Passion of the Christ

The kerfuffle over whether Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ should win awards quite annoyed me. It reminds me of Karl Barth’s reflections on two occasions. On his 70th birthday (1956), there was to be published a Festschrift in his honor, entitled Antwort, as well as

... a series of further Festschriften from his Basle colleagues, from young Swiss theologians, from America, from Japan, from Lutheran theologians—and a volume of sermons by Rhineland pastors edited by Martin Rohkrämer. Barth was highly pleased with all these assessments, and with the flood of good wishes, but was bothered by the question ‘What would Kierkegaard have said of such an occasion? How does it compare with the New Testament? What will it look like in the light of heaven?’ ‘The prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New couldn’t have seventieth birthdays like this.’ (E. Busch, tr. John Bowden, Karl Barth, 417)

On yet another occasion in 1963,

... In the middle of April he travelled with his son-in-law to Copenhagen. From there he had received ‘the utterly unexpected news that he had been chosen to receive a prize previously awarded to such illustrious names as Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Igor Stravinsky, and Niels Bohr because he, too, had made his contribution to the spread of European culture’. ‘How fortunate that Kierkegaard no longer lives there and cannot object that real prophets were usually remembered with stones and not with such prizes.’ (Busch, 467–468)

I shall pass no judgment on Mr. Gibson or his supporters. But one does well to remember Kierkegaard’s words and Barth’s reflections. It might as well be that the movie meets not with prizes but with stones.