Remonstrans
Who Knew?
03/13/09
Who Knew?
Another non-scholar, this one from the other end of the spectrum from Matt Olson (but a soulmate in intellectual exertions) steps forward with some insight into what God likes.
God likes movies. Loves, actually. He loves them.
Brian Godawa says "the dominant means through which God communicates His truth is visually dramatic stories". Brian surveyed the scriptures and calculated that thirty percent "of the Bible is expressed through rational propositional truth and laws". So he subtracted 30% from 100% and came up with 70% which was, "therefore" [his word] not "rational propositional truth and laws".
If you have a scientific calculator you can crunch the numbers for yourself.
Presumably there are only those two (mutually exclusive, hence the math) means of conveying truth:
1) rational propositional truth and laws
2) visually dramatic stories
and "modernist Christianity has neglected to understand how much more important visual imagery, drama and storytelling are to God". "More important". Some pretty close reasoning is going on here, and I wouldn't want you to miss it. I'm guessing maybe if God thought his Revelation was extremely important he would have used visually dramatic stories 100% of the time.
The next step in his reasoning is to equate movies with "visually dramatic stories". There are no movies in the Bible that textual scholars or archeologists have been able to identify; no scripts have been found and no directors are known to have worked either in Israel or Judah, so dreams, illustrations, visions, analogies, types, poems and parables will have to serve as a justification for "movies".
Godawa says that all those miracles God performed for his people were "sensate visual displays of God's glory". And by sensate I am reasonably sure he doesn't mean sensate; he means sensuous. No Evangelist tells us that "signs and wonders" were ever sensate.
I'm thinking that by Godawa's reasoning Oscar Wilde was a blockbuster in Heaven. I know he is a favorite among fundamentalists, and those people are pretty strict about what entertainments will "check".
So all you fundamentalists who love movies can ignore what you where told by St. Augustine, Tertullian, Pascal, and all the Puritans. You can follow this simpleton. What did those guys know? And men like Dante and Milton failed to appreciate visually dramatic stories.
Frank Peretti, Janette Oke, Thomas Kinkade and Brian Godawa: the winds of a true Renaissance are blowing.
Things are falling apart on this terrestrial ball; things that cannot be fixed.
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1 Comment from: Jeff Mobley [Visitor] 
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Just because God communicates in a story does not mean he is not communicating propositional truth. I think we can all agree that God communicates truth that can be expressed in propositions in narrative and even poetic form.
Movies however tend to be a sensual medium and appeal more to our senses and not to our moral imaginations, the target, I believe, of God's narrative and poetic stories. God created us with the capability to picture what he is communicating in the narratives. But movies bypass our moral imagination and appeal to our physical senses and we get lazy then and miss the truth that God communicates.
Plus in order to get something produced in Hollywood one would need to compromise the truth content anyway.
Movies however tend to be a sensual medium and appeal more to our senses and not to our moral imaginations, the target, I believe, of God's narrative and poetic stories. God created us with the capability to picture what he is communicating in the narratives. But movies bypass our moral imagination and appeal to our physical senses and we get lazy then and miss the truth that God communicates.
Plus in order to get something produced in Hollywood one would need to compromise the truth content anyway.
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03/13/09 @ 07:31 2 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
That’s just one of Godawa’s many oversimplifications. I think I am most amused by his binary mentality: either “rational propositional truth and laws” or “visually dramatic stories”. Imagine someone who’s studied OT texts saying there is either prophecy or poetry.
This is how far we have fallen; flunkies sermonizing about art.
Some movies are sensual; all movies are—by nature—sensuous. But that’s not my problem. Poetry is sensuous. I like e.e. cummings’ line “…(and only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down)”.
I don’t think movies have to bypass our moral imagination, nor do I think an appeal to the senses obviates the moral imagination. I just think Godawa hasn’t a clue.
He’s a very dumb propagandist.
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03/13/09 @ 13:29 3 Comment from: exlibris [Visitor]
Yeah . . . McGrath dealt with that level of stupidty some 19 years ago in The Genesis of Doctrine. Really, how long must we put up with these thoughtless "me-too's"?
Anyway, I had this really great Homiletics prof who would insists on points in our sermons that consisted of a straight declarative sentence (subject-verb-object). The sentence must possess an action verb as its main verb. Then . . . once we clearly had a target, we were to learn how to tell a really good story to illustrate the point. You know, sort of like Nathan before David.
Anyway, Sardonis knew his stuff; obviously Godawa (what kind of name is that anyway?) does not.
Anyway, I had this really great Homiletics prof who would insists on points in our sermons that consisted of a straight declarative sentence (subject-verb-object). The sentence must possess an action verb as its main verb. Then . . . once we clearly had a target, we were to learn how to tell a really good story to illustrate the point. You know, sort of like Nathan before David.
Anyway, Sardonis knew his stuff; obviously Godawa (what kind of name is that anyway?) does not.
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03/13/09 @ 17:35 4 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
I also liked that “modernist Christianity” comment. These postmodern quacks sure are a judgmental bunch.
Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
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03/13/09 @ 18:44 5 Comment from: the divine passive [Visitor]
In order to deliver the cargo these guys intend to deliver, don't they NEED to bypass the moral imagination? I am under the impression that the god of the Emergents and Evangullibles NEEDS film for just this reason.
Here's the theory, tear it apart and I will say "faithful are the wounds of a friend:" Morally lazy people tire of making judgments on the fly (as one must do in such a fluid medium) and eventually acquiesce to the views of the film out of sheer moral fatigue. Therefore, film is the most effective propaganda device they have, and thus, their god loves it.
Here's the theory, tear it apart and I will say "faithful are the wounds of a friend:" Morally lazy people tire of making judgments on the fly (as one must do in such a fluid medium) and eventually acquiesce to the views of the film out of sheer moral fatigue. Therefore, film is the most effective propaganda device they have, and thus, their god loves it.
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03/13/09 @ 19:51 6 Comment from: dissidens [Member]
“Evangullibles”; I like that.
I dunno; I think you are imputing to them more reason than they are capable of. If they had any sense at all they’d have to know they are appealing to a moral imagination—just a twisted one. Wilde was appealing to the moral imagination when he wrote The Importance of Being Earnest.
I don’t doubt these people are morally lazy. I also know that none of us can “make judgments on the fly”. Part of what culture does for us is to place such questions in a common, usable framework. Are movies merely “visually dramatic stories” or are there many ways of telling visually dramatic stories, and theater is just one aesthetically problematic way of doing that? One that Christians have historically rejected.
I think it’s more willful ignorance than fatigue; they want to create ad hoc categories out of whole cloth. They love the theater and no argument against it will be considered.
But I think you’re dead right: evangullibles think all their prejudices are loved by their god. Queers, global warmers, evolutionists, open theologians, universalists…they all think God is smiling on them.
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03/14/09 @ 19:00 Leave a comment:
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