Tom Cunningham

Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ", is moving but smacks of a sensational rendering of the subject, namely in the bloody whipping scene which is a prelude to the cross-carry to crucifixion. I recall thinking, "How much blood can any human lose before they die on the way to be executed?" The Jesus story has plenty in it to create interest in production, but how easy it is to obscure the story with theatrics.

The story reveals the tension in the churches raised by the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts and the tendency of people to look at these as bona fide historical documents. The Gnostic writings in the Nag Hammadi collection represent an honest different picture of Jesus but does not meet the criterion of the fragments of words and actions of Jesus comprising the canon of the New Testament. Some one has to draw the line between 1) the nitty gritty life of the first followers of Jesus coping with the mystery of Jesus, including the resurrection phenomenon, and 2) those persuaded by the Gnostic concept afloat in the Hellenistic world at the time of the early Church. The Roman Catholic Church is the "heavy" in the film. I find the idea of an element of stigmata is the intensity of faith as a deepening struggle to maintain one's faith against evil pressures. It seems to me this struggle maintains for the follower of Jesus not so much as bleeding sores but as the stress dimension caused by following Jesus in the marketplace.