Catholic Apologetics International

The Theological Underpinnings of Mel Gibson’s
“The Passion of the Christ”
Why Did Jesus Have to Undergo Such an Excruciating Death?

Understanding the theological basis for physical suffering is foundational to Catholic theology, and the only way to grasp the brutally graphic portrayal of Jesus’ passion in Mel Gibson’s film. Unfortunately, few of the world’s critics commenting on Gibson’s film understand this truth, leading them to make such derogatory comments that the movie was “over-the-top,” “exaggerated,” “unhistorical,” “unnecessarily gory,” “fundamentalist shock therapy,” “barbaric,” and many other such prejudicial and reactionary characterizations.

Leading the media assault on Gibson were prominent Jewish leaders, such as the ADL’s Abe Foxman who accused Gibson almost daily, even with pleas to the Vatican, that The Passion “has the potential to fuel anti-semitism.” Foxman formed this opinion when, after he attended a screening of the movie in front of 5,000 evangelicals, he noticed them “in stunned silence, wailing or sobbing” at the tortures Christ underwent. Fearing some kind of pogroms, Foxman and his colleagues tried their best to persuade the world that the Jews had little or nothing to do with the death of Jesus, even though the Gospels are quite specific concerning the complicity of the Jewish Sanhedrin (e.g., Mt. 26:3-4).

Added to this were the liberal Catholic and Protestant theologians, steeped in their overly-rated art of historical criticism, who came grinding their axes against Gibson and traditional Catholics. If you can imagine this, their claim is that the Gospels do not give accurate portrayals of what occurred at the crucifixion, and therefore Gibson cannot use them as a foundation for the film. Tuvia Abramson, executive director for Penn State’s Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, stated: “When he [Gibson] said his movie is totally accurate, I'm sorry, I don't think he has a Ph.D. in history or religion.”

For Catholics, Bishop Patrick McGrath of San Jose led the list of faithless clerics in this category, declaring in the San Jose Mercury News on February 1 that:

While the primary source material of the film is attributed to the four gospels, these sacred books are not historical accounts of the historical events that they narrate. They are theological reflections upon the events that form the core of Christian faith and belief.

You can thank the theological school of the late Fr. Raymond Brown and the Pontifical Biblical Commission for that point of view. Today’s Catholic clerics know little else when it comes to biblical exegesis. In fact, they don’t even believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote the Gospels ascribed to them. Rather, they posit that the Gospels are merely the culmination of a first century oral tradition that was only put to writing in the early second century by some unknown scribes. It is easy to see why they opt for this remote authorship. If the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, they naturally would contain historical errors and biases, and maybe even anti-semitism.

Next, a number of liberal theologians claimed Gibson’s movie was theologically unsound because the graphic portrayal of Jesus’ suffering is exaggerated and superfluous, and has little to do with Jesus’ main message. According to the Dallas Morning News, “The R-rated movie is so blood-splatteringly brutal that theologians have accused Gibson of embellishing the Gospels.” Dr. Schmidt, a New Testament specialist, opined, “There’s no Gospel ever written that tells it quite this way. He’s pulling one line from Matthew and another from John and creating propaganda in the service of the church’s atonement theology.”

Dr. Elizabeth Johnson of Columbia Theological Seminary said: “It’s not that God is mad and Jesus takes the licks for us...Paul is much more interested in what it means to say that Jesus’ death changes the structures of the universe, brings in a new creation and makes life out of death.” Kip Taylor, a religion major at Texas Christian University, stated: “It doesn’t make sense to me that God would need to be satisfied by sending his son to be killed. That’s a vengeful God and not a God I want to worship.” Dr. Sandra Schneiders, a New Testament scholar at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, added: “It’s just bad theology to say God had to kill his son as a payback for sin. It makes God sound bloodthirsty.” Going the extra mile, Dr. Adele Reinhartz, a New Testament scholar from Canada and author of the book Jesus of Hollywood, adds: “Mel Gibson comes down on the side that says crucifixion was a necessary part of God's plan for salvation.”

Added to these were ex-priest John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of DePaul University and ubiquitous guest on The Discovery Channel whenever the need arises to deny the historicity of the Gospels. He claimed The Passion is taken out of context, stating: “Let’s say I’m a martian...I would be saying to myself, ‘what’s anyone got against this guy [Jesus].” Gibson retorted: “Yeah, you’re right, if you were a martian.”

There was also Stephen Prothero of Boston University and Philip Cunningham, Catholic theology professor at Boston College, among many others, who, as Gary Morella summarized: “made it clear that they don’t like the movie because, they say, it doesn’t conform to their understanding of Christ’s death. How unfortunate.” Or as Jewish convert to Catholicism, Roy Schoeman sardonically put it in National Review:

Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ commits a litany of unforgivable sins. It accepts the Gospel accounts of the death of Jesus at face value, rejecting the “demythologizing” reinterpretations that have become the pseudo-dogma of the past several decades, thus incurring the wrath of a bevy of doctorate-wielding modern theologians (some of whom, to the shame of the Catholic Church, are on its payroll). It incorporates scenes from the mystical visions of Catholic saints, as though they might actually have historical value and not be simply the delusional hallucinations of pious psychopaths.
The “Christian” theologians who have taken the lead in attacking the film – many of them leaders in the “Jewish-Christian” dialogue – have generally made their careers by sidestepping this dilemma by asserting either that Jesus was simply a great moral and ethical teacher, a Rabbi among Rabbis, whose later disciples conferred divine status on him (a view that is by definition non-Christian); or that Jesus introduced Christianity as a way for non-Jews to enter the Jewish covenant but never intended for Jews to become Christian, an interpretation which is contradicted throughout the Gospels.⁽¹⁾

Then there were the Internet journalists with suspiciously ethnic-sounding names like Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum, who stated, respectively:

Tempting as it may be to dismiss Mel Gibson as a glorified pain freak, dressing up a martyrdom fantasy in Aramaic and Latin, it would be more accurate, I think, to say that the filmmaker, a Catholic fundamentalist, presents his torture-racked vision of Jesus’ last 12 hours on earth as a sacred form of shock therapy...The movie is blood-soaked pop theology for a doom-laden time, its effect that of a gripping yet reductive paradox: It lifts us downward.

It’s a baroque lesson in Christ-like patience that demands we watch lingering scenes of skin splitting and blood coursing as Jesus is lashed with canes, then flayed with barbaric weapons of torture, then turned over and flogged some more. (The Gospels give the activity a few sentences; “'The Passion” makes the punishment its own fetish plotline.)

Then the fundamentalist Protestants got in on the act, complaining about the numerous “Catholic” scenes in the film, such as the focus on Mary, the addition of Veronica, the absence of Jesus’ “brothers and sisters,” the backdrop of the Stations of the Cross as Jesus made His way up the Via Delorosa, the portrayal of the Pieta at the foot of the cross. Others complained that Gibson did not depict the soldiers falling backward when Jesus said “I am,” that Jesus had no clothes at the resurrection, and even that Gibson did not focus enough on the resurrection.

Hollywood was also taken aback by Gibson’s film. ABS unleashed Diane Sawyer upon Gibson in an interview that attempted to put some dark cloud over Gibson’s personal life, and/or some deep-rooted anti-semitic prejudice he may have had in making the film. Then CBS advertised Andy Rooney’s insidious comment as to why he didn’t want to see the film: “I’m not going to spend $9 just for a few laughs” Rooney declared.⁽²⁾ Since everyone from Disney to Viacom refused to accept or distribute the film, Gibson produced and distributed it himself, with his own money. This is a major assault on Hollywood. In its first week-and-a-half The Passion grossed over 200 million dollars and is on its way to breaking all the records. That so many people would see a movie spoken in Aramaic and Latin is nothing less than phenomenal. It has never happened before. But this shouldn’t surprise Hollywood. The Bible, year after year, remains the #1 best-seller in the world, outpacing by leaps and bounds anything written by secular man.

Interestingly enough, the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), which would be considered a more or less liberal institution by Gibson’s standards, tried to be fair in its assessment, though it was obvious they were straining to do so. Trying to play the balancing act between placating Jewish sensitivities in the midst of post-conciliar ecumenism, while teaching the raw truth of the Gospels is, indeed, a very hard task. It echoed the vacillation seen coming from the Vatican itself which, at one point reported the pope saying that Gibson’s film “is at it was,” and the next week his secretary said the pope made no such comment. In between those two contrary releases, Abe Foxman had visited the Vatican complaining that Gibson’s film would stir up anti-semitism.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of our essay, the USCCB made at least one intriguing comment about Gibson’s film, stating: “And though, for Christians, the Passion is the central event in the history of salvation, the ‘how’ of Christ’s death is lingered on at the expense of the ‘why?’” In other words, if the film does not give the theological reasons for Christ’s brutal suffering, or perhaps, just assumes that most viewers already know the reasons, the graphic portrayal may lose some of its intended impact. It is a fact that most Christians have only a cursory understanding of why Jesus had to suffer such a gruesome death. Most are content to say that “Jesus suffered and died for our sins,” but that is the extent of the probe. This is precisely why I chose to write this article. It will show the theological underpinning of Gibson’s film.

The Theology of the Atonement:

Understanding the precise nature of Christ’s atonement is, to the surprise of many, quite a difficult and obscure undertaking. It is a subject found in the deep recesses of patristic and medieval writings that rarely sees the light of day in current academia and RCIA classes. The subject is so profound that it took the best minds in Catholic theology centuries before they reached an adequate theological understanding concerning Christ’s passion. Everyone knew ostensibly that Christ sacrificed His life on our behalf, but they were neither quite sure why God wanted it accomplished as it was, nor could they explain why He didn’t chose, or couldn’t have chosen, another way.

To answer the “why” of the atonement, some of the early Fathers entertained the “ransom theory” (Origen, Ambrose, Jerome). This was the concept wherein God was said to be required to pay a ransom to the devil, since the devil had won rights to the human race in the Garden of Eden. Even Augustine had one oblique reference to the theory.⁽³⁾ As happened with Eucharistic theology (which wasn’t dogmatically defined until 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council), Atonement theology did not reach its theological plateau until the same time period. As Ludwig Ott states:

While the Fathers, in the explanation of Christ’s work of sanctification, proceed more from the contemplation of the consequences of the Redemption, and therefore stress the negative side of the Redemption, namely, the ransoming from the slavery of sin and of the devil, St. Anselm proceeds from the contemplation of the guilt of sin. This, as an insult offered to God, is infinite, and therefore demands an infinite expiation.”⁽⁴⁾

It was Anselm (d. 1109), in his major work, Cur Deus Homo (“Why the God-man?”), who gave us a more mature and precise understanding of the atonement – an understanding subsequently developed in the highly acclaimed Sentences of Peter Lombard (c. 1160), and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), and which was then connected intimately to the theology of the Mass by such medieval theologians as Gabriel Biel (d. 1495), Nicholas Cusa (d. 1464), John Gerson (d. 1429) and Denis Carthusian (d. 1471). As an aside, Peter Abelard (d. 1142) advanced the theory that the cross served primarily as a moral influence over men, wherein the cross demonstrated that God punishes evil and rewards good, but Abelard wasn’t known for his orthodoxy.

It was Anselm’s contention that “God owed nothing to the devil but punishment.” Anselm’s atonement theology begins from the guilt of sin. Sin is understood as an insult to God, a personal offense against Him. Because God is infinite, the sin is infinite, and “therefore demands an infinite expiation.”⁽⁵⁾

Anselm also included God’s honor in the understanding of the atonement. He stated: “...nothing is less tolerable...than that the creature should take away from the Creator the honor due to him, and not repay what he takes away....God upholds nothing more justly that he does the honor of his own dignity.” As such, Christ’s voluntary offering to the Father “outweighs the number and greatness of all sins, and thus due reparation has been made to God’s offended honor.”⁽⁶⁾

Thomas Aquinas developed the concept, adding that the atonement served as a means of appeasing God due to the sins of mankind, allowing Him to preserve His honor and justly relent of His wrath. Aquinas writes:

...the passion of Christ is the cause of our reconciliation with God in a two-fold manner: in one way because it takes away sin through which men are made enemies of God...In another way through its being a sacrifice most acceptable unto God, for this is properly the effect of a sacrifice that through it God is appeased, as even man is ready to forgive an injury done unto him by accepting a gift which is offered to him...And so in the same way, what Christ suffered was so great a good that, on account of that good found in human nature, God has been appeased over all the offenses of mankind.⁽⁷⁾

When we consider the severity of the sin of Adam and Eve – the magnitude of which can be measured by realizing that its punishment was nothing less than the plunging of the whole human race into death and damnation – we can better understand the necessity of Christ’s brutal suffering to appease the Father’s wrath. The reason Adam and Eve’s sin was so horrible was that it essentially accused God of being the devil, and made out the devil as if he were God. By eating the forbidden fruit, they were saying that God was not who He claimed to be, but was an imposter who was lying to them about His plans. Instead, Adam and Eve chose the devil as the bearer of truth. In other words, they had completely reversed the roles of God and the devil. It was not unlike the sin of Pharisees who accused Jesus of performing miracles under the power of the devil rather than the Holy Spirit, which prompted Jesus to issue the curse of the “Unforgivable Sin” for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (cf., Mark 3:29-30). This was a supreme offense against God, an insult far beyond merely eating a piece of fruit. Only an equally supreme sacrifice could ever appease God’s wrath and restore His honor among angels and men.

Gibson understood this on a basic level. He told Diane Sawyer on Primetime: “It’s our belief that by the sin of the first people, original sin, that the gates were closed to us, to eternal life, and that his sacrifice as a redeemer of all mankind was to open the gates to all of us again.” The only thing missing from Gibson’s explanation is who God the Father really is, such that He would require so brutal a sacrifice from His own Son in order to have those gates opened once again. The usual answer is that Christ’s suffering had to be so intense because of the intensity of our sins. But that is only half the story. The real truth is that God the Father would accept nothing less of a sacrifice since the appeasement of His wrath and preservation of His honor was at stake.

According to Scripture, God is a very personal Being. As such, He is personally offended by those who sin against Him. As St. Thomas said, this offense is analogous to the way human beings are offended and insulted through the malicious actions of others. If one reads Scripture at face value, one simply cannot miss the vivid language describing how intensely sin offends God. In the very first pages of the Bible we see this. Just prior to the Great Flood, Genesis 6:6-7 records:

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thought of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth...for I am grieved that I have made them.

Here God is “grieved” and “His heart is filled with pain” over the sins of man. The most intense Hebrew verbs are used here.⁽⁸⁾ Whatever our theological persuasion regarding God’s impassibility, we must at least agree that Scripture portrays Him as being emotively affected to the highest degree. Other Scriptures express the same truth. To King David who committed adultery and murder God interprets it as “you despised Me” (2 Sam 11:27; 12:10). King Saul’s sin made “the Lord...grieved” (1 Sam 15:11,35; 1 Chr 21:15). To apostate Israel God says “you wearied me with your sins” (Is 43:24; 1:14; ), “you grieved His Holy Spirit” (Ps 78:40).

God tells Israel that because of their sins “My heart would not go out to you” (Jer 15:1,14), that Israel was “unfaithful to Me as a woman to her husband” (Jer 3:20; 5:7-9; 6:20). So offended was God by their sins that He says “do not plead with Me” (Jer 7:16; Ez 14:14, 20), “I have withdrawn My love and pity” (Jer 16:5), “You prefer strangers to your own Husband!”(Ez 16:32; Hos 2:2-13); “She roars at me, therefore I hate her” (Jer 12:8).

God’s anger is described in the most realistic terms: “I declared on oath in My anger” (Ps 95:10-11; Heb 3:10-17; 4:3); “the Lord became exceedingly angry” (Num 11:1,10); “Do not provoke Me to anger” (Jer 25:6-7); “how long will they grumble against Me?” (Num 14:27); “you will know what it is like to have Me against you” (Num 14:34-35); “in furious anger and in great wrath the Lord uprooted them” (Deut 29:28; 32:19-21).

When God’s wrath is unleashed, Scripture describes it as being “complete” or “spent,” appearing as such over 100 times in the Old Testament. Ez 7:8 states: “I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you.” Lam 4:11 records: “The Lord has given full vent to His wrath; he has poured out His fierce anger” (See also Neh 9:31; Is 10:23; Ez 5:13; 6:12; 13:15; 20:8, 21). This is matched by Scripture’s vivid language describing God’s utter “hatred” of evildoers (Ps 5:5; cf., 11:5; Pro 11:20; 12:22; 15:8-9, 26; 16:5; 20:23; Ecclus 12:6; 16:8; 17:26; 20:15; 27:24; 36:8-11; Jer 12:8; Mal 2:16; Rom 9:13; Apoc 2:6).

Added to this are the numerous references to God’s “jealousy” (Ex 20:5; Deut 4:24; 5:9; 6:15), such that He actually calls His name “Jealous” (Ex 34:14; cf., Ez 39:25). Because of His jealousy He will not forgive certain sinners (Jos 24:19; Deut 29:20). He takes vengeance because of His jealousy (Nah 1:2). He is jealous against the foreign gods that Israel worships (Deut 32:21; Ps 78:58). In the same way, St. Paul says to New Testament Christians who sin that they “insult the Spirit” (Heb 10:30), and “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Eph 4:30), and this is because “the Spirit envies intensely” (James 4:5).

Suffice it to say, this is certainly a very dynamically personal God with whom we are dealing. This is not the ethereal and impersonal god of Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam. This is a God who is so personal and “in your face,” as it were, that it is absolutely frightening. Perhaps this is why Scripture says many times that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

The next question concerns what must be done to appease God when He is so offended. Scripture gives us the answer in bold and detailed narratives. One of the best examples is the incident of the Golden Calf recorded in Exodus 32-33. While Moses was up in the mount for forty days receiving the Ten Commandments, the Israelites decided to create their own god and worship it. The text tells us that God was so angry that He decided to obliterate the whole nation. Moses pleaded with Him to relent, reasoning with God as even Abraham had done over Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:22-33). Exodus 32:14 reveals that, in a moment of compassion for Moses, God “changed His mind” about destroying Israel. But what Exodus 32 doesn’t tell us is what else Moses had to do in order to get God even to listen to his pleas. Deut 9:18-21 adds that Moses had to lie prostrate on the ground for forty days with no food or water. That is what you call appeasement.

Moreover, although God relented, still, the insult from the sin was not completely healed. Exodus 33:1-5 tells us that God, because He thought He still might destroy the Israelites in His anger, decided not to go with them through the desert to Canaan. Moses pleaded with God and, because of the love He had for Moses, He changed His mind again.

It is from this very context that St. Paul, in Romans 9, draws his teachings about the God who “has mercy upon whom he has mercy, and hardens whom he hardens.” Only because of Moses – a type of Christ – was God appeased enough and His honor preserved so that He could give mercy to Israel. God’s mercy is neither automatic nor cheap. A huge sacrifice must be made to move Him. This is precisely why Our Lady told the Fatima children: “Many people go to hell because they have no one to sacrifice for them.” And when God is so moved by sacrifice, His blessings cascade above all we ask or think.

We could easily multiply examples of the appeasement motif in Scripture. Another outstanding example of how highly God regards His honor is recorded in Numbers 25. Another is 1 Chronicles 21:1-27. Read those at your leisure. Suffice it to say that when Isaiah 53:5-12 and 1 Peter 2:24 say that Christ was “beaten for our iniquities; wounded for our transgressions; and by his wounds we are healed” (the very answer that Mel Gibson gave to Diane Sawyer as to why his movie had to be so graphic), it is precisely for the purpose of appeasing the wrath of God and preserving His honor because of the horrible insult of sin against Him. Isaiah confirms this for us as he concludes Isaiah 53, words that, because I know their full theological impact, I cry over every time I read them:

Yet it was the Lord’s [God the Father] will to crush him [Christ] and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering...After the suffering of His [Christ’s] soul, He [God] will see the result of the suffering of His soul and be satisfied...For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.⁽⁹⁾

The Protestant Concept of the Atonement:

Against the foregoing Catholic teachings on appeasement and divine honor stands the Protestant concept fostered by Martin Luther and John Calvin. In brief, it is their fundamental misunderstanding of the atonement which led to a false teaching about salvation, subsequently fomenting the Protestant Reformation and leaving today’s Protestants with a hopelessly warped understanding of Christ’s suffering and death. It is the very reason that Matthew Anger, in his recent column on Gibson’s movie for the Seattle Catholic, writes:

Consider that for centuries a hallmark of Protestantism was its effective iconoclasm against the mystery of the Crucifixion. The Corpus of Christ was removed, leaving a barren cross, which has since become a ubiquitous item of agnostic jewelry. Gone was the penitential symbolism of the redemptive suffering of the Messiah.

Anger goes on to say that, as opposed to Protestants, Catholics “pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, we have Passion Week at the end of Lent, and perform the Stations of the Cross (the original, pre-movie version of The Passion),” showing that their very lives center around Christ’s excruciating sufferings. As one reviewer of Gibson’s movie stated: “Suffering is so integral to atonement theory that in interviews, Gibson interchanges the phrases ‘the Crucifixion’ and ‘the sacrifice.’ From his vantage – and that of the shapers of Christian doctrine – there is no other way to understand the cross.”

That is because Catholic theology is basically a theology about suffering. Everything from the atonement of Christ, to our concepts of the communion of saints, Mary, the treasury of merit, intercessory prayer and fasting, victim souls, stigmatists, indulgences, purgatory, the Mass, justification, sanctification, etc, is all concerned with suffering and what it does to appease God and preserve His honor so that His blessings and grace can flow to us. No amount of suffering is wasted in Catholic theology. Every ounce is pressed into service for the saving of souls. Understanding the nature of physical suffering and the God who requires appeasement and honor (which Gibson’s film seems to have grasped at least on an elementary level), is the cornerstone of all Catholic theology. Without it, nothing else in Catholicism will make sense. Protestants, by and large, have little room for suffering in their soteriology, at least not in the vicarious sense. They may use their individual suffering to grow, or may wish it all away with health and wealth TV gospels, but they would never think of it as meritorious toward saving a soul or appeasing God.

Luther’s and Calvin’s theory of the atonement held that Christ’s physical suffering was incidental. The real suffering, they claimed, came from a spiritual punishment which began in the Garden of Gethsemane and ended up as the equivalent of an eternity in hell. The reason? Luther and Calvin believed Christ’s passion was a legal payment for sin, otherwise known as “penal substitution.” Since Protestant theology believes salvation is forensic, then the atonement must be a legal transaction. Hence, as God requires the legal payment of eternal damnation for sin, Christ had to undergo its legal equivalent, while his physical suffering was of little consequence.

In his commentary on Psalm 22, Martin Luther held that Christ, as God and man, literally entered hell to sustain God’s wrath, suffering the tortures of the damned.⁽¹⁰⁾ Similarly, interpreting the clause “he descended into hell” in the Apostles’ Creed, John Calvin writes:

But we must seek a surer explanation, apart from the Creed, of Christ’s descent into hell...If Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual. No – it was expedient at the same time for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance....For this reason, he must also grapple hand to hand with the armies of hell and the dread of everlasting death....By these words he means that Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge – submitting himself even as the accused – to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained...No wonder, then, if he is said to have descended into hell, for he suffered the death that God in his wrath had inflicted upon the wicked!⁽¹¹⁾

Part and parcel with the Protestant concept of “penal substitution” is the idea that the Father punished Christ because Christ, by divine design, actually became the essence of sin. Since Christ was laden with sin, God had to reject Him, and punish Him as if He were an eternally damned sinner. This understanding comes from their innovative interpretation of 2 Cor 5:21 (“he became sin for us”), whereas all the patristic exegesis before them understood the clause as referring only to Christ becoming a “sin offering,” not sin itself, even as the corollary passage, Romans 8:3, stipulates.⁽¹²⁾ In fact, for Catholic theology, it was precisely the fact that Christ was totally without the stain of sin, whether personally or vicariously, that He was able to offer Himself as an appeasing sacrifice. A victim laden with sin, even if it were only vicarious, could never be a propitiatory sacrifice, which is precisely why Luther repudiated the idea of propitiation and Catholic theology altogether. The two theologies could not be any further apart.

Having been confronted with the distorted views of Luther and Calvin, quite appropriately does the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia state:

...The second mistake is the tendency to treat the Passion of Christ as being literally a case of vicarious punishment. This is at best a distorted view of the truth that His atoning Sacrifice took the place of our punishment, and that He took upon Himself the sufferings and death that were due to our sins.⁽¹³⁾

Not surprisingly, it was Luther’s misunderstanding of the atonement that led him to view the Mass – which in Catholic theology is a re-enactment of the atonement – as the greatest abomination ever perpetrated on mankind. He writes: “No other sin, manslaughter, theft, murder or adultery is so harmful as this abomination of the popish Mass.”⁽¹⁴⁾ Not surprisingly, Luther is totally adverse to the concept of appeasing God. He writes:

He who sacrifices wants to appease God. But he who wants to appease God regards him as wrathful and merciless; and he who does so does not expect grace or mercy of Him, but is afraid of His judgment and condemnation. But he who is to approach the sacrament profitably must believe and trust entirely that he has a gracious, merciful God who loves him so dearly that of His own free will He gave His greatest and dearest treasure.⁽¹⁵⁾

Luther held that only faith alone, not suffering, moved God to act. If this is not the case, Luther says, “do we not become unsure as to whether our sacrifice is acceptable to God?”⁽¹⁶⁾ It is the same reason Calvinism’s Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 80, calls the Eucharistic sacrifice “a cursed idolatry.”

The Council of Trent on the Atonement:

Against all this bluster, of course, is the Council of Trent – the greatest dogmatic council with which God has ever blessed the Catholic Church. The Council states Christ “made satisfaction for us to God the Father” (DS 799), and “Christ Jesus Who has satisfied for our sins” (DS 904), but never teaches that Christ paid a full eternal penalty for sin. Logically, if He had, then God would have no right to punish anyone in hell, since He could not, in justice, exact two eternal punishments for the same sin.

The connection between the Mass and Calvary is so profound, so identical, that when one listens to Trent’s words about the Mass, he is listening to the echoes of the meaning of Calvary. Session 22, Chapter 2 put it this way:

In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner. Therefore, the holy Council teaches that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory, so that, if we draw near to God with an upright heart and true faith, with fear and reverence, with sorrow and repentance, through it ‘we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’ For the Lord, appeased by this oblation, grants grace and the gift of repentance, and he pardons wrong-doings and sins, even grave ones.

What you find at Trent is the notion of “propitiation” and “appeasement,” the very opposite of the forensic atonement offered by Luther and Calvin. For Trent, and all the Tradition prior (which Trent merely crystallized), the atonement was a personal sacrifice made voluntarily by the Son in an effort to appease the Father’s wrath against mankind, preserve His honor among angels and men, and persuade Him to once again open the doors of mercy.

The Latin Mass and the Atonement:

There is no better portrayal of the principle of appeasement than in the Traditional Catholic Mass, and it is the very reason why it will never cease, despite the attempts of the post-conciliar church to have it die a natural death. Listen to these rich words – words which drip with honor and sacrifice to a Holy God.

The prayers before Mass include such statements as “To adore Thee and give Thee honor which is due to Thee...to appease Thy justice, aroused against us by so many sins, and to make satisfaction for them.”⁽¹⁷⁾

The Confiteor says: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, by the merits of Thy saints, whose relics are here, and of all the Saints, that Thou wilt deign to pardon me all my sins.”⁽¹⁸⁾

The Offertory states: “Accept, O Holy Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, this unspotted Host, which I, Thine unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, to atone for my countless sins, offenses, and negligences...” and “We offer unto Thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, entreating Thy mercy that our offering may ascend with a sweet fragrance in thy sight...” and “may our sacrifice be so offered this day in Thy sight as to be pleasing to Thee, O Lord God” and “this sacrifice which is prepared for the glory of Thy holy Name,” and “Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation which we make to Thee in memory of the Passion...the them let it bring honor, and to us salvation.”⁽¹⁹⁾

In the Orate Fratres we plead: “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.”⁽²⁰⁾ Notice here that we cannot demand that God be appeased, but we humbly hope that it “may be acceptable.” That is because God’s mercy is completely personal and voluntary, not a legal remuneration He gives as if He were legally required to do so.

In the Secret we pray: “Sanctify, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, by the invocation of Thy Holy Name, the Sacrifice we offer...” In the Canon we pray: “We, therefore, humbly pray and beseech Thee, most merciful Father...to accept and to bless these gifts, these presents, these holy unspotted Sacrifices, which we offer up to Thee...”⁽²¹⁾

In the prayers at Consecration the priest says: “We beseech Thee, O Lord, graciously to accept this oblation of our service...that we be rescued from eternal damnation...” and “Humbly we pray Thee, O God, be pleased to make this same offering wholly blessed, to consecrate it and approve it...”⁽²²⁾

The prayers after Consecration say: “And now, O Lord, we...do offer unto Thy most sovereign Majesty out of the gifts Thou hast bestowed upon us, a Victim which is pure, a Victim which is holy, a Victim which is spotless...Deign to look upon them with a favorable and gracious countenance...we humbly beseech Thee, almighty God, to command that these our offerings be carried by the hands of Thy holy Angels to Thine Altar on high, in the sight of Thy divine Majesty...”⁽²³⁾

Suffice it to say, the Latin Mass is saturated, from beginning to end, with the theme of sacrifice, propitiation and appeasement which is offered to God the Father so that His wrath against our sins will be abated and that His tender mercies will flow to us. I dare say that, without the daily offering of the Catholic Mass throughout the world, God would have no choice but to destroy it immediately for its sins. It is only through the propitiatory offering of the Mass that God is appeased enough to allow the world to go on existing one more day. This also means, of course, that if the Mass is ever taken away, time on earth will be over. Unfortunately, the Antichrist may have something to say about that in the future (cf., Dan 8:11-13; 11:31; 12:11).

Catholic Theology on How Sin Affects God:

As noted earlier, God is a very personal Being. When personal beings are offended, the offender must reciprocate to propitiate the offended; to make a satisfactory rectification; to assure the insulted party that his honor will be preserved; that he is not being taken for granted and that his worth is irreplaceable, and as such, demands the highest respect and recognition.

This should not surprise us. In almost all of the apparitions with which Our Lady has blessed us, especially those of Fatima, she constantly told the seers that mankind was “offending” God by its sins. At various times she said “They must not offend Our Lord any more, for He is already too much offended.....But if people do not stop offending God, another even worse, will begin in the reign of Pius XI,” and “stop offending God, Our Lord, Who is already very offended.” Needless to say, the word “offend” is one of the most prominent in all Marian apparitions.

Moreover, although it is certainly true that a cessation of sin will help to reverse the offense, without a personal demonstration of sorrow, humility and sacrifice directed to the one offended, the effort to rectify cannot even begin. Personal beings first require a recognition of their worth. In a word, God must be propitiated so that sin can be expiated. Thus, the Catechism of the Council of Trent stated:

...that the Church might have a perpetual sacrifice, by which our sins might be expiated, and our heavenly Father, oftentimes grievously offended by our crimes, might be turned away from wrath to mercy, from the severity of just chastisement to clemency.⁽²⁴⁾

We see this same theme all over Catholic theology. In another place Trent’s Catechism states: “...our heavenly Father, oftentimes grievously offended by our crimes, might be turned away from wrath to mercy.”⁽²⁵⁾ Ludwig Ott reiterates the same:

By atonement in general is understood the satisfaction of a demand. In the narrower sense it is taken to mean the reparation of an insult: satisfactio nihil aliud est quam injuriae alteri illatae compensatio (Roman Catechism, II, 5, 59). This occurs through a voluntary performance which outweighs the injustice done...Thus Christ’s atonement was, through its intrinsic value, sufficient to counterbalance the infinite insult offered to God, which is inherent in sin.⁽²⁶⁾

Representative of many traditional Catholic theologians, M. C. D’Arcy writes: “Calvary was a propitiatory sacrifice. As the name implies, it is the attempt of man to placate an offended God and to give satisfaction.”⁽²⁷⁾ The Catholic Encyclopedia adds:

...Redemption has reference to both God and man. On God’s part, it is the acceptation of satisfactory amends whereby the Divine honor is repaired and the Divine wrath appeased....The judicial axiom ‘honor est in honorante, injuria in injuriato’ (honour is measured by the dignity of him who receives it) shows that mortal sin bears in a way an infinite malice and that nothing short of a person possessing infinite worth is capable of making full amends for it....‘For an adequate satisfaction,’ says St. Thomas, ‘it is necessary that the act of him who satisfies should possess an infinite value and proceed from one who is both God and Man’” (ST, III, Q. 1, a. 2, ad 2um).⁽²⁸⁾

The Encyclopedia continues: “Satisfaction, or the payment of a debt in full, means, in the moral order, an acceptable reparation of honor offered to the person offended and, of course, implies a penal and painful work.”⁽²⁹⁾

Many of the popes caught this truth as well. As representative of their consensus are the words of Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis:

That he completed his work on the gibbet of the cross is the unanimous teaching of the holy Fathers...through his triumph on the cross...he won power and dominion over the Gentiles...by his blood shed on the cross God’s anger was averted and all the heavenly gifts...could then flow from the fountains of our savior for the salvation of men.⁽³⁰⁾

Although just in its beginning stages, many of the Fathers understood the propitiatory atonement of Christ as well. Cyril of Jerusalem states:

For if a king were to banish certain who had given him offence, and then those who belong to them should weave a crown and offer it to him on behalf of those under punishment, would he not grant a remission of their penalties? In the same way, when we offer to Him our supplications for those who have fallen asleep, though they be sinners, weave no crown, but offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins, propitiating our merciful God for them as well as for ourselves.⁽³¹⁾

Augustine adds:

But what is meant by ‘justified in His blood’?....Was it indeed so, that when God the Father was wroth with us, He saw the death of His Son for us, and was appeased towards us? Was then His Son already so far appeased towards us, that He even deigned to die for us; while the Father was still so far wroth, that except His Son died for us, He would not be appeased?⁽³²⁾

Conclusion:

In the end, we must realize that Gibson’s brutal portrayal of Christ’s crucifixion is not exaggerated or superfluous in the least. Every ounce of blood spilt, every blow to the head, every spit in the face, every thorn in the forehead, every nail and spear in the body, were all calculated, expected and necessary to serve as a propitiatory sacrifice to God the Father, to avert His wrath and preserve His honor. If anything, Christ’s gruesome sufferings show us how supremely and majestically high God is above us (Is 6:1-6; 55:9).

One of the most brutal scenes in Gibson’s film is the scourging at the pillar. The Roman soldiers are in a virtual frenzy, first whipping Christ with flogging rods and, after Christ appears to have miraculously sustained it, they mercilessly flail him with the famous Roman cords containing bone chips or iron pellets at the ends. After they leave not an inch of flesh on his back unstained with gapping wounds, they untie one of his hands and turn him over to whip him the same way on the front side. As the soldiers are beating him they are laughing and cavorting with one another, reveling in the intense sadistic pleasure this act of violence is apparently creating for them. Gibson chose to make this scene so gruesome because of his reading of the Dolorous Passion from the visions of the nineteenth century German mystic and victim soul Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote that, at the moment the soldiers began beating Jesus, Satan entered into each one of them, which made them scourge Jesus all the more intensely.

In the Pieta Prayer Booklet, of which so many traditional Catholics are familiar, we find that St. Elizabeth, St. Matilda and St. Bridget speak of a letter written by Christ himself. In April 1890, the letter received the approval of Pope Leo XIIII. In it, Christ reminisces over each of His sufferings. It reads as follows:

Be it known that the number of armed soldiers were 150; those who trailed me while I was bound were 23. The executioners of justice were 83; the blows received on my head were 150; those on my stomach, 108; kicks on my shoulders, 80. I was led, bound with cords by the hair, 24 times; spits in the face were 180; I was beaten on the body 6,666 times; beaten on the head, 110 times. I was roughly pushed, and at 12 o’clock was lifted up by the hair; pricked with thorns and pulled by the beard 23 times; received 20 wounds on the head; thorns of marine junks, 72; pricks of thorns in the head, 110; mortal thorns in the forehead, 3. I was afterwards flogged and dressed as a mocked king; wounds in the body, 1000. The soldiers who led me to the Calvary were 608; those who watched me were 3, and those who mocked me were 1008; the drops of blood which I lost were 28,430.⁽³³⁾

As you can see in your mind’s eye, the above details of His torture are even more graphic than Gibson’s movie. In any case, we can rest assured that God the Father required no more from Christ than what was absolutely necessary to appease His wrath and preserve His honor, and by the same token, did not miss, or consider incidental, any suffering which Christ underwent. From now on, whenever God is confronted by our sin, He can look at the sufferings of His Son and be appeased, and this happens at every Catholic Mass.

In the end, the problem is not the graphic portrayal of Christ’s suffering in Gibson’s film. The problem is that men have lost sight of the seriousness of sin and how much it offends a holy and almighty God. They don’t understand Gibson’s graphic film because they have little notion of what it takes to appease an angry God. Unfortunately, those who refuse to understand it now, will be forced to discover it when they meet Him at Judgment Day.

Robert Sungenis
Catholic Apologetics International
3-02-04

Footnotes:

1) National Review, February 25, 2004, “Caught in the Crossfire: Gibson and his movie.”
2) Andy Rooney to Don Imus, on The Don Imus Show, courtesy of the Matt Drudge website.
3) Origen on Romans 3:24 in PG 14, 945; PG 13, 1397; Ambrose on 1 Peter 1:18 in PL 16, 1299; an implied agreement by Jerome in PL 26, 480; Augustine in one oblique instance, De Trinitate 13, 15 (PL 42, 1029; NPNF I, vol. 3, p. 178.
4) Ibid., p. 187.
5) Cur Deus Homo, ii, xix.
6) Cur Deus Homo i, xiii...i, xiii...ii, xiv.
7) Summa Theologica III, Q. 49, Art. 4, emphasis added; See also ST 1a, 2ae, 87, 1-6; 3, 48, 2; De Veritate, 28, 2.
8) From the Hebrew in the Hitpael verb form indicating intense pain experienced by the self. The same form appears in Genesis 34:7. The Piel form, which is just as intensive, appears in Isaiah 63:10, “they...grieved His Holy Spirit”).
9) This Hebrew text appears in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, p. 760. The LXX renders part as Christ “seeing light” through His suffering. In the above translation, the Hebrew “nephesh” is translated both “life” and “soul.” Shaba is the normal Hebrew word for “satisfied” and is also used by Isaiah in 9:20; 44:16, and 66:11.
10) Operatio in Psalmum 22 (21), 1583 Wittenberg ed., III, 331-334. Cited in Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice by S. Lyonnet and L. Sabourin, p. 229.
11) Institutes 2:16:10 and 2:16:12.
12) This interpretation was held by the Fathers in consensus, beginning with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, through Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nanzianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, et al., and through the Middle Ages. See S. Lyonnet and L. Sabourin, “Sin, Redemption and Sacrifice,” pp. 189-224, for a thorough documentation of the patristic and mediaeval witnesses. Augustine, for example, states: “Those who know the Scriptures of the Old Testament ill approve of what I say. For not once but very often ‘sins’ there are called ‘sacrifices for sins’” (Sermon, 134, IV, 5, PL 38, 745). Aquinas writes: “God made him to be ‘sin,’ that is, he made him suffer the penalty of sin, when he was offered up for our sins” (Epistle to the Galatians, III, 5). Conversely, Martin Luther held that Christ personified sin. On Galatians 3:13 he wrote: “And all the prophets saw this, that Christ was to become the greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world....In short, he has and bears all the sins of all men in his body.” (WA 2, 517). The extent of his belief is noted here: “Whatever sins I, you, and all of us have committed or may commit in the future, they are as much Christ’s own as if he himself had committed them. In short, our sin must be Christ’s own sin, or we shall perish eternally” (WA 40, 434). John Calvin held the same. Of 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Isaiah 53:6 he writes: “...That is, he who was about to cleanse the filth of those iniquities was covered with them by transferred imputation” (INT 2:16:6).
13) 1911 edition, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 58.
14) Weimer edition of Luther’s Works (WA) 15, 774, and Smalcald Articles, P. II, Art. 2.
15) WA 8, 517, 24f.
16) WA 8, 517, 17.
17) Latin-English Booklet Missal, Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, Second Edition, November 1992, p. 3.
18) Ibid., p. 13.
19) Ibid., pp. 21, 23.
20) Ibid., p. 25. We should also mention that the Eucharistic Prayer is the only place that the Novus Ordo Missae speaks of offering God a sacrifice. It also has no references to such terms as propitiation or appeasement.
21) Ibid., pp. 27-29.
22) Ibid. p. 31.
23) Ibid. p. 35.
24) The Roman Catechism: The Catechism of the Council of Trent, p. 255.
25) CCT, p. 255.
26) Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, pp. 186, 188.
27) The Mass and Redemption, p. 43.
28) 1911 edition, vol. 12, p. 678.
29) Ibid., p. 678.
30) AAS [1943], 205f, emphasis added
31) Catechetical Lectures, 23, 10.
32) On the Trinity, Book XIII, Ch. 11. See also; Book IV, Ch. 14. Added to these are the early liturgies of the Church, which are saturated with propitiatory language.
33) The Pieta Prayer Booklet: The 15 St. Bridget Prayers (MLOR Corporation, 1998), p. 28.

Catholic Apologetics International