ENDTIME ISSUES NEWSLETTER No. 112:

“MEL GIBSON’S SLAUGHTER OF CHRIST ”

Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D.,

Retired Professor of Theology, Andrews University

The writing of this newsletter began in Hong Kong, continued in Tacoma, Washington, and ended up at home in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Thank God for the invention of lap top computers that make it possible to continue writing while travelling in different parts of the world.

Sharing my ministry in different parts of the world, offers unique challenges and rewards. It is a constant challenge to meet the spiritual needs of our Adventist believers in different parts of the world. Such challenges can only be met by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. It is rewarding to see how the proclamation of Biblical truths enriches the understanding and religious experience of our people.

HONG KONG RALLY: FEBRUARY 13-15, 2004

Every trip to a foreign country is a learning experience for me. This was especially true of my visit to Hong Kong, a city of six million people, all stacked together in high rise buildings. What I saw and heard surpassed my expectations. I was surprised to learn that Hong Kong is the third major financial and commercial center in the world, after New York and London.

In theory, Hong Kong is under the administration of the Chinese communist government, but in practice, it is the most capitalistic city in the world. Business seems to affect every aspect of the life of the people. This is evident not only in the business reports that dominates the daily TV news, but in the obsession of most people to make money, by working at two or more jobs. I was told that most people in Hong Kong work 60 or more hours a week in order to maintain a high living standard. Truly it can be said that the Hong Kong population desperately needs the rest and renewal of the Sabbath.

The intense working schedule affects the religious life of our Adventist members, especially because some are expected to work or to go school even on Saturday. This poses a problem for Sabbath observance. For a few believers Sabbathkeeping has become a matter of fitting church attendance in their busy working schedule. In my Sabbath messages I attempted to help our members recapture the biblical vision of the Sabbath as a 24 hours day in which we give priority to God in our thinking and living.

Our church leaders were especially thankful for the 10 PowerPoint presentations I delivered, because they felt met an urgent need. The response of our believers was truly marvellous. An indication is the many email messages they sent me to express their appreciation. Many of them were most eager to purchase my books, CD-ROMs, and DVD, which I offered at a substantially discounted price. If sales are any indication of the interest, then the response in Hong Kong was the best I have ever had, because we had the largest distribution of my publications and recordings.

Our Chinese Adventist members face a unique challenge in sharing the Sabbath message, because in their calendar Saturday is denominated as the sixth day (star cycle 6) and Sunday as the seventh day of the week. Joshua Chiu, a bright young Chinese young man, emailed to me some Chinese calendars with the weekdays given in both Chinese and English. I intended to post a typical Chinese calendar, but unfortunately my computer does not recognize the Chinese characters.

The deceptive Chinese calendar with Saturday as the sixth day and Sunday as the seventh day was apparently introduced by the Jesuits who evangelized China. The outcome of this deception is that the average Chinese thinks of Sunday as the seventh day and calls our Adventist church “The Sixth Day Church.” As you can imagine, this widely accepted deception makes it difficult for the average Chinese to accept the Sabbath as the biblical seventh day.

The attempt to legitimize Sunday as the biblical Sabbath by designating it as the seventh day of the week in calendars, is nothing new. Calendars published in Western European countries with the days of the week given horizontally, usually show Monday as the first day and Sunday as the seventh day of the week.

In recent years calendars with Sunday as the seventh day of the week, have appeared also in the United States. In 1985 I bought for $5.00 through Christianity Today, the following calendar that boldly affirms “God Seventh Day is Sunday.”

In his Pastoral Letter “Dies Domini—The Lord’s Day,” the Pope Himself attempts to make Sunday the Biblical Sabbath, by applying to Sunday the biblical references to the Sabbath. For example, the Pope says: “Sunday is the day of rest because it is the day ‘blessed’ by God and ‘made holy’ by Him, set apart from the other days to be among them, ‘the Lord’s Day.’” (paragraph 14). Nowhere the Scripture suggests that God blessed Sunday and made the day holy. This deceptive method is designed to make Sunday a biblical institution rooted in the Sabbath commandment.

The meetings in Hong Kong were held in three locations. On Sabbath morning we met in the gymnasium of our Hong Kong Adventist College—a lovely campus with about 500 secondary and college students. The 800 chairs of the gymnasium were filled with members who came from different parts of the country. On Sabbath afternoon we had a great rally at the Kowlon SDA Church in Hong Kong—a beautiful church that accommodates about 600 people. The attached pictures gives you an idea of the church and congregation. On Friday and Sunday the meetings were held at the Bible auditorium located in the Conference building. About 200 members, including the theology students, registered and attended all the lectures. They received credit and a special certificate.

The schedule of my lectures reflected the hard-working habits of most people in Hong Kong. Only a 5 minutes break was planned between each lecture. I pleaded for leniency by allowing a 15 minutes break to give me a change to drink and catch my breath. I spoke about 7 hours each of the three days. At the end of the last PowerPoint presentation on Sunday evening, I felt like a totally squeezed lemon. I dropped on my bed still dressed and I slept for the next two hours, oblivious to my surroundings. I soon recovered from the grueling schedule and I left Hong Kong with a deep sense of gratitude to God for granting me the opportunity to minister to the spiritual needs of our brothers and sisters in Hong Kong. Let us pray that God may enable our members in Hong Kong through His Spirit to hold fast to their faith and share it in their materialistic society.

ENDTIME ISSUES NEWSLETTER No. 112:

“MEL GIBSON’S SLAUGHTER OF CHRIST”

Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D.,

Retired Professor of Theology and Church History

Andrews University

Several readers of my last newsletter (No. 111) felt that my comments on Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ lacked credibility because I had not seen the movie. The criticism has some validity, though reading penetrating reviews of a book, or of any artistic production, often provide valuable insights overlooked by the casual reader or viewer. In fact, if we were to ask 100 viewers of the movie: What biblical errors and Catholic heresies did you detect in the film, chances are that 95% would reply “None.” The reason is that the average person lacks both the biblical and historical knowledge needed to evaluate its accuracy.

A proof is the comments of those who saw the movie, including Catholic and Protestant church leaders. The vast majority acclaim the movie as the most accurate reenactment of Christ’s Passion. The truth is that the movie is a gross misrepresentation of Christ’s Passion because it contains many glaring errors and the traditional Catholic view of the atonement. Gibson himself admits that his movie is largely based, not on the Gospels, but on the visions of two Roman Catholic nun-mystics, St. Anne Catherine Emmerich and Mary of Agreda. My point is that viewing a religious movie, without knowing the biblical and historical facts, can lead uninformed people to accept as fact what in reality is fiction.

To silence the criticism and to do justice to the review you are about to read, I decided to make time in my busy schedule to view the movie. Thus, on Catholic Ash Wednesday, February 25, I went to see the film at the Celebration Theater in Benton Harbor, Michigan. This was the first time in my life (66 years old) that I stepped in a movie theater. I would have preferred to rent the movie and view it in my home. This would have made it possible for me to stop the movie whenever I needed to jot down some observations. Unfortunately, at this time the movie is not available at video stores.

The best word that I can think of to describe the impact of the movie on myself is: “Shocking.” What I saw is a hundred times worse than the most negative reviews I read. From a biblical perspective, the movie contains numerous glaring errors designed to promote the Catholic view of the Passion and of the redemptive role of Mary, as co-redeemer with Christ. What shocked me most is the relentless torture of Christ’s body. The brutality of flogging first with switches and then with cat-o-nine-tails, blows out of proportion the physical suffering of Christ in order to promote the Catholic imitation of His suffering as a way of salvation.

The movie is truly a blood bath, where Jesus body is constantly beaten, whipped, kicked, spit on, and slapped. Christ’s flesh is literally flayed with metal-tipped whips by sadistic Roman soldiers who compete among themselves for inflicting the most devastating blows. In fact, after the first flogging, Mary attempts to clean the flesh and blood lying on the pavement of Pilate’s courtyard. By the time Christ reaches Golgotha, his body is so mangled, bruised, and disfigured that it looks like a sausage coming out of a meat grinder. A medical report I read suggests that Christ lost between four to five pints of blood during the torture. This means that he hardly had any blood left by the time he was crucified.

While the Romans and Jews killed Jesus once, Gibson in his movie succeeds in killing Jesus a hundred times over. In view of its sadistic content, the movie can rightly be titled: “Mel Gibson’s Slaughter of Christ.” No SUPER MAN could have endured the blows inflicted to Christ in the movie, including being thrown off a bridge while bound to a huge 3-inch-thick chain, strong enough to pull a train. It surprises me that Gibson never went to see the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome, where the alleged chains of Peter’s imprisonment are displayed. Those chains are four times smaller than the ones used in the movie.

Outstanding Artistic Qualities

From a cinematographic perspective, the movie has outstanding artistic qualities. The characters look real. The Jews, the Roman soldiers, Pilate, his wife Claudia, the disciples, are all dressed in the costumes of the times. Mary looks more like a medieval nun than a first century Jewish woman. The slow motion whipping of Jesus accompanied by soft Gregorian chant stirs up deep emotional responses. Again, the slow nailing of Jesus body on the Cross, enable the viewer almost to feel the excruciating pain inflicting by each blow. The darkness and the earthquake that accompanied Christ’s death are very real. The same is true of the splitting of the Temple and its partial collapse. The visual effects reveal unsurpassed artistry. There is no question in my mind that Mel Gibson deserves an oscar, especially for the brilliant relentless brutality of the movie.

The movie raises important questions that I will attempt to address in this review. What led Gibson to produce such a bloody and gruesome Passion of Christ that blatantly misrepresents the Evangelists account of His trial and execution? Since the blood factor is minimal in the Gospel, where did Gibson get his information and inspiration? Can such a bloody, gruesome, and gory misrepresentation of Christ’s suffering and death be biblically justified and shown to young people? Is it not idolatrous to portray the Divine Son of God in a way that will distort the worship experience of millions of Christians for generations to come?

Billy Graham himself acknowledges that “Every time I preach or speak about the Cross, the things I saw on the screen will be on my heart and mind” (“What Others Are Saying,” http://www.passionchrist.org). If a preacher like Billy Graham will be permanently influenced by Gibson’s distorted portrayal of Christ’s Passion, will not millions of average Christians unfamiliar with the Gospels’ narrative “exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom 1:23)?

The fact that some Protestant church leaders accept Gibson’s Catholic view of Christ’s Passion causes one to wonder: What impact will the film have on the future relationship between Catholics and Protestants? Will Protestants gradually adopt the Catholic devotion and imitation of the Passion as a way of salvation? Will Protestants unconsciously come to view Mary in the role portrayed in the film as a partner in Christ’s redemption? Moreover, how will the movie affect the Christian attitude toward the Jews, in view of the fact all the Jewish people shown in the film, including the children who tried to stone Judah, are portrayed as angry, mean, and demonic? These are some of the questions that I will attempt to address in the following order:

THE SOURCES OF THE PASSION

SOME GLARING ERRORS OF THE PASSION

THE PROMINENT ROLE OF MARY IN THE PASSION

THE RELENTLESS BRUTALITY OF THE PASSION

THE THEOLOGY OF THE PASSION

DOES THE PASSION OFFER A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR SPREADING THE GOSPEL?

THE POTENTIAL OF THE PASSION FOR CATHOLIC EVANGELISM

PERMISSION TO DISTRIBUTE THIS REVIEW

Several editors, newscasters, and church leaders contacted me to ask permission to use the preliminary review of The Passion that I posted in the previous newsletter. To avoid unnecessary calls or email messages, I wish to grant full permission to anyone wanting to use this review in any form needed. Be sure to inform your friends that they can receive this newsletter free of charge, simply by emailing me a message at sbacchiocchi@biblicalperspectives.com, saying: SUBSCRIBE ME.

THE SOURCES OF THE PASSION

The Passion of the Christ is heralded as the most authentic reenactment of the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life. To add historical credibility to the movie, Gibson has the characters speak Aramaic and Latin. The Pope himself is reported to have said: “It is as it was,” that is, the movie is a factual representation of the events leading to the Crucifixion. Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls confirmed the Pope’s view, describing the movie as “a cinematographic transposition of the historical events of the Passion of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel.” In fact, the film was shown to members of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. All of them expressed unanimous approval, praising it as the most accurate reenactment of Christ’s Passion ever produced. Archbishop John Foley, President of Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said:  “I don't think there would be well-founded criticisms because all the material in the film comes directly from the Gospel accounts. There's nothing in the film that doesn't come from the Gospel accounts. So, if they're critical of the film, they would be critical of the Gospel.”

The same view is shared by many Protestant leaders who are enthusiastically promoting the film, to use the words of Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as “the Michelangelo of this generation.” Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in southern California purchased 18,000 tickets, because he believes that the movie is : “Brilliant, biblical—a masterpiece . . . It is not just a dramatization. It’s a historic description.” A host of Protestant churches, including several Adventist Churches, have sponsored the film in rented theaters. At the Loma Linda University Church, Pastor Roberts and staff have rented a theater in Redlands for a showing of The Passion on Thursday evening before Easter. An announcement I received indicates that a special showing has been arranged for the General Conference workers.

Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, and Paul Harvey, just to name a few, are all eagerly promoting the film as an unprecedented truthful reenactment of Christ’s Passion which is supposed to bring about massive conversions to Christianity.

Two Catholic Nun-mystics Inspired the Script of The Passion

In view of the extraordinary ecumenical endorsement and promotion of the movie as an authentic portrayal of Christ’s Passion, we need to ask at the outset: Does the movie truly reflect the Biblical account of the last 12 hours of Jesus life or is it based on Catholic mystical literature? The answer is readily available, because Gibson himself openly admits that the movie is based not only on the Gospels, but also on the visions of two Catholic nun-mystics, St. Anne Catherine Emmerich and Mary of Agreda.

Referring to the visions of Emmerich, Gibson said, “She supplied me with stuff I never would have thought of” (The New Yorker, 9/15/03). This is evident, because, as we shall see, many of the details of the movie are foreign to the Gospels. In his review, Darrel Bock provide a handy scene-by-scene reference guide to what is taken from the Gospels and what is derived from the mystic nuns Anne Emmerich and Mary of Agreda (www.beliefnet.com/story/140/story_14097_1.html)

Emmerich (1774-1824) was a German nun who allegedly had the stigmata or wounds of Christ in her hands. The stigmata (bleeding hands) are the ultimate proof of sainthood for Catholics, because the focus of their devotion is on imitating the suffering of Jesus. Any Catholic with the wounds of Christ in the hands becomes as it were a little christ. During the last 12 years of her life, Emmerich allegedly ate only the body and blood of Jesus as contained in the wafer of the Catholic mass. It is evident that she had serious mental problems which border on folly or dementia, yet, for Catholics they are evidence of sainthood.

Emmerich’s visions on the life of Christ were published in 1824 under the title The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The book is advertised in a website as “filled with unusual, saintly descriptions that are not recorded in the Gospel story.” Her deceptive visions describe Christ’s scourging and crucifixion in the gruesome details shown in the movie—details that are absent in the Gospels. The same is true of the key role Emmerich attributes to Mary as co-Redemptor with Christ. The partnership of Mary in Christ’s redemptive mission is evident in the movie, but absent in the Gospels. In her visions, she saw that Protestants suffer more than Catholics in Purgatory because no one offers masses for them or prays for them.

Gibson was also influenced by Mary of Agreda (1602-1665), a Catholic nun and visionary mystic. Her entire family entered monasteries and convents in 1618. She was often taken in trances which carried her away to teach people in foreign lands. In her book The Mystical City of God, Agreda offers many details about Mary and Christ’s Passion, which are not in the Bible.

In spite of the groundswell Evangelical support for The Passion of the Christ, the movie is not Evangelical or biblical for that matter. It is a Roman Catholic movie, made by a traditional Roman Catholic director who rejects the efforts of Vatican II to update the church. He was advised by respected Roman Catholic theologians who sought approval from the Pope himself. As Gibson well puts it, “It reflects my beliefs.” His beliefs are rooted in the traditional Catholic beliefs and practices that preceded Vatican II (1962-1965).

While Vatican II offered the possibility for non-Catholics to be saved by following the lesser light God has given them, Gibson is on record in affirming that he believes that “there is no salvation for those outside the Catholic Church” (The New Yorker, September 15, 2003). Indeed, this has been the historical Catholic position until Vatican II: “No salus extra ecclesia—no salvation outside the church.” In an interview with the Eternal Word Television Network, Gibson said: “I don’t go to any other [Catholic] services. I go to the Old Tridentine [Latin] Rite.” To be able to practice his traditional Catholic faith, he built his own Catholic chapel, called Holy Family, near his home in California. During the filming, he attended Catholic Mass every morning with the misguided hope “to be squeaky clean.”

A major problem with the movie is Gibson’s ulterior motive to portray the Passion according to the understanding of the Old Roman Catholic Church. As Robert Tippie points out in his insightful review, “No longer is he [Gibson] attempting to take facts from the scriptures and ‘enhance’ them to get across the scriptural feelings and meanings, but he switches to old Catholic dogma that is attempting to ‘teach’ us something, rather than make us feel something from the scene. It is the latter form of poetic license that I disagree with in The Passion. The movie became so dogmatically heavy with Romanism that it was ridiculous. If Mel would have stuck to the striking embellishments as seen in the first scene in the Garden, the movie would have been much more impacting on me” (“The Passion: A Review After Seeing the Movie”).

The fact that The Passion is produced by a staunch, traditional Catholic who is eager to win people to his Catholic faith through his movie should be of concern to Evangelicals who wish to protect their members from Catholic heresies. It is hopelessly inconsistent for Evangelicals to endorse a movie that says and shows things that are unbiblical, while committed to uphold the integrity and authority of the Bible.

SOME GLARING ERRORS OF THE PASSION

Few viewers will note the glaring errors which are strategically located throughout the film. Most people come out of the movie thinking that they have seen an accurate portrayal of the last 12 hours of Christ’s life. The truth is far from it. The truth and errors are so intricately interwoven that the average viewer who remembers little about the Gospels’ account of the Passion may not notice the Catholic interpolations designed to promote their historical teachings on the prominent redemptive role of Mary and the brutality of Christ’s suffering to satisfy divine justice and to promote the imitation of Christ’s sufferings as a way of salvation. Let me mention some of the errors and inaccuracies that have caught my attention.

Gethsemane

The movie opens with Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Both the garden and Jesus look awful. The garden looks like an abandoned field in southern Italy, with dry high grass and without the millenarian olive trees that are so characteristic of the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem.

Jesus looks frightening, covered with mud or grease over his hair and face. He looks as if He just came out of a mud pit, rather than from agonizing prayer. . Why should Christ look so dirty and greasy when He had just finished eating the Passover meal with His disciples? The Gospels tell that three times Jesus fell on His face and prayed to His Father if it were possible to let the cup of suffering pass from Him, but such prayer could hardly have made His clothings look so dirty. It is evident that Gibson wants to make Christ look shocking from the beginning to the end of the movie. Such pictures promotes the Catholic devotion to the Passion as a way of salvation.

As soon as the soldiers and priests capture Christ in the Garden, they bound Him with a heavy duty chain suitable for anchoring sea vessels, and start beating on Him. But in the Gospels there is no reference to the beating of Jesus in the Garden. We are simply told: “And they laid hands on him and seized him. . . . And they led Jesus to the high priest; and all the chief priests and elders were assembled” (Mark 14:46, 53; cf. Matt 26:50, 57). “Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest house” (Luke 22:54; cf. John 18:12-13). What in the Gospels is presented as a simple arrest and escort of Jesus to the high priest’s house, in the movie becomes a plot to lynch Jesus even before he gets a chance to appear before the high priest.

While Jesus is tortured in Gethsemane, Mary awakens in her home and says: “What makes this night different from other nights?–a reference to the Jewish Passover liturgy. This detail is found in The Dolorous Passion, but not in the Bible.

Physical Appearance of Satan

Satan, with his black cloak and mime-white face, appears various times in the movie, inciting everyone against Christ. In the Garden a serpent crawls out Satan’s nose. Slowly the serpent creeps toward Christ and is almost ready to bite His head bowed low in prayer. But Christ stands and crushes the serpent head. There is no question that Satan was hard at work in the final hours of Christ’s life, hoping to defeat His redemptive mission. But there are no allusions in the Gospels regarding any physical appearances of Satan during the Passion to incite Jews and Romans against Christ. There are no satanic snakes attempting to bite Christ.

Several of the details of Satan in Gethsemane are drawn from Anne Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. For example, Emmerich speaks of “the serpent ...This odious reptile of gigantic size” in Gethsemane. Satan says to Jesus, “Takest thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty? Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?” There is a striking similarity to the Script of the movie, where Satan tempts Jesus, saying: “Do you really believe one man can carry this burden? ...saving their souls is too costly.”

Riot Between Jews and Romans

A frenzied riot brakes out around Jesus as he drags the Cross to Calvary. Romans and Jews fight wildly, with Christ being brutalized by all. A reviewer perceptively comments: “Wild riots happened a lot in Mad Max movie [by Mel Gibson], but not in the Gospels. Christ is depicted as falling at three points, but otherwise the carrying of the cross is presented as a solemn event. Here is how the Gospel writer Luke, a deeply ardent believer, presents the scene: ‘As they led him away, a great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.’ This doesn’t sound like the depiction of a crazy riot, nor does Christ’s injunction sound like the sort of thing shouted over a melee.”

It is unfortunate that Gibson is more concerned to shock people by using the typical Hollywood audiovisual portrayal of violence and bloodshed, than to capture the solemnity and dignity of the Gospel story. The fact that the episode of the riot and the ensuing beating of Jesus is foreign to the Gospels, shows again that Gibson uses the Gospels as a pretext for his violent and shocking movie. The beating of Christ is relentless throughout the movie, even while he falls under the weight of the Cross. It is evident that Gibson is determined to blow out of proportion Christ’s sufferings in accordance with the Catholic devotion to the Passion.

Christ Thrown Off of a Bridge