The Voice of the Bible

The process of understanding films is like the process of understanding any other human knowledge.  The key is repetition and quantity of exposure until one begins to see patterns.  This is why a skilled physician sometimes knows what is wrong with you before you finish describing your symptoms.  The offensive tackle on the line of scrimmage in an American football game knows the play the other team is about to run by the way in which the opposing team’s players are standing.   The chess master knows the next six moves you are about to make and how he will respond to each.

In film theory, a theory popularized by director/actor Francois Truffaut is the auteur theory.   The theory posits that the author of a film is the true author of a film, putting his or her unmistakable stamp on the final product.  The theory holds that while great actors or producers can, and occasionally do, elevate films, the major artist of a film is the director.  The “voice” of a director is discernable when viewing the director’s output as a whole over the course of their career.

When you listen to Mozart every piece of music is different but every piece is also the same, and every piece yells “Mozart!”  It is the same with film directors: Alfred Hitchcock (an innocent is caught up in events outside of his control), Akira Kurosawa (the master and disciple, heroic champions, and cycles of extreme violence), Jean-Luc Goddard (Marxist themes), Luis Bunuel (opposition to organized religion and to traditional morality),  Naruse Mikio (female protagonists caught in bleak and pessimistic situations, with emotions raging under a calm surface), Martin Scorscese (morally ambiguous protagonists who are often prone to violence and feelings of guilt),  Ingmar Bergman (mortality, loneliness, sexual desire, religious faith),  Tim Burton (the misunderstood outsider who unintentionally hurts those for whom he cares),  David Cronenberg (the uncomfortable merging of mankind and technology),  Jacques Tati (the humor in normal everyday events), etc.

Just like a film director's body of work, the Bible has an identifiable voice, even though it was written by at least forty different people.  It is remarkably self-consistent.  Doctrine derived from the Bible can be judged as to its orthodoxy by its consistency with the total body of scripture.  It truly can be said that the Bible has multiple authors and one author.

Those who claim that the Bible contains contradictions fail to understand a basic principle: God's ways are not our ways.  Our understanding is limited; God's is infinite.  Rather than contradictions, the Bible is full of paradoxes in which both answers are true.  The Bible has multiple authors and one author. True freedom comes from submitting oneself as a slave to the Lord.  Both free will and predestination are clearly taught in the Bible.  Christians are strict monotheists but God exists as Three Persons.  Jesus is fully human and fully divine.  Jesus was at the same time a poor man and also the king of the universe.  God demands perfection but we are incapable on our own of ever fulfilling the demand. We are to be in the world but not of the world.

Film Comment: Un Chien Andalou

I have written before about the modern relativistic idea that there is no absolute truth, that even the idea of truth itself is meaningless.  This anti-intellectual philosophy is rapidly becoming the predominant view in much of modern Western civilization.  The statement that all philosophies are true actually means that none are true.  There is no basis for determining what is right or wrong.  What you declare to be evil, another person might declare to be good, and you both have no valid reason for your claim.  Everything is subjective, based only on opinion.  There is no universal logic, There is no universal sense.  There are no universal ethics. There is no universal meaning.

This idea has begun to become mainstream, but it is not new. “Pilate said unto him, What is truth?”  John 18:38

In the most studied short film in history, Un chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1928), director Luis Bunuel (1900, Spain – 1983) and surrealistic painter Salvador Dali  (1904, Spain – 1989) collaborated in coming up with totally unrelated scenes that they patched together in no particular order.  Their intent was to offend the society they despised.   Bunuel said, “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. … Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything.”

Bunuel and Dali wrote the film together, with Bunuel directing.  There is no plot or continuity of ideas, just one shocking image after another.  The image almost universally recognized as the most shocking is the one in which a woman’s eyeball is sliced with a shaving razor.  Many have tried to interpret the film along preconceived philosophical lines, but all have ultimately failed because the message is that there is no meaning.

Christians utterly reject this world view because we know that absolute truth does exist.  Jesus is The Truth.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6