Sunday 20 April 2008

Catching the Light? Talking about God and the Movies

God-talk is therefore immensely difficult. It requires resourceful imagination funded by scripture, liturgy, art, prayer, literature and poetry. It also requires and enables the rational disciplining of imagination that we call theology; an unending dialogue between these two, in fact. (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/4921
Simon Barrow Ekklesia paper What Difference Does God Make Today.

Discussing the process of catching light, as the search for God in the movies, Roy Anker comments:

The word " God " is no longer particularly evocative having accrued mountains of negative association, especially for moviegoers. Nor is the term any longer - in the polymorphic culture in which we live - particularly precise, having long since become the great cosmic catchall for anything slightly strange, repressive, or for that matter, unjust - either in politics of personal life. that is at least part of the reason that many of the films discussed here are very cautious about using the term "God" to identify the remarkable elements in them. Appropriately they are more about showing than naming. And that approach is fitting not only in the light of the medium, but also - for Jewish and Christian viewers - in view of the biblical caution about trying to contain the Limitless within a single term, particularly in a term that has become so multivalent and depleted as "God". (p.11) Catching Light: Looking for God in the Movies (Eerdmans, 2004)

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