COMMON, UNCOMMON GROUND

By David Beilstein

I have written previously about the problematic idea of “Christian” movies. I have maintained cinema and literature are uniquely secular focused - both descriptive media forms, and unable to do the prescriptive work Christian evangelism requires. Christian evangelism is unnatural in storytelling because of what Christian evangelism is, and also, what storytelling is as a media form. Such issues create room to unpack the proper line to draw the antithesis, and prayerfully determine where that antithesis lies between what is Sacred and what is secular.

In determining the proper grounds upon which the Christian exile lives in the temporal age - taking part in culture and cultic activities in a dual citizenship - we must first inquire the differences between believing saints and non-believers.

In Gen. 3, the pre-figuring of the Kingdom of God through the Messiah comes. In Gen. 4, the prefiguring of the city of man begins. Gen 4, in an ironic foreshadowing manner, lays the foundation for cultural work and the secular activities of men through Cain. But the covenant of the common kingdom breaks into history fully with Noah in Gen. 9. This covenant was made by God with all peoples, non-believing and believing.

It involves all cultural activities.

The covenant made with Abraham is a cultic covenant. It is made with Abraham and his future offspring - the people of God’s choosing through the Covenant of Grace. Abraham was culturally similar from non-believers around him. But he was cultically dissimilar. It is upon this firm foundation in Sacred Scripture an antithesis between believer and non-believer begins. But it is an antithesis based upon ultimate concerns, things pertaining to the Kingdom of God, of eternal salvation as the reword of the heavenly Kingdom.

There is common ground, objectively speaking, with non-believers, in the profane, or common kingdom of man pre-figured with the city Cain built in Gen. 4 and officially established with the covenant of Noah in Gen. 9. The New Testament Scriptures, particularly the book of Hebrews, treats NT saints as sojourners and exiles glimpsing back, as it were, to Abraham and the patriarchs - including the Babylonian exiles, Daniel, et cetera.

New Testament saints, therefore, have commonality with non-believers culturally, but stark dissimilarity when it comes to cultic things - or things Sacred. The Christian living post the ascension of Christ The Lord, therefore, is a citizen of two distinct realms - or kingdoms. One, encompassing civil, cultural affairs, the other, Sacred affairs, meaning those cultic distinctions represented in Christ’s Church.

Christ is Lord of both realms. But Christ The Lord rules (or mediates) them differently.

Christ’s Kingdom is ruled through the Covenant of Grace. It is a spiritual kingdom, mediated by Christ through the historical manifestation of the Church. It is spiritually discerned by faith in Christ alone. The civil kingdom is ruled by Christ, but differently; through God’s divine eternal decree.

The foundation for Christ’s Kingdom, pre-figured in the Garden of Eden in Gen. 3, is unpacked in St Matthew’s Gospel in The Great Commission. The foundation for the civil kingdom is also pre-figured in Gen. 3 with Cain’s city, but periscopes back to the cultural mandate of Gen. 1:28, refracted (post-fall) in the Noahic covenant of Gen. 9.

It is through this premise, I contend that movies are a common cultural task. Objectively, the Christian is using the natural design of storytelling to do the same kind of dramatic “work” non-believers peruse of storytelling. There need not be any objective difference between the storytelling of the non-believer and believer.

There will, however, be subjective differences.

First, Christians do everything subjectively to the glory of God according to St Paul. But this does not mean the objective task (movies, plumbing, engineering, et cetera) will be objectively different for the Christian and non-believer.

To use the adjective “Christian” to describe subjective differences within common kingdom activity - in light of what storytelling is - seems to buttress all kinds of improper categories. The desire to use those subjective differences to categorize the storytelling of Christians verses that of non-believers as distinctly “Christian” misconstrues the true cultic differences the believer and non-believer have. Worship can be Christian, because worship can be uniquely Christian. The Lord’s Day and the Lord’s Supper are distinctly Christian.

But cinema and storytelling in general is different. Storytelling perceives and investigates in descriptive dramatic context the penultimate realities of human experience. Storytelling corresponds and describes things as they are in the common kingdom. Storytelling is uniquely festooned to the ways and manners (and ontology) of the common kingdom. It does not discern things spiritual.

It does not reckon with ultimate things - things pertaining to Christ and His salvation.

Storytelling can certainly involve characters who believe things about Christ and His salvation. But as I have indicated before, the beliefs of characters wrongly or rightly understood are for the unfolding narrative of the story-in-question and do not hold prescriptive intentions for the audience. Movie characters believe what they must believe in order to act - and they act in order to push the narrative forward within a dramatic framework.

Thus, movies imitate in dramatic metaphor things temporal. Storytelling is a post-Fall, pre-World To Come media narrative. Storytelling presumes the secular world - where conflict and men’s imperfections create vagaries of imperfect (and dramatic) experience. This narrative framework whether visual or prose, is descriptive, not prescriptive… prescription being the necessary confine of Christian apologia and evangelism.

Likewise, movies show in dramatic, visual metaphor man’s place in the temporal order of things and his anthropological character in dramatic contextual design. If there is a distinctly “Christian” charter upon the Christian who writes secular movies, literature, - it is a duty to capture and render the world and the creature man truthfully, descriptively and dramatically. The more verity here - since movies’ soil is based upon penultimate concerns - the more the Christian says something true both temporally and eternally about God’s world the creature man as imago dei lives in. The non-believer will acknowledge the penultimate concerns of the dramatic piece in question, but only if the natural order of things (general revelation) - the light of nature - is rendered truthfully.

Cinema and literature are not unlike other temporal creations of God. Designed for distinct, but temporal purposes. Science being one of them. Science cannot determine the truth of the Holy Gospel. It cannot discern the Holy Gospel. Science cannot prove or disprove the Holy Gospel. Science can perceive evidences that God has designed and brought into existence an ordered universe. If science is done properly it will correspond (where it can) with the truth of God’s creation of the world ex nilo, but it cannot prove it by itself without the lense of special revelation (Holy Scripture) to interpret science. Since Holy Scripture is not written to be a science book, and science is science, interpretive issues will arise. 

The point is, just because science, alone, cannot prove the Holy Gospel does not mean science is useless. 

It means science has its God-given parameters. It’s limits. All things temporal have limits. They will not be eternal. Science, then, has its purposes - it’s design for a penultimate age unable to discern the things of the age to come. Those drawing near to God - an ethic of the age-to-come, ironically, breaking into the temporal age in a spiritual manner, taste the Holy Gospel, and its attendant realities, in the Christ’s Church.

A blood test can determine whether a person’s kidney function is optimal. But it cannot establish if a person is a citizen of Heaven. Blood tests are not useless, but they are penultimate. It would be a mistake to say unless blood tests can be made to evaluate things pertaining to Christ and His Salvation, Christian’s have no use of them.

Christians have use of blood tests in this age - the secular age. Blood tests are good, but non-Holy.

The conflation of the cultic and the cultural is disharmonious with the Sacred Scriptures. From this conflation, theological movements assume such unbiblical isms such as pietism and asceticism. And it is these paradigmatic “systems” a product of Christian pilgrims needing unmediated life and liveliness of faith - instead of reckoning the truth of faith - as found in Word and sacrament in Christ’s Church.

The evangelical mission to Christianize movies (amongst other secular activities) is one that does not comprehend the natural world God has ordained and brought into existence with the covenant with Noah. Whilst Christianity is the necessary premise to account for the intelligibility of things secular - the paradoxical, but distinct relationship between cult and culture does not cease to exist. 

WHEN IT GOES BAD?

By David Beilstein

Writing is hard.

But if one loves it - appreciating its beauty and sweep - one will make time to for it. Part of the point of Dominium was to periscope at movie aesthetics - and part of it was to sightsee some of the writing projects I am working on while I slip and parry through film school.

What is key to remember: never make writing harder than it is and enjoy yourself.

Sometimes you throw an oft-timed punch. And sometimes what you thought was a good punch isn’t. I must conclude my screenplay entitled Interloper, is one of those. Good title, but the story is so implausible it becomes painful to think of it. There is some great stuff in Interloper - but its wedded to a plot that I cannot justify in any sense, whatsoever.

Interloper was dedicated to a friend who passed away in 2012. Someone not so close at the moment he passed - but close in other ways. I will miss his conversations and his taste in movies and cinema. We had some wonderful, appreciative moments of pop culture, which included tons and tons of stuff about movies.

Nevertheless, Interloper is damn awful. Too many things don’t work.

The story concerns a former NYPD first grade detective who relocates to New Smyrna Beach to mend fences and take care of his rich father’s estate. His father was a womaniser but generous in death. He has left his former detective son a multi-million dollar estate. The main character is a former NYPD detective because of a bad shooting he was involved with. No fault of his own, but the higher-ups at One Police Plaza in Manhattan did not see it that way.

Then a land dispute erupts. Squatters are living in the old man’s estate. The former NYPD detective wants them out. And he is tough enough to move them out. But the squatters are a mean batch of Florida red necks involved in a shady enterprises. One that is worth a fortune. And the head of that shady enterprise is worse than the NYPD detective and the squatters put together. 

Or is he?

Interloper involved a classic Charles Bronson land dispute theme. I was riffing on several movies and books using that texture. Elmore Leonard’s Mr Majestyk comes to mind. Charles Bronson could not be better than in that movie. Another such story (one Bruce Willis supposedly bought the rights too) was Mr Leonard’s 2002 novella, Tenkiller.

But Mr Leonard’s story somehow achieves what Interloper misses: plausibility and simplicity. Mr Leonard has been honing his craft longer than me. As I have said, there are excuses and than reasons. They are not the same. Mr Leonard is north of 85 years old. I’m 36. Be it said, Mr Leonard is much better than I and somehow he is able to make something implausible, plausible. Mr Leonard’s stories get human nature and action so right the implausible becomes naturally plausible. The stories, thus, never raise eyebrows.

But it rose like hell in Interloper - so much so I could not bare to read it anymore.
So there it is.

Another screenplay aborted. It’s frustrating as hell. It always is when it goes bad and the work has felt for not. But I have a plan to rework the material into something better, something fun, and something with more plausibility.

If God permits, light at the end of the tunnel.

CINEMATIC AESTHETICS DON'T CHANGE THE ART FORM

By David Beilstein

We have seen why movies cannot be objectively “Christian” if what storytelling is as a media form is held to by the storyteller in a dramatic context accurately. But I wanted to look at the objection to this paradigm by those who object to the content of many films and movies.

Often when I make the case I have made on this blog I am roundly critised that my ideas are impossible because of the offensive material in movies.

But the world is offensive - people are sinful and broken. To portray a world removed from such truth is to abandon the vocational duties of the storyteller. If a Christian working as a storyteller fails to describe the reality of the world all people at all times have lived in he betrays truth (not a Christian virtue) and fails the duty of storytelling.

There is ways to demonstrate these fallen human realities without being either exploitative or grotesque. There is a way to do a rated R coming of age story and a G way of doing the same story. Non-believers as much as Christians understand this. The desire to call such differences in content and material as “Christian” seems rather unattached to anything particularly unique to the cultic distinctions (theology, piety, and practice) of Christians.

It is an unhelpful and unnecessary category.

Whilst the Christian saint rightly criticizes much of what comes out of Hollywood, the leap from objection to content or the manner in which human brokenness is displayed is not an argument for “Christian” movies. 

If the point of movies is a dramatic art form glimpsed by people and not a confessional art form told to people, than propaganda - good and bad - is to be avoided because of what movies naturally are.  

St Paul is utterly clear in the Epistle to the Galatians. To restrict the Christian saint in areas where Holy Scripture is silent or indifferent is to build an illegitimate yoke.That a Christian is only proper in storytelling when telling “Christian” stories by good intentioned transformational evangelicals is to shackle the Christian saint - freed mercifully by Christ’s blood - in the law. Of course, there will be a need depending on genre and audience for a filmmaker of confessional Christian faith to graphically show the realities of the world.

The problems with labeling movies “Christian” by what is not in a film in terms of content is that non-believing filmmakers can realise these aesthetics too. There are non-believing filmmakers who do not feel comfortable shooting graphic and exploitative scenes. Whether a filmmaker decides to show a graphic sex scene - or a Christian who is a filmmaker abandons such a scene - the movie does not become “Christian.” It’s still just a movie - a secular art form. It is either a well-crafted film (written, directed, performed, edited) or mildly well realised.

Or it could be horrible. But it is not Christian, objectively.

The content and style of a film is related to film aesthetics. And aesthetics do not change the overall form of dramatic storytelling; the “work” movies properly dramatize to the viewer.

The larger problem with evangelistic movies is they are - in effect - not movies, but commentaries. The evangelistic filmmaker is not externalizing a dramatic conflict outside of his or herself, but is trying to put the universe of the film together to “preach” the Holy Gospel. In essence, this evangelistic filmmaker has imprisoned themselves, by trying to show how life should be - how people should behave - not in order to tell a dramatic story, but for evangelism - meaning conversion to Christ.

But historically movies are of an entirely different form and form dictates motivation. Cinema dramatizes how things are - who people are, in dramatic complexity. They describe an external, yet dramatic story in visual imagery. Aesthetically, this can be realised in stark entertainment ways - [think Indiana Jones] - or more seriously, like Chariots of Fire.

But movies are not an altar call - nor can they be.

THE ROOT OF STORYTELLING

By David Beilstein

Continuing my plunge into storytelling comes advice from screenwriter Terry Rossio. Rossio goes on to belabor the point screenplays (the basis upon which all movies derive) require a strange/compelling attractor:

You can call it a hook or a gimmick or a twist. Sometimes it’s called a high concept: an idea for a movie that can be stated in one or two sentences. You can substitute high concept for strange attractor but strange attractor is more precise. What good is a short, simple idea for a movie if it doesn’t also attract people?

Later, Rossio concludes:

The best strange attractors explore a bit of the human condition that is specific, universal, and (if possible) has never been done before.

The key points here being human (condition) and universal application. Religious affections and claims are universal in that human beings experience and live-out those convictions, true or false. But audiences do not necessarily share in those convictions. In a movie, the effectiveness of the storytelling medium in fact necessities audiences do not have to have those convictions.

Audiences must be (and are) human.

It is this accurate presupposition - what I call the inescapable man-as-imago dei Creator/creature paradigm - that rationalises storytelling for us and gives us its impact. The notion such an epistemic paradigm cannot be proven within itself does not make the claim false.

It is true because it must be true.

It has been said movies are nothing more than trapping a protagonist in a tree - using an antagonist to throw rocks at the protagonist, and finally, finding a way to get the antagonist out of the tree (resolution) in a satisfying and most importantly, a dramatic way. To use this “means” - or media - as a message soundboard corrupts the natural design of storytelling.

If movies are a pulpit (as a friend of mine suggested) what they do and can only preach is the human condition. And they will do so based upon the pervading ethos of the time and cultural context in which they arise.

JRR Tolkien was richly aware the storyteller is not trying to dominant the audience’s imagination - but pursues to release it. The storyteller (in effect) is trying to “imitate” all of life’s vagaries so that audience collectively says, “That’s how it is.” This is precisely what cannot happen when movies are used as an evangelistic arm no matter the intentions.

St Paul is worthy of discussion here. The transformer evangelical who wishes to use cinema as an evangelistic tool ceases to allow the Apostle his due. It is one thing to run rough shot over the parameters and design of storytelling, quite another to ignore St Paul. As the Apostle makes clear, faith comes from hearing the Word of God preached.

Human beings are not the “deciders” of God’s gracious condescension. They are the recipients of it.

What continues to boggle my mind is the transforming evangelical’s need to use good and secular things and try to make them Sacred. More worrisome, I keep hearing how movies can be “Christian” simply because of the pietistic ramblings of believers, running rough shot over the design and structure of storytelling altogether.

I happened upon an interesting e-mail from a lady friend. She’s quite amazing. What was interesting to me is how she said my convictions are somewhat unique to Reformed Christians she knows. I’m positive her observation is true, but my suggestion has always been, historically, my convictions are simply common sense. A distinction between the Sacred-secular kingdoms has been a proto-Protestant and Protestant/Lutheran development for many moons. Only recently, in the words of Westminster Seminary California Professor R. Scott Clark, has there been a desire to transform this and transform that - seeing common things as Sacred, et cetera, et cetera.  

It is important to note this has done large disservice to those cultic distinctions Christians do have - and aspire towards in obedience to Christ the Messiah against those of non-believers. 

Sigmund Freud was infamous for saying sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Could it be - as much of what Freud said is algebra to me - storytelling is simply storytelling? Moreover, other than a commitment to the sternest verity, is the Christian saint’s vocational impetus in storytelling objectively different than the non-believers?

I am not convinced it is.  

THE EXISTENTIAL SEAT OF CINEMA AND LITERARY ART FORMS

By David Beilstein

WHEN it comes to the issues I have thus far discussed it is important to look at some of the theological issues influencing my thinking on issues confessional Christians encompass when glimpsing relationships of secular culture, specifically, cinema and literature. 

St Augustine of Hippo unpacked in his magnus opus, The City of God, an antithesis between Christians and non-believers in the present age concerning ultimate things related to the Kingdom of God. In St Augustine's schema, the Bishop of Hippo laid out duties and experiences Christians and non-Christians share and can agree on in distinction with those things which divide the elect of God, chosen by God's merciful grace in Christ, and those under the just enmity with God, the unregenerate non-believer. 

In The City of God St Augustine illustrates a basis between ultimate things - things pertaining to salvation; of the Sacred Kingdom of God glimpsed in the gospel proclaimed by Christ's church - and those things penultimate - things common, or profane, encompassing duties, behaviours, that are not inherently sinful, but are nevertheless, non-Holy. It is here the rubber hits the road. 

Movies, cinema, as much as literature, concern themselves with penultimate interests. Thus, they can only describe those things experienced on a secular level. A common, profane level of experience of life and its glory and brokenness. While dramatic art forms can describe people and actions of the Sacred Kingdom, they do so in the interest of dramatic storytelling, not to prescribe proclamation. 

Suffice to say, a character in a movie can proclaim Christ accurately or falsely, but said character does so because of an unfolding narrative - couched in descriptive, dramatic purpose; not for prescriptive apologia, or evangelism. It is also true that God's creation has specific purposes, not all decreed in order to bring men to Christ. Holy Scripture is clear how this work manifests itself through the work and act of the triune God alone. 

Let's peek-a-boo at an example: wine and food are good for the body, but neither brings men and women into reconciliation with God through Christ's Gospel. And these earthly elements, though profane, need not be Holy to be purposeful and good gifts of the triune God of Holy Scripture. In ultimate terms, it is certain that without the presupposed truth of Christ and His Gospel, the ultimate purpose of wine and food goes misunderstood by those outside the Covenant of Grace. 

Nevertheless, I have argued movies and cinema (literature too) rely on penultimate purposes as their basis - apart of the dramatic storytelling medium; to achieve their design. And it is because these art forms are penultimate, they fail to gird up the antithesis Christians desire them to be in contradistinction to ultimate things, which do erect a natural antithesis between those belonging to the city of men, and those brought into a state of grace, awaiting the promised consummation of the City of God through Christ. 

This contention, however, does not mean the Christian who writes movies and literature is left without a personal voice. All writers and filmmakers bring their individuality to their work. There should be no debate, here. And those who do not have failed any meaningful aesthetic purposes. The writer constructs his ideal world in a dramatic contextual design, and it is the requirement of the Christian who is an artist to imagine a world in consistent harmony with the world Sacred Scripture's God has ordained. Our world, brimming with vagaries of all kinds, is itself beautiful, corrupt, broken - immensely expressive of God's wondrous character in nuanced, incomprehensible, but particular ways. 

Nothing the Christian saint imagines should construct a false view of the world. But we must emphasise caution.  For the dramatic conflict between protagonist and antagonist organises the narrative of any story, true or feigned, within a dramatic meeting - a combustion - where numerous characters will have false ideas about the world and human experience and purpose. Quite obviously, such dramatic complexity will be one of the major reasons for the conflict marinating the unfolding narrative; a consequence of the author doing his abled best to observe and describe the epic sweep of human existence, in penultimate terms. 

People believe many another untrue things, Christian and non-Christian. Those beliefs happen upon an edge of conflict, running against and contrary to other character beliefs and actions. As such - because of human experience or dramatic story needs - characters must be equally wrong, equally right, and equally duplicitous - in order to create the foundational apparatus for drama to work. 

Drama works because of the humanity - man as imago dei, denied or accepted - of the audience. Thus, the goal, if that is the right turn of phrase, for the Christian who writes secular movies and literature, is as Flannery O'Connor described: to describe distortions, as distortions; the result of man's fall into enmity with God in the Garden by the first Adam, a type of Christ, resulting in the paradigmatic broken anthropology St Paul describes in the Apostle's Epistle to The Romans, Chapter three. Thus, the writer of Christian faith should describe distortions in the human experience as unnatural and bitterly tragic; as foreign to our humanity. 

We come to a specific paradigm, then. If one of the hallmarks of proper Biblical exegesis is the law-gospel distinction (especially related to the doctrine of Justification through ex nos imputation to sinners by Christ's cross-work) we may define a distortion-beauty-conflict-inducing arch - in a penultimate sense - as the proper function of dramatic storytelling.

The most successful writers of confessional Christian faith have understood dramatic narrative parameters; the laws, as it were, of dramatic storytelling. And they have realised the non-prescriptive nature of the dramatic-storytelling craft. Likewise, these writers comprehend the limits and the design of the art forms they peruse. And it is these same writers who have occasioned in their work, more darkness, more beauty - more earthiness and humanity; than the Christian trying to force-feed evangelism into dramatic storytelling designs and purposes it simply cannot execute because of what dramatic art is as created by God.