Constantine

Keanu Reeves seems incapable of playing anything but a Christ figure (remember his supersonic ascension at the end of Matrix 1). In the recent horror film, Constantine, he plays John Constantine (J.C. – get it?), an agnostic, chain-smoking suicide restored to life to work as a free-lance exorcist. He hopes to earn a place in heaven, so that he can escape the unpleasant prospect of spending eternity in a hell populated by demons he sent there through his work as an exorcist. The film deploys Christian symbols, but the world of the film is more Manichean than Christian.

At the heart of the story is the angel Gabriel's plot to carry out an alternative plan for humanity's redemption. Unhappy that God so readily saves people who confess and believe, she (yes, it's Gabriela) embarks on a strategy of making humanity worthy of God’s love, a strategy that involves a sword of destiny and a psychic policewoman who will be used as the "doorway" through which Mammon, Satan's son, will be born into the world. As humanity faces the horrors Mammon will unleash, it will display a respectable degree of courage and perseverance and be worthy of God.

John commits suicide again, but this time it's self-sacrificial because he does it to save the policewoman's suicidal sister from hell (harrowing hell). Instead of serving God to earn heaven, he gives himself in faith, and is saved. He even stops smoking. Gabriel's plan is foiled, she loses her wings, and we're supposed to cheer because we like a God who forgives sinners instead of sending demons. It seems a very Christian conclusion (apart from the smoking bit).

But I wonder: What are we to say about a God creates a man and woman, places them naked in a garden, and then sends along a talking serpent to tempt and test them? Whether we call this "decree" or "permission," Scripture and of history suggest that God is up to something a tad more complicated than Constantine suggests, something that is uncomfortably closer to Gabriel's plan than we'd like to think. In fact, in one sense, Gabriel's plan is fulfilled, for without the challenge of demonic invasion, John would never have come to the point where he was willing to risk hell to save another from hell.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 26, 2005 at 01:20 PM

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