Let's go comment-monkey!
Jesus is God and man. His "faith" never waivered. However, according to what I was taught when I was a child and what I now still believe, Jesus, in his humanity, suffered every sorrow and temptation that every human being has and will ever suffer.
Jesus' temptation reveals the way in which the Son of God is Messiah, contrary to the way Satan proposes to him and the way men wish to attribute to him.
This is why Christ vanquished the Tempter for us: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning." (Hebrews 4:15) By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert. CCC 540
His "faith" never waivered.
Well, you can read the the textual evidence a couple of ways. "My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?" sounds to me like the cry of a man who is not quite 100% sure about the Father's Big Plan.
I find Last Temptation to be a profoundly moving and spiritual film—and indeed, a profoundly Catholic film—precisely because it emphasizes the human dimension of Jesus, and makes us privy to His doubts: What if I only think I'm the Messiah? What if this isn't the voice of God I'm hearing, but the voice of the Devil, or my own ego, or a brain tumor or something?
And then He carries on anyway. Because that's what faith is: not banishing all doubt and inquiry, but retaining the ability to function in spite of it.
The other thing I loved about Last Temptation—and why I think it's one of the best spiritual films ever made—is that it deals comfortably with mystery (in the theological sense) and ineffability. Jesus' methods and message are so wildly inconsistent throughout the narrative. He improvises His own destiny, inventing Himself as He goes along—and there's no attempt to justify or make excuses.
Just as the God of the Old Testament, who lurches wildly from tender comforter to vengeful psychopath and cannot be called to task, the Jesus of Last Temptation, for all that He is an immensely sympathetic character, remains laregly unknown to us—because He is literally unknowable.
I find this vastly preferable to the sort of Christian rhetoric that presumes to know the Mind of God—to reduce the Christ to a little man sharing the interlocutor's own little prejudices.
Because that's what faith is: not banishing all doubt and inquiry, but retaining the ability to function in spite of it.
I would somewhat agree with this statement. I agree more with Fulton Sheen who insisted that a thousand questions do not equal a single doubt. In other words, questions – inquiry – are good things.
Well, you can read the textual evidence a couple of ways. "My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?" sounds to me like the cry of a man who is not quite 100% sure about the Father's Big Plan.
The text you cite does seem like a cry of desperation and doubt. However, Jesus is not lamenting his apparent abandonment. His words are an allusion to the first line of Psalm 22, which is a victory psalm.
It begins:
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish? My God, I call by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I have no relief. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the glory of Israel. In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted and you rescued them.
To you they cried out and they escaped; in you they trusted and were not disappointed. But I am a worm, hardly human, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: "You relied on the LORD--let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you."
Yet you drew me forth from the womb, made me safe at my mother's breast. Upon you I was thrust from the womb; since birth you are my God. Do not stay far from me, for trouble is near, and there is no one to help.
Many bulls surround me; fierce bulls of Bashan encircle me. They open their mouths against me, lions that rend and roar. Like water my life drains away; all my bones grow soft. My heart has become like wax, it melts away within me. As dry as a potsherd is my throat; my tongue sticks to my palate; you lay me in the dust of death. Many dogs surround me; a pack of evildoers closes in on me. So wasted are my hands and feet that I can count all my bones. They stare at me and gloat; they divide my garments among them; for my clothing they cast lots.
And hear is where the transition occurs:
But you, LORD, do not stay far off; my strength, come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my forlorn life from the teeth of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth, my poor life from the horns of wild bulls.
Then I will proclaim your name to the assembly; in the community I will praise you: "You who fear the LORD, give praise! All descendants of Jacob, give honor; show reverence, all descendants of Israel!
For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, Did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out. I will offer praise in the great assembly; my vows I will fulfill before those who fear him.
The poor will eat their fill; those who seek the LORD will offer praise. May your hearts enjoy life forever!" All the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the LORD; All the families of nations will bow low before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, the ruler over the nations. All who sleep in the earth will bow low before God; All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage. And I will live for the LORD; my descendants will serve you.
The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.
While it is true that no one can know the mind of God, (Wasn't it Augustine who said that if we think we know then it is not God whom we know.) people of faith believe that God has revealed a bit of Himself to us in the Scriptures as well as in Christ who is the Word Incarnate. It’s true some people presume to have Him entirely figured out. Those people should just be bitch slapped and when they speak do as my mother always recommended “Consider the source.”
Was I imagining things, or did Scorsese do something weird to the wonderful Harvey Keitel's nose to make Judas look more Jewish? Jesus was just as Jewish, but Willem Dafoe is not obliged to disguise the fact that he looks about as Jewish as the Pope! I found the film very confusing and gave up after 30 mins. Wild horses would not have dragged me into the Mel Gibson masochism fest. Yuck!
Found you, Loz!
Damn, found out! I don't think any of the cast looked particularly Jewish, it was going more for the Renaissance tradition of making Jesus and the disciples look like Italians...
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