Mel Gibson's "Passion" & Aquinas's Five Modes:
How the Passion of Christ Works
by Father Romanus Cessario
I
In her book, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era: Theology and Art of Christ's Passion, Celia Chazelle studies plastic and other images of the Passion of Christ produced during the final centuries of the first millennium.(1) On the basis of a highly developed art criticism, she discovers that "works of art are not to be considered as simple 'translations' of or parallels to theological statements but instead could take on rules of their own through the appropriation of iconographic traditions." For example, the author points to a miniature of the Crucifixion that forms part of a Te igitur initial in the well-known Sacramentary of Gellone.(3) This depiction of Christ on his cross aims, Chazelle argues, to instruct clearly that the one crucified possesses both divine and human natures, and to witness against later western forms of Adoptionist Christologies.(4) Chazelle goes on to conclude that the visual arts exist, by their very nature, in a constant tension between orthodoxy and heresy. Whether or not we agree with each detail of her analysis, Chavelle's research both fascinates and provokes.
What were the principal doctrinal issues-"theological statements"-that exercised an influence on those craftsmen and artists who produced sacred art during the Carolingian era, that is, the period from Charlemagne (743-814) to Charles the Bald (823-877)? They included the relationship of the Crucifixion or Passion of Christ both to the Eucharist and to the Church, the reality of both Christ's human and divine natures, and the precise character of the Eucharistic conversion. These issues, especially those that pertain to the Eucharist, continued to occupy the attention of the Church and her theologians throughout the eleventh century.
The Romanesque Church of Champagne (Ardèche), which was built during the first half of the twelfth century, helps us to illustrate Chavelle's intuition about theology and art. The portal of this small church hidden in the valley of the Rhone illustrates the influence that theological and doctrinal debates can exercise on sacred art. The church's main portal, which originally was protected by an outside porch, contains an elaborately sculpted bas relief composed of two scenes. On top, the Calvary scene, depicting the moment when the soldier pierces Christ's side with a lance; on the bottom, Christ eucharistizing at the Last Supper. What does the sculptor-artist seek to portray? Catholic teaching on the intrinsic relationship of Calvary to the Eucharist. During another period in French history, this dual image also occasioned a demonstration of the limit between orthodoxy and heresy. Not by the introduction of new iconographical traditions, but by the destruction of already existing ones. During the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, the portal of the church in Champagne became the object of what we would call today a hate crime. The Reformers of that era struck out precisely at the iconic identification of the Cenacle with Calvary. What did they protest? The sacrificial character of the Eucharist, and the continuity of the priestly action that runs from Christ himself to the ordained priest. In short, the Eucharist as Sacrifice. Figure or Reality?
Let's return to the Carolingian period. The question of how to relate symbolic, sacramental figures to actual divine reality occupied theological reflection during the period when Europe began to take on its peculiar identity as a continent. Charlemagne's court at Aachen remains the recognized center of the liturgical and theological renewal that dominated this period of expansive Caesaro-papism, or what Alcuin called the regnun christianitatis.(5) For example, theologians of this period, such as Amarlarius of Metz (c.780-850/51), Paschasius Radbertus (c. 785-860), Ratramnus (d.868), and Rabanus Maurus (776/784-856) had sought to explain the mystery of what it means to call the Blessed Eucharist "real." It is generally recognized that opinions among theorizers veered between highly symbolic accounts to naive physicalisms, such as the one espoused by the Stercoranists (if they existed) baldly illustrates. The debate that the aforementioned theologians began continued throughout the eleventh century. In fact, the Church-portal in Champagne arguably sought to communicate visually the decision of Pope Gregory VII given at the Roman meeting in 1079 where Berengar of Tours (c.1010-88), an eleventh-century figure confused about how to express reality in philosophical terms, signed his confession of faith in the Real Presence.
I introduce these exhibits, the Sacramentary of Gellone and the church-portal of Champagne, in order to point out that Mel Gibson is not the first artist whose theological intuitions have shaped his artistic representation of the Passion. What Chazelle has observed of Catholic art during the late-eighth century up to the middle of the ninth century may also be said of Mel Gibson's art-film, "The Passion of the Christ." Let me repeat one of her discoveries: works of art are not simple 'translations' of theological statements but take on rules of their own through the appropriation of iconographic traditions. Both Sacramentary and portal confirm that, at least certain, iconographic traditions themselves derive from controversial theological exchanges within the Catholic communio.
II
The French film critic and Dominican priest, Guy Bedouelle, wrote his review of Gibson's film after having seen it in Philadelphia. He describes the setting: "La salle était comble, à peu près entièrement composés de Noirs venus en famille, bébés compris, et probablement pour la plupart issus des communautés pentecôtistes."(6) "The auditorium was filled. Mostly Black families, together with babes-in-arm. Many of them from Pentecostalist churches." One mother was heard telling her daughter, "See what the Lord had to suffer for us!"
Bedouelle interprets Gibson's film in the way that Chazelle argues one must interpret the Carolingian art of the Crucifixion. In other words, there are "iconographic traditions"(2) at work. Mel Gibson's "Passion," so Bedouelle argues, aims to capture the ones that issue from the theological tradition that dominates Catholic spirituality and devotion from the high Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, including what occurs in the spectacular period that we call the Baroque. Thus the title of his review: "Un Christ Baroque...." That on at least one Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia, the Mel Gibson film merited a place in the catalogue of Catholic pieties may be measured in part by the touching explanation that the Black Pentecostalist mother was overheard giving to her daughter. When that Black woman evangelized her child, a deeply held faith provided a definitive hermeneutical moment for the movie.
What are some of the iconographical traditions that shape Gibson's art form? Surely one should begin with the Stations of the Cross, first set up by Franciscans in the later Middle Ages to aid the faithful appreciate the price of their salvation. Then there are the processions in Andalusia during Holy Week, which as some surviving examples remind us included public displays of self-flagellants. Also, the medieval Mystery Plays which continue on in the celebrated production at Oberammergau. And not to be overlooked are the Baroque paintings of the Catholic kind that one finds in Spain or in Latin America. "The Passion" then suffers many diverse iconographical influences. Do some of these stray from a strictly orthodox piety? I think that it is safe to say that commentators will not each give the same reply.
On Bedouelle's account, the art of the baroque dominates Gibson's portrayal of the Passion. It is said that some of the extra-biblical details that appear in the film are borrowed from the writings of the German mystic Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774-1824). Her "Meditations on the Passion" were popularized by Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and enjoyed significant influence on European Catholic culture during the nineteenth century. In fact, an English translation appeared as early as 1862. Gibson may also have read the "Visions" of the Spanish mystic Maria d'Agréda (1602-1665), which have still to win official approbation from the Church. From these texts, which have their origin in the period of the baroque and even rococo, I would suggest, emerge the proximate "iconographic traditions" that Mel Gibson employs to set forth his account of the Passion narratives. It would be futile therefore to debate the extent to which we find the "pure" Gospel adequately represented in the "The Passion of the Christ." Like the Carolingian artists of the first millennium, Mel Gibson has chosen to let himself be influenced by visual and literary interpretations that continue to occupy the orthodox Catholic imagination. His film represents a sort of cinematic sensus plenior of biblical interpretation.
III
No reviewer to my knowledge has suggested that Mel Gibson read the Summa theologiae before setting about to direct "The Passion of the Christ." Aquinas represents a different sort of iconographic tradition. His structure is that of the architect, who produces out of many theological arguments an ordered whole. This structure exhibits, as impressively as the Gothic cathedrals which may have inspired the summists' art, God's own knowledge of himself. The Latin term that Aquinas gives to this knowledge when it is shared with the blessed in heaven and on earth is sacra doctrina.
Let me invite you to focus your attention on what in the Summa theologiae would be the equivalent of a single stained-glass window in a medieval cathedral. Question 48 of the tertia pars-the work, the Summa, comprises three unequal parts designated by Aquinas's editors, first, second, and third. The third or tertia pars treats the mystery of the Incarnation, the Sacraments, and had Aquinas completed the Summa, also would have included the Last Things. Questions 48 and 49 occur toward the end of the treatment of the life of Christ, and concern "de effectu passionis Christi;" if you will, the result of Christ's passion. Question 49 considers the result itself, "de ipso effectu," while question 48, which is one of the better studied essays in the Summa, examines how this effect was produced, "de modo efficiendi." The mode of efficiency, or the mode of causing efficiently. Efficiency is a technical, philosophical term that points us back to Aristotle's four causes, and urges us to inquire about what is responsible for something coming into being. The standard example is the artist who is the efficient cause of the statue which is composed of matter-marble, say-and the form that she puts into it-Apollo, for example, and which serves a purpose, or final cause, that we identify as aesthetics. In Aquinas's usage "efficiently" does not connote as it does in modern English the restricted meaning of "working productively with minimum wasted effort or expense."
Modes of efficiency. The Latin word "modum" may be compared roughly to the English word model, as in the title of the book authored by Avery Dulles, Models of the Church. I know that it has been a source of regret to Cardinal Dulles that many readers of this book thought that his "models" offered a range of options from which one could pick his or her favorite image of the Church. In fact he intended that these models when taken together would provide a set of perspectives from which to attain a comprehensive description of the Church. The five modes that Aquinas discusses in Question 48 aim to provide the essential points of consideration from which to attain everything that the Gospels communicate about Christian salvation. To answer the question, "How does the Passion of the Christ accomplish our salvation?" Even the most frank critics of Mel Gibson allow that this is the question that he too sets out to answer. We will look briefly at each of the five modes.
The mode of merit. When Aquinas says that "Christ by his passion merited salvation not only for himself, but for all who are his members, as well," he introduces the question of the relationship of the Cross to the Church.(7) Merit denotes the right to a reward. The reward of the Passion of the Christ is beatific communion open to every member of the human race. According to the formula of Saint Anselm, only God could merit such a grace, while only man should expend the energies to regain what he had lost. Christ is given grace not only for himself but for his members. We thus call this grace the "capital grace" of Christ inasmuch as he remains the "caput Ecclesiae," the head of the Church. Some wonder why Christ's other merits would not have been sufficient to win for us the reward of eternal life. Aquinas replies that Christ did everything from the greatest charity, but the Passion remains that "kind of work" (genus operis) best suited to the effects that we attribute to it.
Mel Gibson clearly constructed his film in such a way as to ensure that the viewer understands that this kind of work, this particular genus operis, is ordered to an effect that transcends whatever particular persons or events may be depicted in the drama. It is the Passion of "the Christ." Like Greek drama, Gibson has cast the film in such a way to allow its universal significance to emerge slowly from within the consciousness of the viewer. The epic proportions of the film, emphasized by the musical accompaniment, inform the viewer with a sense of the universal and majestic.
The mode of satisfaction. Aquinas takes up a theme that has figured in Catholic theology since at least the early sixth century, but which most students now identify with the work of the eleventh-century archbishop Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109), Cur Deus Homo? Aquinas reports the received teaching: "Christ's passion was not only sufficient but superabundant atonement ("satisfactio") for the sins of mankind."(8) Christian satisfaction falls among the theological themes less well-studied during the post-conciliar period.(9) At the same time, the renewal of interest in the Eucharist as sacrifice should prompt theologians to return to this mode of Christ's passion inasmuch as it remains the lodestar for Catholic sacramental practice. Aquinas holds that Christ's suffering was all-embracing and his pain so great on account of the dignity of his person that, in addition to other reasons, the satisfaction he offers suffices as recompense for the sins of the world, from the original sin to the last sin to be committed. While merit earns a reward on account of good works, satisfaction entails the acceptance of punishment, of difficult works.
No theme emerges with more clarity in Mel Gibson's film than that of the satisfaction of Christ. Most commentators have failed to observe that there exists a theological reason for portraying, even, as some have argued, excessively, the sufferings of Christ from the time of his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to his final "Consummatum est." If with Father Bedouelle, we allow that the scenes of punishment exceed the modesty of the Scriptures themselves, or follow Professor Grisez, who opines that after such beatings and harsh treatment, no man would be able to shoulder the cross or even walk, one cannot exclude the explanation that the artist chose this excess for a theological reason.(10) A long theological tradition supports this sort of "iconographical" modification: The Church asks us to ponder the price that the Savior of the world paid. Without this meditation, one cannot embrace the full dimensions of Catholic piety; instead, we would find ourselves moving rapidly toward those various forms of de-sacramentalized Christianity that focus exclusively on interiority.
The mode of sacrifice. Sacrifice, writes Aquinas, "designates what men offer to God in token of the special honor due to him, and in order to appease him."(11) In his discussion of this mode, Aquinas allows Saint Augustine to supply the instruction about sacrifice, especially what the Doctor of Hippo says in Book X of The City of God (chapters 5 and 6) and in the De Trinitate. In short, sacrifice creates unity: "in order that we might remain one with him."(12) Christ's Passion works according to the mode of sacrifice because it results, ultimately, in that union of God and man which we call beatific vision or fellowship. How diverse the lot of those involved in bringing about this unique sacrifice, where Christ is both victim and priest. Aquinas replies to the objection that since those who slew Christ perpetrated a heinous crime (magnam malitiam), they could not have accomplished something sacred: "On the part of those who put Christ to death, the passion was a crime; on the part of Christ, who suffered out of love, it was a sacrifice."(13)
Mel Gibson portrays this theme with an exactitude that conforms not only to the biblical accounts of the Passion, but also to the theological affirmations that have been canonized by the Church with respect to the responsibility of those who had a hand in putting Christ to death. No one can watch the film and come away without an awareness that there are two kinds of persons surrounding the crucifixion scene. Those who believe that what is happening conforms to God's plan, even if they suffer great sorrow, though not sadness, and those without comprehension of the mystery. The latter class of persons includes, on the one hand, those with natural human sympathies, especially exhibited in the wife of Pilate, Claudia, and on the other, those who exhibit crass indifference, especially the lower ranks of Roman soldiers.
The mode of redemption. The theme of redemption or ransom emerges from the biblical texts where Christ is said to redeem us: 1 Peter 1:18f., "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways...with the precious blood of a lamb," and Galatians 3:13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law...." Christ liberates man from both the punishment of sin itself, the bondage or slavery that sin imposes, and from the penalty of the divine justice that opposes all sin because God who is just cannot act against his justice. The state of redemption comprises the opposite of slavery and punishment; "we are freed," says Aquinas, "from both obligations."(14) The Latin poet and hymn-writer Prudentius (348-c.410) expresses this ancient truth: "Lo, now to the faithful is opened/ The bright road to Paradise leading;/ Man again is permitted to enter/ The garden he lost to the Serpent."(15) This effect of course is possible only because of the work of the whole Trinity. "Christ as man therefore, is, properly speaking, the immediate Redeemer, although the actual redemption can be attributed to the entire Trinity as to its first cause." (16)
From start to finish, Mel Gibson does not shrink from including the devil in the dramatic action of "The Passion of the Christ." The devil, "who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father," appears in androgynous guise not, in my view, as a commentary on contemporary social mores, but to remind the viewers that the devil is "a liar and the father of lies." (17) What people believe to be the good turns out to constitute a lie about the good of the human person. It's the oldest story in the book. In this case, the book is Genesis.... The Passion of Christ reverses the lot of man who had been expelled from the Garden. Christ decisively crushes the head of the serpent. Should we not recognize in the fact that Gibson places on the lips of Mary Magdalene the question customarily reserved for the youngest son in a Jewish family, "Why is this night...," and that she asks the question of Mary, Christ's Mother, a sign that the New Eve now operates. Above all others, Mary, the New Eve, comprehends that great reversal of man's sorry plight has been inaugurated.
The mode of efficient cause. The final article of Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, article 6 (since there are two articles devoted to the mode of redemption), completes the discussion of the Passion by clarifying the special status of the one who is Crucified. We have returned to the theological tradition that occupied the craftsmen who produced the miniature of the Crucifixion in the Sacramentary of Gellone. "God is the principal efficient cause of man's salvation.(18) Adoptionist Christologies cannot explain what causes the effects of Christ Passion. But," says St. Thomas, "since Christ's humanity is the instrument of his divinity, all Christ's acts and sufferings work instrumentally in virtue of his divinity in bringing about man's salvation." Because it is impossible to represent visually what is invisible, it is difficult if not impossible to represent Christ. Godhead remains invisible. Saints recognize this truth. Blessed John of Fiesole, Fra Angelico, is said to have observed, "To depict Christ, it is necessary to live with Christ." We should take him at his eschatological word.
Mel Gibson directs Jim Caviezel in a way that, in my view, approaches accomplishing the impossible. There are the Christs of Pasolini, of Zefirelli, and of Rossellini, but the Christ of Gibson captures what these others were content to accomplish with representing a high expression of human values. Although I am not an art critic, it seems to me that the very excesses, even the distortions, which commentators have questioned, in fact aim to show us that this man is more than human. That we have to look elsewhere for the source of his human endurance. Is it too much a stretch to ask whether Mel Gibson also indicates Christ's divine nature by suggesting that he possesses infused knowledge? For instance, when Christ designs a sixteenth-century European table for first-century Palestinians? Or when without effort Christ begins to speak with Pilate in Latin? Some experts have wondered about the absence in the film of Greek; none to my knowledge have conjectured that the "historical Jesus" would have had the occasion to learn conversational Latin. We should not leave the mode of efficiency without observing that Gibson does not shy away from visualizing the signs of divine intervention that the Gospels record at the moment of Christ's death. "The Passion of the Christ" does not end with musings over the presumed interior dispositions of Jesus's followers. The film rather concludes with the unquestionable affirmation that this Crucifixion results in events of cosmic significance that only God can produce.
Let me conclude by observing that the theological issues of the Carolingian period continue to shape Catholic art forms. In Gibson's film we see clearly faith and a new iconography emerge in the themes that represent perennial sources of reflection for Catholic theologians: (1) the relationship of the Crucifixion or Passion to both the Eucharist and the Church, (2) the reality of Christ's human and divine natures, (3) and the precise character of the Eucharistic conversion.
The relationship of Christ's Passion to the Eucharist ranks among the signal achievements of the film. Who could deny that Mel Gibson professes the same Eucharistic faith as that of the anonymous sculptor of the low relief in Champagne? And what are we to think of the contemporary representatives of those sixteenth-century reformers who hacked away at the joint-representation of Calvary and Cenacle? In my opinion, the flashbacks to the Last Supper stand among the film's greatest artistic and theological achievements.
The relationship of Christ's Passion to the Church. Here again Mel Gibson succeeds in a way that at once stresses the feminine character of the Church - only women touch reverently the sacred blood, Veronica, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and by extension, even Claudia, who supplies fresh linen for the purpose. And at the same time, places the Virgin Mother of God, Mary Immaculate, in what is obviously the closest personal contact with the sufferings of her Son. She who is Mother of the Redeemer becomes by that fact mother of all who are redeemed. We see Mary's maternal mediation enacted on film. Gibson portrays Mary placing "herself between her Son and mankind (remember the times that Mary looks at us!). In the reality of their wants, needs, and sufferings (remember Peter at her feet). She puts herself 'in the middle,' that is to say she acts as a mediatrix not as an outsider, but in her position as mother." (19) The words are from Pope John Paul II. Mel Gibson captures what the Pope writes in "Mother of the Redeemer" in a way that alone merits the film the title "Catholic."
We have already seen what Mel Gibson does to ensure that his viewers recognize that "The Christ" possesses two real and distinct natures, that of God and that of man. Could it be that the spurious distinction between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history, that has so badly influenced even Catholic theological circles, explains why so many of the criticisms of the film fail to comment on what should be the most obvious theological tradition to govern the production of this film? Do people look and think, "Well, that's the historical Jesus; I'll wait for the Christ of faith to rise on Easter Sunday?" In other words, do both those who rave about the film and those who deplore it require introduction to the iconographical traditions that Mel Gibson employs to remind them that the truth of Christ's personal being is preserved only in the Church of Christ-that he is both God and man.
Finally, the reality of the Eucharistic conversion. There is a sense in which the whole film is about the Eucharist. The Bread of Life. St. Jerome illustrates this truth: "Why should I not mourn, you say? Jacob put on sackcloth for Joseph (see Gen 37:35)..., but he only did so because Christ had not yet broken open the door of paradise, nor quenched with his blood the flaming sword and the whirling of the guardian cherubim (see Gen 3:24; cf. Ezek 1:15-20).... For, as the apostle says, 'death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned' (Rom 5:14). But under Jesus, that is, under the Gospel of Christ, who unlocked for us the gate of paradise, death is accompanied, not with sorrow, but with joy."(20) "The Passion of the Christ" invites its viewers to recognize that in the bread that the joyful Jim Caviezel offers to his priest-disciples we discover the one source of that joyful love that never ends.
1. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
2. See review by Werner Telesko (Österreichlische Akademie der Wissenschaften) in Speculum 79 (January 2004): 153-55.
3. An early Sacramentary of the Gelasian type, written not earlier than 790. It formerly belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Gellone, then to St-Germain-des-Près, and then, in 1795, to the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, Biblothèque nationale de France, lat. 12048, fol. 143v).
4. See p. 87.
5. See Guy Bedouelle, O.P., The History of the Church (New York: Continuum, 2003), p. 62.
6. Guy Bedouelle, "Un Christ baroque. La Passion du Christ de Mel Gibson" in Choisir, no. 532 (April 2004).
7. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 1.
8. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 2.
9. But see my The Godly Image: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas, Studies in Historical Theology VI (Petersham, MA: St Bede's Publications, 1990).
10. Bedouelle, art. cit. Germain Grisez writes: "The scourging is overdone, not because it is too brutal, but because the amount of injury depicted is not credibly consistent with Jesus being able to stand up, much less walk or carry anything." See his review at http://imdb.com/title/tt0335345/usercomments-1290.
11. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 3.
12. De Trinitate IV, 14 (PL 42:901), cited in ibid.
13. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 3, ad 3.
14. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 4.
15. The Poems of Prudentius, trans. Sister M. Clement Eagan, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 43 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), p. 77.
16. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 5.
17. See 1 Jn 3:8 cited in CCC 392; also CCC 394.
18. Summa theologiae IIIa q. 48, art. 6.
19. Encyclical Letter of John Paul II, "Mother of the Redeemer," no. 21.
20. St Jerome, Letter 39, 4, to Paula, on the death of Blaesilla (Rome 389) in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, v. 6, pp. 51-2.
Father Romanus Cessario
Father Romanus Cessario, priest of the Eastern Province of the Dominicans, currently serves as professor of systematic theology at St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts. His thesis, Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas, was directed by the late Colman O’Neill, O.P., and published in 1982; a revised version, The Godly Image (St. Bede's Press/Fordham University Press), appeared in 1990.
Father Cessario has published articles on dogmatic and moral theology as well as on the history of Thomism. Among his books can be listed The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), Perpetual Angelus: As the Saints Pray the Rosary (Alba House, 1995), a short history of Thomism, Le thomisme and les thomistes (Cerf, 1999), Christian Faith and the Theological Life (1996) and, in collaboration with Kevin White, a translation of the fifteenth-century Dominican theologian John Capreolus’s Treatise on the Virtues (2001) (both published by The Catholic University of America Press). His Introduction to Moral Theology has inaugurated the multi-volume Catholic Moral Thought series at CUA Press. Father Cessario serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is senior editor of the monthly worship aid Magnificat. For the last two decades he has lectured extensively in both the United States and Europe.
|
|
|
