On this score, I found a very interesting contrast between two “places” (τόπος), metaphorically conceived, that Scripture describes in John 14:2 and Acts 1:25.

First consider the familiar statement of Jesus in John 14:1-2, when he says, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms (μοναὶ πολλαί). If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you (τόπον ὑμῖν)?” In the OT, God went before Israel into Canaan and prepared  place for them (Deut 1:19-33). So too, here Jesus goes ahead of his disciples to prepare a “place” for them. But what does this mean? Note how John uses the word μονὴ, which means “room/abode,” in chapter 14: Jesus says there are many “rooms” (μοναὶ) in his Father’s house and uses the same word when he tells the disciples, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home (μονὴν) with him” (14:23). The two statements make sense when considered in light of Jesus’ promise that the Spirit will dwell in believers (cf. 14:7). Paradoxically, just as Jesus goes to prepare a place for the disciples in one of these “rooms,” God, through the Spirit, makes the believers his own “room.” This helps us make sense of what Jesus means when he says that he goes to prepare a “place” for us. As Köstenberger and Swain note, “the ‘place’ that Jesus prepares for the disciples is his filial place in the presence of the Father, the place where he has eternally basked in the Father’s love (1:1, 18; 14:3; 17:5, 24-26)” [Father, Son, and Spirit, 144]. The place Jesus prepares for us is the place of a son of God, possessed by the Spirit of Sonship. It is a place within the life of God himself.

In stark contrast, consider what Luke tells us when the disciples are replacing Judas with Matthias, “They prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place (εἰς τὸν τόπον τὸν ἴδιον)” (Acts 1:24-25). Whether this place is Judas’ “Field of Blood” or hell itself, the message is equally clear.

Jesus provides us with a place of eternal life, whereas Judas provides himself with a place of eternal death. This is inevitably the case when we remember the traditional concept of sin as homo incurvatus in se, literally “being turned in upon oneself.” There is thus a strong contrast between the place prepared by us and the place prepared for us, as there is between law and gospel; between those who kiss the Son (Ps. 2:12) and those who “kiss” the Son (Luke 22:48). The question facing each of us is whether we will “seek that which is above, where Christ is” (Col 3:1) or “seek that which is within” and succumb to the abyss of absolute interiority (Jer 17:9; Phil 2:3; Prov 18:1).

Scripture: A Very Theological Proposal

The primary issue at stake in this first chapter concerns the doctrine of revelation and its mediation. Paddison’s brief discussion of the inspiration of Scripture (pp. 9-11) relies entirely on P.T. Forsyth’s arguments, which has the unfortunate effect of dating his treatment of the doctrine to the early 20th Century and renders it fairly obsolete.  Paddison, via Forsyth, decries many faults in “typical” treatments of inspiration. Take, for example, his complaint that verbal inspiration risks ignoring or downplaying the Spirit’s “present action upon Scripture” (11). I couldn’t point you to a theologian who holds to a traditional view of inspiration and yet denies the necessity of the Spirit’s illuminating work. Apparently, neither can Paddison because we are given no example of this theological boogeyman (read: straw man). “Typical” sources such as Francis Turretin and Charles Hodge both emphasize the pneumatological aspect of reading.

The most damning portion of this section, for me, is in how it fails to escape a kernel/husk model of Scripture, despite his characterization of “de-historicized” or “subjectivist” theories of verbal inspiration. Sadly, name-calling replaces argumentation here. The primary mistake comes when Paddison draws upon Forsyth’s contention that authors, rather than their texts, were inspired, driving a wedge between inspired authors and their supposedly uninspired writings. Paddison appeals to Forsyth’s psychological distinction between revelation and its effect on the Christian consciousness, which is the dirty glass through which revelation must pass in the apostles and prophets before it’s spilled out onto the pages of Scripture. There are two fundamental flaws to this construal of revelation, as I see it. The first is that there is no solidified criterion for this disjunction between revelation and the apostle Paul, for example. Kevin Vanhoozer successfully deals with this disjunction when he claims,

communicative agency integrates the subjectivity (feelings, thoughts) of agents with the objectivity of their external deeds. The life of the apostle Paul, for instance, expresses the idea of Christianity. The overall shape of Paul’s life is as much a part of his communicative action as the content of his letters. His ministry itself is a “letter of recommendation” on behalf of the triune economy of the gospel (2 Cor. 3:2-3) (The Drama of Doctrine, p. 100).

Paddison’s idea of revelation as almost purely historical action stops short of a coherent account of action’s communicative aspects and fails to demonstrate how we can stop the buck at the level of apostolic consciousness. This move leads to a modernist hermeneutic, for it leaves us with a kernel/husk model of Scripture. As a result of Paddison’s account, we have to go “revelation hunting” in the muck and mire of prophetic and apostolic consciousness (perhaps Freud should’ve written a biblical hermeneutics text!). He says, “The correct attitude to Scripture will mean that we strain the writings written by inspired authors for the revelation that lies within” (p. 12 n. 36).

Following upon this construal of revelation, Paddison argues, “We thus avoid the thickets of elevating Scripture to an inappropriate status or of foreclosing the freedom of God to act upon us anew” (p. 19). Paddison here rehashes one of the more annoying arguments in modern theology: you cannot say God does x, because that restricts his freedom! Normally, this argument employs an otiose (or voluntarist) principle of freedom that is elevated over God himself, for the assumption here is that God’s freedom is something other than and independent of God‘s enacted freedom (i.e., the way God has freely chosen to act, as in inspiring the authors of Scripture and carrying their words along as his own throughout history). God is free to inspire Scripture, speak sufficiently in and through it, grant it authority, speak clearly and truthfully therein, etc., is He not? Paddison’s argument, overused in the modern academy, is weak and needs to be retired. In the words of Bob Newhart: “just stop it” (please). [On this, see Kevin Hector, "God's Triunity and Self-Determination," IJST 7]

His entire discussion of “time” sounds lofty, but I found it wanting because it functionally relocates revelation within the “politics” of the church (ecclesial practices). Getting into this would take too long, but a few brief comments are necessary. His understanding of time is theologically problematic primarily in how he understands time with reference to the church rather than God (p. 21), a notably a-theological proposal of time. This is an area where Paddison’s ecclesiocentrism is on full display, owing to his appropriation of Hauerwas. In other words, while he can quote John Webster to the effect that we should define time with reference to Jesus’ history (p. 25), Paddison collapses Jesus’ history into the church’s history – something the doctrine of the ascension protects us against. This ecclesiocentric move makes his enlistment of Webster all the more curious. Admittedly, these arguments will appeal more to postliberal Wesleyans and perhaps those of a more Catholic bent.

Finally, Paddison’s stated desire to avoid any competition between divine and human agency (p. 32) schematizes hermeneutics in a Pelagian fashion. Once again, ecclesiology is enlisted to shoulder more than it can bear. If not competition, there has to be some degree of conflict between divine and human agencies because the former is redemptive and the latter is rebellious. We are still sinners, are we not? Do our wayward hearts not affect how we read this side of the resurrection (cf. 2 Cor. 3:15-16)?

His desire to locate Scripture theologically within the economy of the gospel is laudable, but how he does this is not theological enough, in my opinion. Webster, Vanhoozer, Timothy Ward, and the recent offering by Scott Swain, do a much better job at this. Paddison’s arguments are not well-supported and he skirts over counter arguments in silence and caricature, out of either ignorance or willful neglect. If he were just describing his position, rather than casting down “idols,” then it wouldn’t be sensible to expect any of this from him. But he characterizes opposing views too briefly and too unfairly. For these reasons and more, it’s hard to find any of this persuasive, despite the author’s demonstrated learning in the subject. Hopefully, Paddison will one day refine his arguments against concrete foils and a more explicitly theo-centric method, leaving us with the promised theological proposal. Until then, one only has time to read so many books….

A “biblical” theology, therefore, involves more than summarizing the propositional content of the Scriptures. It involves acquiring cognitive skills and sensibilities, and hence the ability to see, feel, and taste the world as disclosed in the diverse biblical texts. Exegesis therefore involves much more than lexical, historical, and grammatical knowledge, much more than mastering information about the text. As a scientia or type of disciplined knowledge, the goal of exegesis is to come to know the text for what it is, for what it says, and for what it does; this ultimately involves not mastery so much as apprenticeship. The discipline required by exegesis is at once intellectual, spiritual, and imaginative, for it involves nothing less than training readers to undergo the hard formation of following Scripture so that literary forms merge into forms of life, so that seeing as translates into experiencing as, even, at the limit, into being as. It is in this sense that scientia is a prerequisite to what ultimately matters: the sapiential ability to participate fittingly in the theo-drama. (285)

This is what Vanhoozer means when he says, “The truth of God’s word is not merely but richly propositional.” The point may not be original, but it’s freshly presented. This is important for readers to keep in mind when they read Scripture and are praying for the Spirit’s illumination. God’s Word is meant to engage our imaginations and affections even as it engages our minds and hearts, so when we pray that the Spirit will enable us to understand the Scriptures, we should pray that He enables us to be moved by them and to see the world through them. Might we even interpret Vanhoozer in such a way that the very meaning of a passage is not grasped enough until it has impacted us in this holistic fashion (cognitively, emotionally, imaginatively)? Consider the words of John Frame:

To say that Scripture is authoritative is not only to say tht its propositions are true, it is also to say that its commands are binding, its questions demand answers of us (“Shall we sin that grace may abound?”), its exclamations should become the shouts of our hearts (“O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!”), its promises must be relied upon, and so forth. [The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p.201]

NOTICE

Persons attempting to find a “text” in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a “subtext” in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise “understand” it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

Now what exactly is he “saying” here?

1. To respect any particular of Jesus is, if we are consistent, to see how far the Levinasian rabbit hole goes. If we must respect the Jewishness of Jesus to respect him as an “other” and to avoid controlling him, then several things follow. We must respect the particularity of his entire life, teaching, and ministry. How can we respect the particularity of his ethnicity on one hand and jettison the particularity of these latter categories on the other? The ethnicity of Jesus is important, but it is part of a larger context. Jesus is a Jew because he is born in the fullness of time, under the law, from the seed of David. There is an entire prophetic expectation of God’s chosen people, which are the vehicle for God’s redemptive activity in the cosmos. Jesus’ Jewishness is part of an unbreakable chain located in God’s dealings with Israel, even as the fulfillment of their religion. Eschewing one aspect of Jesus’ particularity while respecting another introduces a “rule” or hermeneutic that has to take its cue from some place other than Jesus.

2. Neither can we reconstruct transcendence to our liking, for this is merely another form of “re-locating” Jesus such that we remove him from his location. If I may equivocate for a moment, where does Jesus’ self-testimony in Scripture say he is? He is with the church and he is enthroned at the right hand of the Father; “He is not here, but He has risen” (Luke 24:6). Why do people stand looking into various contexts? This Jesus, who has been taken up from us into heaven, will not come in just any way we please, for he is not at hand, but far off (cf. Acts 1:11; Jer 23:23-24). Jesus’ own transcendence is part of his particularity and resists any domestication of transcendence, which leads to my final point.

3. Why must we try to contextualize Jesus? It seems to me that Jesus does not need to be contextualized, if we really give due dogmatic weight to Jesus being born in the “fullness of time.” To be pithy, Jesus’ particularity and his transcendence judge and confront each context and culture (even white Western males!). There is no “controlling” metanarrative of Jesus, only the authoritative canon, which is his prophetic self-testimony. This witness itself meets us anew in every context and locality that claims to need its own Jesus (i.e., a LGBTQ Jesus, Womanist/Mujerista Jesus, Jain Jesus, etc.). Any such claim is a repudiation of the Jesus that comes to us in a barn in Bethlehem, the Jesus who comes from Nazareth and proclaims the Kingdom and dies on a cross outside Jerusalem; the Jesus who claims to be one with the Father – the truth, life, and way. Now, it may very well be that contextual Christologies reject the “controlling” narrative(s) of the biblical witness. If so, they only replace such a controlling narrative(s) with many others, trading one “colonialism” for another. I contend that this all amounts to inconsistency. As John Webster has so eloquently said,

[The object of theology] is not one more matter for the free play of intellectual judgement. Rather, the object is itself judge, wholly and originally; and perhaps the test of the authenticity of any theology of the incarnation will be whether it emerges from that judgment or prefers, instead, to establish an independent colony of the mind from which to make raids on the church’s confession. (Word and Church, 114)

This scholar claimed that Christian theology was a controlling narrative on Christology that did not have all the answers and resources for the needs of every context and culture. The odd thing is that if you remove Christian theology, you no longer have Christology. You might have “Jewish Christology” in the sense that you have a Messianic expectation divorced from the particularity of Jesus, but then you’ve ceased talking about  Jesus Christ. And it is this name which transcends Christology itself.

Last night, the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at TEDS hosted a lively debate between Dr. R. Albert Mohler and Jim Wallis over the question of whether social justice was an essential part of the church’s mission. Unfortunately, the event was between a serious public intellectual trying to have a debate and an affable raconteur blatantly avoiding one. You can watch the debate online for the specifics, but I’d like to make a methodological observation here.

Wallis’s opening statement, a charming stew of anecdotes and pathos, made no point other than that the church should be concerned with justice and this somehow belonged to the essence of the gospel. In stark contrast, Dr. Mohler carefully defined justice with reference first to God and Scripture, rather than social or anthropological concerns. In a succinct, wonderful deconstruction of “justice,” he argued that God alone is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). Justice is thus of the very essence of God, but not the church’s mission, which Dr. Mohler compellingly argued was strictly kerygmatic. The gospel is not itself about social justice, but the making of disciples, who consequently are to be about kingdom work. Whether you agree or not, this was an argument that started with God and moved to man.

Wallis, on the other hand, implicitly defined justice and the mission of the church in his constant references to what people need today from the church. Thus, if the church wanted to remain relevant to the needs of the least of these and the occupiers of Wall Street, then we need to make social justice part of the essence of the gospel. The logic: social justice is what people need and what Wallis’s childhood churches lacked, therefore it belongs at the essence of the gospel. Also, Jesus was keen on social justice. Nevermind the absence of any warrant in Wallis’ argument, the troubling thing was his implicit Feuerbachian starting point. For Wallis, it’s experience and the exigencies around us that define justice, not the act of God. Wallis would find a great deal in Feuerbach with which to disagree, but he was starting with the same basic moves. And it’s this type of ill-conceived logic that should not be tolerated, even by progressives. Unfortunately, it’s what passes muster in many of these discussions.

Regardless of how one feels about the relationship between the gospel and “social justice,” the direction of our theological reasoning should be from God to man, not the other way around. That’s the movement of the gospel itself!

10.29.11 UPDATE: I was interviewed briefly on this topic for the Christian Post.

“Wine,” according to the absolutely unanimous, unexceptional testimony of every scholar and missionary, is in its essence “fermented grape-juice.” Nothing else is wine. The use of “wine” is precisely what is commanded by Christ in his example and his authoritative institution of this holy ordinance. Whosoever puts away true and real wine, or fermented grape-juice, on moral grounds, from the Lord’s Supper, sets himself up as more moral than the Son of God who reigns over his conscience, and than the Saviour of souls who redeemed him. There has been absolutely universal consent on this subject in the Christian Church until modern times, when the practice has been opposed, not upon change of evidence, but solely on prudential considerations.

Before this, Hodge says, “it is obviously a matter of indifference what particular form of bread should be used.” But it’s clear that it should be bread. Now, as a Southern Baptist, I’ve often heard that the Supper doesn’t require wine per se, just the fruit of the vine. But, as Hodge would say, that’s not what the text says. I’m not as convinced by the exegesis here than I am by the appeal to the conscience. What if someone were medically indisposed to alcohol, even the smallest amount? Should we tell them to suck it up? Or do we get some Welch’s for their stomach’s sake? Obviously, we enable them to take the Supper by getting something free of alcohol. I have to have gluten-free bread in order to participate in the Supper at my church, because normal bread turns my immune system against me. So it’s not really about the material content of the bread itself, but about the significance of bread in general and the figurative role it plays in the canon. Same with the cup, I’d argue. We can understand the significance of the cup apart from the fermentation.

But that’s not what normally prevents churches from offering wine at the Supper. I don’t know of a single church that’s medically indisposed to alcohol.

No, it’s usually an underlying prohibitionist ethos among the congregation or the clergy (or the ecclesial asociation with which the church cooperates) that keeps wine out of the Supper. This is where Hodge is right on, and he’s certainly not unique in making this point. Keeping the wine out of the Supper almost always has to do with churches thinking themselves holier than Jesus – even if this isn’t the conscious intention. For such churches, the wine itself could signify something in addition to the new covenant of Jesus’ blood. It might also remind her that her conscience needs to be sanctified and that she need not think herself better than God!

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. Matt 11:19

Relevant to all of this is the topic of Brian Palmer’s recent Slate column, “Before Hitler, Who Was the Stand-in for Pure Evil?” Interestingly, rhetoricians and essayists did not turn most frequently to the nearest available genocidal maniac. Rather, due to a bygone biblical literacy, they most often turned to Pharoah. Given, from time to time certain figures (such as George III) would provide all the fodder necessary for an instantiation of pure evil. Yet it was the hardened Pharoah of the exodus who most frequently represented evil to the moral imagination.

Aside from the historical/cultural details, it’s worth thinking about how the most salient horrors in our imaginations and consciences exercise an influence over our theological reasoning. There is little doubt that since WWII, theodicy has played a disproportionate role in far too many theologies. Coupled with other factors, e.g. ontological renditions of the cross, these often lead to the depreciating of classical doctrines such as divine impassibility (or better: divine constancy). The result is that God suffers change because it’s supposed that God is more relevant to felt human needs if he suffers at the level of his eternal essence. This is all done with the best of intentions, mind you, and it is not my concern to enter into these debates here.

What immediately strikes me about all this is the contrast between Pharoah and Hitler, as it concerns theological reflection in light of evil. Might we do better to attend theologically to Pharoah than to Hitler/Auschwitz? I think so, and not simply because attention to the latter has resulted in so much modification to the positive content of the classical affirmation of God’s constancy. Instead, Pharoah is a much better stand-in for evil in the theological moral imagination because Pharoah’s context is not suffering and the ‘banality of evil’ simpliciter. Pharoah is located within the story of the exodus, where evil and suffering meet the right hand of the Lord, glorious in power, who “shatters the enemy” (Ex 15:6). I can only ask somewhat glibly, does a modern theological imagination focused on Auschwitz (and relevant horrors) tend to move towards modifications of theology proper because these events are not contextualized by such theologians within a biblical view of history – a history that sees evil within the context of God’s redemptive act, seen in all its finality in Christ? In the Scriptures, evil is put in its place, so to speak, within God’s decisive NO to sin. Evil makes ‘sense’ – to the extent that we can even say something like this – only in light of what God is doing about it.

Even so, I think Moltmann is right when he says it’s “necessary to remember the martyrs, so as not to become abstract” (The Crucified God, 278). Abstraction that never moves to the concrete can easily make theology irrelevant. Good theology speaks to people and gives them a deeper understanding of their experiences, revealing to them the true nature of what’s happening in their lives. The holocaust is one such experience, and in no way am I trying to minimize the sheer horror of this event and others like it. But I also think Moltmann’s wrong to make Auschwitz an event in the life of God – “God in Auschwitz and Auschwitz in the crucified God” (ibid., 278) – as if the most important thing theologians could say is ‘God suffers too!’ The biblical emphasis is on the fact that Christ saves, not that he suffers. This is clarified by the context of evil in the exodus event, where the evil one is destroyed by the chaotic ‘deep’ – the waters of judgment. And thus the emphasis is on God’s answer to, rather than his experience of, evil.

Two interesting contrasts:

1. Jesus lays down his own life for the sheep, whereas the thieves and robbers lay down the sheep’s life for their own benefit (10:10).

2. Jesus wants his sheep to have abundant life, whereas thieves and robbers want to have abundant possessions (cf. Luke 12:15).

I have a competition in me, I want no one else to succeed.  I hate most people.

-Daniel Plainview

We begin with the the opening scene of There Will Be Blood:  The camera slowly rises from the desert ground with the music dragging along and rumbling towards a brilliant opus as the scene fixes on a small mountain range. The music soars with a dramatic flair that calls to mind the oft-emulated “Also Sprach Zarathustra” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the opening to 2001, the aforementioned song bursts forth as apes discover a monolith in their midst that signifies the next step in their evolution: the use of force.  The discovery of weapons unfolds – a bone becomes a club one ape uses to beat another to death in an act of dominance.  Now fast forward to the opening of Blood, where Johnny Greenwood’s score mimics “Zarathustra” as the lands of California are revealed –lands that hide a resource that will signal the next major step in industrialization and wealth.

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), filthy and poor, is underneath the ground in a hole digging away at the earth to discover wealth.  After an injury looking for silver, he turns his attention to oil, which he soon enough discovers. As he and his crew eventually hit oil, a man is killed in an accident that’s almost characterized as the necessary collateral to the discovery of the oil Plainview so desperately seeks. The parallels here between Blood and 2001 are striking.  As in the latter, the opening sequence in the former ends with the discovery of a club of sorts and the death of an ape (careful attention will draw out other parallels I’ll leave out here).

Perhaps the most noticeable thing about There Will Be Blood is the raw intensity of the film and its characters.  Plainview is an “oil man” who discovers black gold and sets about conquering the covered riches that lie beneath the quiet town of Little Boston.  This little town in the plains of California is home to Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the highly charismatic and influential (albeit greedy) pastor/healer of the Church of the Third Revelation – a name that implies Eli’s hubris.  Inevitably, the two characters clash in vying attempts at power and serve as the primary vehicle for the plot – which revolves around Plainview’s character- to move along to its inevitably bloody conclusion.

It might be supposed that Eli’s mistake is making a deal with Plainview in the first place, a sort of deal with the devil.  But, contrary to what might be expected, it is Eli’s hubris that is the mechanism behind a Faustian bargain with the church.  A wolf himself, Eli dons sheep’s clothing and pretends to lead a flock, gathering greater acclaim and wealth for himself all along the way.  But underneath the wolf’s skin is a man just as wickedly greedy as Plainview, though lacking the means and bravado to live out his true nature more ostentatiously.  He chides his father Abraham for being weak and stupid, but he foolishly ties his fortunes to a stronger man, Plainview, and tries to control him by controlling the masses.  The “bargain” is with Eli’s front, a man of the cloth who can know no violence.

The story is carried along in the constant friction between Plainview and Sunday; if Plainview isn’t snubbing the bombastic pastor to bless the oil derrick, Sunday is using his pulpit and influence to control those living on Plainview’s coveted land.  The back and forth exercises of power grow steadily more overt and grand.  After an accident that leaves H. W. deaf, Plainview slaps Sunday around and ‘baptizes’ him in the oily mud after his suggestion that this tragedy could have been avoided if he had been allowed to bless the derrick.  Plainview resents Sunday for his charade because the supposed healer cannot cure his deaf son, whom he sent to boarding school far away. The oilman is a thoroughly greedy and opportunistic student of humanity, so he is quick to recognize his own kind –a facet that perhaps fuels his hatred for Sunday all the more.  Eventually, Sunday finds himself with the upper hand when Plainview has to appease a member of Eli’s flock so that he can build an oil pipeline over his property.

To get what he needs, Daniel is forced to play along with Eli’s act, repent, beg for “the blood,” and be baptized in the Church of the Third Revelation.  Daniel’s contorted expression suppresses his words as he is forced down to his knees and Eli teases a stronger confession of sin out of him, all the while slapping the devil out of Plainview.  “I abandoned my child!  I abandoned my boy!” he cries.  Is this genuine conviction of sin or prideful resentment?  On one hand, Daniel’s disposition soured after he left his son on the train.  On the other, Daniel’s hushed words after his baptism leave Eli with a horrified look, likely promising retribution.  Perhaps it is a little bit of both, Daniel does contritely send for his son but we are never left with the impression that it is anyone’s blood but Eli’s that Daniel seeks.

Several years pass by and the final scene of the film allows us to see an old and miserably rich, yet lonely, Plainview come face to face with his destiny.  His son H. W., now grown and married to Sunday’s little sister, wants to strike out on his own and refuses to follow Plainview’s steps.  Daniel vehemently disowns him, revealing the truth that he was an orphan, a “bastard in a basket.”  He tells him that it’s clear he never was his son because H. W. has none of Daniel in him.  The film’s relentless focus on the domination of nature does not let up even here, we’re left with the impression that, for H. W., nature trumps nurture.  Being raised in the shadow of Daniel isn’t enough to turn this boy into the same monster he loves so dearly.  Apparently, Daniel’s early ‘baptism’ of H. W. with oil as a child never stuck.

But it is not long before Daniel’s other son he baptized, an older and just as miserable Sunday, comes to visit Plainview in his basement bowling alley.  Here the tables have suddenly turned from what we last saw between the two men and it is Sunday who needs the gospel that only Plainview has to offer: mammon.  Poor investments and the onset of the depression have left Sunday’s empire less than sufficient, so he offers to sell Daniel the land over which he built a pipeline many years earlier.  Plainview takes full advantage of the situation, eliciting a renunciation of God and confession of chicanery from Sunday. He then tells him – in the infamous “milkshake” scene – that he’s already sapped the land of its oil by drilling the lands surrounding the property.  Plainview proceeds to impressively tear Sunday down with the crudest insults and then, drunk with liquor, hatred, and power, Plainview maniacally chases him down.  Sunday screams and tries to avoid him, but Plainview grabs a bowling pin – but a polished club – and beats Sunday’s head into a bloody pulp. The use of force has come full circle. No longer has he wasted his time slapping the boy about, he simply has done what his ancestors did so long ago. With the lifeless body of Sunday on the floor next to him, Plainview sits back and barks out, “I’m finished.” And with that, the film, and the rivalry between Plainview and Sunday, ends.

In this film, Plainview both is and is not a sinner rebelling against God, doing what any of us would do if left to our own devices.  But Eli is this too, he simply knows how to fake it.  Both the church and the oil fields are different tools to achieve the same end: dominance.  And the dominance spoken of here is that of nature, which prevails in the cases of Daniel, Eli, and even poor H. W.  More to the forefront of this spectacle, Plainview and Sunday are nothing but apes with suits.  Blood’s view of depravity is more accurately a view of the meaningless existence implied by naturalism: we are nothing but more evolved apes, in our own tribes, discovering new and improved clubs with which to subjugate one another. If and when these new clubs fail, we can always revert to the tried and true original, like Plainview does in the final scene – the climax where Anderson presents us with the final manifestation of Plainview’s nature.  Throughout the film, there is never any hint of hope or purpose in what seem to be horrid accidents, fueled only by the greed that compels Plainview to dig.  There is no great hand of providence, no compassionate governor of the universe, no justice, only the monstrous Schopenhauerian Will around the corner, whose voice is heard with every dissonant note of Greenwood’s tense score.  Such a philosophy is truly terrifying, stripping the world of any true purpose and sustaining itself on Plainview’s virtues.

It does not really matter what Anderson meant to say with this film, Plainview can profitably be compared to the human at large, to America, or the global economy.  But what we must question is the sustainability of this philosophy, for it is the very philosophy behind the “beast” and “harlot” of which John speaks in his Apocalypse.  It must be resisted, and at least from the very beginnings of the Christian church, we have been told that the way of Jesus necessarily runs against this philosophy by virtue of what it is: antichristian.  There are lessons here about the effects of capitalism driven by the wills of fallen men, but there is also a ‘revelation’ itself about the endgame of such a philosophy.  The question is whether or not we’re listening.  Regardless, we can agree with Daniel on one thing, as he tells Eli after seeing his charade for the first time, “Well, that was one goddam helluva show.”