift. Is the person unworthy of a gift? Has the person dishonored the family? Can they be of no service to the community? From the opening scene, the audience encounters the protagonist Mirabel who is treated with less dignity and respect for having no apparent gift. The scene of Mirabel’s gift ceremony depicts the heartbreak that comes with being passed over. The encanto did not grant her a gift. No door manifested in the hallway. From then on, the family and the town silently tell Mirabel that she is unworthy. After all, when her cousin Antonio receives his gift of communicating with animals, Alma says to him: “I knew you could do it . . . a gift just as special as you.”11 Hearing Alma’s sentiment, Mirabel is painfully reminded of her unworthiness and homelessness within the Madrigal family. Within Alma’s mind, one’s abilities correlate to one’s worth. According to that logic, Mirabel must not be special because she had no gift. However, an unexpected gift accompanies the shame. W. David O. Taylor calls the Holy Spirit “the Particularizer” because the Spirit “particularizes all things” and enables the “thisness” of each person and thing.12 In other words,

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the Spirit endows value through distinction. In creation and at Pentecost, the Spirit rests on each person, empowering them to glorify God, each in their own way. The story never explains why the encanto did not give Mirabel a supernatural gift as a child. It only hinted that it is her destiny to determine the ultimate fate of the magic. Even someone as unremarkable and peculiar as Mirabel has an influence over the welfare of the community. Yet the Spirit’s function as the Great Particularizer does not have to mean that God is the giver of evils. One does not have to jump to the conclusion that the encanto wanted Mirabel to suffer lack and humiliation. Instead, the Spirit/encanto forms every human being to be unique, and from their distinctive social location, they affect the world around them. Every Madrigal member, including Mirabel, has dignity precisely because of their distinct personalities and perspectives. Her alleged inability is what makes her unique from her abled family members. Whereas human eyes might perceive her lack of a magical gift as a disadvantage, spiritual/enchanted eyes appreciate each person as a gift in and of themselves. Mirabel’s particular gift, empathy, is birthed from the pain of being ungifted and rejected. She can relate to other people’s anxieties and vulnerabilities because she went through them first. Her powerlessness paves the way for a new kind of power. She contributes to the community’s flourishing in a way they could not. She is a bearer of the encanto, the Spirit, just as much as everyone else. Mirabel’s seeming lack of a gift turned out to be the gift needed to make her community whole. SPIRIT AS HOST The miracle grew . . . and our house, our casita itself, came alive to shelter us.13

A Home for the Displaced The family’s origin story begins as a young Alma and her husband Pedro flee their burning town, clutching their three newborn babies. Pedro takes the candle from their wedding to light their way in the night. As the marauders catch up, Pedro gives Alma the candle, kisses her and his babies, promising her that she will survive, thrive, and their children will find a new home and have a better life. He confronts the men on horseback and begs them to let his family live. They ignore his plea and charge forward. Pedro throws his arms out to protect his family, but he suddenly vanishes into the wind. As the horses approach, Alma sinks to her knees, with tears in her eyes, and prays to the earth to spare the lives of her babies. She puts her hands into the soil, and suddenly, the candle fills with magic, banishing the darkness with radiance.



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Mountains rise and form a protective valley around Abuela, her babies, and the other displaced people. Magically, a house grows around Alma, emanating from the candle’s light.14 The movie never explains where the encanto came from (the earth, that particular place, or the candle). But something or someone heard Alma’s prayer of desperation and responded with a power of protection and creation. The heart-rending scene is reminiscent of the expulsion of the Egyptian woman Hagar (Gen 21:14–21). As she sobbed in the desert watching her son Ishmael starve, God heard their crying, miraculously opened a well of water, and protected them for years in the desert. The Spirit of God hears the cries of those pushed out of their home and provides a home for them even in the desert. The encanto heard and answered Alma and Pedro’s prayers. The Spirit hovered over the darkness and chaos and formed a home for Alma and her babies. As it was for the ancient Israelites, God granted the gift of land to the vulnerable.15 For Christians, the whole universe is the theater of God’s unconditional love and hospitality.16 Things did not have to exist. The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo holds that God created all things from nothing, which means that creation is unnecessary. All is grace. As Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion David Bentley Hart contends, no external force and no internal need compelled God to create, and so creation can only be an expression of God’s goodness.17 From this lens, the miracle of the candle, the enchanted casita, and the Eden-like valley flow from the hospitality of the Spirit. Out of nowhere, a paradisical home sprung up in a desolate area in a desperate time. While every dwelling and valley is God’s gift for individuals and groups of people, the entire cosmos itself is the hospitable gift of God. Additionally, a Christian might be compelled to see Abuelo (“grandfather”) Pedro as the prime bearer of the Holy Spirit in the story. Firstly, Pedro could have abandoned his family like a coward. But he chose to exercise the Spirit’s fruit of love by persevering with his family. Secondly, Pedro decided to lay down his life for his family and others, reflecting Christ’s self-giving ethic that is entirely oriented toward the needs of others.18 Thirdly, instead of resorting to violence, picking up a weapon to kill the men who sought to kill him and his loved ones, Pedro sought to save lives without taking life. His action goes with what Scottish theologian George Newlands calls “the grain of the universe,” that is, the divine love that is generous, self-giving, self-affirming, kenotic, and in vulnerable solidarity with those in need, all the while entirely rejecting all violence and coercion in the search for justice and peace.19 In such ways, Abuelo exhibits signs that the Spirit of God dwelled within him. His virtue and sacrifice seem to have ignited the encanto in the first place, giving his wife and children the home and the abilities they needed to flourish. His will resonated with the Spirit’s will for abundant life.

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Yet, as wonderful as the initial miracle was, in time, the Madrigal family began to displace their own members. After the tragic loss of her husband, Abuela Alma resolved that she had to be strong and strove to earn the miracle. As the years wore on, Alma became more rigid and strict with her children and their children. She expected much out of them, and each was a disappointment, especially Mirabel. Little did she know that the encanto had gifted Mirabel with a gift of prophetic truth-telling. Her actions challenge the family to change its assumptions and attitudes toward its gifts and its fellow members. Nancy Kruse, the head of the movie’s story, says: “when Mirabel starts rocking the boat and showing cracks in that balance, everyone tells her to stop. However, sometimes you have to destroy the boat in order to build a new one that can fit everyone, rather than excluding the people that don’t fit.”20 The displaced Mirabel committed to providing a home for other displaced people, namely, her sisters and her uncle. Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov reflects on how prophecy involves human and divine initiative. On the one hand, a person develops a feeling and an intuition about the future that emerges from their particular place and time. And on the other hand, God graciously answers human questioning. Bulgakov holds that prophetic individuals are receptive to the Holy Spirit and rise to the call from their honorable character.21 The encanto leads Mirabel to discover why the magic is fading. As she encounters Luisa, Bruno, Isabela, and Alma, she speaks the truth in love to them, freeing them from their respective baggage. Luisa is allowed to rest and relax. Bruno should be restored to the family. Isabela is beautiful whether or not she is “put together.” Alma is the reason why the Madrigals have a home in the first place. As a prophetess, Mirabel helped her family open up to each other and to speak the truth about how they felt, even if it was messy and vulnerable.22 The encanto is big enough to house all people, regardless of their abilities, inabilities, or disabilities. Everyone who had been displaced because of their inadequacies could finally be accepted and feel at home. Gifts for the Community Secondly, the Holy Spirit endows humanity with gifts, and the encanto endows the household with gifts. When the Madrigal children turn five years old, they are filled with magic, each with a unique gift. These gifts loosely parallel the spiritual gifts St. Paul outlines in his epistles. For the first generation: Pepa’s mood affects the weather; Bruno has visions of the future (gift of prophecy, Rom 12:6); Julieta heals with her cooking (gift of healing, 1 Cor 12:28). And for the second generation: Isabela produces flora with her mind; Luisa has Herculean strength; Dolores has super-hearing; Camilo is a



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shapeshifter; Antonio can communicate with animals (gift of interpretation, 1 Cor 14:26); Mirabel exercises the spiritual gifts of ministry and compassion (Rom 12:7–8), assistance (1 Cor 12:28), hymns and revelations (1 Cor 14:26). Under Alma’s leadership, the family uses their supernatural gifts to help those around them,23 and to serve the community.24 Her ethic aligns well with Paul’s instruction to use all of the Spirit’s gifts to build up the church (1 Cor 14:26) and the body of Christ (Eph 4:12). Yet despite her good intentions, Alma carried out her mission with a severity that winded up hurting her own family. The community was divided between the magical and the nonmagical, the family and the nonfamily, the useful and the useless, the perfect and the defective. Part of Mirabel’s mission was to breach and heal those divisions. All are welcome and included in the casa. Pentecostal ethicist Murray Dempster maintains that the Holy Spirit judges and restructures the church’s “entrenched moral biases, value preferences, and social prejudices that manifest as structural forms of sexism, classism, or racism.”25 Structural prejudice demeans people for things that they cannot help. None of the Madrigal children chose to have (or not have) their abilities. Nor did they choose to be born in that household. It is improper to elevate them for having a gift, or to look down on them for not having it. But with each passing year, abuela dug herself into a deeper prejudice that those with gifts have greater value than those without gifts. In Christian thought, the Holy Spirit empowers every person with a gift, making them “an equally valued participant in the diversified Christian community.”26 The encanto wants to move beyond the haves and the have-nots. Mirabel’s mission resulted in the inclusion of every person in the broader community in the casa. Furthermore, the gifts of the Spirit can be spoiled when one’s value is tied to giftedness, ability, or strength. Luisa, for example, sings: “Under the surface, I’m pretty sure I’m worthless if I can’t be of service.”27 If she cannot serve, then she is useless. If she does not want to serve, then her selfishness makes her unworthy. Her identity is wrapped up in her ability, and she is afraid to admit that she has weaknesses and needs help. Luisa’s fear of weakness is a direct consequence of her abuela’s belief that giftedness confers worth. In Vulnerable Communion, theologian Thomas Reynolds argues that wholeness comes not from strength or perfection but from vulnerability and interdependence. Vulnerability is the one thing that every human being shares (even for someone as indestructible as Luisa). No person is entirely independent of another, so no one should carry their burdens alone. The Madrigal complex can be described as, in Reynold’s words, an exaltation of “autonomous self-sufficiency (e.g., the individual’s ability to construct, produce, or purchase).”28 In Alma’s eyes, some of her descendants did not construct or produce to her standards. Mirabel has valuable things to give, but those gifts

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are deemed worthless. Bruno’s gift of sight is perceived as destructive and unproductive. Isabela feels she has “been stuck being perfect [her] whole life.”29 And Luisa bears the weight of the world on her shoulders, forbidding herself from being weak. Each person struggles with shame in isolation, unaware that others bear similar burdens of inadequacy and rejection. The answer, Reynolds argues, is to make vulnerability the starting point for discovering what people share in their struggles. The encanto originally gifted the Madrigals with a range of powers that enabled them to do wondrous things. But those gifts were never meant to make the individual self-sufficient or invulnerable. Nor was the family meant to be the sole providers and protectors of the town. In a Christian framework, the Spirit replaces the divide between ability and disability with an attitude of reciprocity. Every need in the community can be met by another person’s gift. One can embrace one’s limitations, trusting that there is someone in the community who is able and willing to meet one’s needs. Ultimately, the Spirit is the Giver of both natural and supernatural gifts. The movie concludes with a beautiful montage of the townspeople arriving at the ruins of the casa. They sing: “Lay down your load. We have no gifts, but we are many, and we’ll do anything for you.”30 They bring hammers, saws, tools, and supplies—ordinary resources and talents—to rebuild the Madrigal home. God invokes a spirit of gratitude, charity, and service within every heart. This reflects God’s economy (Greek oikonomía “household management”) of grace in which the Spirit directs, provides, and administers gifts and love to build the human family (oíkos).31 Everyone, without exception, has a gift to contribute to the common good. After the catastrophe, Alma comes to appreciate Mirabel as the catalyst that would renew the encanto. As Alma embraces her granddaughter, she tearfully confesses: “I asked my Pedro for help. Mirabel . . . he sent me you.”32 Those whom society regards as worthless might be the instruments the Spirit/encanto anoints to save the community. Place of Belonging Along with a unique ability, the encanto gives the Madrigal children an enchanted room of their own, larger on the inside than the casa could believably house. The rooms create a space for each child to learn, practice, and grow their gift.33 More than that, the rooms represent belonging. The room belongs to the person, and the person belongs to the family. Pentecostal theologian and artist Steven Félix-Jäger argues that architecture is both practical (providing shelter from the elements) and artful (constructing an environment where people meaningfully engage and interact). The layout of a building creates walls and enclosures that “both separate and



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conjoin spaces.”34 Thus, the courtyard and the dining room of the Madrigal casa are designed to bring people together, and the rooms are spaces of refuge for individual members. Everything and everyone has a place. However, the Madrigal family’s dysfunction warped the architecture to construct an environment of exclusivity. The dining room is an inaccessible space for Bruno, who can only look longingly at it through holes in the wall. Mirabel’s lack of her own magical room reinforces her homelessness. After all, one’s spatial location informs one’s social location. Who one is is very much determined by where one is.35 Not having a seat at the table and not having a door along the hallway conveys the message: you do not belong here. Feminist theologian Letty Russell accurately describes the exclusion that happens so often in communities: “Keeping peace in the family overtakes recognizing that some family members are not included in order to keep that peace.”36 The Madrigals and their neighbors treasured the status quo so much that they would marginalize Bruno and Mirabel. The whole town sings in unison: “We don’t talk about Bruno!”37 Abuela Alma instructed Mirabel to step aside and let the rest of the family do what they do best for Antonio’s gift ceremony.38 The not-so-subtle message was that life would be better if Bruno and Mirabel were not around. They did not belong. Mirabel’s mother, Julieta, expressed her fear of losing her daughter: “Mira, my brother Bruno lost his way in this family . . . I don’t want the same for you.”39 In her view, Bruno ostracized himself. But the truth is that Bruno’s family made it hard for him to fit in. Bruno was not lost because he got lost; he was lost because his family pushed him out. They would not accept what he had to offer. Ironically, Julieta and the rest of her family are blind to how their attitude excluded Bruno. The most poignant part is that Bruno never left his family. Even in exile, he lived within the walls of the casita, painstakingly patching up the cracks that were invisible to everyone else.40 As an outsider in his own house, Bruno tries to restore what is broken from behind the scenes. How many people are marginalized in their own families and communities, even as they try to be peacemakers and agents of renewal? How many prophetic voices have been shunned and suppressed even trying to fix what is broken? There are no villains in Encanto. However, even though everyone has good intentions to help others, every Madrigal member carries their hurt in isolation. The screenwriters identify Encanto’s point of pain this way: 1) Most of us don’t feel truly seen by our families, 2) most of us carry burdens we never let our families see, and 3) most of us are oblivious that nearly all of us, especially within our own families, feel the exact same way.41

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Burdens weigh more when it is borne alone. Something harmful happens when we care more about other people’s pain on the other side of town (or the world) than the people who hurt next to us. The Madrigals are quick to help their neighbors but slow to care for their siblings. “Genuine hospitality,” according to Roman Catholic theologian Ana María Pineda, ought to “promote both the common good . . . and the good of each person.”42 In other words, do what is best for the group without neglecting the individual. Each human being deserves protection, especially those that are most vulnerable. Alma prioritized the collective good—the encanto, the casita, everyone in the town depending on them—over the well-being of her children and grandchildren. She had more concern about the family’s place in town than her children’s place within the home. The encanto wanted Alma to accept every child, regardless of their abilities. Saving the encanto is not as important as loving the people in that encanto. The miracle was not the giving of supernatural powers. The miracle was the people. After Mirabel facilitates the family’s mutual reconciliation, the encanto does a phenomenal thing: it opens up the entire casa to Mirabel. She is given a new custom-made doorknob with an “M” on it (possibly signifying “Mirabel” or “Madrigal” or both). Her door is the front door to the whole house. As she places her doorknob on the front door, light explodes over the entire encanto, making a new miracle. The casita draws her in, and on her invitation, the house also draws everyone else in, both Madrigal members and neighbors. Now, the house in its entirety belongs to the once invisible and homeless Mirabel. Not only that, Mirabel flung the door so wide that the entire town could feel at home in the casita. As on the Day of Pentecost, the center of the casa has expanded to enfold those on the margins. The crowd now belongs to the household, too. This hints that Mirabel will become the new matriarch, the next-generation hostess who provides a home for an even bigger family. Welcome for Strangers Lastly, one of the main arcs of the movie is about how the estranged Mirabel and Bruno find their way home. People shunned Bruno because they believed that his prophecies caused their misfortune. The night Mirabel did not receive her gift, Abuela begged Bruno to look into the future out of fear of losing the magic. He saw the magic in danger, the house breaking apart with Mirabel at the center of it. Yet her future was undecided. “I knew how it was gonna look, I knew what everyone would think because I’m Bruno and everyone always assumes the worst . . . so . . . ”43 Even though the prophecy left room for either the destruction or salvation of the house, Bruno knew how others perceived him. They would jump to the conclusion that Mirabel would destroy everything. So, he chose to bury the vision and spare Mirabel the kind of alienation



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he experienced. It is remarkable how Bruno, wounded as he is, loved his niece Mirabel to the extent that he was willing to isolate himself even more if it meant that she could flourish. Bruno embodies God’s hospitality (Greek, philoxenia), that is, loving strangers “to the point of giving up [one’s life] on behalf of others.”44 Here, a stranger shows love for another stranger. Despite Bruno’s valiant efforts, Mirabel spent the next ten years living as an outcast. Even though she lived in the casa, she was unseen, unheard, and unknown.45 She was a stranger among family. What use was she without a gift and an enchanted room of her own? Where could she belong? Like Bruno, no one wanted to hear what Mirabel had to say, even if it was the truth. The paradox of the human condition, according to Frederick Buechner, is “that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.”46 Mirabel yearns for Alma and the rest of her family to know her as she knows herself: “I am not [sad], because the truth is, gift or no gift, I am just as special as the rest of my family.”47 One’s full humanity rests not in possessing a supernatural gift, but in being true to one’s convictions and vulnerability. All the estranged members—Mirabel, Bruno, Luisa, Isabel, and Alma—fear being known as they truly are: ungifted, a disappointment, weak, imperfect, helpless. Nonetheless, to be seen, heard, and known as such is precisely what every person desires. Mirabel’s desperation to find belonging led her on a quest to find the glass shards of Bruno’s vision and to divine its meaning and her destiny. As the adventure unfolds, she discovers Bruno living in the walls of the casita, watching his family live on without him. Having experienced daily rejection, Mirabel could empathize with her tío (uncle). Empathy is the ability to share in another person’s emotional experience in a particular situation and the ability to step outside oneself and into another person’s private world.48 Mirabel knows what it is like to be unnoticed and to be a misfit. She can empathize with his sense of abandonment. Mirabel not only feels for Bruno (sympathy), but she also feels with Bruno (empathy).49 She reassures him: “I don’t think you make bad things happen. Sometimes family weirdos just get a bad rap.”50 This encouragement is rooted in her own estrangement, which she can now share with Bruno. The Spirit’s gift of empathy plays a significant role in Christian theology. The Son “had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect,” and “[b]ecause he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Heb 2:17–18). The Spirit facilitated the Son’s incarnation, making clear the truth that God feels with us in our struggle. Thomas C. Oden says it well: “God is with us precisely amid our temptations, intimately experiencing our special personal difficulties with us, and imparting strength for good choice. God the Spirit is privy to the secrets of our hearts.

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God the Son knows what it means to be tempted and to suffer.”51 The encanto gave Mirabel the spiritual gift of empathy so that she could understand her siblings’ and her uncle’s pain. Her empathy moved her to make the casita a welcoming home for all who had been made homeless. Indeed, Mirabel exercised empathy for both her sisters, each estranged in their own ways. She heard them vent, affirmed their honest feelings, and loved them simply as they were. She gave them what she needed for herself: a listening ear and a warm hug. The ability to understand another person is one of the gifts of the Spirit. At Pentecost, Jesus’s followers were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other languages, and the crowd understood them: “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6). Russell argues that the Spirit enables people to understand one another, regardless of the language spoken.52 While the Acts narrative speaks of a linguistic understanding, it suggests that the Spirit also imparts an affective understanding. Anytime one person feels for, relates to, and understands another, it is the hand of the Spirit mediating between individuals. While Mirabel was not as strong as Luisa, she could identify with Luisa’s feeling of weakness. While Mirabel was not as perfect as Isabela, she could identify with Isabela’s imperfection. Christian ethicist Christine Pohl suggests that the experience of being a stranger and vulnerable provides the context for people to become hosts even as they stand on the margins of society. By meeting human needs, such hosts cross social boundaries and build community as a deliberate withdrawal “from the prevailing understandings of power, status, and possessions.”53 As a stranger in her own home and a person who does not possess a supernatural gift, Mirabel does not ground her worth on a magical gift. This enables her to see and accept Bruno as he is, irrespective of his abilities. In Pohl’s reading, Mirabel is a host who can care for others because she can simultaneously recognize her own woundedness and persistent need for grace and mercy.54 So even if Mirabel is not complete “at home” within the Madrigal family, she still makes a place of welcome for others.55 The encanto forged a heart of compassion and empathy in Mirabel so that she could stand in solidarity with the other members of her family who similarly bore wounds and needed grace. After seeing the whole vision, Mirabel promises Bruno: “After I save the miracle, I’m bringing you home.”56 Narratively, the encanto was never about supernatural gifts but the formation of an ever-expanding family. The family and the casa are tied together. The family’s dysfunction manifests as cracks in the walls.57 Therefore, saving the miracle and the casa means restoring the fragmented family to wholeness. Mirabel saved the encanto by reuniting estranged members back to each other.



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The encanto began falling apart when Bruno was marginalized and further deteriorated as Mirabel was ostracized. It would be impossible to save the miracle without also bringing Bruno home. Mirabel’s resolve to restore her tío exemplifies a core principle of Christian hospitality. As Newlands frames it, hospitality stands with the vulnerable and alienated and shakes up the social structures that keep people apart and certain people from sharing in the benefits of society.58 As everyone had feared, Mirabel shook the family and the casita down to its foundation. But, in doing so, she made it possible for the condemned (the weakened Luisa and imperfect Isabela) and outcast (Bruno and Mirabel) to finally be welcomed as they were. But the most stirring reunion of all was when the encanto revealed her abuela’s core trauma to Mirabel: “Abuela . . . I can finally see. You lost your home . . . lost everything . . . you suffered so much . . . all alone . . . so it would never happen again. We were saved because of you. We were given a miracle because of you. We are a family because of you.”59 These words set Alma free. Her losses and burdens made her tough, too tough to unconditionally love her offspring. Her fear of the future made her myopic, blind to the hurting people in front of her. Her unreachable expectations drove everyone away from her. In effect, Alma estranged herself. She, too, needed to welcome her back into the community. By seeing, hearing, and knowing Alma in her full humanness, Mirabel welcomed the estranged Alma back into the home she first nurtured. CONCLUSION Young Mirabel: “What do you think my gift will be?” Abuela Alma bends down to Mirabel, full of love and pride: “You are a wonder, Mirabel Madrigal. Whatever gift awaits, will be just as special as you.”60

It turns out Alma was right. Mirabel (whose name means “lovely, wonderful”) certainly did possess marvelous gifts: empathy, loving embrace, and prophetic truth-telling. By loving her family and its members more than the encanto, Mirabel was able to save the encanto. When Christians love people more than the building or the institution, the church is renewed back to life. The true miracle is the formation of a community of diverse people who leverage their woundedness and vulnerability to embrace others. Encanto is an exceptional movie that, at least from one perspective, showcases the glory of Pentecost. Where people are treated with less dignity because of their inabilities, the Holy Spirit opens up the household of God by

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bestowing diverse gifts upon individuals so that they can uniquely contribute to the well-being of the ever-expanding community of God. From generation to generation, the Spirit empowers the prophetic voice to speak up for the silenced and to establish a home for the displaced. The Spirit encourages vulnerability and mutual interdependence, birthing a fuller humanity. The Spirit adopts orphans and gives them a loving place to belong. Finally, the Spirit gives the gift of empathy so that strangers can become guests, and guests can become hosts. NOTES 1. Charise Castro Smith and Jared Bush, “Encanto” (Jan 2021), Screenplay, 2. https:​ //​deadline​.com​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2022​/01​/Encanto​-Read​-The​-Screenplay​.pdf. 2. James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, Pentecostal Manifestos, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 39–40. 3. See Num. 9:17–23; Lk. 3:16; Acts 2:3–4. 4. One of the story writers of Encanto, Lin-Manuel Miranda, was raised Catholic. He himself is not religious, but the characters within his stories are. In his words: “I don’t consider myself religious, but at the same time it keeps popping up on me.” Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Ready for His Next Act,” interview by Michael Paterniti, Culture, Sept. 20, 2016, https:​//​www​.gq​.com​/story​/lin​-manuel​ -miranda​-profile​-gq​-cover. 5. Wendy B. Faris, Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 1. 6. Faris, Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative, 7. 7. Kenneth J. Archer, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Retrospect and Prospect,” in Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, ed. Lee Roy Martin (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 131. 8. Craig S. Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 28–29. 9. Craig S. Keener, Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 95–96. 10. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 22. 11. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 23. 12. W. David O. Taylor, “Spirit and Beauty: A Reappraisal,” Christian Scholar’s Review 44, no. 1 (Fall 2014 2014): 53–54. 13. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 2. 14. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 1–2, 88–89. 15. George Newlands and Allen Smith, Hospitable God: The Transformative Dream (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2016), 16. 16. Newlands and Smith, Hospitable God, 8. 17. David Bentley Hart, “God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo,” Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics 3, no. 1 (2015): 3.



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18. Newlands and Smith, Hospitable God, 105. 19. Newlands and Smith, Hospitable God, 132. 20. Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2022), 162. 21. Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 231. 22. Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto, 170. 23. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 8. 24. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 22. 25. Murray A. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen, Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991), 29. 26. Dempster, Klaus, and Petersen, Called and Empowered, 29. 27. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 36. 28. Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008), 17. 29. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 74. 30. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 96. 31. Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 678. 32. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 91. 33. Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto, 45. 34. Steven Félix-Jäger, Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 182. 35. Jennifer Allen Craft, Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018), 143. 36. Letty M. Russell, Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009/04/16/, 2009), 59. https:​ //​ www​ .amazon​.com​/Just​-Hospitality​-Welcome​-World​-Difference​/dp​/0664233155​/ref​=tmm​ _pap​_swatch​_0​?​_encoding​=UTF8​&qid​=1567098817​&sr​=1​-1. 37. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 7. 38. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 17. 39. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 29. 40. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 61. 41. Emphasis original. Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto, 8. 42. Ana María Pineda, “Hospitality,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice, ed. Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 308–9. 43. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 64. 44. Amos Yong, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008), 131. 45. Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto, 86–87. 46. Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets: A Memoir (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 2–3.

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47. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 12. 48. D. H. Stevenson, “Empathy,” in Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology & Counseling, ed. David G. Benner and Peter C. Hill (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 397. 49. Stevenson, “Empathy,” 398. 50. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 68. 51. Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life: Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 312. 52. Russell, Just Hospitality, 60. 53. Christine D. Pohl and Pamela J. Buck, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 104–5. 54. Pohl and Buck, Making Room, 118–19. 55. Pohl and Buck, Making Room, 118–19. 56. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 72. 57. Jones, The Art of Disney Encanto, 162. 58. Newlands and Smith, Hospitable God, 164. 59. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 91. 60. Smith and Bush, “Encanto,” 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Archer, Kenneth J. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics: Retrospect and Prospect.” In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader. Ed. by Lee Roy Martin, 131–48. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Buechner, Frederick. Telling Secrets: A Memoir. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. Bulgakov, Sergius. The Comforter. Translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Craft, Jennifer Allen. Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018. Dempster, Murray A., Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen. Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, October 1, 1991. Faris, Wendy B. Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Félix-Jäger, Steven. Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Hart, David Bentley. “God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of Creatio Ex Nihilo.” Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics 3, no. 1 (2015). Jones, Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster. The Art of Disney Encanto. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2022. Keener, Craig S. Gift and Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001. ———. Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.



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Kittel, Gerhard, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985. Newlands, George, and Allen Smith. Hospitable God: The Transformative Dream. New York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 2016. Oden, Thomas C. The Word of Life: Systematic Theology. Vol. 2, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Paterniti, Michael. “Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Ready for His Next Act.”  Culture.  GQ.  September 20, 2016.  https:​//​www​.gq​.com​/story​/lin​-manuel​ -miranda​-profile​-gq​-cover. Pineda, Ana María. “Hospitality.” Chap. 20 In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to R eligion and Social Justice, edited by Michael D. Palmer and Stanley M. Burgess. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Pohl, Christine D., and Pamela J. Buck. Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Reynolds, Thomas E. Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008. Russell, Letty M. Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference. Louisvi lle: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Smith, Charise Castro, and Jared Bush. “Encanto.” Jan 2021. Screenplay. https:​//​ deadline​.com​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2022​/01​/Encanto​-Read​-The​-Screenplay​.pdf. Smith, James K. A. Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy. Pentecostal Manifestos. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Stevenson, D. H. “Empathy.” In Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology & Counseling,  edited by David G. Benner and Peter C. Hill. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999. Taylor, W. David O. “Spirit and Beauty: A Reappraisal.” Christian Scholar’s Review  44, no. 1 (2014), 45–59. Yong, Amos. Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Nei ghbor. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008.

‌‌C hapter 11

“Leave Six Inches for the Holy Spirit” Lady Bird Comes of Age Gaye Williams Morris

A dimly lit school gymnasium has been transformed for the evening with a rustic Western motif, and teenagers with cowboy hats and boots, bandanas, and denim mill around among the hay bales, laughing and talking. Lady Bird, a teen with red hair, fixes her stare on Danny, who is in full cowboy costume (holster, hat, fake pistols). She leaves her friend Julie and speeds across the room to ask him to dance, and he eagerly accepts her invitation. As they begin to slow dance together, a nun walks by and pointedly says, “Six inches for the Holy Spirit!” This short scene from Lady Bird (2017) illustrates the complex, precarious nature of a teenage girl’s last year of high school. The film marks Greta Gerwig’s solo directorial and screenwriting debuts; Gerwig was raised Unitarian Universalist in Sacramento but attended Catholic high school. In Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical story, Christina/Lady Bird is a senior at a Catholic co-ed high school in Sacramento, where teens at school dances are regularly warned by chaperone nuns to keep a respectable distance between each other while slow dancing (with the stern warning, “Leave six inches for the Holy Spirit”). What role does the Spirit play in coming of age? Is it primarily to fend off lusty teen intimacy and to safeguard the purity of good Catholic girls? I would argue, rather, that its presence resonates more closely with the Spirit of Life that is a feature of Unitarian Universalist spirituality, and which appears in the hymn “Spirit of Life,” written by feminist Christian musician Carolyn McDade. In the lyrics of this hymn, Spirit stirs our hearts to compassion, 151

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gives life the shape of justice, and empowers a life of freedom while holding us close to our roots. This chapter aims to explore the vulnerable and exhilarating coming of age of the character of Lady Bird, and to understand how a dialogue between film and hymn can illuminate the development of a Spirit-led life. WHAT IS THE SPIRIT? According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church,1 “‘Holy Spirit’ is the proper name of the one whom we adore and glorify with the Father and the Son; one of the divine persons of the Trinity.” Richard Rohr, Jesuit priest and writer, explains the Holy Spirit as the “loving immensity of God’s presence within us” when he writes in a breathtaking passage from his Daily Meditations: There is an Inner Reminder and an Inner Rememberer (see John 14:26, 16:4) who holds together all the disparate and fragmented parts of our lives, who fills in all the gaps, who owns all the mistakes, who forgives all the failures—and who loves us into an ever-deeper life. This is the job description of the Holy Spirit, who is the spring that wells up within us (John 7:38–39)—and unto eternal time. This is the breath that warms and renews everything (John 20:22). These are the eyes that see beyond the momentary shadow and disguise of things (John 9); these are the tears that wash and cleanse the past (Matthew 5:4). And better yet, they are not only our tears but are actually the very presence and consolation of God within us (2 Corinthians 1:3–5).2

Relevant to Lady Bird, we may wish to explore the functions of the Holy Spirit to see why being present at a high school dance might be a proper place for the Holy Spirit to be manifested. These functions will be examined as they appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, and in the hymn “Spirit of Life.” THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SPIRIT IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Spirit is the fundamental animator of human life. George Montague traces the Spirit back to Genesis 2, the “breath of life that comes from the Creator,”3 and translated from the Hebrew neshama, “breath.” Montague writes that “the source of man’s [sic] life not only in its beginning but in every breath he takes, is God.”4 Montague sees in Gen. 2:7 a warning by its Yahwist author

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to his contemporary Solomonic court to temper its arrogant pride. The breath of life that God bestows to animate the human form, previously nothing but “the dust of the earth,” is something that God can withdraw (as in another Yahwist verse, I Kings:10–11: “You reign by the breath of Yahweh, if Yahweh takes away his breath, his spirit, you will return, as Adam did, to the dust of your former state.”5) The Spirit bestows the function of leadership and authority, as in I Samuel, when Saul and, later, David are inspired by the Spirit to be aggressive in establishing the justice and the kingdom of God (20–21). There are two Hebrew Bible passages foreshadowing the underpinnings of New Testament pneumatology: in Isaiah 11, the Spirit appears four times and the text lists six different qualities of the Spirit. These form the foundation of the Christian tradition’s “gifts of the Holy Spirit”6; in verse 2 they are named: wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord). In Ezekiel 36 there comes a new mention of cleansing with water followed by the gift of a “new Spirit.” Montague identifies this text as being the source of two distinguishing moments in the Christian initiation, of baptism by water and the consequential reception of the Spirit that follows.7 A function that emphasizes the more fearsome aspect of the Holy Spirit appears in Psalms 139 and 104. The Hebrew word panim is used in several Bible verses to indicate God’s presence or face and can be used complementarily with ruah (Spirit). Montague points to the parallels in Psalm 139:7: “Where can I go from your spirit (ruah)? From your presence (panim) where can I flee?” Isaiah 63:10 “brings out one of the qualities of the panim,” Montague writes, which is “the danger of destruction if one comes too close or sins.”8 In the Hebrew Scriptures, we can see multiple functions of the Spirit which acts to bring life to the first human being, then guides and blesses God’s people or brings God’s wrath whenever their value system requires restoring.9 The Spirit can be, as Montague says, “an awesome power . . . linked to the divine presence . . . [and] more dreadful when grieved by infidelity or disobedience . . . ”10 As God’s divine presence, the Spirit can be fearsome as well as comforting. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT In Christian New Testament literature, the Spirit takes on an important role in the moral formation of the members of this new faith. In I Corinthians Paul develops his theology of the body as a temple, in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Through baptism the Spirit directs Christians to sexual morality. In

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II Corinthians, Paul urges followers of Christ to purify themselves from the defilement of both body and spirit (7:1). Paul clarifies this message further in his Letter to the Romans: baptism results in the possession of the Spirit of Christ, and Christians must use the power of that Spirit to put the “deeds of the flesh” to death in their bodies. The Spirit for Paul is a shield that must be used to ward off the ever-present temptation to fall short of the life that Christ models for Christians. When we turn from Paul’s writings to the historical account in Acts of the Apostles, we see the Spirit literally appear at the first Pentecost, an outpouring “which you see and hear” (Acts 2:33). What is more, Peter indicates that from now on the gift of the Holy Spirit is always to be mediated through the church. It is in the unique pneumatology of the Gospel of John that the Spirit is deemed “another Paraclete,” sent to “teach all things,” to be a reminder of Jesus (the original Paraclete) and his word, and to be for the disciples an advocate, helper, and witness. John summarizes the Holy Spirit’s function as abiding within, accompanying, guiding, and comforting. When the disciples receive the Spirit through the breath of Christ in John 20, this action recalls the breath of Genesis 2:7. The Spirit of the Hebrew Bible initially gives life to humankind, and then is seen to move those who are touched by the Spirit. It renews the people of God and becomes a holy presence that pours out a desire for justice and wisdom. The Holy Spirit seems to be everywhere in the New Testament: given as a gift of tongues, signs, and wonders, and as the guarantor of a holy ethic of purity. Most importantly, before that the Holy Spirit comes to Jesus at his baptism, remains with him through his ministry, and then is passed to the disciples through the resurrection event, as a spirit of revelation and comfort. Through this brief review of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, it is clear that the Holy Spirit effects a tremendous impact on the early Church and its developing theology. Quite how essential the Spirit is to the Church is summed up by Cardinal Leo Suenens, who says, “A Church without the Spirit, without a charism and without the gift of the Spirit, is not a Church.”11 THE SPIRIT AND MORALITY IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Roman Catholics profess the gift of the Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” in the recitation of the Nicene Creed during Mass. The sacrament of confirmation uses chrism to symbolize the coming of the Holy Spirit that brings supernatural gifts, empowering Catholics with spiritual strength. A prayer by Cardinal Mercier

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spells out the function of the Holy Spirit: “O Holy Spirit, Beloved of my soul I adore You. Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen and console me. Tell me what I ought to do and command me to do it. I promise to submit to everything that You ask of me and to accept all that You allow to happen to me. Just show me what is Your will, O Holy Spirit.”12 In Lady Bird, it seems that the Holy Spirit is being summoned by the nuns at the dance as a form of protection. The “six inches” between the dancers presumably creates a space which the Holy Spirit will inhabit to prevent teens from making any mistakes that they will need to confess later. There are limits to sexual intimacy for Catholics in a dating relationship, as a Catholic dating advice column by Grace MacKinnon explains: as all baptized persons are “called to chastity,” the “intimate bodily aspects of our sexuality were meant by God for marriage.”13 Placing themselves in a “near occasion of sin” is not cooperating with God’s plan to use the gift of sexual pleasure in marriage. Mackinnon advises, “If you wish to have a relationship centered on Christ, it should be chaste, with a sense of purity in it, with respect for each other’s bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit.”14 Why is it so necessary for the nuns to issue the directive to leave room for the Holy Spirit? Anecdotally, Catholics remember this saying from their teen years. Mary Kelly writes: “Dating is serious business. Just so you know, the only reason to date is because you want to get married, otherwise hands off, and keep walking. So kids, don’t get too close to each other and make sure you make room for the Holy Spirit.”15 In her memoir Leenda B. Mac writes about her memories of high school dances. She attended Catholic high school in Omaha where “At the time, the nuns used to chaperone our sock-hops. The sisters didn’t appreciate the close contact and therefore would come up and remind us to make room for the Holy Spirit.”16 Michael S. Patton writes that “Traditional Catholic education, obsessed with how sinful Catholics were as human beings, taught the ordinary Catholic to distrust his or her sexual feelings and all erotic behavior.”17 It is obvious, from the opening minutes of the first scene in the car with her mother, where she calls the school Immaculate Heart of Mary “Immaculate Fart,” that Lady Bird’s rebellious streak finds a target in the Catholic school ethos, including the nuns’ attempt to discourage intimacy. At every dance they stand glowering over the slow-dancing students—a scene particularly effective in communicating this is the homecoming dance, where the gym is decorated for the theme “Eternal Flame.” The nuns stand watch to prevent close contact, bathed in red glowing lights that seem to suggest the fires of damnation! Immaculate Heart of Mary High School seems to be rigorous in all things, academics as well as morality. It is clear, however, that the teachers who work

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there are aware of how difficult this senior year can be for their students. The priest offering Mass at the start of the film names the anxieties that haunt the senior year for teenagers: “We’re afraid we won’t get into the college of our choice, we’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked, we won’t succeed.”18 CHRISTINE/LADY BIRD It doesn’t take long for us to recognize that Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson resists the ways her family and school attempt to impose an identity on her. For Lady Bird, the hard knocks of high school life are interspersed with exciting times. Running as a candidate for student office, Lady Bird is questioned by the vice-principal over the odd images she uses for her campaign posters, and while they are talking (Sister Sarah-Joan astutely observing that Lady Bird has a “performative streak” in her) Lady Bird finds out that there are currently auditions for a fall musical. When she exclaims that she never knew there was such a thing as theatre arts at the school, the nun remarks, “Perhaps you haven’t always been an active part of this community.” Lady Bird’s inner-focused personality is thus deftly established in the first five minutes of the film. Lady Bird’s willful nature is on display in an exchange between Lady Bird and the priest running the auditions. She puts her name on the audition with quotes around “Lady Bird,” and when the priest questions her about it being her “given” name, she replies that she gave it to herself: “It’s given. To me, by me.” Lady Bird proceeds to sing an aptly titled Sondheim song, “Everybody Says Don’t.” Her choice of song indicates that Lady Bird feels that her independent spirit is stymied by what others tell her she cannot do. At the auditions, Lady Bird meets Danny, who garners the lead male role. They run into each other a few times, including at the homecoming dance, where Sister Sarah-Joan issues the warning, “Six inches for the Holy Spirit!” while they slow dance. They roll their eyes and resume close contact, and later as they leave the school they kiss. The experience for Lady Bird is so overwhelmingly romantic that, as she walks home smiling, she “throws her face to the sky and screams.”19 GRETA GERWIG’S RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND Greta Gerwig willingly acknowledges that the story of Lady Bird does have some autobiographical elements, such as growing up in Sacramento and attending a Catholic high school. Xarissa Holdaway conjectures that Gerwig

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has “appear[ed] to have too much respect for Catholicism, and religious tradition in general” to make the movie a vehicle for either. Holdaway writes that Gerwig’s film “shows a young woman learning why the adults around her were working so very, very hard to be nice.”20 Gerwig’s upbringing as Unitarian Universalist, predisposing her to inclusivity and diversity in individual spiritual paths, might be the reason for a notable lack of emphasis on stereotypical imperfections of Catholic culture and religion. “SPIRIT OF LIFE” Although Unitarian Universalism is not a trinitarian faith tradition, the Spirit plays a major role in its spirituality. And instead of acting as a force for protection against sin or moral weakness, the Spirit—often referred to as Spirit of Life—accompanies people in their journey through life, helping to shape their values and inform their response to and choice of decisions and actions along that journey. In that sense, the Spirit does not just come between teenagers when they are tempted by lusty opportunities for intimacy. The Spirit of Life brings an awareness of connection and community, which is where, it seems, Lady Bird is heading as the film concludes. There is perhaps no better articulation in Unitarian Universalism of the functions of the Spirit than the song “Spirit of Life” by Carolyn McDade. It is seen by many Unitarian Universalists as the anthem of their faith tradition. In defining spirituality as a relationship to the Spirit of Life, Joel Miller writes “Our spirituality is our deep, reflective, and expressed response to the awe, wonder, joy, pain, and grief of being alive.”21 Carolyn McDade is an activist and musician who has been active in feminist and progressive movements since she was a child, when she first felt the calling to pacifism after seeing wartime newsreels of the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In the mid-1970s she joined with Unitarian Universalist women to create meaningful rituals and music for women’s spirituality. McDade wrote “Spirit of Life” in the early 1980s, and it was included in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s hymnal Singing the Living Tradition in the early 1990s. McDade has always described “Spirit of Life” as “a song, not written, but prayed into being.”22 Kimberly French writes that “No other song, no other prayer, no other piece of liturgy is so well known and loved in Unitarian Universalism as ‘Spirit of Life.’ It is our doxology or perhaps our ‘Amazing Grace.’”23 The introduction to a Unitarian Universalist religious education course on the Spirit of Life explains that “It can be felt as a loving force, a life force . . . as deity unfolding, as divine comforter. It can be felt as the collective human

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spirit, the power of nature, or innate wisdom.”24 Love is a force that inspires Gerwig in her work. In a 2017 magazine interview, Gerwig says, “I only ever write from a place of love,” said Gerwig, “which sounds goofy but is actually true. Some writers write from a place of anger or analysis, or something that feels more didactic, but that impulse means that I also write out of real love, which is complicated and changing.”25 THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE Kimberly French says that the brief lyrics of the song “Spirit of Life” “touches so much that is central to [Unitarian Universalist] faith—compassion, justice, community, freedom, reverence for nature, and the mystery of life. It finds the common ground held by humanists and theists, pagans and Christians, Buddhists and Jews, gay and straight among us.”26 Its six lines can help us unpack the way in which Lady Bird grows in her own spiritual identity: Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.27

The Spirit comes as a creative force, and the first line of the hymn suggests that our invitation to the Spirit to enter and influence us is part of the process of creativity. In the first Mass of the school year, Lady Bird goes up to the altar, not to receive communion, but to be blessed. Non-Catholics may receive a blessing, thus including them in the community of the faithful. Even though Sister Sarah-Joan suggests that Lady Bird has not always been an active part of the school community, the teenager attends and participates in activities that interest her. She is running for class president at the start of her senior year and has created what she thinks are attractive campaign posters featuring a bird’s head on a girl’s body, which the nun describes as “upsetting.” While Lady Bird is busy creating the person she wants to be, her teachers, imbued with the ethos of Catholic education, work with her and other teenagers in an extraordinarily patient and compassionate way. They even pull out of Lady Bird the creative—and performative—streak they see in her: Sr. Sarah-Joan compliments Lady Bird on the description of Sacramento in her college essay (“You write . . . so affectionately, and with such care. It comes across as love”). Lady Bird replies that she pays attention, which the nun suggests is the same thing as love.

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The creative experience of performing alongside other students in a musical is good for Lady Bird, once she opens her mind to the idea. Resisting at first the idea of auditioning, Lady Bird insists to Sister Sarah-Joan that she has potential but prefers instead to be on Math Olympiad. When the nun gently points out that Lady Bird is not strong in math, the teenager responds quickly, “That we know of YET.” And she does try hard for auditions, getting a minimal part despite being the one, she points out to her friend Julie, “who had a dress and prepared a song.” SING IN MY HEART ALL THE STIRRINGS OF COMPASSION Compassion stirs in Lady Bird with hopeful signs that Lady Bird is beginning to feel empathy, at least with her peers. After discovering Danny locked in an embrace with another boy in the toilet, she refuses to speak to him. When he catches her outside the coffee shop where she works and breaks down while telling her of his anxiety over coming out as gay, she takes him in her arms and comforts him. She promises that she will not share his secret. She later attends the final play of the year, The Tempest, and applauds Danny’s performance with sincerity. On prom night, Lady Bird seeks reconciliation with Julie, the tried and trusted friend that she scorns during her brief friendship with the “cool” girl, Jenna. Lady Bird finds her friend in low spirits (we never are told why Julie is crying, and her only explanation is “Some people aren’t built happy, you know?”). The two girls pick up as if nothing had ever separated them and have an uproarious time together at the prom. Seeing in the sunrise, they hug and promise to see each other every day when fall semester begins. Even though Lady Bird is determined to go to New York, she can see that her support for Julie is important if she has to stay in California for college. Lady Bird finds compassion for her mother Marion when it is accidentally revealed that she is on the waiting list for admission to an East Coast university. She knows that it was wrong to keep her plans secret from her mother while drawing in her father on her financial aid application. She apologizes profusely for “being bad” and insists she is grateful for all her mother has done for her, but her sudden understanding of her mother’s feelings can’t break Marion’s silence. All the times she hears her mother say that “everything we do is for you” and “whatever we do is never enough” seem never to phase her until she badly wants her mother to be proud of her success at achieving her dream.

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ROOTS HOLD ME CLOSE, WINGS SET ME FREE Even though Lady Bird expresses her strong desire to leave home, the film begins with a most touching examples of roots holding her close: mother and daughter peacefully sleeping together in a motel room. Driving home from a college visit, Lady Bird and Marion listen tearfully to the final words of a book on tape of The Grapes of Wrath; these early scenes promise a compassionate and loving relationship, but within seconds the tears have dried, and an escalating argument ensues before Lady Bird takes drastic action to set herself free from it. Lady Bird throws herself out of the car in frustration when expressing her desire to get out of her hometown. Her dream of going to college in a “liberal arts” East Coast college is spurned by almost everyone in her life except for her father Larry, who furtively assists in applying for financial aid. Many scenes of conflict between mother and daughter dominate the rest of the film. Several times the arguments are about her choice of the name “Lady Bird”; if we are considering the phrase “wings, set me free” then naming herself after a bird is suggestive of the way in which wings offer birds a way to escape and fly away. Lady Bird is not concerned with who she hurts in her circle of family and friends because she so badly wants to escape from her present life. She is ashamed of her working-class family life, asking her dad to drop her off a block from school so no one sees their old car, and telling Danny she lives “on the wrong side of the tracks.” Instead of apologizing about these slights when confronted by Marion, who complains that it costs a lot to raise her, Lady Bird grabs a pad of paper and a pen and demands a number for how much it costs to raise her: “I’m going to get older and make a lot of money and write you a check for what I owe you so that I NEVER HAVE TO SPEAK TO YOU AGAIN.” Lady Bird is trying desperately to mold her life to her own dreams and desires. There is an internal battle going on but also externally with her relationships; Gerwig cleverly includes battle scenes from the Iraq war on home televisions that echo the combative chaos Lady Bird experiences with everyone in her life. Lady Bird tolerates Catholic school education—enrolled at Immaculate Heart by her mother after her brother witnessed a stabbing at his public high school—but makes it clear that she does not want to apply to Catholic colleges. She is not a Catholic and often shows her disregard with the way the religion is forced on students. One incident that results in Lady Bird’s suspension has her rudely responding to an assembly guest speaker who is telling an anti-abortion story. Lady Bird is murmuring her displeasure to her friend

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when she is asked to share her thoughts out loud, and they are so offensive that she is suspended from school, incurring the wrath of her mother. She abandons her best friend Julie for Jenna, who Lady Bird befriends because she is a rich girl, beautiful, and sexually active. She loses that friendship when she is caught in a lie about where she lives; it is her dream house where she would rather live than in the modest family home. Lady Bird, when not living in a dream world, is struggling to escape her real world. LADY BIRD AND COMING OF AGE How wrong Lady Bird is when she proclaims to Julie, “I think we’re done with the learning portion of high school!” Coming of age is a time of intense life lessons. In the year leading up to her escape from Sacramento, she fights hard to maintain her independence by giving herself the name Lady Bird and demanding that she be called by it. Now in New York she gives her name as Christine to a person who asks, but she can’t resist still having control over her own story: when she adds she is from Sacramento, the person doesn’t catch the word and so she quickly changes it to San Francisco. She is still reinventing herself, and the start of a new college life is the perfect opportunity. Gerwig follows this declaration of her new identity with Lady Bird’s initiation into a dizzying but dangerous discipline-free world: a harrowing experience of alcohol poisoning from her first carefree undergrad party going lands her in the hospital. A wan and listless Christine—the name duly recorded on her admissions bracelet—leaves the hospital in a disheveled state, wandering down streets until she realizes it is Sunday; she is drawn to enter a church where a choir is singing. She stands listening, framed by the sun coming through a window behind her, and this visual signal to viewers is an iconic moment of transfiguration. A phone call to her parents outside the church perfectly encapsulates the wisdom that is hard-won: that she has been set free—she has set herself free, actually—into a new life, but that the lasting “roots” of family life are more precious to her than she had ever perceived them to be. She leaves a voicemail that seeks to reestablish the bond she has with her mom, which Gerwig suggests visually with interspersed shots of Lady Bird and Marion each driving through Sacramento. Lady Bird brightly speaks: “Hey Mom: did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren’t really talking when it happened. All those bends I’ve known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing. But I wanted to tell you. I love you. Thank you, I’m . . . thank you.”28 This final scene illustrates the seminal lesson of coming of age: the spiritual maturity that enables a balance between surrendering to the necessity

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of change while keeping the bonds that hold you to those you leave behind: “roots hold me close, wings set me free.” Recognizing those who have been our guides as we find our way through life, and being grateful for their help, is a sign of the Spirit working in us. It is inspiring us to get in touch with who we have become because of them. But unfurling our wings is only possible once we have a secure place from which to set off! Lady Bird recognizes in her voicemail for her parents that they have provided that secure place: “Hi Mom and Dad, it’s me. Christine. It’s the name you gave me. It’s a good one.” Another realization that emerges for her is the special place that Sacramento is; it has been the “roots” that have held her close, even when she didn’t want to be and even when she described the city as “soul-destroying.” The memory of how emotional it was for Lady Bird when she first drove through Sacramento after getting her driver’s license is something she now wants to share with her mother; it matters because of the grounding her hometown has given her and the meaning the place has for her: “All those bends I’ve known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing.” The fraught mother-daughter relationship between Lady Bird and Marion is at the heart of this story; most coming of age involves a reorientation of the boundaries that parents and children draw in their relationships. Many times, Lady Bird feels insecure about her mother’s feelings toward her. A pivotal scene takes place as Lady Bird tries on prom dresses and looks to her mom for approval. Marion is seemingly unable to control her critical reactions to what she sees: one dress would fit better, she observes, if Lady Bird hadn’t had a second helping of pasta, and another dress, she murmurs, is “too pink.” This sort of attention, Gerwig seems to be telling us, does not come across as love to Lady Bird. Marion can’t bring herself to be positive, upsetting Lady Bird, who says, “I wish that you liked me.” Marion replies that of course she loves her, but Lady Bird persists: “But do you like me?” Marion’s faltering answer, “I want you to be the very best version of yourself you can be” is met with Lady Bird’s plaintive question that ends the scene: “What if this is the best version?” There seems to be only one activity that brings mother and daughter together without strife: the occasional Sunday outing going to open house viewings. Perhaps the way in which this time spent together gives each of them a chance to dream about a different life, or about choices they wish they could have, is enough to engender if not joy, at least a brief affinity in each other’s company. Despite Lady Bird’s alternating longing for and animosity toward her mother—writing “F..k you Mom” on her cast—and her occasionally-voiced belief that her mom hates her, she hears different perspectives from Shelly (“She has a big heart, your Mom . . . I admire her”), Danny (“she’s warm but she’s also kind of scary”), and Larry (“You both have such . . . strong personalities. She doesn’t know how to help you and that frustrates her”).

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When Marion realizes that Lady Bird has gone behind her back to apply and be accepted at a university in New York, she stops talking to Lady Bird. This at last seems to jolt Lady Bird out of her self-defensiveness (“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I’m ungrateful and I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I wanted more . . . ”), but not even the chance to say goodbye to her daughter at the airport makes Marion change her attitude. The ending of Lady Bird, although far from being a neat and tidy resolution, gives us enough of a hint that the anxieties listed in the priest’s homily at the start of senior year (“We’re afraid we won’t get into the college of our choice, we’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked, we won’t succeed”) have for the most part been confronted and overcome by Christine. While unpacking in her new student accommodation, she is surprised to see that her father has slipped an envelope in her luggage that contains a fistful of unfinished drafts on yellow lined paper of the things Marion would like to say to Lady Bird. They are evidence that Marion cared deeply about her daughter but was conscious that she never could say out loud exactly what she felt. CONCLUSION “Do you believe in God?” This is the question that Christine asks another undergrad student as she becomes dangerously drunk at the party. When he answers no, she shakes her head and says, “People will call each other by names their parents made up for them, but they won’t believe in God.” As we see in the film, Lady Bird comes to an epiphany about her name and the value that it holds for her, now that she has crossed the threshold of a new life away from those who named her. She is ready to live a Spirit-led life. The final scene of the film following her from the hospital bed to the church is a poignant journey revealing to her that her life is just beginning; it is full of promise and full of love. The Spirit of Life comes to Lady Bird in a time of confusion, chaos, conflict, and joy, helping to stir compassion within her for her loved ones, holding her tenderly to her family and hometown roots, and yet giving her wings with which to effect an escape that allows her to see the most precious thing in her life that remains with her—namely, love. NOTES 1. The Catholic Church, “The Name: Titles and Symbols of the Holy Spirit,” in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012, https:​//​www​.vatican​.va​/archive​/ENG0015​/.

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2. Richard Rohr, “The Immensity Within,” Daily Meditations, June 7, 2022, https:​ //​cac​.org​/daily​-meditations​/. 3. George Montague, Holy Spirit (Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1976), 6. 4. Montague, Holy Spirit, 7. 5. Montague, Holy Spirit, 9. 6. Montague, Holy Spirit, 41. 7. Montague, Holy Spirit, 46. 8. Montague, Holy Spirit, 57. 9. Montague, Holy Spirit, 58. 10. Montague, Holy Spirit, 60. 11. Cardinal Leo Suenens, “The Holy Spirit in the Church Today,” audio public lecture, Princeton Theological Seminary Media Archive, 1979, https:​ //​ commons​ .ptsem​.edu​/id​/5065. 12. Ann Lankford, “The Holy Spirit—God’s Divine Life and Power within Us,” Catholic Life, May 19, 2022, https:​//​catholiclife​.diolc​.org​/2022​/05​/19​/the​-holy​-spirit​ -gods​-divine​-life​-and​-power​-within​-us​/. 13. Grace Mackinnon, “Intimacy during Dating,” Catholic Exchange, February 4, 2004, https:​//​catholicexchange​.com​/intimacy​-during​-dating​/. 14. Mackinnon, “Intimacy during Dating.” 15. Mary Kelly, “Leave Room for the Holy Spirit,” Awful Library Books, December 1, 2015, https:​//​awfullibrarybooks​.net​/leave​-room​-for​-the​-holy​-spirit​/. 16. Leenda B Mac, Lost in the Clouds (Meadville PA: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.,  Jul 12, 2017), https:​//​books​.google​.com​/books​/about​/Lost​_in​_the​_Clouds​.html​ ?id​=Lo0ztAEACAAJ. 17. Michael S. Patton, “Suffering and Damage in Catholic Sexuality,” Journal of Religion and Health, 27, no. 22 (Summer 1988): 139. 18. Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird Clean Shooting Script, November 8, 2017, https:​//​ www​.dailyscript​.com​/scripts​/LADY​_BIRD​_shooting​_script​.pdf, 5. 19. Gerwig, Lady Bird Clean Shooting Script, 29. 20. Xarissa Holdaway, “The Hopeful, Ordinary Catholicism of Lady Bird,” Religion & Politics, March 1, 2018, https:​//​religionandpolitics​.org​/2018​/03​/01​/the​ -hopeful​-ordinary​-catholicism​-of​-lady​-bird​/. 21. Barbara Hamilton-Holway, “Spirit of Life,” 2010, https:​ //​ www​ .uua​ .org​ /re​ / tapestry​/adults​/life. 22. Marian L. Shatto, email message to author, June 30, 2022. 23. Kimberly French, “Carolyn McDade’s Spirit of Life,” UU World, 10/1/2007, https:​//​www​.uuworld​.org​/articles​/carolyn​-mcdade​-spirit​-life. 24. Barbara Hamilton-Holway, “Tapestry of Faith: Spirit of Life,” 2010, https:​//​ www​.uua​.org​/re​/tapestry​/adults​/life​/introduction. 25. Noreen Malone, “Greta Gerwig is a director not a muse.” Vulture, October 1, 2017, https:​//​www​.vulture​.com​/2017​/10​/greta​-gerwig​-director​-lady​-bird​.html. 26. French, “Carolyn McDade’s Spirit of Life.” 27. Carolyn McDade, “Spirit of Life” (words and music), 1982, Surtsey Publishing; 1991, Carolyn McDade. 28. Gerwig, Lady Bird Clean Shooting Script, 115.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Catholic Church. “The Name: Titles and Symbols of the Holy Spirit,” in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012. https:​//​www​.vatican​.va​/archive​/ENG0015​/. Lankford, Ann. “The Holy Spirit—God’s Divine Life and Power within Us.” Catholic Life, May 19, 2022. https:​//​catholiclife​.diolc​.org​/2022​/05​/19​/the​-holy​-spirit​-gods​ -divine​-life​-and​-power​-within​-us​/. French, Kimberly. “Carolyn McDade’s Spirit of Life.” UU World, October 1, 2007. https:​//​www​.uuworld​.org​/articles​/carolyn​-mcdade​-spirit​-life. Gerwig, Greta. Lady Bird. Century City, California and New York, New York: IAC Films, Scott Rudin Productions, Entertainment 360. 2017. ———. Lady Bird Shooting Script. https:​//​www​.dailyscript​.com​/scripts​/LADY​ _BIRD​_shooting​_script​.pdf, November 8, 2017. Hamilton-Holway, Barbara. “Spirit of Life,” 2010. https:​//​www​.uua​.org​/re​/tapestry​/ adults​/life. ———. “Tapestry of Faith: Spirit of Life,” 2010. https:​//​www​.uua​.org​/re​/tapestry​/ adults​/life​/introduction. Holdaway, Xarissa. “The Hopeful, Ordinary Catholicism of Lady Bird.” Religion and Politics, March 1, 2018. https:​//​religionandpolitics​.org​/2018​/03​/01​/the​-hopeful​ -ordinary​-catholicism​-of​-lady​-bird​/. Kelly, Mary. “Leave Room for the Holy Spirit.” (blog) Awful Library Books, December 1, 2015. https:​//​awfullibrarybooks​.net​/leave​-room​-for​-the​-holy​-spirit​/. Mac, Leenda B. Lost in the Clouds. Meadville PA: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc., 2017. https:​//​books​.google​.com​/books​/about​/Lost​_in​_the​_Clouds​.html​?id​ =Lo0ztAEACAAJ. MacKinnon, Grace. “Intimacy During Dating.” Catholic Exchange, February 10, 2004. https:​//​catholicexchange​.com​/intimacy​-during​-dating​/. McDade, Carolyn. “Spirit of Life.” (words and music). Copyright ©1982 Surtsey Publishing; renewed copyright ©1991 Carolyn McDade. Used by Permission; all rights reserved. Malone, Noreen. “Greta Gerwin Is a Director Not a Muse.” Vulture, October 1, 2017. https:​//​www​.vulture​.com​/2017​/10​/greta​-gerwig​-director​-lady​-bird​.html. Montague, George. Holy Spirit. Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1976. Patton, Michael S. Suffering and Damage in Catholic Sexuality.” Journal of Religion and Health 27, no. 22 (Summer 1988): 129–42. Rohr, Richard. “The Immensity Within.” Daily Meditations, June 7, 2022. https:​//​cac​ .org​/daily​-meditations​/. Suenens, Leo. “The Holy Spirit in the Church Today.” Audio public lecture. Princeton Theological Seminary Media Archive, 1979, https:​//​commons​.ptsem​.edu​/id​/5065.

‌‌C hapter 12

Spiritus Absconditus Listening to the Holy Spirit in Des Hommes et des Dieux Sid D. Sudiacal

During an argument, when the other person is feeling extremely frustrated, the words “You’re not listening to me!” can often be heard. What does it mean? Does it mean that the person is incapable of hearing sound waves that are emitted from one’s mouth? Does it mean that the words are being physically heard but the receiver is unable of comprehending the words? Does it mean that the words are being physically heard, cognitively understood, but the receiver is unable to reciprocate emotionally? The act of listening, in many ways, is not reduced to the simple act of one’s ears physically interacting with the sound waves uttered by another person. In fact, listening is not something that can only happen within an acoustic setting. Sign language is a form of communication that does not rely on sound. Yet, the concept of listening is still present in this setting. What, then, does it mean to listen? Complicating things further is the fact that this situation is primarily understood and analyzed from a physical perspective. Adding a divine component to this question makes the idea of listening a more complicated task. How can one listen to God’s voice? As Elijah notes, God is not always or only found in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the sound of silence. Elijah had to listen for God’s still, small voice.1 When so many expect grandiose pronouncement of God’s presence, it is quite a shock when God’s voice can only be heard when one is still enough to hear a gentle whisper. The question remains: how can we hear the Spirit when the Spirit is silent?2 This is the question that looms large in the French film, Des Hommes et des Dieux. Directed by Xavier Beauvois in 2010, the movie is based on the 167

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real-life story of eight Trappist monks from the monastery of Notre-Dame de l’Atlas who were trapped in Algeria during the civil war.3 Faced with increasing violence by Islamic fundamentalists, the monks are forced to make a difficult decision: to stay and risk their lives or to flee and save their lives. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section gives a brief synopsis of the film Des Hommes et des Dieux. The second section explores the concept of divine hiddenness. The third section delves into the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the human. The fourth section examines the role of deification as the way in which Christians can learn to listen and respond to the Holy Spirit. In times when one is unable to hear the voice of God, deification enables an individual to adopt a posture of submission and humility that helps one to be attuned to the Holy Spirit. Deification, then, becomes the means by which one can listen to the Spirit when the Spirit is silent. DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX: A BRIEF EXPLORATION The movie begins with a quote from Psalms 82:6–7: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.”4 There are eight Trappist monks: Christian, Luc, Christophe, Celestin, Amédée, Jean-Pierre, Michel, and Paul. Christian is the appointed leader of the monastery. Luc is the doctor who offers medical services to the village. Christophe is a monk who has a troubled and conflicted temperament. Amédée is the oldest monk in the monastery. This chapter will primarily deal with these four main characters. The movie begins with the monks walking into the chapel as they celebrate mass together. The haunting hymn “Seigneur, ouvre mes levres” is heard. The first half of the movie shows the day-to-day activities of the monks. Luc begins his day by going through the medical supplies he needs as he provides medical assistance to the villagers. For many, he is the only doctor the villagers can access. The other monks prepare the honey that they sell in the market to provide income for the monastery’s practical needs. Rabbia, one of the teenage villagers, and Luc has a poignant scene together where they talk about what it means to be in love. This exchange sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It is candid, vulnerable, and poignant.

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RABBIA: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE? Luc: There’s something inside you that comes alive. The presence of someone. It’s irrepressible and makes your heart beat faster, usually. It’s an attraction, a desire. . . . It’s very beautiful. No use asking too many questions. It just happens. Things are as usual, then suddenly . . . happiness arrives, or the hope of it. It’s lots of things. But you’re in turmoil. Great turmoil. Especially the first time. Your father spoke to me about Khaled. Rabbia: My father speaks too much. I don’t want that. I feel none of the things you mentioned when I see Khaled. Frère Luc: That means it’s not very serious. Rabbia: My father wants it, not me. Frère Luc: That’s another problem. Rabbia: [Have you] ever been in love? Frère Luc: Several times, yes. And then I encountered another love, even greater. And I answered that love. It’s been a while now. Over 60 years.5

From this exchange, one gets a glimpse into the very heart and soul of these monks. Their love for God is pure and genuine. It is also a love that is incredibly personal and transformative. The men at the village eventually have a conversation with Christian and Luc about the violence happening in the country. One of the leaders in the village recounts how his cousin’s daughter was killed by Islamic fundamentalists. She was 18 years old. She was stabbed in the heart while she was on the bus. The reason? She was not wearing a hijab. The men are angered at the idea that these men call themselves religious when it is clear to them that they have never read the Qur’an. They also speak of how these Islamic fundamentalists also killed an imam on the street. There is palpable confusion and despair. The danger that seemed so far away becomes a clear and present danger. It begins when foreign workers from Croatia are killed by Islamic fundamentalists. The workers have their throats violently slashed, sending a message that foreigners are no longer safe. News reaches the monastery and shakes the quiet, idyllic surroundings of the small village. This begins the discussion among the monks on what they should do. The Wali6 offer the monks military protection but Christian refuses to accept military presence within the monastery. Things come to a head when one of the Islamic fundamentalists forces their way into the monastery to ask for a doctor to provide medical assistance

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for three of their wounded men. Christian negotiates with their leader and tells them that they are unable to acquiesce to their demands because Luc is the only doctor in the village. His old age makes it difficult for him to comply. The leader eventually leaves but it forces the community to address what they should do in the future since this is probably not the last time that they would face this threat. The monks gather around the table and have a frank discussion about their thoughts and options on whether they should stay, leave temporarily, or even leave the country permanently. Because they could not all come to a decision, they decide to take some time to individually reflect and pray for guidance. The ongoing violence also creates a very serious political situation for the monks. The Ministry of Interior gives them orders to leave the country. Christian, along with Amédée and Celestin, have a conversation with some members of the community. Their exchange shows the close relationship between the village and the monastery. Christian: Will the village need the army to protect it? Because they’ll be back someday. Village leader: Forget the army! It’s a disaster. The army won’t come. The protection is you. This village grew up with the monastery. Who was that priest, before? Awhile back, before the war. Christian: Brother Bernard? Village leader: Another one. Old. Woman from the village: Brother Daniel. Village leader: That’s him. Brother Daniel. He told my mother not to stay here. Move to a city. There was no more work here. She made him swear to say nothing to my father. Because my mother, she feels good living here. Comfortable. Amédée: We may be leaving. Village leader: Why are you leaving? Célestin: We are like birds on a branch. We don’t know if we’ll leave. Woman from the village: The birds are us. You’re the branch. If you go, we’ll lose our footing.7

In a heart-wrenching and poignant scene—with Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” playing in the background—the monks have a scene that evokes Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” While there are no words spoken, it is made abundantly clear that the monks have all decided that they have chosen to stay amidst the ongoing and impending violence. The close-up shot of each character’s face evoke a myriad of emotions. In their faces, one can see joy,

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anxiety, resoluteness, fear, turmoil, and acceptance. Shortly after this scene, the Islamic fundamentalists storm the monastery and kidnap seven of the eight monks. They are held hostage. The movie ends with the monks walking in the frozen cold with their captors behind them. Slowly, they fade away into nothing. WHERE IS GOD? EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF DIVINE HIDDENNESS The human experience is often marred by trials and tribulations. It is difficult to be human. Part of being human involves experiencing hurt and pain. To be human is to feel sorrow and grief. To be human is to be exposed to a never-ending barrage of day-to-day injustices this world has to offer. The oppression experienced by so many who follow God is the background of the sacred Scriptures. Time after time, the psalmist calls out in lament to a God who seems to be blind to the evils that others do. Evil people prosper while good people suffer. Where is God in the midst of the darkness that so often envelops our human souls? Joel S. Burnett notes that [T]he problem of divine absence thus involves the most basic terms of divine-human relationships. Because the deities are like us in many ways and have needs as we do, they are understood to form reciprocal relationships with human beings. Within this framework of divine-human reciprocity, human experiences of hardship, misfortune, and disaster are interpreted as disruptions of the divine-human relationship, as expressions of divine punishment, or perhaps as divine negligence and an unjustified withdrawal of divine protection.8

The idea that God’s face is intentionally hidden from the children of God is not merely a theological event, but one that is incredibly personal and emotional. One of the difficulties when talking about theology in our present climate is that there is a tendency to understand theology as merely intellectual assent to philosophical tenets. Yet, this way of understanding theology has no historical precedence. The human-divine relationship mirrors human-human relationships in that the relationship exhibits the same dynamic. This relationship has tangible, physical repercussions. As Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser remark, “[t]he subject of God’s hiding is no merely theoretical matter in the Hebrew Psalms. It cuts to the core of the psalmists’ understanding of God and of themselves.”9 This is yet another way in which “the theme of divine absence in the Hebrew Bible involves a crisis of relationship.”10 Michael J. Murray notes that “[t]heists in the Judeo-Christian tradition have often argued that the hiddenness of God finds its explanation in the Fall and

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subsequent Curse.”11 Such an understanding of the hiddenness of God follows the trajectory one often finds in expressions of lament found in the Bible and Christianity’s long history. The Fall often serves as the locus of humanity’s strained and estranged relationship with the divine. God’s question of “where are you?” to Adam is reversed. Instead, it is Adam who now asks the question of “where are you?” to God. There is a brand of Christianity where there is a tendency to have a triumphalist theology that guides the Christian’s understanding of God and how God interacts with the Christian’s life as it is expressed in the human realm. This type of theology finds its apogee in the Prosperity Gospel movement where “health and wealth” are correlated to an individual’s spiritual success or failure.12 This triumphalist tendency puts a premium on the idea of victory in the Christian’s life. The Christian life is a victorious life. Failure to live a victorious life is a sign of the Christian’s failure to have adequate belief in God. Their faith in God is tangibly expressed by physical signs of health and wealth. It is a faith that is built on the certain. There is no room for doubts. There is no room for uncertainty. Doubts and uncertainty are enemies of the faith. They must be quickly vanquished lest it lead to deleterious effects in the Christian’s life. Catherine Keller opines that [t]heology in the Abrahamic register has however often answered trauma by ramping up certainty. Promises of truth, salvation, and eternal life thus morph into guarantees conditioned on acceptance of the operative premises. Such certitude surely offers solace in the face of the unendurable. And its political legacy of righteous unquestionability has wrought not only reaction but revolution.13

This love affair with certainty offers a theology that is often deprived of nuance and resilience. When faced with trials and tribulations, this type of faith is unable to come to terms with the unfairness of life. As a result, there is an inability to develop theological muscles that can lead to spiritual resilience in light of the spiritual darkness that can often assail the Christian’s life. The long history of ascetic lifestyles from early Christianity to the present (as can be seen in these monks) not only takes into account the fact that life can be cruel; it takes life’s harshness as a given. It is to be expected that this world shall throw slings and arrows at the Christian. After all, if their master was treated unfairly, why should they expect to be treated better than their master? Asceticism becomes a way for Christianity to thrive under harsh conditions. By promoting ascesis, the Christian is given a tool by which one can build the spiritual muscles needed to face the difficult road ahead. While life, along with everything that is ever related to life, is uncertain, there is but one certainty that the Christian can truly count on: God and God alone.

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This kataphatic trait is not restricted to the Prosperity Gospel movement. Theology—especially as it is understood in the West—leans heavily toward a kataphatic understanding of God. Deirdre Carabine notes that “[t]he formulations of affirmative theology can be understood as the attempt to provide mental forms through which aspects of the divine truth may be communicated to the human mind, while the negative way can be seen as a guard against equating the divine nature with its formal expression, an expression which relies upon terms accessible to the limited human reason.”14 If kataphatic language is restricted by words that can be understood in the finite realm, apophatic language is restricted by words that attempt to give a description of the infinite by using finite terms. Kataphatic theology signifies the “the outgoing (proodos) from God who always remains in himself (monē), while apophatic theology signifies the return (epistrophe) of all things to their source.”15 As Carabine opines, “the kataphatic theologian relies upon the more typically Western assertion that God is the ‘fullness of being,’ while the apophatic theologian asserts that God is best understood in terms of ‘non-being.’”16 Kataphatic theology, then, is helpful for the Christian as it informs them of the ways in which God moves in the world and how God can be known. Apophatic theology, however, is helpful for the Christian in helping one realize about the vastness of God and how the concept of God is so incredibly complex that the mortal experience is unable to truly comprehend the richness and fullness of the divine. When the Christian encounters the vicissitudes of life, it is apophatic theology—the via negativa—that will enable the Christian from falling into the abyss of despair. There is an ongoing tension that must be held in the way that one must think of God. Ultimately, I am arguing for a kataphatic theology that is shaped by apophasis and an apophatic theology that is energized by kataphasis. It is when God can no longer be comprehended, nor understood, by words that the Christian’s understanding of God will finally be analogous to the Christian’s experience of life. At the same time, it is because God can be known as the God who Sees that gives comfort to the Christian in their hour of need. In the face of suffering, what words shall give comfort? In the face of death, words become meaningless. It is in the precious silence of apophatic theology that the bereaved and suffering Christian find their solace. It is in this silence, pregnant with meaning, when the world can often be so meaningless, that the divine and human can meet and embrace each other. It is in this silence that God meets the human in their hour of need.

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THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN: HOW HUMANS EXPERIENCE GOD Speaking of the Holy Spirit, Martin Luther says: “For we could never attain to the knowledge of the grace and favor of the Father except through the Lord Christ, who is a mirror of the paternal heart, outside of whom we see nothing but an angry and terrible Judge. But of Christ we could know nothing except by the revelation of the Holy Ghost.”17 It cannot be stressed enough that the very experience of Christian life that Christians experience can only be known and understood through the work of the Holy Spirit.18 Augustine argues that “it is the Holy Spirit . . . that makes us abide in God and him in us.”19 In the same way that the disciples are told by Jesus that if they had seen him, they have also seen the Father, the way that one sees Jesus and his works is through the divine intervention of the Holy Spirit.20 Every possible way in which we conceive and comprehend Christ is only possible through the person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, then, makes possible the impossible: to behold God, to experience God, to know God.21 The difference between knowing God and knowing about God is one that cannot be put into words. The Christian journey is one that is wholly reliant on the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot know Christ. To know the Spirit is to know Christ is to know the Father.22 In his book, Flame of Love, Clark Pinnock notes that “of all theological topics, Spirit is one of the most elusive. Knowing the Spirit is experiential, and the topic is oriented toward transformation more than information.”23 He continues, “How does one render that reality that is wind, fire, breath, life—tangible yet intangible, invisible yet powerful, inexpressible yet intimate, powerful yet gentle, reliable yet unpredictable, personal yet impersonal, transcendent yet immanent?”24 It is this very elusiveness that Pinnock speaks of which makes the topic of divine silence so incredibly fascinating in how it truly brings out a strong emotional response when experienced. If the Spirit is elusive by nature, how easy is it for humans to interpret this very same elusiveness as silence? Jürgen Moltmann notes, “Whatever we may say in general about ourselves and other people in the light of eternity, the Spirit of life is present only as the Spirit of this or that particular life.”25 This means that the way in which the Spirit can be experienced is as varied as the number of lives the Spirit touches. Yet again, we come against a rigid or strict definition of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this is because the Spirit is, by nature, resistant to static definitions; the dynamism of the Holy Spirit indicates that any understanding of the Spirit must take this fluidity as foundational to our understanding of the Spirit.26 What can be done when words are not enough? What can be done

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when the words that seek to give word to one’s experience is found wanting? What if the words one can string together is incapable of creating a coherent statement? Not because the very words that one can string together are incapable of creating a coherent statement but because, by default, one is unable to articulate an experience that borders on the ineffable. In the attempt to understand the Holy Spirit, one must heed an important warning: “The Spirit is not an ‘object’ of human study in the same way that, for instance, the objects of the physical sciences are. In fact, we can say that the Spirit, rather than being an object of our scrutiny, is the One who searches us.”27 The Christian, then, enters a space of liminality in the Christian’s desire to study the Spirit. To study the Spirit is to try to grasp oil and hold it in one’s hands. It is impossible to take hold of oil, yet it is not impossible to speak of having grasped oil in one’s hands. Yet, even this analogy fails to fully describe the fact that the Spirit is unlike oil for the Spirit is untouchable, not only ungraspable. The Holy Spirit is “this mysterious light, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal, this radiance of the divine Nature, this glory of the divinity, this beauty of the heavenly kingdom is at once accessible to sense perception and yet transcends it.”28 It is virtually impossible to understand the Spirit without referring to one’s experience of the Spirit. It is only through divine intervention that one can try to comprehend the Spirit’s work. Christian tradition maintains that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, and we catch glimpses of the Spirit’s work in the human world.29 If the Spirit, however, resists any definition, how can one adequately speak of the Spirit at work in the world? It is in the silence, when words are not uttered, that we often find the Spirit speak the loudest. This truth is best exemplified in the film through a stirring scene when, after taking time for personal reflection, the monks come to the table and have dinner together. Luc takes a bottle of wine—a rarity for the monks to have under normal circumstances—and shares it with his fellow brothers in Christ. Reminiscent of the Last Supper, these monks share food and wine together. Etched in their faces are joy, worry, peace, and the decided resolution and resignation of their fate. Throughout the movie, the constant tension in the background revolves around the question of whether they should stay or flee? In this scene, it is made clear that they have all decided to stay. However, no words are uttered. There are no verbal indications, from either the monk to themselves, or from the monk to another fellow monk, that state this reality. The silence is a piercing shout of their declaration of intent.

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DEIFICATION: HOW TO LISTEN TO THE SPIRIT WHEN THE SPIRIT IS SILENT It is rather interesting that there appears to be no formal definition of deification30 until the sixth century.31 Kallistos Ware defines it as such: To be deified is, more specifically, to be ‘christified’: the divine likeness that we are called to attain is the likeness of Christ. It is through Jesus the God-man that we men are ‘ingodded,’ ‘divinized,’ made ‘sharers in the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4). By assuming our humanity, Christ who is Son of God by nature has made us sons of God by grace. In him we are ‘adopted’ by God the Father, becoming sons-in-the-Son.32

Before his death, Jesus tells his disciples that he shall soon leave. In his stead, he shall send the Paraclete.33 It is the role of the Paraclete to comfort, to aid, to encourage, and to strengthen those who belong to Christ. Jesus must go so that the Comforter can stay. Through the Spirit, Jesus’s followers are empowered to do greater things than him. Jesus’s ministry is marked by the restoration of humans to God in the form of healings, forgiveness of sins, and a commitment to live a life that reflects the very heart of the Father. As Yves Congar rightly notes, “God, in other words, never seizes hold of man without involving him completely, including his psychosomatic being.”34 The role of the Spirit in the life of Jesus cannot be overlooked nor underestimated. When Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, the Spirit comes upon him, and a voice is heard saying “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” The Spirit can be seen as proclaiming the divine identity of Jesus as the Son of God. It is through the Spirit that individuals can know Jesus in the first place.35 It is not surprising, then, that deification plays a central theme in Christianity. The Christian is called to talk like Jesus, act like Jesus, think like Jesus, and love like Jesus.36 This becomes a call to action that is difficult to follow. The Spirit enables the Christian to become like Christ. F. LeRon Shults and Andrea Hollingsworth argues, “[o]nly God can deify creatures. Deification is the work of the Spirit. There, the Spirit must be God.”37 Through the Spirit, the human is able to become like God. How can we be aware of that which we are not aware of? Is the lack of awareness a sign of the lack of presence or might it not signal a lack of presence but a lack of awareness? A famous ad by Transport for London promoting bicycle safety explores this idea. The ad starts with the title “Awareness Test.” Two groups of basketball players are shown. The question is “how many passes does the team in white make?” The viewer is then concerned with trying to count the number of passes made by the white team. The answer is 13. However, the ad asks, “did you see the moonwalking bear?”

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They then re-play the video where you can clearly see a moonwalking bear in the middle of the screen while the basketball players are throwing passes to each other. It ends with these words: “It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for. Look out for cyclists.”38 I cannot help but think about the message of this ad within the context of listening to the Spirit. The elusive nature of the Spirit makes the Spirit already seem invisible under the best circumstances. When faced with the harshness of life, amidst a world filled with injustice, it is easy for us to fail to perceive the Spirit’s presence. Could it be that when we say that the Spirit is silent, it is an invitation for us to be silent so that we may hear the Spirit? In her book The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory, Carla D. Sunberg states, In Cappadocian thought, the goal of the Christian life was theosis: to become like God or union with God. This concept of theosis signaled a return to the telos of humanity, a humanity that was made in the image and likeness of God. People are saved through their participation in theosis, culminating in their growth in holiness, love, and Christ-likeness. Throughout their lives, the Cappadocians worked toward this salvific goal.39

It is only when we are Christ-like that we can hear the Spirit and experience the Spirit’s work in our lives.40 It is not an accident that the movie begins with Psalms 82:6–7. The verse reminds the audience that “ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High”; it finds its ultimate expression in the lives of the eight Trappist monks. While there are no discernible theophanies in the movie, the Spirit is at work in the lives of the monks. Whether it is through the personal angst of Christophe, the resoluteness of Christian, the calm wisdom of Amédée, the Spirit, though silent, is moving. Deification becomes a posture of humility for the Christian to enable the Christian to hear the Spirit. Through deification, the Christian enters the necessary space to be aware of the Spirit’s movement. It is only when the Christian is attuned to the Spirit’s presence that the Christian can experience the Spirit’s presence. In the same way that we are surrounded by air yet are not actively aware of the presence of air, so is the Spirit in the life of the Christian. In the same way that we tend to acknowledge the presence of air when it is absent, it is when the Christian does not feel the Spirit that the Christian can know the Spirit’s existence. The absence becomes the proof of its existence.41 Athanasius’s statement that “God became man in order that man might become God in him” is central to the idea of deification.42 To hear the Spirit is no easy task. In the story of Elijah and the revelation that God is found in the still, small voice, it must be said that one of the main reasons why God

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was revealed to Elijah was because Elijah was looking for God. If Elijah, who is already looking for God, cannot find him so easily, that should signal the reader that listening for God’s voice involves intentionality. It is the persistent listening, the removal of the noise around him, the stubborn desire to hear God, that ultimately leads to Elijah hearing God in the form of a gentle whisper. It is only when one is attuned to the things of God that one can perceive the things of God. Deification becomes the means by which the individual becomes sensitive to the Spirit of God which enables one to experience the Spirit of God. CONCLUSION Christophe, in conversation with Luc, reveals that he has not been able to properly sleep at night as he ponders about death and the possibility of martyrdom. In a moment of authenticity and vulnerability, he tells Luc: “I pray. And I hear nothing.” In his time of need, he draws near to God, and he is met with silence. This experience is not new. The psalmist once lamented, “But I, O Lord, cry out to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?”43 Christophe literally cries out to God, and it is a sound that haunts the Christian soul. It is bitter. It is agony. It is pain. Yet, this is also the same Christophe who is fortified by the Spirit as he decides to stay and face the possibility of martyrdom. This is an act that would not have been possible had he not been intentional and persistent in seeking the Spirit. This intentionality can only happen through deification. The desire to become like Christ becomes a key motivator in the Christian’s spiritual journey.44 In the same way that the Spirit proclaims Christ, the process of becoming like Christ enables the Christian to be attuned to the work of the Spirit. Seeking the Spirit involves practicing stillness. The Spirit’s silence beckons the Christian to be still and in the process of being still to know that the Spirit is ever present, ever alive, and ever working. As the seven Trappist monks are forced to walk in the snow by their captors, they slowly trudge into the unknown. Though their figures slowly disappear from our gaze, yet they also slowly disappear into the elusive Spirit’s invisible presence. NOTES 1. 1 Kings 19:11–13 2. “Silence can be a blessing or a curse. It can welcome us into its bosom or freeze us out. We trust that the Spirit has been present in the silences of the tradition, in

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the unspoken gesture or glance, between the lines of a sermon, a poem, or a treatise. The Spirit’s power may marshal its forces in the fertile and quiet darkness of the soil in which seeds germinate and sprout in good time. We are accountable to trust these silences and to do what we can so that they will bear fruit, making all things new. There is also the silence that acknowledges that all language, imagery, symbols, and metaphors about God are inadequate. This is the apophatic or negative way that takes over when words fail, when we stand in silent awe at the mystery and majesty of God. At times, this blessed silence seems more truthful than a thousand words of images naming God. After thousands of words about metaphors of the Spirit, we must also remember that the Spirit is not ‘GOD,’ not a person, not Gift, not a waiter, not love pouring forth, not music, not Reconciler. Negative silence about the Spirit signals incompleteness, hardness of heart, or simply undue preoccupation with other concerns.” Elizabeth Dreyer, Holy Power, Holy Presence: Rediscovering Medieval Metaphors for the Holy Spirit (New York: Paulist Press, 2007), 255. 3. To read more about this event, see John W. Kiser, The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria, 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002). 4. The KJV translation is used in the opening scene of the film. 5. Des Hommes et des Dieux, directed by Xavier Beauvois (Toronto: Mongrel Media, 2011), Streaming. 6. “Wali” is a title for the provincial governor. 7. Des Hommes et des Dieux, directed by Xavier Beauvois (Toronto: Mongrel Media, 2011), Streaming. 8. Joel S. Burnett, Where Is God?: Divine Absence in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010),11. 9. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser, Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 2. 10. Burnett, Where Is God?, 43. 11. Michael J. Murray, “Deus Absconditus,” in Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 63. 12. Here, I follow Kate Bowler’s definition of Prosperity Gospel. Bowler states, “The prosperity gospel, I argue, centers on four themes: faith, wealth, health, and victory. (1) It conceives of faith as an activator, a power that unleashes spiritual forces and turns the spoken word into reality. (2) The movement depicts faith as palpably demonstrated in wealth and (3) health. It can be measured in both the wallet (one’s personal wealth) and in the body (one’s personal health), making material reality the measure of the success of immaterial faith. (4) The movement expects faith to be marked by victory. Believers trust that culture holds no political, social, or economic impediment to faith, and no circumstance can stop believers from living in total victory here on earth.” Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 7. See also Katy Attanasi, “Introduction: The Plurality of Prosperity Theologies and Pentecostalisms,” in Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of the Global Charismatic movement, ed. Katy Attanasi and Amos Yong (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Amos Yong, “A Typology of Prosperity Theology: A Religious Economy of Global Renewal or a

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Renewal Economics?,” in Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of the Global Charismatic Movement, ed. Amos Yong and Katy Attanasi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 13. Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 16. 14. Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1995), 2. 15. Carabine, The Unknown God, 3. 16. Carabine, The Unknown God, 3. 17. Martin Luther, The Large Catechism of Martin Luther, trans. Henry Eyster Jacobs (Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication Society 2018), 72. 18. In On Faith and the Creed, Augustine famously notes “Many books have been written by scholarly and spiritual men on the Father and the Son. . . . The Holy Spirit has, on the other hand, not yet been studied with as much care and by so many great and learned commentators on the scriptures that it is easy to understand his special character and know why we cannot call him either Son or Father, but only Holy Spirit.” IX, 18 and 19. However, F. LeRon Shults and Andrea Hollingsworth also starts their book, The Holy Spirit, with these words: “Christian theology is in the midst of an academic revival of interest in pneumatology—the study of the Spirit (pneuma) of God.” F. LeRon Shults and Andrea Hollingsworth, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 2008), 1. For more work concerning the Holy Spirit, see Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, 1st HarperCollins pbk. ed. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991); Wonsuk Ma, “Toward an Asian Pentecostal Theology,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1998); Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian life, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991); Kirsteen Kim, The Holy Spirit in the World: A Global Conversation (London: SPCK, 2007); Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994). 19. Augustine, The Trinity, XV, 5.31, 420–21. 20. “We believe and confess that the Holy Spirit must be grasped together with Father and Son in every deed and every concept, whether in the world, beyond the world, in time, or before the age, since it does not fall short of them in will, activity, or in any other of the things which are piously thought of in association with goodness. For this reason, apart from the difference in order and in subsistence, we comprehend no variation [among them] in any respect. Instead, while we maintain that it is numbered third in the sequence after Father and Son, and third in the order of the tradition, we confess its inseparable connection in all other respects: in nature, honor, deity, glory, majesty, omnipotence, and in the pious confession.” Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Holy Spirit against the Macedonian Spirit-Fighters,” in The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings. Volume 1, God, ed. Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 280. 21. “But, what our Lord wanted us to understand when He breathed on His disciples, saying: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ was that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit not only of the Father but also the Spirit of the Only-begotten Son Himself. For, in fact, one

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and the same Spirit is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son—not a creature but the Creator, and forming with them the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not, of course, that the physical breath issuing from His actual mouth was the very substance and nature of the Holy Spirit; rather, it was a sign by which we are to understand, as I have said, that the Holy Spirit is common to both the Father and the Son, since neither has His own individual Spirit but both have the same Spirit.” Augustine, City of God, XIII, 24, 341. 22. The persons are “three . . . not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power.” Tertullian, Against Praxeas, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Arthur Coxe, trans. Peter Holmes, Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. Volume 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995), II, 598. 23. Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 14. 24. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 14. 25. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, 1st Fortress Press ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 8. 26. “In the experience of the Spirit a new community of rich and poor, the educated and the uneducated comes into being. The Spirit of God is no respecter of social distinctions; it puts an end to them. All Spirit-impelled revival movements in the history of Christianity have taken note of these socially revolutionary elements in the experience of the Spirit and have spread them. They became a danger to the patriarchy, the men’s church and the slave-owners. Today these experiences of the Spirit among children and old people is a danger for those who are pushing the very young and the old on to the fringes of life.” Jürgen Moltmann, Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1997), 23–24. 27. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 15. 28. Gregory Palamas, and John Meyendorff, The Triads (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). 29. “When we hear the word ‘spirit’ it is impossible for us to conceive of something whose nature can be circumscribed or is subject to change or variation, or is like a creature in any way. Instead, we are compelled to direct our thoughts on high, and to think of an intelligent being, boundless in power, of unlimited greatness, generous in goodness, whom time cannot measure. All things thirsting for holiness turn to Him; everything living in virtue never turns away from Him. He waters them with His life-giving breath and helps them reach their proper fulfillment. He perfects all other things, and Himself lacks nothing; He gives life to all things, and is never depleted. He does not increase by additions, but is always complete, self-established, and present everywhere. He is the source of sanctification, spiritual light, who gives illumination to everyone using His powers to search for the truth—and the illumination He gives is Himself. His nature is unapproachable; only through His goodness are we able to draw near it. He fills all things with His power, but only those who are worthy may share it. He distributes His energy in proportion to the faith of the recipient, not

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confining it to a single share. He is simple in being; His powers are manifold: they are wholly present everywhere and in everything. He is distributed but does not change.” Basil, Treatise on the Holy Spirit, IX.22, 42–43. 30. Throughout this paper, the term “deification” is understood in the same manner as the terms “divinization” and “theosis.” 31. Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, The Oxford early Christian studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1. 32. Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1979), 98. 33. John 14:16–17, 26 34. Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 1 (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), 5. 35. “The baptism of Jesus does not make sense without the presence of the Spirit. For what the Spirit adds to the expression and reception of love is this: that she witnesses to the love between the Father and the Son among the disciples and among other human beings.” Eugene F. Rogers, After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 137. 36. “Christian formation is best described as an interactive process by which God the Father conforms believers into the image of Jesus through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit by overseeing the development of the whole person in various life dimensions for the sake of others.” Chandler, Diane J., “Introduction” in The Holy Spirit and Christian Formation: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. ed. Diane J. Chandler. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1. 37. Shults and Hollingsworth, The Holy Spirit, 25. 38. https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=Ahg6qcgoay4. 39. Carla D. Sunberg, The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory and Gregory (Eugene: Pickwick, 2017), 15. 40. “I am of the opinion, then, that the working of the Father of and of the Son takes place in both saints and sinners, in rational human beings and in dumb animals, and even in things which are without life, and in absolutely everything exists; but that the working of the Holy Spirit does not at all extend into those things which are without life, or into those which though living yet are dumb; nor is it even found in those who, though rational, still lie in wickedness, not having converted to better things. In those alone, I think, who already turn to better things and walk in the ways of Jesus Christ, that is, who are engaged in good actions and abide in God, is there the work of the Holy Spirit.” Origen, Origen: On First Principles, Reader’s Edition, trans. John Behr (Oxford University Press, 2019), I.3.5, 75. 41. By saying so, I realize that I am entering an oft-debated topic. J. L. Schellenberg argues that “[s]urely a morally perfect being—good, just, loving—would show himself more clearly. Hence the weakness of our evidence for God is not a sign that God is hidden; it is a revelation that God does not exist.” J. L. Schellenberg, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 1.

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42. For a longer treatment of the development of his early pneumatology, see Kevin Douglas Hill, Athanasius and the Holy Spirit: The Development of his Early Pneumatology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016). 43. Psalm 88:13–14, NRSV. 44. “The bishop of Nyssa saw spiritual transformation and trinitarian reflection as intimately implicated in any discussion of the Spirit. It is through the deifying Spirit that we participate in the infinite life of God.” Shults and Hollingsworth, The Holy Spirit, 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Burnett, Joel S. Where Is God?: Divine Absence in the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. Carabine, Deirdre. The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. Chandler, Diane J. “Introduction.” In The Holy Spirit and Christian Formation: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Diane J. Chandler, 1–15. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Clairvaux, Bernard of. The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs 1. Translated by Kilian Walsh. Edited by M. Basil Pennington. Vol. 2, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971. Congar, Yves. I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Vol. 1, New York: Seabury Press, 1983. Dreyer, Elizabeth. Holy Power, Holy Presence: Rediscovering Medieval Metaphors for the Holy Spirit. New York: Paulist Press, 2007. Fee, Gordon D. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994. Hill, Kevin Douglas. Athanasius and the Holy Spirit: The Development of His Early Pneumatology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016. Howard-Snyder, Daniel, and Paul K. Moser. Divine Hiddenness: New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002. Keller, Catherine. Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Kim, Kirsteen. The Holy Spirit in the World: A Global Conversation. London: SPCK, 2007. Kiser, John W. The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria. 1st ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991. Luther, Martin. The Large Catechism of Martin Luther. Translated by Henry Eyster Jacobs. Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publication Society, 2018. Ma, Wonsuk. “Toward an Asian Pentecostal Theology.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 1 (1998): 15–41.

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Moltmann, Jürgen. The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology. 1st HarperCollins pbk. ed. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991. ———. Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. 1st Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Murray, Michael J. “Deus Absconditus.” In Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder and Paul K. Moser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Nyssa, Gregory of. “On the Holy Spirit against the Macedonian Spirit-Fighters.” In The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings. Volume 1, God, edited by Andrew Radde-Gallwitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Origen. Origen: On First Principles, Reader’s Edition. Translated by John Behr. Oxford University Press, 2019. Pinnock, Clark H. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996. Rogers, Eugene F. After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2005. Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. The Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2004. Schellenberg, J. L. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Shults, F. LeRon, and Andrea Hollingsworth. The Holy Spirit. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 2008. Sunberg, Carla D. The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory and Gregory. Eugene: Pickwick 2017. Tertullian. Against Praxeas. Translated by Peter Holmes. Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325. Volume 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Arthur Coxe. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995. Ware, Kallistos. The Orthodox Way. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1979.

‌‌C hapter 13

A Hidden Life Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and the Spirit of God in an Age of Totalitarianism Robby Waddell

During the Second World War, Franz Jägerstätter, a young farmer from the mountain village of St. Radegund in Austria, defied the Third Reich by refusing to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. Motivated by his Christian faith and his personal convictions, Jägerstätter endured public ridicule, imprisonment, and eventually execution by guillotine at the hands of the German government. Since then, Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, as he is now known in the Catholic Church, has been declared a martyr and beatified—one step short of sainthood. While in prison, Franz corresponded with his wife Franziska, whom he affectionately called Fani. Their letters have been collected and published in Erna Putz’s Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, translated by Robert A. Krieg. The English translation also contains several more literary compositions by Franz including two poems, a letter to his godson/nephew, and numerous short essays covering his thoughts on life, politics, scripture, and his Catholic faith (e.g., sacraments, liturgy, and feast days). The Jägerstätters’ writings along with Gordon Zahn’s biography, In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter, served as the source material for A Hidden Life, a film written and directed by Terrence Malick.1 Originally, the movie was going to be titled Radegund for the hometown of the Jägerstätters. In a review for Crisis Magazine, Michael Rennier comments on the history behind the name of the village. 185

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St. Radegund, the patron saint of the village where Franz and his family live, was a humble serving girl known for her simplicity and goodness. She met her fate when she was attacked and killed by a pack of wolves while on a mission of mercy. She is said to have died while performing some minor task, perhaps walking through the woods to deliver bread to a neighbor in need. St. Radegund left no writings, wrote no books, and is generally forgotten by history except in a few village enclaves.2

The lives of St. Radegund and Bl. Franz epitomize the sentiment of the film’s title: A Hidden Life, which is a phrase that Malick borrowed from George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. The film concludes with this epilogue: “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”3 Although the lives of Radegund and Franz have been memorialized, countless others whose names are lost to history are the agents of truly unhistorical acts for which Eliot invites her readers (and Malick invites his viewers) to contemplate. Critically acclaimed for his philosophical filmmaking, Malick’s cinematic style elicits personal reflection on the meaning and significance of life.4 My goal in this chapter is twofold, first to examine Franz Jägerstätter’s religious and political convictions in his own words to discover what inspired his courageous commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience in the face of his certain demise. Secondly, I engage theologically with the narrative world created by Malick’s aesthetic masterpiece, focusing on its pneumatological features. Identifying the role of the Spirit in the film presents a challenge, in part because, as in real life, the Spirit’s work is subtle and implicit. As Killian McDonnell aptly notes, “The Holy Spirit cannot be objectified and viewed from a distance because, though distinct, the Spirit is not separable from the faith process by which an attempt to ‘define’ who the Spirit is.”5 For this reason, I have not attempted to write an explicit pneumatology of the film. Instead, I offer reflections on the beauty and value of created life, the inspiration of prophetic imagination, and the work of peacemaking—themes present in the film and, according to Christian theology, in the realm of the work of the Spirit. FRANZ JÄGERSTÄTTER: AN UNLIKELY MARTYR AND PROPHET An unspoken question that the film asks its viewers is this: Where did Franz obtain such strength of character and moral courage?6 No one in his



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village, apart from his wife, was supportive of his decision—not the mayor, his neighbors, his priest, or even his bishop. Franz’s childhood, which only receives passing references in the film, was unremarkable. He had been born outside of wedlock to a poor farm girl, Rosalia Huber, who never married Franz’s biological father. When Franz was ten, Rosalia married Heinrich Jägerstätter, who adopted Franz.7 His formal education amounted to eight years in a one-room schoolhouse, and his reputation was one of a rambunctious youth prone to getting into fights. Although Franz was, like everyone in St. Radegund, a Catholic; he wasn’t particularly pious. As a young adult, he had a daughter outside of marriage whom he and Franziska would later offer to adopt just before their marriage, though the girl’s maternal family declined. “According to local consensus,” Jim Forest notes, “the most important single factor attributing to bringing about a change in Franz (i.e., his conversion to a devout faith) was his marriage to Franziska.”8 Although the Jägerstätters were not unaware of Hitler’s rise to power in neighboring Germany, their lives in St. Radegund were quite idyllic—portrayed in the film by scenes of the couple frolicking with their children on the hillside or laying together in a field of thick green grass. Their rugged but simple farm life, as depicted by Malick, resides above the clouds in the high Austrian mountains. Multiple scenes in the film could be mistaken for a historical setting from the nineteenth century rather than the middle of the twentieth, except for Franz’s motorcycle which was an anomaly in the otherwise preindustrial countryside. While Franz had little inspiration from his surroundings for his stalwart resistance to the Nazis, there were a couple of voices who served as positive examples for him. In 1933, the bishop of Linz, Johannes Gföllner, spoke out boldly against the blatant racism and nationalism that fueled Nazism. Gföllner sent a pastoral letter to all churches in his diocese which read in part: “Nazism is spiritually sick with materialistic racial delusions, un-Christian nationalism, a nationalistic view of religion, with what is quite simply sham Christianity.”9 Later in 1937, he would declare in another correspondence, “It is impossible to be both a good Catholic and a true Nazi.”10 Gföllner died in 1941. Franz would later meet with his successor, Josephus Fliesser. Malick depicts this fateful meeting in the film. That scene is discussed in more detail below. In addition to Gföllner, one of the priests who served for a while in St. Radegund, Fr. Josef Karobath, was incarcerated for preaching a sermon against Nazism in 1940 and was later removed from the area. After his banishment, Franz would stay in touch with him and continued to revere him as a pastoral influence in his life. A defining event for Franz came in the form a dream he had in January 1938. In the dream, he saw a train with a powerful locomotive. The impressive train was especially attractive to the children. A voice spoke to him in the dream and said, “This train is going to hell.” Awakening, Franz shared

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the dream with his wife and reflected on it often. Franz interpreted the train as the Nazi propaganda machine aimed at the youth of the nation. Later that year, Germany would invade Austria without firing a shot. The annexation (Anschluss) was officially passed by popular vote, though, disregarding the wishes of his fellow citizens, Franz submitted the solidarity vote in St. Radegund against the Anschluss. In fear that his protest ballot may bring unwanted persecution to the village, his vote was left unrecorded by local officials. In complete contrast to Franz’s resistance, Cardinal Innitzer, the highest-ranking Catholic cleric in Austria at the time, published a statement of affirmation for the Anschluss, signing the valediction, with the words: “Heil Hitler.” The Anschluss legally turned Franz and his fellow Austrians into German citizens, making him a candidate for the draft. Twice Franz would receive notice to report for military training, in June and October (1940), though after brief stints he was released to return home and work on his farm. After returning from his second training session, Franz determined that he could not participate in armed combat for the Nazis. His short-term, noncombatant service in the German military raises the question if Franz was philosophically committed to nonviolent resistance in all wars or rather selectively opposed to fighting in Hitler’s war. Gordan Zahn reports that Franziska and Fr. Ferdinand Fürthauer, a priest from St. Radegund who had succeeded Fr. Karobath, claimed that Franz would have fought in an Austrian army against the Nazis if that had been an option.11 The possibility that Franz was ambivalent concerning violence as a legitimate form of resisting evil begs comparison with one his famous fellow inmates. First incarcerated in Linz on March 2, 1943, Franz was transferred to the Berlin-Tegel prison, where just one month before Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been imprisoned for plotting the assignation of Hitler. The famous German Protestant pastor and theologian had advocated publicly for pacifism and had been deemed an enemy of the state by the Nazis for avoiding military service. Notwithstanding the testimony of people close to him, it is not clear from his actions nor his writings whether Jägerstätter would have advocated the use of violence to stop the Nazis.12 Malick rightly leaves this question unanswered in the film. According to his biographer, there is no evidence that Franz was aware of anti-Nazi literature or organizations that existed in Austria.13 The source for his beliefs and convictions seem to derive from a combination of scripture, the Catholic catechism, the lives of the saints, and his own experience with God. In a letter to his godson, Franz wrote, “People who do not read will never be able to think for themselves, and hence they will become playground balls that others will kick around.”14 Later in the same letter he foreshadows his own eventual decision to resist the Nazis when he says, “our enemies can attack us with their forces, but they cannot take our heavenly home away



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from us. If we must daily undergo hardships and earn very little reward in this world, we could still become richer than millionaires, for the richest and most fortunate people are those who need not fear death.”15 With a provocative pun, Franz encourages his godson to value and trust in his religious education: “The catechism should always be our best comrade and guide [Führer] for all of life.”16 Franz’s essays were written in his own hand in four notebooks with another twelve essays on loose-leaf paper that cover an assortment of topics. The first notebook contains fourteen essays dealing with aspects of the Christian faith, for example humility, prayer, sin, eschatology, the Eucharist, love, etc. The second notebook opens with an account of his dream of the “train to hell.” These nine essays focus on the sociopolitical and ecclesial side effects of the Nazis ruling in Austria. In these essays, the prophetic imagination of Franz comes into view as he challenges the common cultural assumptions of his day. The third notebook includes a list of seven detailed questions, likely written as preparation for his fateful meeting with Bishop Fliesser. The fourth notebook and the only one penned from prison contains two sections. The first section is a journal of sorts, recording dates of interrogations or court appearances. The second section, titled What Every Christian Should Know, constitutes an essential Jägerstätterian catechism with 199 statements on Christian thought and practice. With few exceptions, he appears to have thematically followed the canonical order of the New Testament, though his numbering system is flawed because he skipped from 60 to 70. In the final twenty-two entries, he forgoes his commentary and resorts to copying passages of scripture, which he introduces with a heading summarizing its contents. What Every Christian Should Know could be categorized as a biblical theology. Not unlike the New Testament itself, the writings of Jägerstätter are unsymmetrized. Nevertheless, they contain all the essential elements of trinitarian belief and display an incipient pneumatology. His comprehension of ethical axioms, on the other hand, are on full display.17 I have selected four entries as a sampling of Franz’s beliefs that undergirded his life choices. In this first example his trinitarian belief is evident: “Christians are preordained to faith by God the Father, sanctified in baptism through the Holy Spirit, and called to obey the Son of God and to be sprinkled with his blood, that is, to be purified from sins and through Christ’s blood” (statement 169). Secondly, many of the statements discuss the nature and power of divine love, for example: “Love of enemies is not a weakness of personal character but a heroic power of the soul and the imitation of the divine model” (statement 6). Jägerstätter’s understanding of love as divine parallels the systematic theology of Sergius Bulgakov, who writes that love is not only a quality of God but the very being of God. This ontological significance is best understood in the light of Trinitarian dogma. “Hypostatic love, completing the trinity

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in unity, is the Holy Spirit. This is what makes possible the identification of God and love.”18 Thirdly, Franz identifies Christian hope for the afterlife as a source of courage in the present, for example: “Out of our belief in life beyond death there grows the courage for the right form of life on earth. This courage creates heroes” (statement 107). Finally, statement 187 epitomizes Jägerstätter’s nonviolent ethic: “The watchword of Christians amid conflict is not ‘Resist power with power,’ but ‘Resist power with patience and perseverance in faith.” Undeniably, Franz drew strength from his belief in and experience of God. The lives of Catholic saints also served as an inspiration for Franz. In his eschatological essay, Four Last Things (which was written before his imprisonment), he recounts a story of St. Augustine experiencing a mystical visitation in Hippo (northern Africa) of St. Jerome, who had just died in Jerusalem. In the vision, Jerome assures Augustine that the joys of heaven are infinite and immeasurable. For Augustine, the experience provided him indescribable peace and for Franz the ancient story did the same.19 Franz refers again to Augustine in one of his entries in What Every Christian Should Know: “St. Augustine says, ‘Pray without ceasing.’ This means: ‘Unceasingly yearn for eternal life from the One who alone is able to give it.’ We should offer up to God all our work, joy, and suffering. The spirit of prayer must live in us, even when we are not able to undertake special prayers because of our work. Then work as worship becomes our prayer” (statement 143).20 In one of his letters from prison in Linz, Franz mentioned to Franziska that books had been distributed to the inmates and that he had been fortunate enough to receive one containing the sermons of John Chrysostom and other saints.21 In addition to these direct references, Franz regularly mentions “the saints” as a collective whole. What is most notable is that, for Franz, “the saints” do not represent unattainable examples of piety or morality, but rather they serve as role models who exemplify achievable lives of devotion and holiness. Saintly living and sacrifice, according to Franz, is a life that every Christian should seek to experience. In his list of seven questions, Franz asks, “Shouldn’t we become even greater saints than the first Christians? . . . Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to learn from the lives of the saints so that we would know how the first Christian would have responded to today’s evil commands?”22 Jägerstätter believed in the power of prayer and in the efficacy of the sacraments while at the same time holding the conviction that the “grace of God . . . is effective in us only as long as we cooperate with this grace.” He continues, “if we do in our actions what is the opposite of what leads to holiness, then we shall not become saints even in thousands of years.”23 In statements like these, it is possible to see Franz’s life and witness not only as an example of martyrdom but also as an example of prophecy,



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calling his fellow Christians to repentance and action, not unlike the Hebrew prophets who often died for their faith and witness. THE BLESSED FRANZ JÄGERSTÄTTER ACCORDING TO TERRENCE MALICK The life of Franz Jägerstätter indisputably merited a biopic, and philosopher and filmmaker Terrence Malick was the perfect person to tell his story. Malick’s cinematic style has received significant attention from film scholars, philosophers, and theologians.24 After completing his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Harvard, Malick attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, though he never graduated due to a conflict with his supervisor. Despite having earned only a bachelor’s degree, Malick has taught philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he brings this philosophical acumen to bear on his filmmaking. According to his primary influence, Martin Heidegger, “Every thinker thinks only one thought.”25 For Malick, the “thought” that occupies his films is the existential question of the meaning of life (cf. Heidegger’s being-in-the-world). As a filmmaker, Malick garnered immediate attention in 1973 with his debut of Badlands—a film that he wrote, directed, and produced. His second film, Days of Heaven, which he also wrote and directed, won the 1978 Academy Award for Best Cinematography, cementing his reputation for aesthetic filmmaking. After a twenty-year hiatus, Malick burst back on the scene with The Thin Red Line, a Vietnam War film which he adapted from the 1962 novel of the same name by James Jones. In his epic drama The Tree of Life, released in 2011, Malick again explored the perennial question of the meaning of life. It contains a twenty-two-minute scene without any dialogue that recounts the major events in the history of the universe from the big bang to the beginning of organic life, including depictions of dinosaurs, early forms of hominids, and culminating with the life of one family, played by Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, and Sean Penn. Despite their critical acclaim, Malick’s films—a total of ten in the last 50 years—have only realized modest commercial success, failing to capture the attention of the average moviegoer. His films often contain meandering plotlines, and the character formation is left underdeveloped. Watching his films is like being guided in an exercise of mindful (Heideggerian) meditation as Malick reveals to his audience a glimpse into his own philosophical and spiritual reflections on life, death, and ultimate reality. Not since his Days of Heaven has Malick produced such a straightforward telling of a story as found in A Hidden Life, which is arguably his most Christian work to date. For a film that is two hours and fifty-four minutes, A Hidden Life contains a

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striking amount of silence creating a meditative experience for the audience. This is augmented by juxtaposition of minimal dialogue with breathtaking cinematograph, including picturesque scenes of the Austrian high country complemented by a musical score filled with violins and cellos. The aesthetics of the film draws the viewer affectively into its narrative world. Another feature of Malick’s style is his extensive use of voice-overs. In this case, they often contain the actual words of the Jägerstätters’ personal letters. As a cinematic device, a voice-over allows the director to juxtapose auditory and visual elements that do not necessarily correlate. For example, in one scene in which the audience hears Franziska reading one of her letters to Franz as he sits in prison, her voice and words are soft and sweet as she expresses concern for his well-being; however, the visual scene contains an audible, albeit muted, verbal attack against her from one of her fellow townspeople who is protesting Franz’s refusal to serve in the military. The dissonance of the scene enables Malick to display the competing intricacies of life and the multilayered complexity of human emotions. Malick frequently couples his use of voice-overs with a montage of discursive scenes, which further complicates the audience’s experience. “Through montage,” writes Steven Félix-Jäger, “film can display long periods of time passed in a matter of seconds or minutes. . . . So, unlike the plastic arts, film is able to frame entire sequential experiences instead of only snapshots of moments that can be contemplated abstractly.”26 For example, in a lengthy montage, Franz’s voice can be heard whispering a prayer that includes allusions to the Psalms. He prays, “You, my shepherd, you make me lie down in green pastures by the river of life. . . . Darkness is not dark to you” (cf. Psalms 23 and 139).27 By contrast, what is seen and heard during the prayer are images and sounds from inside the prison as Franz is interrogated and tortured. The montage also includes flashes of a field of wheat and a cloudy mountain peak. Toward the end of his prayer, Franz pleads, “Give me strength to follow you. Spirit, lead me; show me.” The next words are those of Franziska; now she prays (or laments), “Lord, you do nothing. Where are you? Why did you create us?” These moments of despair are paralleled in other parts of the film with equal expressions of hope. In another voice-over, Franziska is reading a letter to Franz: “My dear husband! Trust in the heart! If the Spirit that sustains us didn’t sustain the world itself, then everything would be out of kilter. Why would it abandon us? How could it?” Malick impressively captures the gambit of human emotions and, at the same time, is able to evoke them in his viewers. The only direct references to the Spirit in the film are Franziska’s encouragement that the Spirit will sustain them and Franz’s prayer, “Spirit, lead me; show me.” The Spirit is regularly identified in Christian scripture and theology as the giver and sustainer of life; however, prayers directed solely to the



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Spirit are relatively rare in Christianity. Christians typically pray to God the Father in the name of the Son and with the power or assistance of the Spirit. Prayers are also directed to the Father and/or Son to send down the Spirit. Although there are no biblical examples of prayers to the Spirit, the development of trinitarian dogmatics would justify the practice.28 For example, the Orthodox evening prayer begins with the stanza: “O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of life: Come and dwell in us, and cleanse us of all impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.” Despite the paucity of direct references to the Spirit in the film, there are pneumatological reflections that can be offered. I have organized my final observations around three aspects of the Spirit’s work: Life, Prophecy, and Peace. Spirit of Life While not as extensive as his “visual exegesis”29 of creation found in The Tree of Life montage, Malick’s breathtaking shots in this film of the Alpine Region of central Europe are comparable in majesty. The natural beauty of these scenes is no less than Edenic. More than a mere backdrop or scenery, the land functions as a character in the story. It, too, is part of God’s good and beautiful created order. As the Hebrew wisdom literature proclaims: God loves the land and resides in it (Wis. 1:7; 12:1). According to trinitarian theology, the Father created the world through the Son in the Spirit; therefore, as Jürgen Moltmann writes, “God is present in each of the beings he has created and in their community of creation. Everything living lives from ‘the source of life,’ the divine Spirit.”30 In another scene as the camera pans the countryside, a field comes into view with Franz sowing a crop as the belltower of his church rises in the background. The Jägerstätters and their neighbors are depicted as living a simple, albeit ideal existence. The unity of their agrarian community represents another expression of the Spirit of life. In multiple scenes, groups of people can be seen farming the land together. Social doctrine would identify this as solidarity, though in Christian community it’s called love. This sense of community predominates the opening scenes of the film. Other than the sounds of wind and water, mostly what is heard is the clatter of farm tools, the fellowship of friends and family as they share meals, and the laughter of the Jägerstätter family plays together. The categories of play and festivity have been used by theologians to express the way in which the Christian vision for a better world is realized amongst its practitioners.31 As Clark Pinoock writes, “This is why we humans love to play in the midst of the seriousness of ordinary life—play bespeaks eternity. Play is a gesture of hope. It takes us

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momentarily out of the realm of suffering and lets us glimpse deathless joy. It is a gesture of hope in the midst of ugliness and destruction.”32 The life of the community is disrupted when Franz declines government aid for his family and refuses to contribute to the veterans’ fund. It raises the suspicions of Mayor Kraus, who was increasingly frustrated at Franz’s objections to the war. Kraus’s behavior worsens as he erupts in racists and xenophobic spouts, eventually claiming: “Hitler is a new era. A new truth.” No one in that scene dared to contradict him. The peacefulness of the community continues to disintegrate as the Jägerstätter family begins to be ostracized and accusations are hurled, claiming that Franz is being unpatriotic and/or cowardly—neither of which is true. Franz loves Austria and mourns the loss of her independence. He is not afraid of death; he is afraid of living a life that is unfaithful to Christ because, from his perspective, an allegiance to Hitler would nullify his commitment to God. “The life of the Spirit,” writes Hegel, “is not the life that is afraid of death and keeps itself untouched by devastation but the life that endures death and maintains itself in it.”33 Spirit of Prophecy In Christian theology, the Spirit not only creates and sustains life, but it also inspires prophetic witness. “The task of prophetic ministry,” according to Walter Brueggemann, “is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”34 This includes speaking truth to power in public settings and bringing prophetic critique internally to the leaders of the faith community. The Hebrew prophets offered more correction to the kings and people of Israel than they did to their neighboring kingdoms. Franz’s life embodies this prophetic vocation in both directions. He maintained his resistance to swear allegiance to Hitler before his prison guards, his German attorney, and the Nazi military leadership. He equally promoted alternative perspective to the religious leaders within his church. In a poignant scene about half an hour into the movie, the Jägerstätters travel to the cathedral in Linz so Franz can meet with Bishop Josephus Fliesser. As church bells ring in the background, the couple gingerly walks through atrium. They make their way into the nave and practically sit on top of one another in a pew. During this time, the bishop’s voice can be heard delivering a sermon. “We must be strong. Stand firm. Learn the lesson of the blacksmith. No matter how hard the hammer strikes, the anvil cannot, need not, strike back. The anvil outlives the hammer.” As the sermon continues, the scene changes and the couple can be seen waiting and pacing outside the bishop’s office. The sermon continues, “That which is hammered on the anvil, takes its form, not only from the hammer, but the anvil, too.” When



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they meet, Franz asks the bishop, “If God gives us free will, we’re responsible for what we do, what we fail to do, aren’t we? If our leaders are not good, if they’re evil, what does one do? I want to save my life, but not through lies.” The bishop responds, “You have a duty to the Fatherland. The church tells you so. Do you know the words of the apostle? ‘Let every man be subject to the powers placed over him.’” Moving to a window and opening it so that the sound of church bells fills the room, the bishop sighs, “You hear those bells? They’re melting them, for bullets.” The scene cuts to Franz and Franziska leaving the cathedral. Franz sympathetically assesses the meeting: “I think he was afraid that I might be a spy. They don’t dare to commit themselves, or it could be their turn next.” In the following scene, Franz sits silently at his kitchen table as a neighbor defends the ecclesiarch. “We can’t blame the bishop for going along. He hoped, by doing it, that the regime would be more tolerant towards the Church. But now the priests are sent to concentration camps, church processions banded. We don’t have a say. What can we do?” The sermon illustration about the blacksmith and anvil could be interpreted as trope for Franz’s life. The Nazis are the hammer, and he is the anvil. He doesn’t strike back, but his life shapes his community, nonetheless. Though this is not the reading the bishop would have approved. His later allusion to Paul’s instructions about governing authorities reveals that he intended for Franz to adopt a position of nonresistance rather than a position of nonviolent resistance. The reception history of Romans 13:1–7 is mixed, including both the justification of totalitarian regimes and the renunciation thereof.35 Franz’s moral clarity and resistance to this line of thinking is astonishing. As Jim Forest records, “At the Second Vatican Council, Archbishop Thomas Roberts . . . recounted Jägerstätter’s life, pointing out that the heroic stand taken by this remarkable Austrian could not be credited to pastoral guidance from those leading the church in Austria or Germany or from the text of any existing Catholic catechism.”36 Contrary to the commonplace Christian acquiesce to national leadership, Franz adopted a stance that parallels the position held by many first-century Christians regarding the Roman Empire. As C. K. Barrett notes, “No more certain statement can be made about the Christians of the first generation than this: they believed themselves to be living under the immediate government of the Spirit of God.”37 On multiple accounts in his essays, Franz cites Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters.” If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not, and neither is the Führer. As he instructed his godson, the catechism is a legitimate leader (Führer) because it guides its adherents in the ways of Jesus Christ. Franz measured all aspects of his life according to this standard.

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Spirit of Peace In the Hebrew prophets and again in the Christian tradition, the eschatological vision is one of peace or shalom.38 Weapons of war are transformed into farming utensils, the gates of New Jerusalem are never shut, and the animal kingdom enjoins the new reality too as the wolf and the lamb lay down together and the lion eats hay like an ox. The Apostle Paul begins and ends each of his letters with exhortations of grace and peace. Before processing forward to receive the sacrament of bread and wine, Christians greet one another with these same words. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” He did not say, “Blessed are the peacekeepers.” Moltmann chides Hauerwas’s notion of a “peaceable kingdom” arguing instead that church of Christ is to be a peacemaking kingdom.39 Franz Jägerstätter’s conscientious objection is in alignment with Martin Luther King Jr.’s definition of nonviolent direct action, which, “seeks to create such a crisis and establish creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”40 The first time he verbalizes objections to serving in the war, Franz is speaking with his priest, Ferdinand Fürthauer. He says, “Father if they call me up, I can’t serve. We are killing innocent people. Raiding other countries, preying on the weak.” Franz continues, “Now the priests call them heroes, even saints—the soldiers, the doers. It might be that the other ones are the heroes. The ones who defend their homes against the invaders.” Abruptly, Fr. Ferdinand interrupts questioning Franz, “Have you spoken with anyone else? Your wife? . . . Your family?” Franz assures him that he hasn’t, and the cleric resumes his line of questioning, “Don’t you think you ought to consider the consequences of your actions—for them? You’d almost surely be shot. . . . Your sacrifice would benefit no one.” The assessment of the priest—that Franz’s refusal to serve in the German military would have no significant effect on the war while at the same time costing his family dearly—is echoed time and again throughout the film. Franz hears this message about the futility of his decision from a variety of characters including his court-appointed attorney and the ranking German officer who oversees his trial. While in prison, he is told that if he simply changes his mind and swears loyalty to Hitler, he will be set free. Franz profoundly replies, “But I am free.” In a metaphysical sense, this is true. Franz’s free will act demonstrates his autonomy or liberty. Not unlike the cross of Jesus, the ultimate act of turning the other cheek, Franz’s choice shows his willingness to die for love rather than kill for freedom. In the logic of George Eliot, unhistoric acts are not ineffective. In the case of Franz Jägerstätter, history would prove that his sacrifice; act of peacemaking was neither ineffective nor forgotten but has been celebrated by popes, chronicled



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in monographs, and now enshrined on the silver screen. Malick’s depiction of Jägerstätter offers a rejoinder to the line of thinking that a nonviolent life lived with integrity is pointless if its effects cannot be realized in measurable ways by others. CLOSING REMARKS Once again, Malick has succeeded in provoking his audience to reflection on the existential question of the meaning of life. In his review of the picture for Variety, film critic Peter DeBruge wrote: “Whether or not he is specifically referring to the present day, its demagogues, and the way certain evangelicals have once again sold out their core values for political advantage, A Hidden Life feels stunningly relevant as it thrusts this problem into the light.”41 DeBruge raises an important question about the state of contemporary Christian culture and its relationship to the dominant culture of America.42 While the challenges to truth and integrity are acute within evangelicalism, they are not restricted to that segment of the Church. In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year was post-truth, an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”43 One of the factors that has contributed to the promulgation of a post-truth worldview is the expansion of an exclusivist populism that promotes an ideology which “pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against . . . dangerous ‘others’ who are . . . depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice.”44 Literature and film are especially equipped to shape society through the power of stories and the inspiration of the imagination. As Chris Hedges asserts: Writers from Euripides to Russell Banks have used literature as both a mirror and the lens, to reflect back to us, and focus us on, our hypocrisy, moral corruption, and injustice. Literature is a tool to enlighten society about its ills. It was Charles Dickens who directed the attention of middle-class readers to the slums and workhouses of London. . . . It was Upton Sinclair who took us into the stockyards and shantytowns of Chicago in The Jungle.45

From a pneumatological perspective, Clark Pinnock offers this advice: “There is no formula or doctrine of the church’s role in society. . . . In prayer we envisage a new future, and we protest the world order as it is. We stand against darkness and invoke God’s light. Using the weapons of the Spirit, we pull down strongholds and join the uprising against the present disorder.”46

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NOTES 1. Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, trans. Robert A. Krieg (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009). Gordon Zahn, In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter, rev. ed. (Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1986). A Hidden Life, directed by Terrence Malick (Century City, CA: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2019). 2. Michael Rennier, “The Hidden Life of Bl. Franz Jägerstätter,” Crisis Magazine online November 28, 2019. 3. George Eliot, Middlemarch: Study of Provincial Life, 8 vols. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871–1872; Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2015), 387. Citations refer to the Dover edition (emphasis added). 4. For the ways in which narrative and film can inspire a pneumatological imagination and aid their audiences in the reflection on ultimate and existential questions see Steven Félix-Jäger, Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 160–73. 5. Kilian McDonnell, The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003), 213. As McDonnell notes, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber makes a similar observation: “the Spirit is not the I, but the between I and Thou.” Martin Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937), 39. McDonnell, The Other Hand of God, 214. 6. Franziska Jägerstätter would not die until shortly after her 100th birthday in 2013. Although it is her husband’s sacrifice that often absorbs the spotlight of public recognition, Malick does an honorable job depicting her strength and resolve which matched that her husband, even if her desire was for him to live. 7. The following summary of Franz’s early life follows Jim Forest, Introduction to Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, ix–xxiv. 8. Forest, Introduction, xiv. 9. Forest, Introduction, xvi. 10. Forest, Introduction, xvi. 11. Zahn, In Solitary Witness, 130. 12. In one of his notebooks, Franz refers to an early time when Austria had a right to national defense but that was no longer the case now that it had been absorbed into Nazi Germany. Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 210. 13. Zahn, In Solitary Witness, 131–32. 14. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 146. 15. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 149. 16. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 149. 17. What Every Christian Should Know can be found in Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 214–33. For the development of early Christian pneumatology from scriptural language to church dogma see McDonnell, The Other Hand of God, 11–20. 18. Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 314. 19. Franz had read this story in Martin Prugger, Lehr- Und Exempelbuch, 20th rev. ed. (Augsburg: Simon Buchfelner, 1724). According to Robert Krieg, on the back of



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the book jacket of Franz’s copy of the book was the words: “Read by Franz Jägerstätter in the winter of 1937–1938. I recommend that others read it.” Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 159, fn. 6. 20. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 227. 21. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 98. 22. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 209. 23. Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter, 199. 24. E.g., Robert Sinnerbrink, Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019); James Batcho, Terrence Malick’s Unseeing Cinema: Memory, Time and Audibility (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018); Steven Félix-Jäger, Spirit of the Arts, 162–67; Chris E. W. Green, “The Spirit of Time: Pneumatological Reflections on Malick’s Cinema (A paper Presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, 2017); Christopher B. Barnett and Clark J. Elliston, eds., Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick (New York: Routledge, 2016); Thomas Deane Tucker and Stuart Kendall Terrence, eds., Malick: Film and Philosophy (New York: Continuum, 2011); Steven Rybin, Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011). 25. Martin Heidegger, What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 50. In 1969, Malick published his own translation of Martin Heidegger, The Essence of Reasons: A Bilingual Edition, Incorporating the German Text of Vom Wesen Des Grundes, trans. Terrence Malick (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). 26. Félix-Jäger, Spirit of the Arts, 160. 27. A Hidden Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Century City, CA: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2019, Streaming. All quotations from the film derive from this version. 28. See Bulgakov, The Comforter, 386–90. 29. Anna C. Esmeijer, Divina Quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis (Amsterdam: Gorcum Assen, 1978); Paolo Berdini, The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 30. Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 136–37. 31. See Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). The pneumatological aspects of play was the focus of Jean-Jacques Suurmond, Word & Spirit: Towards a Charismatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). Also see Wolfgang Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). In the process of developing a pneumatological aesthetics, Steven Félix-Jäger questions whether play is a viable root metaphor, claiming that it is too broad because it can apply to all religions and that the biblical metaphors of Spirit Baptism and the pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh provide better foundational metaphors that are rooted in scripture. Félix-Jäger, Spirit of the Arts, 19–24. 32. Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: IVP, 1996), 43–44.

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33. G. W. H. Hegel, Theologian of the Spirit, trans. J. Michael Steward (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 101. 34. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 3. 35. The bishop’s use of Romans parallels that of Jeff Sessions, the former US Attorney General, who in the summer of 2018, cited Romans 13 as justification for the government of the United States separating children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Of course, during the time of the American Revolutionary War, those who fought for national independence from England rejected the notion that Romans 13 required unconditional obedience. See Allan A. Boesak, “What belongs to Caesar? Once again Romans 13,” in When Prayer Makes News, ed. Allan A. Boesak (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), 138–56. Robby Waddell, “A Hidden Life: Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and Romans in Age of Totalitarianism” (A paper Presented in the Bible and Film Section at the Annual Meeting of Society of Biblical Literature, 2020). 36. Forest, Introduction, x–xi. 37. C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (London: SPCK, 1947), 1. 38. E.g., Mic 5:4–5; Isa 2:2–4; 9:2–7; Col 3:25; Rev 21:25. 39. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 32–33. 40. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World. James M. Washington, ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 86. Citation is from King’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 41. Peter Debruge, “Film Review: ‘A Hidden Life,’” Variety (Variety, December 14, 2019), https:​//​variety​.com​/2019​/film​/reviews​/a​-hidden​-life​-review​-terrence​ -malick​-radegund​-1203220352​/. 42. See Leah Payne and Brian Doak, “The Christian Conspiracies That Keep Evangelicals on Trump’s Side: What ‘The Trump Prophecy’ Explains about the Religious Right’s Loyalty,” The Washington Post. October 19, 2018. 43. https:​//​languages​.oup​.com​/word​-of​-the​-year​/2016​/​#:​​~:​text​=Post​%2Dtruth​ %20is​%20an​%20adjective​,to​%20emotion​%20and​%20personal​%20belief. 44. Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell, Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 3. 45. Chris Hedges, The Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (New York: Nation Books, 2009), 97. 46. Pinnock, Flame of Love, 146.

BIBLIOGRAPHY A Hidden Life. Directed by Terrence Malick. Century City, CA: Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2019, Streaming. Albertazzi, Daniele and Duncan McDonnell. Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European Democracy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.



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Barnett, Christopher B. and Clark J. Elliston, eds. Theology and the Films of Terrence Malick. New York: Routledge, 2016. Barrett, C. K. The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition. London: SPCK, 1947. Batcho, James. Terrence Malick’s Unseeing Cinema: Memory, Time and Audibility. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018. Berdini, Paolo. The Religious Art of Jacopo Bassano: Painting as Visual Exegesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Boesak, Allan A. “What Belongs to Caesar? Once Again Romans 13,” in When Prayer Makes News, ed. Allan A. Boesak. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986. Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1937. Bulgakov, Sergius. The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Cox, Harvey. The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Debruge, Peter. “Film Review: ‘A Hidden Life,’” Variety. Variety, December 14, 2019. https:​//​variety​.com​/2019​/film​/reviews​/a​-hidden​-life​-review​-terrence​-malick​ -radegund​-1203220352​/. Eliot, George. Middlemarch: Study of Provincial Life, 8 vols. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1871–1872; Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2015. Esmeijer, Anna C. Divina Quaternitas: A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis. Amsterdam: Gorcum Assen, 1978. Félix-Jäger, Steven. Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. Forest, Jim. Introduction to Erna Putz, ed., Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, trans. Robert A. Krieg. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009, ix–xxiv. Green, Chris E. W. “The Spirit of Time: Pneumatological Reflections on Malick’s Cinema.” A paper presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, 2017. Hedges, Chris. The Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. New York: Nation Books, 2009. Hegel, G. W. H. Theologian of the Spirit, trans. J. Michael Steward. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. Heidegger, Martin. What Is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Heidegger, Martin. The Essence of Reasons: A Bilingual Edition, Incorporating the German Text of Vom Wesen Des Grundes, trans. Terrence Malick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969. King, Martin Luther, Jr. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World. James M. Washington, ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1986. McDonnell, Kilian. The Other Hand of God: The Holy Spirit as the Universal Touch and Goal. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003. Moltmann, Jürgen. Ethics of Hope, trans. Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012.

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Payne, Leah and Brian Doak. “The Christian Conspiracies That Keep Evangelicals on Trump’s Side: What ‘The Trump Prophecy’ Explains about the Religious Right’s Loyalty.” The Washington Post. October 19, 2018. Pinnock, Clark H. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit. Downers Grove: IVP, 1996. Prugger, Martin. Lehr- Und Exempelbuch, 20th rev. ed. Augsburg: Simon Buchfelner, 1724. Putz, Erna, ed., Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, trans. Robert A. Krieg. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2009. Suurmond, Jean-Jacques. Word & Spirit: Towards a Charismatic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994. Rennier, Michael. “The Hidden Life of Bl. Franz Jägerstätter,” Crisis Magazine online November 28, 2019. Rybin, Steven. Terrence Malick and the Thought of Film. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011. Sinnerbrink, Robert. Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Tucker, Thomas Deane and Stuart Kendall Terrence, eds. Malick: Film and Philosophy. New York: Continuum, 2011. Vondey, Wolfgang. Beyond Pentecostalism: The Crisis of Global Christianity and the Renewal of the Theological Agenda. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010. Waddell, Robby. “A Hidden Life: Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and Romans in Age of Totalitarianism.” A paper presented in the Bible and Film Section at the Annual Meeting of Society of Biblical Literature, 2020. Zahn, Gordon. In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter, rev. ed. Springfield: Templegate Publishers, 1986.

‌‌C hapter 14

Conclusion Collective Themes and Common Threads Steven Félix-Jäger

Images are perceptual representations that point beyond themselves. They can be visual (painting, projections, designs), mental (dreams, memories, concepts), or verbal (figures of speech),1 but in each case they are means for communicating realities that are not entirely (or even partially) graspable otherwise. The difficulties that surround communication compound infinitely when we talk about God who is wholly other and altogether ineffable. God has appeared to our senses (i.e., the burning bush, the audible voice of God, prophetic visions, etc.), but these theophanies are mere manifestations of God—they are not God, but incomplete images of God. Our awareness of God’s full image to humanity, is the incarnated God in Christ. We know God because we know Christ (Jn. 14:9), and we know Christ because the Spirit of truth has revealed him to us (1 Jn. 4:2–6). Since images point beyond themselves to other realities, the ineffable Spirit is, paradoxically, an image of the concrete Christ. Christ is perceptible and points to the imperceptible Father, but after the ascension and Pentecost, the imperceptible Spirit points back to the perceptible Christ. As God and image, both Christ and Spirit point beyond themselves to themselves—between their own intelligibility and ineffability, between immanence and transcendence. Knowing God constitutes a spiritual knowing, and growing in God entails the communion of our spirits to God’s. This whole affair is spiritual and thus not observable to our senses. As such, we use perceptible images by analogy to gain a sense of who the Spirit is and what the Spirit is like. And because God is infinite, endless images can help us understand the Spirit. In fact, 203

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the Bible uses many images to describe the Spirit. The Spirit is water (Joel 2:27–29, 1 Cor. 12:13, Jn. 19:34, 1 John 5:8) of whom we drink. The Spirit is anointing (Ex. 28:3, Isa. 11:1–3, 2 Cor. 1:21) who comes upon us. The Spirit is fire (Exo. 13:1, Matt. 3:11–12) who transforms and sanctifies us. The Spirit is covering (Exo. 13:1, Matt. 17:1–8) who overshadows us. The Spirit is counselor (Jn. 14:26, Jn. 15:26–30) who guides us and advocates for us. The Spirit is wind (Num. 11:31, Ex. 10:13, Jn. 3:8, Acts 2:24) who blows spontaneously. The Spirit is dove (Matt. 10:16) who, as innocence, restores ours to purity. If we take just these images together, we begin to form a complex understanding of the Spirit and the Spirit’s activity in the world. This biblical imagery shows that, in relation to humanity, the Spirit is expected to be active in all parts of life. The Spirit draws us to God, re-creates us, empowers us, and transforms us into temples of God. The Spirit’s presence is eschatological, reminding us of the past activities of God and infusing that remembrance with power to live for today. The Spirit constantly impels us to seek the transformation of the individual and community until God is seen face-to-face. The chapters of this volume can also be viewed as images—as portraits of the Spirit and tableau vivants of the Spirit’s work in the world. The book addresses the Spirit’s role in the process of filmmaking, characterizations of the Spirit in film, and characterizations of the Spirit-led life in film. The filmmakers of the films we engaged likely did not intend to cast a portrait of the Spirit through their art, but neither did wind, fire, water, or dove expect to reveal God. Because creation was fashioned by the Son and Spirit—the two hands of God2—we can expect to see sonship and spiritedness emerge as fingerprints. Part 1, “The Spirit & Nature of Film(making),” explores the Spirit’s role in film as an artform, and in the artist’s craft of filmmaking. The authors in this section look at how the Spirit works through narrative temporality (Green), music (Callaway), and traditioning (Lamp) in film, and how filmmakers tap into Spirit-led creativity in the construction of stories (Downing). Consistent throughout each of these chapters is the notion that God’s wider presence is near the work of human creativity, and that film, as an artistic form, utilizes its various conventions to help the viewer transcend his or her confined sense of self and the world.3 Chris E. W. Green puts philosophical concepts of time and narrative in dialogue with film theory and pneumatology, contending that Terrence Malick’s work daringly explores this relationship. Malick’s work suggests, according to Green, that we need paracletic guides in order to make sense of our lives. Being fully human is equivalent to the fullness of time, and we are led by the Spirit to this reality. Malick’s Tree of Life, To the Wonder, and Knight of Cups make up a trilogy that negotiates the concepts of nature and grace, and the reconciliation of time and memory. The films show how one’s guidance (or

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lack thereof) renders his or her sense of beauty, temporal fullness, and, to look at it through a theological lens, desire for the joy of the Lord. Exploring the genre of film musicals, Kutter Callaway demonstrates how music functions performatively as magic, metaphor, and a means that draws together characters in a shared narrative. In song, characters move from discord to harmony as they navigate the plot’s internal logic from social conflict to restored community. This is acutely evident in Mary Poppins where music bears a central narrative function in reconciling broken social structures. In particular, the film traces the domestic and social restoration of Mr. Banks. Music functions magically in the film as it helps characters overcome social tensions between work and play and seriousness and fun. It even moderates tensions between social structures like male and female and working class and upper class. Music also functions metaphorically as it symbolizes a possible reality that is yet to come. Finally, the musical event is the means that brings about this reality. This can all be read as a theological encounter with the Spirit where music is a proleptic inbreaking of what is to come. Not unlike the Spirit, Mary Poppins was carried into the story by disruptive winds that brought about renewal and restoration. Jeffrey S. Lamp argues that the Spirit-inspired process of biblical traditioning, when source material is appropriated to create new meaning, is akin to how Martin Scorsese handles his 2019 documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. The documentary follows Dylan’s 1975–1976 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, but adds some notable fictitious scenes and characters in order to tell the story in a way that ties it more directly to our contemporary context. Just as the Spirit is active in biblical traditioning in order to tell God’s living story, which is only known when the end result is evident, so does Scorsese guide the viewer to a fuller interpretation of Dylan’s story that is also emblematic of the tour’s purpose to expose and explore the failures of American mythology. In her chapter, Crystal L. Downing utilizes Dorothy Sayers’s theological understanding of creativity and applies it to the film Stranger than Fiction. Sayers views the imago dei as emulating the divine creativity found in the Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit participate together in every creative act, and each takes on a particular role in creation. The Father can be likened to the Creative Idea, the Son is like Creative Energy, and the Spirit is like Creative Power. Sayers sees these creative modes present in every creative act, and creative people, Christian or not, participate in this sort of process. Harold Crick, the protagonist of Stranger than Fiction, confronts this process head-on by questioning and eventually submitting to the will of his creator (author Karen Eiffel). Theologically, we can see the creator’s plan as the Creative Power of the Spirit, and we can see our own agency in God’s creative actions through an intricate relationship between freewill and determinism.

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Part 2, “Spirit Figures” looks at particular characters that demonstrate qualities congruent with the Spirit. Consistent throughout these chapters is the Johannine concept of Spirit as paraclete. While Félix-Jäger and Sanders emphasize the paracletic notion of advocacy in their respective films, Estrada-Carrasquillo emphasizes the paraclete’s hospitality and guidance. Delgado’s chapter functions transitionally between parts 1 and 2 as it notices both a paracletic character and another character who is led by the Spirit. Delgado focuses on the Spirit’s grieving and the restorative justice that ensues. Taken all together we get a complex sense of the Spirit as a selfless, advocating, empowering, and hospitable force that leads people to compassion, justice, and reconciliation. Steven Félix-Jäger looks at the genre of superhero fiction, arguing that Wonder Woman is uniquely a Spirit figure rather than a Christ figure. Because Superman, the first comic book superhero, was written as the quintessential Christ figure, Christic qualities have become standard for many heroes throughout superhero fiction. Yet Wonder Woman, which is evident in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman films, displays paracletic qualities such as advocacy, influence, and self-denial that render her a Spirit figure. This selfless characterization stands in contrast to the consumerist culture of the West that perpetuates greed, self-obsession, and power dynamics. Wonder Woman, however, sees living for others as the true mark of humanity. Considering Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, Lucia Sanders argues that Samwise could be looked at as a Spirit figure counterpart to Frodo, the Christ figure. After creating a biblical profile of a paraclete utilizing exegetical tools, Sanders compares this profile to that of Samwise, concluding that Samwise demonstrates the characteristics of gift, paraclete, and empower-er. These films allow viewers to visualize the pertinent role the Spirit figure plays in the life of the protagonist. Analogously, we should ask if we are allowing ourselves to be guided and supported by the help of an advocate in our lives. Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo offers a pneumatological reading of In the Heights, that looks at Abuela Claudia as a hospitable, communal, voice of wisdom. Although Abuela Claudia has only a supporting role in the musical, Estrada-Carrasquillo argues that she grounds the story as the common thread throughout the local Latina community, or barrio. In one scene in particular, several of the families gather at her house for dinner, and Abuela Claudia— the clear matriarchal figure—mediates the group by bringing them together and guiding them through conflict. Like John’s paraclete, Abuela Claudia both helps and convicts her loved ones through domestic interventions. Like the Spirit, abuelas stand between our ancestors and our future, and guide us by their wisdom.

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D. Coleby Delgado argues that looking at Te Kā and Te Fiti together as a Spirit figure, gives us a fuller understanding of the Spirit-led life that includes restorative justice and ecological liberation. Rather than looking at Te Kā as Te Fiti’s vengeful, spurned counterpart, we can look at her as being violated by an oppressive patriarchal and hegemonic system (embodied by Maui), characteristic of what frequently happens to both women and land. Just as the Spirit can be grieved, we can see Te Kā as a victim and devastation as a consequence to her suffering. Both Te Kā and Te Fiti represent the Spirit as the power that calls and convicts, and grieves when there is injustice. We can live a Spirit-led life, like Moana does in the film, when we partner with the Spirit to restore justice, bringing about reconciliation and ecological liberation. Finally, part 3, “The Spirit-led Life” discusses various filmic portrayals of protagonists that are led by the Spirit. On the one hand, Le and Morris explore the leading of the Spirit towards growth in everyday life. In particular, Le looks at how the Spirit leads us toward healing, and Morris looks at how the Spirit helps us embrace change during critical points in life. Sudiacal and Waddell, on the other hand, consider the Spirit’s leading through moments of crisis. Sudiacal contends that the Spirit speaks even in silence, and Waddell shows that sometimes the Spirit will lead us to speak prophetically to power. Taken all together, we see that being led by the Spirit produces growth and flourishing, but also sacrifice and a sense of contentment in the midst of great pain. The Spirit leads us through every aspect of life, which includes the highs and the lows. “Joey” Alan Le sees a parallel with the magical realism of Disney’s Encanto and the Spirit-led life. Le contends that as the film resolves, viewers are given a glimpse of what it might look like to live in, with, and by the Spirit in a community of love. The encanto of the story, symbolized through a burning candle, gives each member of the Madrigal family unique gifts that they then utilize to strengthen the community. Abuela Alma, however, began to view the gifts as status-making, and was disappointed that Mirabel did not receive a special ability. It turns out that Mirabel was given the spiritual gift of empathy, which allowed her to bring the family back together. Theologically Mirabel can be read as being led by the Spirit to bring healing and wholeness back to the family. The encanto in the film functions like the Spirit that replaces the divide between ability and disability with mutual reciprocity. Gaye Williams Morris asks what the Spirit’s role is in coming of age stories like Lady Bird. For Morris, this question can be fleshed out through the Unitarian Universalist concept of “Spirit of Life.” This concept does not see the Spirit accompanying people as mere protection against moral weakness. Rather, the Spirit helps shape their actions and moral decisions throughout their lives. The Spirit brings people to a deeper awareness of their own connectedness into a broader community. Coming of age stories consist of

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hard-learned lessons, and one of the lessons Christine, protagonist of Lady Bird, learned concerns the balance of embracing change while holding on to those bonds you’ve made with what’s being left behind. The French film Des Hommes et des Dieux, poses the question how can a person be led by the Spirit when the Spirit is silent? The film traces the events of a group of Trappist monks in war-torn Algeria who sacrificially stayed to help their community of peaceful Muslim residents in the face of destruction by Islamic terrorists. Sid Sudiacal states that the monks’ very act of submission is a sign of their deification, and the means for hearing the Spirit of God in the midst of silence. As we grow sensitive to the Spirit of God in silence, we learn how to respond in moments of suffering and crisis. Finally, Robby Waddell considers the life and letters of Franz Jägerstätter as recounted in Terrence Malick’s film A Hidden Life. Waddell contends that Jägerstätter’s religious and political convictions for nonviolence and peacemaking could be understood as Spirit-led. In his writings, Jägerstätter demonstrates a prophetic imagination that challenges the dominant Nazi ideology of his day. As the film unfolds, the protagonist’s resistance leads to his execution. Jägerstätter’s unwavering stance concerning nonviolence demonstrates an implicit pneumatological commitment to life, which is expressed by the promotion of his agrarian community, prophecy, which is evidenced by his speaking truth to power, and peace, which is demonstrated by his efforts toward peacemaking. Many other themes are present in all of the films discussed, but we intentionally looked for the Spirit in film believing that we can and should look for the Spirit in all things. Throughout these chapters we get the traces of a pneumatology that sees the Spirit as inspiring filmmakers, advocating for and guiding people in every facet of life. These sketches show us an ineffable God that’s yet nearby. We may not be able to fully describe or comprehend God, but we know God’s Spirit is present among us, guiding, shaping, and transforming us. We also know that this mysterious God is the same Spirit of Christ, so when we come to know the Spirit more, we know Christ better. So as we look for the Spirit in film, we come to know God more. And when we emulate the God we’ve come to know, we conform more and more to the image of Christ. In other words, we are formed spiritually when we watch films through Spirit-saturated lenses. We hope this volume inspires you to consume these films anew, and to forever recognize the presence and work of the Spirit in all things. After all, the Spirit glows where it wills!

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NOTES 1. W. J. T. Mitchell, “What Is an Image?” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1984), 505. 2. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.20.1. In Andrew Raddee-Gallwitz, Ed., The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writing, Vol. 1: God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 34. 3. This is the main thesis of Robert K. Johnston’s, God’s Wider Presence: Reconsidering General Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies, 4.20.1. In Andrew Raddee-Gallwitz, Ed. The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writing, Vol. 1: God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Johnston’s, Robert K. God’s Wider Presence: Reconsidering General Revelation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014. Mitchell, W. J. T. “What Is an Image?” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation. Vol. 15, No. 3 (1984), 503–37.

Index

Abuela Claudia, 99–109 abuelita theology, 99, 105–6, 108 apophatic theology, 173, 179

Encanto, 99, 133–146, 207

belonging, 76, 106, 134, 140–45 breath, 35, 125, 153–54

Gerwig, Greta, 151, 156–58, 160–62 grieving, 17, 106, 114, 120, 122, 153, 206–7

Christ figure, 2–3, 72–77, 79–81, 86–87, 114, 117, 206 coming of age, 151–52, 161–62, 207 community, 32–34, 86–87, 99–103, 109, 121, 134–36, 138–40, 144–46, 156–58, 193–96, 204–8 compassion, 17–18, 139, 144, 151, 158–59, 163 deification, 168, 176–78, 208 Des Hommes et des Dieux, 167–79 Disney, 25–26, 29, 114, 117–23, 125– 27, 133, 207 displaced, 134, 136–38, 146 divine hiddenness, 168, 171–72 Dylan, Bob, 41–52, 205 ecological liberation, 114, 119–21, 124–27, 207 empowerment, 2, 76, 79, 85, 93–97, 106, 121–22, 133, 136, 139, 146, 152, 176, 204, 206

Frodo, 85–95

Hart, David Bentley, 11–13, 48–49, 137 A Hidden Life, 185–97 Holy Spirit, 4–5, 49, 55–57, 59–60, 71–72, 86, 106–9, 114–15, 125–27, 133, 137–39, 144, 151–55, 168, 174– 75, 186, 189–90; as advocate, 72, 74, 76–77, 79–81, 88, 95, 107–8, 154, 204, 206; as comforter, 77, 89–91, 107, 157, 176, 193; as convicter, 76, 89, 91–92, 107–8, 114, 120–21, 125, 134, 143, 188, 190, 206–8; as counselor, 75–77, 80, 89–91, 204; as creative power, 57–58, 60–61, 65–66, 117, 158–59, 205; as gift, 17, 71–72, 86–88, 95, 134–46, 153–55; as host, 136–38; as paraclete, 75, 77–78, 80, 85, 88, 90–91, 95, 99, 106–8, 154, 176, 206; as wisdom, 72, 75, 79–80, 91, 99–101, 104–6, 108–9, 206; as witness, 76, 90, 107, 154, 194 211

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imago Dei, 58–61, 205 In the Heights, 99–109, 206 ineffable, 115, 175, 203, 208

prophetic, 2–4, 44, 76, 93, 106, 141, 145–46, 186, 189, 191, 194, 196, 203, 207–8

Jägerstätter, Franz, 185–97, 208

reconciliation, 17, 66, 76, 114, 120, 123–25, 142, 159, 204, 206–7 restorative justice, 114, 120, 123–36, 206–7 Rolling Thunder Revue, 41–50 Roman Catholic, 105, 116, 142, 151–52, 154–58, 160, 185, 187–88, 190, 195

kataphatic theology, 115, 173 kingdom of God, 36, 49, 107, 153 Knight of Cups, 13–16, 204 Lady Bird, 151–63 Life, Spirit of, 35, 137, 151, 163, 174, 176, 193–94 The Lord of the Rings, 85–86, 206 magical realism, 30, 134–35, 207 Malick, Terrence, 9–19, 185–97 marginalization, 134, 141, 145 Mary Poppins, 25–36, 205 messianic, 72–74, 121, 206–7 The Mind of the Maker, 57–66 Miranda, Lin Manuel, 99, 101, 104 Moana, 113–27, 207 Moltmann, Jürgen, 75, 174, 193, 196 music, 10, 12, 25–38, 42–44, 99, 103, 156–57, 192, 204–6; as magic, 30–31; as metaphor, 31–32; as means, 32–33 nonviolent civil disobedience, 185–86, 188, 190, 196–97, 200 Peace, Spirit of, 196–97 Pentecost, 60, 134, 136, 142, 144– 45, 154, 203 Pentecostal, 1, 4, 106, 109, 133–35, 139–40 Pinnock, Clark, 174, 197 presence, 17, 19, 32, 35–36, 49–50, 72, 76, 86, 102–3, 106, 115–18, 121, 126–27, 134, 151–54, 167, 169, 176–78, 204, 208

Samwise, 85–95, 206 Sayers, Dorothy, 55–66 Scorsese, Martin, 41–50, 56, 205 self-disclosure, 116–17 “Spirit of Life” (hymn), 152, 157–58 Spirit figure, 3, 72, 75–79, 81, 85–87, 91–92, 94–95, 114, 127, 206–7 Spirit-led, 3, 109, 114, 125, 127, 152, 163, 204, 207–8 Stranger than Fiction, 55, 62, 64–66, 205 sueñito, 100, 104 superhero fiction, 72–74, 77, 206 Superman, 73–74, 80, 206 Tarkovsky, Andrey, 10–12 Te Fiti/Te Kā, 113–14, 119–27, 207 To the Wonder, 13, 15–16, 18 tradition, 2, 41–50, 86, 108, 114, 125, 127, 153, 157, 171, 175, 196, 204–5 trappist monk, 168, 177–78, 208 The Tree of Life, 11–14, 16, 191, 193, 204 Trinity, 1, 3, 58, 66, 75, 77, 87, 106, 114–15, 152, 189, 205 welcome, 120, 134, 139, 142–45 Wonder Woman, 71–81, 206

About the Editors and Contributors

Chris E. W. Green, PhD, is professor of public theology at Southeastern University and the director for St Anthony Institute of Theology, Philosophy, and Liturgics. He’s written many articles and books including All Things Beautiful, Sanctifying Interpretation, The End Is Music, and Surprised by God. Steven Félix-Jäger, PhD, MFA, is associate professor and chair of the Worship Arts and Media program at Life Pacific University. An exhibiting artist, songwriter, and producer, Félix-Jäger is also the author of Renewal Worship, Spirit of the Arts, Art Theory for a Global Pluralistic Age, Pentecostal Aesthetics,  With God on Our Side, and of numerous journal articles about art, aesthetics, worship, and theology. Kutter Callaway, PhD, is the William K. Brehm Chair of Worship, Theology, and the Arts, and associate dean of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. Dr. Callaway holds two PhDs, one in theology and one in psychological science. He is the author of numerous books, including Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue,  Watching TV Religiously, and Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience. D. Coleby Delgado, PhD, is the Bishop James Mills Thoburn Chair of Religious Studies and assistant professor of history and religious studies, as well as affiliate faculty in Black studies and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Allegheny College. Dara’s research interests include race, gender, and popular culture in American religious life. Her research has been funded by the AAUW Dissertation Fellowship, and she has written about Pentecostals/Pentecostalism in scholarly journals, edited volumes, and in popular news outlets.

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About the Editors and Contributors

Crystal Downing, PhD, is co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton, IL. Her first book, Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers, was honored with an international award in 2009, and her most recent book, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers (2020), was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week.” Her other three books, on faith and culture, are required reading in multiple seminaries and universities. Wilmer Estrada-Carrasquillo, PhD, serves as the director of the Center for Latino Studies and as assistant professor of practical theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. Wilmer has written two monographs and many articles that study the intersection of faith, life, and culture. Wilmer lives in Cleveland, TN with Laura and their three daughters—Kalani, Mía, and Valeria. Jeffrey S. Lamp, PhD, is professor of New Testament and instructor of environmental science at Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma. His primary research and publishing interests are in the field of ecotheology, and more recently, Bob Dylan studies. He has authored or co-edited six books and also serves as the editor of Spiritus: ORU Journal of Theology. “Joey” Alan Le, PhD, serves as director of spiritual formation at First Covenant Church, Oakland. His interest in the Holy Spirit’s creation of beauty in the world through justice leads his research toward theological aesthetics, biblical and social justice, human rights, joy, human flourishing, and pneumatology. He co-hosts The Kingsmen Podcast, a forum for discovering God in movies. Gaye Williams Morris, PhD, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. She served the Augusta Georgia UU congregation for 6 years before moving to the Outer Banks in 2019. She is an adjunct instructor for Augusta University’s Department of Communication. Gaye is a community minister affiliated with the Oak Ridge, TN, UU congregation, and also is the secretary/ treasurer of the UU Justice Ministry of North Carolina. She has published two books on theology and film. Lucia M. Sanders, PhD candidate, teaches biblical studies as assistant professor at Life Pacific University in San Dimas, CA, and is co-editor of A Scripture Index to Rabbinic Literature. She is currently exploring the role of experience within Ecclesiastes’ theological construction in her dissertation. Sid D. Sudiacal, PhD, is a Filipino-Canadian scholar living in Hamilton, ON. He received a PhD in Christian theology from McMaster Divinity College.

About the Editors and Contributors

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His dissertation examines the role of disgust in the Donatist Controversy. His research interests include Roman North African Christianity, religious violence, pop culture, emotions, and the intersection between history, theology, and psychology. Robby Waddell, PhD, is professor of New Testament and early Christianity; and director of the Global Pentecostalism Center at Southeastern University. He has written The Spirit of the Book of Revelation, co-edited Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies, Spirit and Story, and Pentecostals in the Academy, along with numerous journal articles on biblical hermeneutics and Pentecostalism.