This week, I decided to write a collective response to your posts, touching on some of the key issues that we can discuss more fully in class. Some of you have not yet posted, however, and that means I can’t respond as completely as I should be able to in anticipation of class. Please remember the Sunday night deadline for these.
I’ll start with Sam’s film for the previous week because his was delayed last week. I didn’t see”201,” having been put off by the trailer and most of the reviews, but his discussion shows why we benefit from analyzing even the lesser quality films. He spells out the ideological fault-lines of the plot effectively. Here I want to underscore the way in which conspiratorial thinking of the type attributed to the powerful elite in the film is itself symptomatic of apocalyptic thinking. The sense that “they” are out to deceive us begins with Satan and the Anti-Christ in the Book of Revelation and gets retold over the centuries in both religious and secular form. Apparently “2012” takes this on in terms of the elite’s special plan to escape the ecological disaster that they have been responsible for creating. In class, we should consider the elements of conspiracy in terms of the status of a truth, including the standing of those “in the know” as well as those who are deceived (by Satan or powerful human beings). Please review Kirsch, pp. 220-221.
Alongside and as part of the theme of truth (who has it, who hides it, who fakes it, etc.), the idea of calculation keeps returning as a key issue. Grecia and Andreas deftly and Jon playfully (I think!) point out some of the intricacies of the use of numbers and how they are understood as secret codes of some sort. The suggestion of the text is that if one can crack the code, the actual date will be knowable. So will the identity of the Beast and his number 666. But Andreas’s quote by Jacques Ellul gets to the other in-built point of Revelation: the truth that is to be revealed nonetheless remains hidden. This, as we have already discussed, has kept it relevant over the centuries despite the inaccuracies of the claims of imminence for doomsday. Inspired by William Miller and David Koresh among others, Jon has given us rational systems of calculation for an endtime. Let me pose these questions for Jon in particular for class discussion. What is at stake psychologically in this kind of calculation? Why has it appealed to so many followers? Please draw on Kirsch to present on this.
Don’t forget, Andreas, there is no s on Revelation. This bring up the idea of unity versus multiplicity—or single, capital T, Transcendent Truth from God versus lower case truths that stem from human beings and may even conflict with one another. Here are some questions to ponder and I’d like Andreas and Grecia to present on these. The insistence that Revelation is literally what God will do to end the earth is a claim to Truth. What then is the insistence that it is to be read “spiritually” or symbolically? Is this a claim for Truth or truth? If it is an allegory (or parable of good and evil as Andreas suggests) does that make it untrue? According to what perspective? If one believes in a God who possesses the power to destroy the world and most of its inhabitants and save the chosen ones for a new world to be created, might John’s depiction get at this truth as accurately as human imagination can provide without becoming untrue?
In asking these questions, I am interested in your thinking more about the nature of the secular in contrast to the religious.
Finally, I want everyone to be ready to discuss the following key historical shifts, when:
-Christianity was established as Rome’s state religion;
-Revelation was canonized for the New Testament;
-Augustine declared Revelation to present a “moral conflict within each person and in the Church in general” (Kirsch, 119);
-women emerged as religious prophets;
-Protestantism rebelled against Catholicism;
-Puritanism came to America;
-the Rapture was introduced formally within Protestant Fundamentalism;
-Nazi belief took the form of apocalyptic destruction and millennial hope for the chosen;
-the Atom Bomb was dropped.
