Journal d'un curé de campagne: An Ecclesiological Review

Note: This review focuses on two components of Bresson's film, which are relevant to ecclesiology. There is much more that could be said about Bresson's film as well as his entire body of work. For those interested in delving deeper I recommend Paul Schrader's Transcendental Style in Film.

Robert Bresson's 1951 Journal D'un Curé De Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest), is the story of a young priest, sent to a new parish in a small village in the French countryside. Though adapted from the Georges Bernanos novel of the same title, this is Bresson's film, through and through. He uses the story to explore themes of transcendence, the sacramental character of the physical (and with it a certain view of sacraments themselves), and the operation of grace apart from the worthiness of the minister. He accomplishes this through camera movement, actor direction, pacing, and narrative elements.

Bresson was committed to the idea that the transcendent could be found by seeing "through" the details of the physical. For him, artifice in acting was a barrier seeing. He dispensed with professional actors and instead found with the look that he wanted and trained them to execute precise movements. The performances are restrained. Facial expression is slight. Actors deliver lines in an unaffected manner.

Camera shots are long and movements fluid. Bresson strips every shot of extraneous detail, often placing the camera extremely close to an actor's hands or face. The pacing of the film is slow. In all of this Bresson sought to recreate the everyday - the quotidian, because he felt that it was in the everyday details, where one who looked carefully enough could see the transcendent. The result of all of these elements when combined is that the slightest expression becomes explosive.

Bresson’s stated intention in this style of filmmaking was to create moving icons. An icon is not intended as an object of contemplation in itself (which would make them into idols); it is intended to point beyond itself to something else - to the transcendent. This view of the material as being infused with the transcendent such that it can actually communicate the transcendent can be called a sacramental view of the physical and it has direct bearing on one's range interpretations of the Eucharist. In this film, the connection is made more explicit through elements of the story.

The young priest arrives in the village of Ambricourt and is largely ignored by his parishioners. They are reluctant to let him into their lives to minister. He is befriended by an old priest from a nearby parish and an unbelieving doctor.

The young priest is sick. The only food that can calm his stomach and that will sustain him is bread that has been soaked in wine. This physical situation - a man physically ill and weak sustained by bread and wine - is emblematic of a certain, sacramental understanding of the Eucharist - men spiritually weak sustained by the bread and wine of Communion. He keeps his illness from all but the doctor and priest of Torcy. The villagers, seeing him both consuming his wine-soaked bread and also staggering from weakness assume that he is a lush. We find out late the exact nature of his illness.

But the priest is also ill spiritually. He suffers from doubt and anguish which Bresson communicates through his narrated journal entries and through conversations with the priest from Torcy. He still "feels" his faith within him, but he doubts the grace of God towards him and his usefulness to God. This despair reaches its peak when the doctor is found to have accidentally shot himself in the woods. It is an obvious suicide.

Ineffective in his ministry, the priest is avoided by adults and taunted by the children of his parish. We have seen Bresson explore the physical as a means of grace. Here he explores the human as such.

It will be instructive here to take a detour towards early church history and the Donatist controversy. From 303 to 313 the emperor Diocletian persecuted the church and outlawed Scripture. Some Christians gave up their copies of the Scriptures and later, after the persecution returned to the church. The Donatists protested that since they had compromised their ministry would be invalid. Augustine countered the Donatists, insisting that the church is made up of both saint and sinner and that the efficacy of the sacraments depended upon Christ's worthiness (ex opere operatio). Can a doubting, ineffective minister be used by God?

God does use the priest of Ambicort in the life of a particular family in the parish. The Count we discover is having an affair with the governess, Miss Louise. The daughter, Chantal has confided in the priest and is being sent away by her father. The priest goes to the Countess to confront her, but finds her resigned to her situation and bitter towards God over the loss of another child. They have a drawn out battle of wills and in what turns out to be the longest conversation in the film. The Countess is unmovable for most of the conversation, when suddenly, in response to the priest's words, she drops her antagonism and surrenders herself to God. In light of the style of the film this scene, though restrained in comparison to most films, is incredibly moving. Here God uses the weak, doubting, ineffective priest to minister grace to another.

With regard to the view of sacrament expressed in this film, much can be said for understanding that the creation, though distinct from God bears His imprint. In fact, it is through the physical that God most often communicates grace in the world. Nevertheless, this is not what is happening in the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a memorial which commemorates the work of Christ on the cross and points us towards the coming feast in His Kingdom. It is not a meal whose physical eating sustains the spiritual life of believers, though it is a symbol pointing to the very true spiritual reality that it is the body and blood of Jesus - the substitution and sacrifice which they represent - which does sustain the spiritual lives of believers.

Regarding the worthiness of ministers, it must be said in accord with Augustine in response to the Donatists that, regardless of how the sacraments themselves work, it is the worthiness of Christ which makes grace effective and not the minister.

Download this review as a pdf without images here.

A Textual Problem in Ephesians 2:21

If you're having trouble falling asleep tonight, you might want to read my first ever textual criticism paper. I wrote this over the weekend for my NT103: Intermediate Greek class. In spite of how dry this paper might appear to you this class has been a blast. It's definitely been the most work of any of my DTS classes so far, but Dr. Johnston keeps class interesting. He's a funny guy. I just pdf'd it and posted it here. Enjoy!

My favorite part of Papyrus and Uncial NT manuscripts like the Codex Sinaiticus here is how they wrote in all upper-case letters and didn't use punctuation, accents, or spaces between words.

A Textual Problem in Ephesians 2:21

The Uncomfortable Faith of David Eugene Edwards: Paste Magazine

Matt Fink talked with David Eugene Edwards about his latest Woven Hand project, Consider the Birds for the upcoming issue of Paste. Why couldn't you get this one, Dave? :^)

The gothic-folk master sees himself as doing a pre-evangelistic apologetic work, reminiscent of Flannery O'Conner's take on violence which is worth quoting at length here:

“My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable. . . . Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.

"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Still, as his message is an uncomfortable fit for those who don’t share his faith, and his music is anathema to the comparably sterile contemporary Christian music establishment, he now assumes an unusual place in the modern musical pantheon. Rubbing elbows with artists who don’t share his view but have come to similar conclusions on the ethical deficits that define man’s condition, Edwards holds tightly to his idea of the uncomfortable truth. “They can see it. All men can see it,” Edwards says of the ugliness that colors man’s character and leaves him in need of redemption. “Whether they want to spend any time looking at it or not is another story. And I’ve always been drawn to those kinds of people, whether they were Christians or not, like Joy Division, Nick Cave, Tom Waits. There’s not a lot of hope there, but there is truth.”"

"“I feel the responsibility to speak truth, and speak it in love, even though sometimes it’s scary,” he laughs before turning deadly serious. “To evil, truth is harsh. To self, to be selfless is harsh. It’s unnatural and it’s distasteful. Otherwise, it would be easy. But it’s not.”"

Paste Magazine :: Feature :: Woven Hand :: The Uncomfortable Faith of David Eugene Edwards (Page 1)

Why are Evangelicals Converting to Roman Catholicism?, Pt 1

Why are Evangelicals Converting to Roman Catholicism?

This seems relevant to the worship discussion, at least in a peripheral manner, see also this post. Evangelicals have been running to the open arms of Roman Catholocism in record numbers. The article cites four reasons: certainty, history, unity, and authority. I would add aesthetics to this list. (NOTE: I don't say aesthetics to be dismissive of the move. We are creatures who think and express in symbol, metaphor, and ritual -- think "Lord's Supper" and "baptism" for example.) Younger evangelicals are seeking community, authenticity and continuity with the past. Given the increasingly transient nature of our society this is not so difficult to understand.

It seems that in reacting against formalism and the overly external sacrementalism perceived first in the pre-Reformation era church and indeed, even in some of the more liturgical protestant churches of the Reformation, our forebears overcorrected. We can affirm the intimate and personal nature of devotion recaptured via the pietists that is emphasized by mainstream evangelicalism today while at the same time recognizing that the proverbial baby was thrown out with said bathwater. Perhaps such polarizing moves are necessary to overcome the weight of error, but it's been long enough that it's time to reexamine our approach to worship.

Coming in Part 2, The sources of theology: Scripture, Tradition and Culture

Why are Evangelicals Converting to Roman Catholicism?

Reforming Worship

Found these nice insights on John DePoe's blog this morning. Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Theology of Worship from Exodus 32

As an occasional worship pastor I am deeply concerned about this issue. Specifically, I'm concerned as to what a fully-formed, holistic Christian life looks like in this an other contexts. To take this discussion to the level of form is a huge step in the right direction. All too often we evangelicals are so focused on the heavenly that we have a complete disdain for the physical and the formal. But shouldn't we strive to glorify God from every aspect of our worship and not just the sincerity of the content?

Sincerity is certainly key, but what about excellence? Sincerity is not an excuse for in-excellence, though it can at times make up for it. What about understanding the ways in which symbol, metaphor and sign communicate or the ways in which the arts communicate most effetively? If we're to have those as a part of our worship then shouldn't they be more than just emotional triggers or propaganda?

John's previous post resonates with my recent concerns and thinking here.

Nevertheless, I think a main reason for this problem in churches where John and I might feel most at home doctrinally is the subtle Manicheaism that dwells there (which values only the "spiritual" - as if we don't live the spiritual out in and through the physical), the hegemony of propositionalism (which would assume that the "meaning" of the Biblical text is roughly equivilant to what we can extract and put in -- take your pick: Ryrie, Berkhoff, Erickson, Grudem -- a sytematic theology text), and a modernist disdain for tradition (and by tradition I don't mean the barely 100 year old revivalism that passes for tradition in many of our churches).

The question remains: How do we overcome this in our churches and how do we re-form our churches in a manner that doesn't destroy the Body in the process?

Fides Quaerens Intellectum: Theology of Worship from Exodus 32

One Nation, Under the Designer

While taking a break from my Textual Criticism paper this evening I found this interesting piece on Intellegent Design. It is from the perspective of a non-ID friendly science teacher in Seattle.

It does a good job of spelling out some of the major fears of people regarding the ID movement. Heavy attention is paid to the agenda of the Discovery Institute in particular and social, cultural, and legal implications at the public school level, rather than at the professional academic level.

Note also the confusion of ID with anti-evolutionism. The fact is that most ID theorists take evolution as a given. It is merely the blind, unguided, unteleological nature of evolution in its strictest Darwinian form that they are opposed to.

RedNova News - One Nation, Under the Designer