In our Christianity Matters on Sunday, Aaron briefly showed that drama, as we know it in its various forms, didn’t originate in the Greek and Roman plays as one would suspect but in the Church during the Middle Ages. (BTW, read Augustine’s City of God for an extensive assessment of Greek and Roman plays and theaters.) They were performed during the celebratory months of May and June. Originally the plays portrayed the Passion of Christ, but they eventually evolved into depicting other biblical stories until the productions became too grand for the Church to manage. Nonetheless, all the plays had one goal in mind - point to the redemption found in Jesus Christ. (Aaron, it would interesting to know what happened to drama in the wake of the Enlightenment.)

So what’s the point in knowing the history? First, we shouldn’t be surprised that writers and producers still desire to tell a story of redemption.  As human beings made in the image of God, we have a desire to see the helpless and hopeless saved.  Now I want to be careful here because sin has radically distorted this desire.  Joe Wright’s and Christopher Hampton’s Atonement is a prime example of a distorted and ill-perceived understanding of the nature of true atonement.

Second, as evangelical Christians, who stand inline with Orthodox Christianity, we want to see the story’s narrative point to or illustrate the Christian Metanarrative - the story of Redemption. Commenting on The Kite Runner, Albert Mohler said, “In the end, The Kite Runner is a fascinating and deeply moving story of betrayal and rescue. Missing from the story is the promise of redemption, and that is why the film ends with a most unsatisfying absence of resolution. Where there is no redemption, there is no real sense of hope. There is no ‘way to be good again’ — only a way to be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.” He’s right! The message is “unsatisfying” without the resolution of redemption.

But that does raise another question; one that gets at value judgments. Can we still call the film “good” in the absence of redemption? I would argue that it may be considered good even if it is devoid of the theme of redemption based on a number of criteria for making value judgments.  I’ll just mention one of the more provocative and controversial standards from our class on Sunday.  Film, literature, and art can have a transforming effect and cause for introspection.

This is particularly controverisial among Evangelicals because of the implications of Sola Scriptura.  But Sola Scriptura must be coupled with an understanding of God’s common grace and the imago dei, i.e. human beings are made to know something of God’s divine character and to reflect it.  Man, Christian and non-Christian without distinction, therefore, is able to create that which is honorable, true, beautiful, and real. And mediating on such things can be transforming and thereby “good.”

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