The Theology of Christopher Nolan

Mike Horton

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Bob Hiller

this is when Gerard's idea of the scapegoat sort of comes to bear. Batman becomes the scapegoat and when this violence threatens society. So he becomes the fall guy, the one who the lie is told about and he actually kind of rolls with it in a way.

Walter Strickland

Whereas the white knight is actually the bad guy.

Bob Hiller

He's actually the.

Justin Holcomb

He's. Well, he's two faced.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, yeah, eventually, eventually. So then with Gerard, when the scapegoat doesn't work, you have to have this Christ like figure sort of rise from the ashes. If I can make it very dramatic.

Walter Strickland

He even comes out of the bat cave. He rises from the cave.

Bob Hiller

So even before we get there we have Harvey dental. Who's then this person who's the white knight? Yeah, the white knight who's going to fight violence not with violence like Batman, but doing so with, through non violence and so forth through a devastating accident that was set up by Joker. He then becomes two face. So now we have the fall, this plot twist, the fall of this person who is this Christ figure.

Walter Strickland

So who is really the Christ figure up until then is left in doubt.

Justin Holcomb

Yes, I think I'm going to do the rest of the show like this,

Mike Horton

Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Zinn, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.

Walter Strickland

Christopher Nolan has spent three decades making films that are haunted by questions about whether we can trust our own minds and whether love is something more than a useful evolutionary accident. I'm Mike Horton, founder of Solo Media, and I teach theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary, California. And I'm joined by Lutheran pastor Bob Hiller, Baptist theology professor and pastor Walter Strickland, and Justin Holcomb, Bishop of the Diocese of Central Florida and professor of theology at Reformed Seminary in Orlando. Christopher Nolan is one of the most serious artists and thinkers working in film and we're gonna move through some of his notable movies that our viewers will know probably pretty well. It's a kind of theological journey. Just take a look at the wider questions of meaning. And look at the radical doubt of Inception, the scapegoat logic of the Dark Knight trilogy, the aching, almost religious humanism of Interstellar, and the dilemmas of Oppenheimer. So maybe we'll get an idea of what will come next with the Odyssey. I think we're all looking forward to that one coming out. There's a lot of philosophy in his films, and one of the things that people have picked up on is the influence of Rene Girard, who was an agnostic and he became a Christian by reading Dostoevsky, A pioneering post structuralist thinker ended up at Stanford in his last years. And Girard had this idea, mimesis, an imitative desire. We have a desire to imitate. And also this idea of a scapegoat mechanism that's closely connected to it. Can we just talk about that for a moment? Because I think you see a little bit of that throughout his movies.

Guest/Theologian

It came from I See Satan fall Like Lightning, 1999. And he said that the Bible, unlike other sacred texts, takes the side of the victim as opposed to the persecuting mob. And so that's a piece of the scapegoating. He writes this. The Passion accounts reveal the scapegoat mechanism precisely by refusing to join the collective violence. And so he says the cross is not just another scapegoating event, but it's the event that exposes the lie at the heart of all scapegoating.

Walter Strickland

Because the scapegoat is innocent. Yes, that is clearly exposed in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Guest/Theologian

And then he says, this is where different from him. This is not him. This is, as us Christians thinking through this, this is where biblical orthodox theology pushes beyond Girard. Because to break the cycle of violence doesn't come from imitating Christ by some type of moral effort. It comes from the Holy Spirit who unites believers to Christ, producing the fruit of love, joy, peace, and all. So it's an interesting kind of diagnostic of human society and how they interact with one another. And what he's doing is Girard. If you apply Girard to Christianity and what's happening with the cross, it's an anthropological reading of the cross which unmasks human violence. That's interesting, but it's not a theological reading of what's actually happening, of atonement, where God's holiness and justice is being dealt with, and God's holiness is being dealt with, and atonement is. Is what's the work of Atonement is the work of atonement So I feel loved. Or is the work of atonement that God's wrath has poured out, justice is done, and atonement is for God.

Walter Strickland

Because it seems like for Girard, the scapegoat mechanism is totally horizontal. It's basically the scapegoat is exposed as innocent. And therefore that breaks the cycle of violence and. And so forth. But the scapegoat in the gospel is actually the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is actually not innocent when he's hanging on the cross because he's bearing our sins. That element is kind of missing from. I don't think we have to reject the part that says, surely he was the son of God, we killed an innocent man. That that exposes how heinous our hearts are and so forth. Kind of flips our scapegoating on its head. But Jesus really is our scapegoat.

Guest/Theologian

Yes.

Walter Strickland

And I think that that has to.

Guest/Theologian

Not simply in the Girardian anthropological sense. Scapegoat of what he's doing, but absolutely

Walter Strickland

in the sacrificial sense of the Old Testament. Yeah.

Guest/Theologian

For this, I mean, I think we just put all the kind of philosophical stuff on the table. And then kind of go to the movies. Cause that's gonna be really significant for Dark Knight and some others. Can we also talk about hermeneutics of suspicion? Because that's going to be important as well. Is that good just to do all the philosophy stuff on the front end and go for it. Because another piece of Nolan is. And it's not so much him naming it, but you start looking at the movies. There's Memento, Inception. Again, we'll go through all the other ones, but there seems to be this hermeneutic of suspicion at work. That's a phrase that comes from Paul Ricoer, from Freud in psychologies, where he coins it the hermeneutics of suspicion. And so everyone is clear. Ricoer is not a nihilist. He's a Protestant who's actually. He's comparing hermeneutics of suspicion. Then he looks at Marx, Nietzsche and Freud and says that they are unmasking things that are at play. Hidden, concealed forces like economic psychology and the will to power. That Freud. What's really at play is some type of desire, sexual desires. And for Marx, it's really an economic thing that's at play. And Nietzsche is this will to power. So he's looking at those three and saying those are the hermeneutics of suspicion. And he calls it hermeneutics of suspicion. He's countering them to what he calls hermeneutics of recollection and hermeneutics of faith. And so his big idea is that suspicion without faith leads to cynicism, which is exactly where the hermeneutics of suspicion goes. But faith without suspicion leads to naivete. And record wants both. He has a great, fascinating book on faith and suspicion, and it's a Lenten reading. Oh, it's not him. It's Merrill Westfall using Ricoer. And he goes through Marx, Nietzsche and Freud and says, read this for Lent because it'll point out all your idols. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Clearly, they're wrong. They're atheists. But hold on. Their criticism sometimes hits home, really.

Justin Holcomb

Hike.

Guest/Theologian

Ricoer also said, beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again. And so after you've unmasked all the illusions, he's saying, there's still a voice, and the question is whether you can hear it. And it's the voice outside, the voice of faith. And this is where Nolan is interesting on this hermeneutics of suspicion question, because he's doubting appearance. He's doubting memory, identity, and reality. That's a theme throughout many of his movies. That's why I loved Memento. When I first saw it, it unnerved me. It was yanking out reality of how memory works. And then he does it with time and appearance, but he never quite gets to Ric second, this other move, the secondary move. So Nolan will strip away every illusion, but rarely finds a trustworthy word on the other side. He does eventually, with making a claim about love and interstellar. We'll get to that. He gets the diagnosis right. He just doesn't get beyond the noetic effect of sin, of how to play on a story.

Walter Strickland

That's really important to bring that up, Justin. That he's. Ricor has that other side, that the positive answer, which he says really is God calling us outside of ourselves. And he was French Reformed. He grew up becoming interested, he said, in biblical interpretation through Bible studies in his home. People would come over to the house and they'd have Bible studies and that kind of always talking about exegesis and everything. So he has this. It's called phenomenological hermeneutics. People want to geek out about that. One of the important points he makes, which is why he's considered a great postmodern philosopher, is that interpretation happens between the subject and the object. It's not just the text or the reader. It's something that happens between the Text and the reader. And we could go into that later. But he's very. He says, why don't the hermeneutics of suspicion doesn't turn suspicion on ourselves as the reader because we're not sinners. Oh, well, you just say that because you're a capitalist or oh, you just say that because you're a socialist or you just say that because you're a Westerner or whatever. But what about I misinterpret because of what? How about being critical of myself and my way of thinking and where I'm coming from? And I just. He's some of his books thinking biblically exegetical and hermeneutical studies. That's not what you expect from the mentor of Jacques Derrida. And Figuring the Sacred is one of my favorite books. There's probably no other 20th century philosopher I've benefited from more than Paul Ricoeur. He's just amazing.

Bob Hiller

So just as I'm putting some pieces together, tell me how Ricoer's idea of interpretation happening between the subject and the object coincides with Gadamer's fusing of horizons.

Walter Strickland

Yeah, he's critical of Gadamer's idea of. So Hans Georg Gadamer after World War II is really trying to come up with a communicative theory, a hermeneutics of non suspicion, a hermeneutics of understanding. Can't we come together and understand each other? How can we prevent another war? And Ricoeur comes along and says, one of the best ways to work through all of this is to understand you're a sinner, I'm a sinner. He doesn't put it in exactly these terms, but we're all distorters of the truth. So he's not saying there's no such thing as truth and everybody who's telling you that they have the truth is a liar. But he's saying we do systematically distort the truth. And of course that's what Paul says.

Guest/Theologian

He's describing sin. I mean this is Romans 1, that we all suppress the truth and our unrighteousness and what Rakur and what Nolan where they track is a description of the noetic effects of sin. And if you can't simply trust yourself, your memory and your perception, what's left to trust? Then it causes you to doubt yourself. Where Nolan stops with the hermeneutic and the criticism, Christianity continues. Ricoer continues and said, yeah, there is a thing. It's called revelation and it's from outside of you of yeah, you aren't trustworthy you can't. It's not a stable ground. But the revelation from beyond, from God, it sure is.

Bob Hiller

So for the listener, who is almost overly humbled in their. Because of the fact that they've agreed that I've been affected by the no effects of sin, they don't even trust themselves. As readers of Revelation help that person. What would you guys say to them?

Justin Holcomb

What I would say is, what you ought to do is turn on a movie called Inception and completely wreck any hope of ever getting. I think what you want to start with is here's my whole problem with the whole conversation about harmony, exist, suspicion. Yeah, you've got to question yourself a little bit. Yeah, you've got to question the text a little bit. Maybe a lot. We need to question these things. Obviously, there's sin cooked in. In all of it. But on some level, I hate this. I gotta be honest, I hate this conversation right now because I don't know my way out of it apart from saying there's a voice outside of me that I can trust. Because what I can't say is, well, I can trust, at least on some level, that the text is given to me by people who want me to believe something specific. So part of this I would go to, like, John. John's gospel, right? So at the end of John's gospel, he says, look, I've got an agenda behind what I'm writing. I understand. Like, this is very helpful for us in our 21st century. Like, there's a reason I wrote this. I'm not just giving you a neutral history of the events of Jesus with recording of his teachings. I'm writing this so that you believe it. I'm writing this for your good, that there's somebody outside of me who's giving me something with my best intentions in mind that is actually trying to do this for my good. What is my basis for trusting John's words there? I have to say it's a miracle of faith in my heart, because on some level, I can't. This pushes me personally up against the philosophical wall that the only way I'm getting out of it is somebody coming in to rescue me with the word.

Guest/Theologian

For the only other option is nihilism.

Justin Holcomb

That's where I find it.

Guest/Theologian

I feel it, because I'm like, if you don't go all the way with Rakor and you only stop with Nolan, you're going to run into nihilism. And you're like, well, I can't trust anything. It's meaningless. And what can you trust? And that's why Ricor is so wonderful, because the hermetics of suspicion is a good diagnostic of the human condition that's fallen and finite.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, yeah.

Guest/Theologian

If you stop there, you're an end in nihilism.

Bob Hiller

Exactly.

Guest/Theologian

But if you have the hermeneutic of. Of recollection and faith, if there's a word from outside, this is what the prophets do. The prophets sound like this double step of, like, they're calling out, they're saying, like, no, this is wrong. This is where it leads to exploitation idol worship. And you have doing crazy stuff. And so when the prophets are speaking, they. They're doing the criticism piece, and then they're saying, but the word of the Lord says this, and there's a promise being made. So going back to your question is, well, the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, who inspired the words of scripture, is also in me. And so my heart and mind illuminates the words to me. And also, it's just reality because of uniformity of nature. God created it. God made my mind. I mean, there's a whole apologetics piece of this, so you can trust it, because there's plenty of reasons.

Justin Holcomb

Isn't there something, too, though, to this? And some of this is like, it's philosophical mind games. So, like, if you go and watch Inception. So we should probably bring up the movies we're talking about. Inception is this movie about guys who have the ability to basically invade your dreams and steal information they might need for. For whatever reason. Inception is the idea that you can put. You can implant an idea in somebody's mind that they didn't come up with on their own, that everybody will say, like, so there's this great scene where they're trying to explain what Inception is. And Joseph Gordon Levitt says, if I say, think of an elephant, what do you think of? I says, an elephant. He goes, right. But you didn't, like, come up with that. Like, it was in your mind. But I helped. You know what an elephant is. So I didn't put the idea of elephant in your mind. I called for something that's kind of already there. It's hard to put an idea in somebody else's head. Well, they want to do this for all kinds of crazy reasons, but nonetheless, they go on this journey to go into the deep depths of someone's mind to implant an idea that wasn't there before, and it completely jacks you up, and you start to lose the ability to decipher what is a dream versus what is reality, which is Very real for us today, which is very real for us today. When you have something you can just put over your eyes and check out of the real world, and suddenly you're in a digitalized sort of inception. So you got to see it. The movie is really fantastic, really thought provoking, really interesting. But at the end of it, there's this Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm gonna give you the end of the movie. Is that allowed? Are we here? Okay, go see it. Hit pause. Take two and a half hours. Come back. At the end of the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio thinks he has found a way out of this dream. But he's never sure if he's in reality or in a dream or not. Well, the way he can tell is he has a little top. And if he spins the top and the top falls, he knows he's back in reality. So he gets back to his house, he sees his kids. I'm crying, my daughter's crying. It's great. And then they hone in on the top, which is spinning, and it looks like it's about to fall. And then the movie ends and you're stuck with, is he in reality or is he not in reality? And I watched the movie twice to see if I could figure out the answer. And only made matters worse for me, which really made me realize, like, this was his whole point, the whole thing. This is the hermeneutics of suspicion. Like, I can't trust what I think this movie should be. I can't trust what Leonardo DiCaprio thinks is happening. I can't trust the top on the table. I can't trust anything. So what gets me to the point where I can actually trust something? The only thought I had. There's this one scene in the movie where everything is falling apart around him. And his wife says she's the reality, but she's actually dead. So much going on here. But there's always somebody else with him. There's another person there who is able to break out of the reality. And it seems to me the problem with hermeneutics of suspicion is embodied existence. Like, in my mind, I can't trust my mind. But I can trust the fact that if I reach over and punch Walter, I'm going to get hit back and it's going to feel really bad because he's a lot stronger than I am. There is reality that I can grasp onto. Something tangible out there, beyond my suspicion in my mind, I might not be able to trust my interpretation of reality. I might not be able to trust everything Somebody tells me, but there are certain realities. I trust that this chair is going to hold me up. I trust that water is good for my body. I can trust certain things in this world that aren't just constructs of my mind or not. And maybe I can't and the top doesn't fall and I'm in a dream. Like, I don't know. This is what drives me nuts. So there you go.

Mike Horton

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Guest/Theologian

It's not Inception, but just to tell, like, really quickly. Memento is another movie passive memory thing. And this is just a funny story of how unnerving this is, what the movie does to you. But Memento, I remember my dad told me to go watch it. I'm a big Braves fan. And so I'm listening to the Braves game on. On the way to the movie theater. It was a Friday night, all by myself. Just wanted to go and just be alone. And I'm listening to the game and it said, okay, Chipper Jones is at the plate with two on, two out, bottom of the ninth. And then I went and watched this movie that was all about memory. Can you trust it? And how do you deceive yourself? And I'm sitting there thinking about it. I get back to my car, I turn it back on, it says, here we are, bottom of the ninth, two on, two out, Chipper Jones at the plate. And I was like, what is happening to myself? And I'm losing my mind. And it says, been on a rain delay. And so what happened was the rain delay, the rain delay coordinated perfectly with when I turned on my car and turned it back on again and turned it off and up. But for like 30 seconds, I was like, which way is up? What is happening? What is real? And that's. That's funny, but that's what the movie's doing to you. If you're going to start questioning reality, everything's up for grab. And you start. I started doubting reality and. And I was just in it from, from that but that's what. So that's what he's gotten to.

Justin Holcomb

I want to ask a question, because I think this is where theologically, Memento and Inception are very interesting to me, because in both movies, the guy with the memory issue, Leonardo DiCaprio, and I forget the guy from Memento, it's been over 20 years since I saw that movie. They're both dealing with guilt.

Guest/Theologian

Yeah.

Justin Holcomb

And so they, in a sense, are trying to alter reality to manage the guilt that weighs on them. Leonardo DiCaprio, his. Again, we're ruining the movie if you haven't seen. But Leonardo DiCaprio's wife dies, basically because of inception. Right. And DiCaprio blames himself for this. Cobb blames himself for this. In Memento, he.

Guest/Theologian

Leonard.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, Leonard kills his wife.

Guest/Theologian

Right.

Justin Holcomb

And so to deal with this.

Walter Strickland

Accidentally.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, accidentally. But it's. It's. It's guilt, it's shame. And so to cope with this, reality has to be questioned. And the only way to escape the guilt is to somehow. Somehow alter and make reality something you can't trust in at all anymore. Because apparently you can't trust yourself in particular situations. I mean, the lack of ability to trust yourself leads to guilt, leads to I can't trust anything.

Walter Strickland

Well, then it seems like he moves from the self to society. You can't trust yourself to. You can't trust society. What are the films that do that?

Bob Hiller

Well, before I jump into that, which I'll be glad to sort of take us into the Batman trilogy, but I mean, I think that's the question that we were trying to broach before. You know, as far as, you know, if we're trying to put reality together, what is going to break into reality to help us do that? And we have to have revelation to do that, or else we're always just falling and never knowing which way is up. And so that's. That's where, I mean, even to go back to your answer to the question that frustrated you, others have had that same question, but your answer was so deeply biblical.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah.

Bob Hiller

But it was also very epistemological as well, because if John is saying these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, it actually means that words are intended by God to communicate reality. We can understand reality communicated. And then we get into perspicuity and we make these plain teachings, the things that we can certainly understand. And then I think we just go from there. And so your answer, I think, was very, very helpful. But undergirding it is a helpful Response to a hermeneutics of suspicion. Because within the scripture, there's an embedded epistemology.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, yeah.

Bob Hiller

Which is the study of what it

Justin Holcomb

means to know how you know what you know. Yeah.

Bob Hiller

So. So moving from the. The questioning of the self, you know, in Memento and Inception and those things, how do you engage in a community of selves to Mike's question, who are trying to engage with this? And so this is the Batman trilogy.

Guest/Theologian

Yeah.

Bob Hiller

This is where Batman begins, the Dark Knight, and the Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Lowell and I were pretty tight as of the past couple of weeks, and so that's why I'm getting help for the movie titles. But this is where Gerard's memetic theory really comes to bear.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, yeah.

Bob Hiller

You know, moving from the individual to the society. And so even as we're thinking through the Dark Knight, I mean, this is so helpful.

Walter Strickland

We have mimesis, which is imitation. So people know.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, so, yeah, imitation. And it's one of the most basic components of human relationship. And then what we have is that mimetic desire is when you have imitation of behavior, but it doesn't stop there. You imitate someone's desires as well.

Justin Holcomb

In the Christian world, we call that covetousness.

Walter Strickland

Right.

Justin Holcomb

I mean, that's just basically what it is. It's basically.

Walter Strickland

Yeah, yeah.

Bob Hiller

So then that leads into. Then you nailed it. Because that leads to mimetic rivalry.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, yeah.

Walter Strickland

Violence.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, Violence and the escalation of that, and then so on and so forth. And so this maps right onto the dark night.

Walter Strickland

And so then you need a scapegoat. Somebody has to carry that climax of violence, bear it, and be responsible for it so that we can deflect it from ourselves.

Bob Hiller

And as we mentioned, it's always a lie.

Walter Strickland

Yeah, yeah.

Bob Hiller

So the way that we see mimesis in the Dark Knight is that we see these two symbols that are often that are worthy of imitation. The first one is Harvey Dent, who's the white knight, who is someone who fights crime through the law as a district attorney. And then we see Batman as the dark knight who fights crime through fear and inspires copycat villains. And so then we see this escalation of this memetic rivalry. We see that the mob, they hired Joker to then kill Batman. This is when Gerard's idea of the scapegoat sort of comes to bear. Batman becomes the scapegoat. And when this violence threatens society, so he becomes the fall guy, the one who the lie is told about, and he actually kind of rolls with it in a way.

Walter Strickland

Whereas the white knight is actually the bad guy.

Mike Horton

He's actually. Yes, he's.

Justin Holcomb

Well, he's two faced.

Guest/Theologian

Yeah, yeah, eventually.

Bob Hiller

Eventually. So then Gerard, when the scapegoat doesn't work, you have to have this Christ like figure sort of rise from the ashes. If I can make it very dramatic.

Walter Strickland

He even comes out of the bat cave. He rises from the cave.

Bob Hiller

So even before we get there we have Harvey Dent who's then this person

Walter Strickland

who's the white knight.

Bob Hiller

Yeah, the white knight who's going to fight violence not with violence like Batman, but doing so with. Through non violence and so forth through a devastating accident that was set up by Joker. He then becomes two face. And so now we have the fall, this plot twist, the fall of this person who is this Christ figure.

Walter Strickland

So who is really the Christ figure up until then is left in doubt.

Bob Hiller

Yes.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, I think I'm gonna do the rest of the show like this because I think the best part of the movie is definitely the voice of Batman. At one point we had to get it in there. I just wanted to compete with Justin's voice. One of the things great though is, is, is the, the view of human nature in that's discussed here with the way that Joker is trying to prove that everybody is not trustworthy. Everybody is ultimately evil. So Joker I think is the best depiction of evil in any movie I've seen where he starts asking people where do you. Do you want to know where I got these scars? So you're about to get, you're about to get the backstory of the Joker. And now we can explain why he is so evil and we can sort of identify and feel sad for him and all this. He never gives the same story.

Bob Hiller

Yes.

Justin Holcomb

It's always something else because he's just evil. He's just pure evil. He doesn't work for the mob. The mob hires him, he burns the money. He just does stuff to create chaos. And he's trying to prove that when push comes to shove, everyone just needs a little push. Everybody ultimately is that way deep down. And so the question is pretty serious

Walter Strickland

view of human depravity.

Justin Holcomb

It's very deep view of human depravity. And so is Joker. Right? Can Joker win? And so the reason why Batman suggests at the end that Harvey Dent needs to be held up always as this scapegoat figure, this heroic Christ like figure is because otherwise they only have evil to emulate. You have no one else that you can actually look to for help. So I would suggest that Nolan's view here, his answer is almost in a certain sense, a Pelagian kind of view. You just need the model to follow. And once we have that, the people. And in a certain sense, that's what happens in the movie. I mean, Gotham looks. Turns out that they can be trustworthy and not just blow each other up. So it's kind of an interesting. Kind of an interesting take on it.

Walter Strickland

But he says Batman can be anybody. That was the point. And so that obviously isn't a good Christology. That's right. But it shows his. Similar to Girard himself, it is a kind of Pelagian idea that there's a mechanism going on here that is imitative rather than redemptive.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, yeah.

Walter Strickland

But he's still kind of a savior figure. But anyway, still, at the end of

Bob Hiller

the day,

Walter Strickland

Bruce Wayne is not like a unique person. Batman is a symbol. Is a unique symbol that every Bruce Wayne or Tom, Dick and Harry could be.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah.

Bob Hiller

And it's interesting that there were the copycat villains, but he was kind of down on those guys, so it's.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, that is interesting.

Bob Hiller

Yeah. Because if he's somebody to emulate and then that emulation ends up being a good thing because it's one of the bright spots. Although, you know, the white knight was a. A bright spot before his turn, it seems to me that there would. We would want copycats, and their vigilantism would be seen as a good thing because it would follow in the. In the footsteps of that. So, I mean, it's. It strikes me as a need for not just somebody, the copycat, but somebody to actually make us new and then we're able to be filled with the spirit. And I know I'm doing a switch to sort of Christian theology, but this sort of. This mimicking vigilantism, it just seemed like it's just not enough.

Walter Strickland

Do you think that he. He move from the earlier, more self. How can we trust ourselves, Memento, for example, to society and then to outer space, the cosmos. Do you think that as he moves, he is becoming less cynical, frankly, he's becoming less like. There is no answer to this question. Now he's coming to the Batman trilogy saying basically, we can all be Batman. And then as he don't want to jump ahead, but as you go forward, it's like love really can conquer all. Is he getting a little bit more optimistic as he goes along?

Guest/Theologian

He's doing transcendence with love and spirit. I mean, something's happening there where there's a trajectory.

Bob Hiller

I thought that same thing. Because it seemed. Because anybody who stays and gets very deeply entrenched in hermeneutic suspicion, it gets. Becomes nihilistic. There's nothing left. And so, yeah, I do see that.

Justin Holcomb

So just to put a bow on the Batman thing and then along with this, say it with the voice when Catwoman comes along. So I think, like the Catwoman, the Catwoman character is really interesting because she is a villain. She's working for the bad guys. But he keeps saying to her, I see something good inside of you. There's more to you than this. You can be better. You can be this heroic character. And she's like, nope, I. Once I am out of here, I'm out of here and I'm living for myself. And then she does take a turn and she does come back and she does become sort of Batman's partner in doing good. There does seem to be in him this more optimism that we can find something hopeful in the midst of all of this.

Walter Strickland

Whereas Dent good. And then turns away. She's bad and turns good.

Justin Holcomb

She turns good. So that then moves us, I think, into the next set of movies here.

Guest/Theologian

Yeah, Interstellar. Let me give you a summary of Interstellar in a few sentences, which is see if we can do this like I did first.

Bob Hiller

Good luck.

Guest/Theologian

So there's this guy named Cooper, former NASA pilot. He leaves Earth for a.

Walter Strickland

And now you have to do the Texas accent.

Guest/Theologian

I cannot do that.

Justin Holcomb

Oh, come on.

Guest/Theologian

No, trust me. I'm going to do A. Matthew McConaughey would be so ridiculous. So he leaves Earth for a mission through a wormhole in search of a new place to live, habitable planet, as humanity is facing extinction. That's the problem. And then as the team is exploring these distant worlds, they are faced with impossible questions and some issues with time dilating. And we'll get to that in a second. It's a tragic place which strains their survival. And his relationship with his daughter Murph, and she plays this, a very important role throughout the movie. And in the end, love, gravity and a higher dimensional breakthrough allow him to help save humanity and unite with his daughter across time. So all of these barriers and problems, something can get you through them, which is love, gravity and higher dimensionality. And so he's looking at alternative world versions. He's looking at transcendence through spirit and love. And he's opening up a space for new ways to experience the universe beyond conventional time and space and cause and effect. And so the way he sets up the character, Nolan sets up the character Of Cooper is, he's the enlightenment man. And Nolan seems really deliberate because early on he's self reliant, he's skeptical, he's, he's empirical, he's, you know, the film is then dismantling this kind of enlightenment man. And everything Cooper believes about the universe, about time and space, cause, preceding effect in the sufficiency of technology is all unraveling. And so the very, the very world, the very idols or whatever he's setting up just crumble. And then there's, there's this space trip and you start seeing the time dilation and this, the, the Miller's planet, the tragic place where if you go to this planet, I think every hours, seven years or something like that, and he's there and he's like wondering how long he's there. And apparently 23 years have passed, I believe. And there's this, this horrific place where he gets back, they're safe, they're, they're on in the water, they're in the planet for way longer than they thought they were. And he just watches all these things happen. As children are growing up, his daughter becomes older than him, his son gets married, has a child, loses a child. So all of these things for which a parent would want to be there is missed. And so it has this tragic dimension to it. And he is stripped of everything that would bring him certainty, time, spatial, gravitational stuff. And so you're left with what's the meaning when the framework you trusted collapses, which is a theme that we've been picking up on certainly. And he begins to answer this Brand, the character. Brand's speech is pretty debated in the film, but she says love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. And so naming. There's something irreducible in the human experience. Call it love, call it a pull toward others that exceeds material explanation. And that resonates kind of with some Christianity, except it needs some grounding. Because love transcends time and space, not because it's a mysterious force, because it originates in an eternal God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There's, there's a Christian dimension to this. And so what other people have called it a, you know, a human transcendence of what he's doing. That's all. That's the best you have, the best you have to offer. If you're facing nihilism and don't want triune love. Revelation breaking into now is some type of finding something that seems transcendent. There's more we can go into if we want to unpack some more. But I think that's a pretty good place because the answer to everything crumbling is something irreducible in the human experience, which is love.

Bob Hiller

And it's interesting that he's NASA scientists and pilot, very intellectually sound, you know, very learned man. And so it shows that science alone is not enough. There has to be something in addition to that that makes this. That gives us transcendence. And to your point, Mike, I think he is sort of groping for something to be that key that allows us to transcend ourselves.

Justin Holcomb

What's interesting in my mind about this is it utterly lacks. It's love without grace, by which I mean all the work is falling on him to save his relationships, to save the world.

Guest/Theologian

Humanity saves humanity.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, humanity depends on humanity to save itself. So again, we talked. We've done a show on Revelation, and at the end of Revelation, Heaven descends upon Earth. Well, because Earth is falling apart. It's chaos, it's sin, it's disorder. And heaven comes down. That's right. It's Gotham City in interstellar. You have to go up and you have to create and you have to find new worlds.

Walter Strickland

That's Elon Musk.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, that's right. And so this is literally what we're witnessing right now is people saying salvation of the planet, which apparently is done

Walter Strickland

for or from the planet.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah, it has to be. We have to leave. We have to build up places on Mars. What I was struck by from interstellar, though, like in Star wars, interplanetary travel is so much easier. Like, I don't get it. Why is it so hard? That was my only. That's the other takeaway.

Guest/Theologian

I mean, no one's wrestling with transcendence head on. And he's giving the best answer possible if you don't have Revelation. So, I mean, I can respect that. And the question is what that something is. There's something beyond. But what that something is, his answer is problematic. Human love and human spirit and human creativity. And the Christian answer is it's God. We participate in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit's love for one another by grace. We're invited to be a part of that love and wrapped up in union with Christ. And so it's a love outside of ourselves, breaks in.

Walter Strickland

I think that. But it's so important to say that. But also to say, like Ecclesiastes, you don't have to say everything. I mean, a non Christian, I don't know what his faith is, but a non Christian can give Us, a pretty clear mirror to hold up to ourselves, to understand a lot more about ourselves as fallen. And even that by itself is a terrific gift. And it leads us to Oppenheimer, where he. So, Robert J. Oppenheimer is a theoretical physicist. 1939, Germany actually has split an atom. And so there's a fear that they'll be able to have an atomic bomb. And then there is the invasion of Poland. And Oppenheimer is recruited at some point to be part of the Manhattan Project. And so we don't have to go into all the details, but one of the interesting things for me is at the beginning, you have this moment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton of Einstein out at the pond and Oppenheimer going to him and talking to him, and Strauss, this nemesis who is going to be throughout the movie, a jealous guy on Oppenheimer's tail. But he's the head of the Institute. He's not even really a scientist. He walks down. He wants to be big and impressive. He walks down to these two great thinkers. And as he's walking, Einstein walks away from Oppenheimer and is so flummoxed that he walks right past Strauss. Strauss greets him and he walks right past him. And now he's really ticked off. Well, later in the movie, you find out what he said. And he pictured Armageddon. He pictured what might happen. Time magazine called him the father of the atom bomb. And he just. He tried for years to get the US Government not to ever use it. So he had these nightmares of Holocaust. And sure enough, America dropped the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And he's just picturing global catastrophe. And evidently that's what he told Einstein about. And Einstein was completely beside himself that he couldn't talk to anyone. Oppenheimer doesn't save Gotham.

Justin Holcomb

Oppenheimer is. It's almost like Interstellar was hopeful, but, oh, by the way, science is in the hands of guys like Oppenheimer, who's morally suspect, you know, an adulterer, all this kind of stuff. Very proud, very, like, interested in his own agenda and all this. And these are the guys in charge of our science now, so where is our hope?

Walter Strickland

Right.

Justin Holcomb

It kind of ends, but interestingly, it's there.

Bob Hiller

Dunkirk is also.

Justin Holcomb

Oh, that's a great point. Yeah, yeah.

Bob Hiller

So very different.

Justin Holcomb

That's an interesting point.

Bob Hiller

So we're juxtaposing these individuals who are scientists.

Justin Holcomb

Yeah.

Bob Hiller

Then we're also saying, well, there's this Dunkirk spirit, which is very selfless.

Justin Holcomb

The family and the love.

Bob Hiller

Exactly.

Walter Strickland

So fraternity, especially that father who, who lost his son and now he is single handedly on his little wooden boat saving all kinds of people in the name of his son, that he lost the hopeful side of humanity.

Bob Hiller

So it seems like with Oppenheimer and Dunkirk, he's kind of undecided.

Justin Holcomb

Well, it's two sides of our humanity. Joker hanging down and saying, I'm never going away, you're never gonna kill me cause you need me and I'm never gonna kill you because you're too much fun. There's the good side and the bad side. Always it like he's like you said earlier, I think really helpfully he's diagnosing the situation we're in. You're going to see some people do great, wonderful things. You're going to see some people do some pretty evil things. So I mean, as Christians we can look at this and say, yeah, that, that tracks, you know, but the only hope we have ultimately is outside of us in Christ Jesus. That's all we've.

Mike Horton

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