Divine Plagiarism

The latest Star Wars movie had some pretty amazing special effects during the battle scenes. The latest Lord of the Rings movies, on the other hand, had some pretty amazing battles. Special effects are a lot like spices in cooking… they’re at their best when they’re least apparent. Like too much Tabasco, overbearing SFX calls into question the quality of the storyline’s meat. Conversely, well-measured effects help the viewer overcome their disbelief and hence advance the story. I know that, at least in modern Florida, there is no such thing as a fawn. Still, when I watch Tumnus walk across the screen on life-like goat legs, I don’t have to try so hard to lose myself in Narnia’s storyline. Perhaps, then, this is another way to put it: effects bolster the viewer’s faith in the story‘s validity in order to hold their interest through to its conclusion.

Which, incidentally, sounds a lot like the purpose of signs, wonders and miracles. Jesus didn’t come to Earth to inaugurate a miraculous new vintage for a wedding, nor to make fast food for crowds of Galileans out of thin air, nor to resuscitate the dead only to see them die again. But those things definitely keep you on board for the rest of the story. How many times did the Old Testament prophets call Israel’s attention back to the miracles of the Exodus? The special effects, as it were, illustrated the Producer’s commitment to the storyline and His capability to see it through to a good ending. Even so, we should not take the God of the Universe as some conjuror of cheap tricks. Even the most playful of His miracles serve solely to advance His storyline. This is His elegant universe, and even in the extravagance of His greatness nothing is gratuitous. And certainly nothing is clumsy.

The Ancient Greeks were known for their playwrights. Notable amongst their innovations on the stage was the idea of Deus ex Maschina. Equal parts fast-forward and plot fix-a-flat, a god would appear in the middle of the play to explain away glaring holes in the storyline. While this device may have salvaged a number of otherwise irredeemable works, it is not exactly a highlight of elegance in story-craft. Instead of advancing the plot from within the mechanics of the story, the author has to introduce an outside element to move things along. Perhaps this is the difference between the petty contractor-gods of old and the One True Landlord. Producer, Director, and Chief Protagonist, this was His story from the outset and it is played out upon His stage. I have little difficulty imagining that the Creator made His stage sturdy enough to accommodate the requirements of His special effects.

A good friend of mine is completing her graduate degree in Biology. Her advocacy of Intelligent Design theory stirs up unending controversy amongst her colleagues. One day, another student approached her exultantly exclaiming that the plagues of Exodus could be explained away through natural causes. Apparently, he was a bit crestfallen when he discovered that a naturalistic explanation actually bolstered her faith in the veracity of the miracles. Her response, if more polite, was something to the effect of, “obviously Michelangelo didn’t make this thing… its got paint all over it.” Is it so impossible that Nature’s Creator would use His Creation to accomplish His will?

The naturalistic account of the Plagues goes something like this: a volcanic eruption turns the Nile red, which causes the fish to die, which leads to a spike in the fly population, which in turn provides food to frogs, and so on. Taking this account as given, the timing and the sequencing of the plagues still demands an answer. First, these plagues occur at a particularly propitious time for the nation of Israel, as evidenced by the undeniable historical result of Israel’s first nationhood. Second, the progression of the plagues systematically discredits the entire Egyptian pantheon of the time. What could be a more poetic curse for a culture with a frog god of fertility than an overabundance of overly fertile frogs? The naturalistic explanation points to a cause outside nature. The special effects serve the storyline, not vice versa.

Naturalism is predicated upon a certain view of nature. Hence the name. Unfortunately, our perspective on nature is skewed by the human propensity for overestimating our span of understanding. Like every generation before us, we assume that we are the ones who finally have things figured out. Do we really know everything yet? Is our sample size really large enough to justify the assertions that we are so comfortable making? Is our present encyclopedia of natural processes truly sufficient to explain everything in nature? Until we can answer these questions in the affirmative with certainty, naturalism must view itself with a certain degree of humility. And humility teaches us to look to others for help, especially in our shortcomings.

I imagine it would be remarkably tricky for a person living in a world of permanent eclipse to form a coherent theory of orbital mechanics. What if, for as long as we can remember, we have been living in a world under eclipse? This world is caught in an anomaly of discord with its Creator, and such a rift could cut all the way to the dynamics of reality itself. Our present thoughts on the nature of things would then be tremendously incomplete; they would hold true only for the area of the anomaly and deeply lacking for the rest of the universe. What if all of this is a blip in eternity, a momentary deviation from Things As They Are? All of our theories would then be deeply suspect, along with all of our definitions.

The Old Testament miracles seem to best fit the rules of the anomaly. This stands to reason: they are miracles for a world of Sin and Death, and they are themselves often miracles of death (even if to preserve greater life.) The plagues of Egypt, the selectively fatal Red Sea crossing, the flood of Noah, the fall of Jericho, all of these miracles involved the shedding of blood. The physics of a fallen world seem to suffice in explaining miracles of death. In contrast, the ultimate miracle of Christ’s resurrection defies all attempts at explanation. There is no process within our naturalism that can reverse death. Perhaps the fault lies with our definition of nature.

The ultimate and crowning miracle of death happened atop Golgotha. The invincible Creator dies at the hands of His creation, and this cannot be considered anything but miraculous. The last and most terrible miracle of the Old Physics. And it is followed by the first and greatest miracle of the New Physics. Death itself was turned backwards by love, the first and greatest of all governing dynamics. The resurrected Christ demonstrates in the flesh that the newly inaugurated law of love applies to biology, to physics, to time and space and everything. This is the true physics, this is nature restored to its true self. Thus, the miracle that defies the old naturalism fits perfectly into the new naturalism.

So perhaps it is Deus ex Machina after all. The actors have evicted the playwright and turned the play into a mockery. The stage itself is disfigured, incapable of bearing any story worth the telling. So God enters the play, and patches the holes the actors continue to tear in the plot. He moves the characters places that they could never get on their own, and He somehow crafts a good ending for one particularly bad play. This is the greatest miracle of all: the story actually makes it to its ending. How strange… a magnificent Producer and some spectacular special effects actually makes up for some absolutely pathetic actors.