The Last Temptation of Christ

Everyone is talking about the movie The Last Temptation of Christ which opened in New York and several other sites in the US and Canada this weekend. The film has aroused a storm of controversy in religious circles like nothing else we’ve ever seen. It is featured on the cover of the Aug.13 issue of TIME magazine, and has been the subject of countless newspaper articles around the country. What is the all the uproar about?

The film is based upon a novel about the life of Jesus Christ written by Nikos Kazantzakis, a Greek author, and published in 1955. (Kazantzakis was excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church because of the book.) The novel portrays Jesus as a befuddled, confused man, uncertain of his role as a would-be Messiah, manipulative of his friends, and at times full of hatred against people. This Jesus fantasizes about marrying Mary Magdalene and allowing his guardian angel to watch while he has sex with her. In his dream, Magdalene later dies, and Jesus moves in with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, and has children by both of them. The novel portrays Judas Iscariot as Jesus’ best friend and the most noble and courageous of all the disciples.

The noted Hollywood director, Martin Scorsese, who directed Raging Bull and The Color of Money, was given a copy of the novel in 1972 by Barbara Hershey, the actress who plays Mary Magdalene in the movie. He was intrigued by the book and, over the next ten years, he tried to find a way to make a movie out of it. He found that financial backers were tough to come by, given the dubious contents of the script. He finally persuaded Paramount Pictures to begin the project, but they dropped out in 1983 after spending 2 million dollars on it. The reason: Paramount was beseiged by calls and letters from Christians protesting the movie.

Universal Pictures picked it up a couple of years later, however, more to establish a relationship with Scorsese than because of an attraction to this particular film. As work progressed, it soon became obvious that Universal would have to address the fact that Christians all over the country didn’t want this movie to see the light of day. So they hired Tim Penland, a Christian marketing consultant, to alleviate fears in the Christian community regarding the film. Penland said that Universal had promised him that the movie would be honoring to the Lord. Universal also promised some of their most vocal Christian critics that if they would not protest the film, they would be given a preview showing of it in June and be invited to make recommendations and suggestions prior to its scheduled release in September. However, when preview time came, Universal told Penland that the film was not yet ready for screening, but they refused to postpone its opening in theaters. Penland felt that he had been betrayed - merely used as a sop to the Christian community by a studio that wasn’t seriously interested in soliciting Christian opinion in the first place. He cancelled his contract with Universal Pictures and has now joined the growing number of people actively opposing the film.

The rising tide of reaction to The Last Temptation of Christ began to be noticed by the media in July, and by August, it was on the front pages all over the country. People were talking about the film. Universal, having spent a mere 6.5 million dollars on the project (peanuts by Hollywood standards), sought to cash in on this unexpected publicity bonanza by moving the release up six weeks to August 12. The Last Temptation of Christ would open on that date in just eight cinemas: one each in New York, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Toronto, Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and Washington.

Tom Pollack, who is the head of MCA’s motion picture group, which is Universal’s parent company, says “the best thing that can be done for The Last Temptation of Christ at this time is to make it available to the American people and allow them to draw their own conclusions, based on fact not fallacy.” However righteous this sounds, MCA and Universal’s real reason is to take advantage of all the publicity, limit the opening to a few cities - all of which are northern, liberal cities, by the way - and see how the critics and the audiences react. If the critics pan the film, then Universal cuts its losses and gets out cleanly, having spent little on the movie in the first place.

The film itself, judging by the script, treats Jesus with as little reverence and respect as does the novel on which it is based. It is not only sacrilegious but bizzarre and gross. For example, at the Last Supper, the bread and wine turn into real flesh and blood in the mouths of the disciples. Peter is the first to cough up the bloody flesh. The others, sickened, follow, wiping their bloody mouths. Another time, as Jesus teaches his disciples, he reaches into his chest and pulls out his heart. He offers it at arm’s length to them. Blood drips from the ventricles. Then he puts it back in again.

Jesus begs his friend Judas to betray him, saying that being crucified is easy compared to what he’s asking Judas to do. When Jesus is pressed by a crowd of poor and sick people asking for healing, Jesus says “Get away from me. You sicken me. You are selfish and full of hate. God won’t help you.”

Perhaps the most galling thing to Christians about this film, though, is what it does to Jesus’ holiness. Not only is he depicted as only a man, but he is portrayed as an evil, sick man - a man who apologizes to his mother from the cross for what a bad son he has been; a man who acknowledges to Mary that he had sinned against her; a man who cries out “I am a liar, I am a hypocrite… Lucifer is inside me.”

The reason that a film like this sickens us is that we believe that Jesus Christ is Holy God. Martin Scorsese and his miserable patrons in the film industry wrap themselves in the American flag and the US Constitution and plead their right to make a film like this. They plead the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. They scream and cry about the Christian opposition to this film being censorship - the dreaded “C-word” of the entertainment industry.

But there is something very, very wrong with that view. We live in a pluralistic society, and in a pluralistic society, we never have the right to slander the most sacred beliefs of our neighbors. If we desire respect from others, we must show respect to others. Making a film like this is the moral equivalent of painting a swasika on a synagogue - and you’ll never find Hollywood making movies which glorify that. The Last Temptation of Christ takes that which is most sacred to Christians - the very character of our Lord Jesus Christ - and drags him through the mud.

But beyond these questions there is an even more important question. Who is Jesus Christ? Is he just a man? In Matthew chapter 16, Jesus asked his disciples “Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am?” In the Gospels, which Scorsese and Kazantzakis obviously ignored, Jesus is shown to be God. He is not just a man. His enemies, the scribes and the Pharisees, the teachers of the law and the religious leaders were against Jesus not mainly because he threatened their comfortable position at the top of the social ladder, not because he had the audacity to accuse them of being sinners, not because he was rocking the boat in Judea and threatening to bring Roman reprisals down on them all, but because he claimed to be God.

He did things which only God can do. He healed the sick, he raised the dead. He had power over nature. He claimed to be able to forgive sins and give eternal life to those who follow him. He said that he was one with God. But he also called himself the Son of Man, and his human side was very evident in the things we read about him doing. He got tired. He got hungry. He got happy and he got sad. He felt temptation to sin. So who was he? Was he God or was he a man or was he both?

In the years since he was here on earth, people have been arguing over the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” That is rather interesting in and of itself because, as far as I know, nobody is arguing about who is Mohammed, or who is Buddha, or who is Confucius. Christian theology has a whole subject called Christology where we study the person and nature and work of Jesus Christ. As far as I know no other religion is like this. Islam doesn’t have Mohammedology; Buddhism doesn’t have Buddhology. Only Christianity deems the very personhood and identity of its founder so important.

How could Jesus be both God and man? In the 4th century AD, a man named Arian said that Jesus really was not God, that he was just a superman - the highest of all creatures that God created. And Arian has his followers today - they are called Jehovah’s Witnesses. But Arian’s teaching was totally rejected by the early church in 325 AD because it didn’t square with what we read about Jesus in the Bible.

Then along came a man named Apollinarius, who said that Jesus wasn’t really a man - that he was God wearing a human body. But Apollinarius’ teaching was totally rejected by the early church in 381 AD because it didn’t square with what we read about Jesus in the Bible.

Then along came a man named Nestorius, who said that Jesus is really two people, with two personalities living in one body - a kind of holy schizophrenic. But Nestorius’ teaching was totally rejected by the early church in 431 AD because it didn’t square with what we read about Jesus in the Bible.

Then along came a man named Eutyches who said that Jesus was a unique blending of human nature and divine nature which produced in him a unique third hybrid nature. But Eutyches’ teaching was totally rejected by the early church in 451 AD because it didn’t square with what we read about Jesus in the Bible.

The classic statement of what we as evangelical Christians believe about the person and nature of Jesus Christ was first stated in a church council. It was held in 451 at a little town called Chalcedon across the Bosporus Strait from what is present day Istanbul in Turkey. There, Christian leaders after having wrestled with the issue for four hundred years of church history, after having studied the Scriptures intensively, and after having debated all the divergent alternatives, came up with the following description of the person of our Lord:

Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin. Jesus Christ has two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, the distinction of these natures being in no way annulled by their union, but rather the characteristics of each being preserved and coming together to form one person.

So Jesus is one person with two natures: he is fully God and fully man. He is, as Origen called him, the God-man. This is the mystery at the center of the Christian faith. We do not understand how Jesus could be both God and man but we believe that he is. No religion ever devised by man has at its very center a conundrum like this! That is one reason why I believe that it must be from God - because it is too big for us to get our minds around it.

That is why we worship Jesus as Lord and call on him as our mediator. That is why he knows our trials - not just because, as our Creator, he made us, but because as a human being he lived with us and felt the things that we feel. And that is why we take exception to the way that he is portrayed in the film we have been speaking of.

The question “Who is Jesus Christ?” is the most important question each one of us has to answer. For what you believe about Jesus Christ will affect your eternal destiny.