Lars Walker is a wonderful writer of fiction related to Vikings (and Christianity). He recently took up his pen, so to speak, to review the new Thor movie. These lines caught my attention:
To anyone schooled in Norse mythology, the Odin of the movie is almost unrecognizable, except for his long beard, lack of one eye, and possession of Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse (which provides an extremely cool special effects moment). Anthony Hopkins’ Odin is wise and good, full of benevolence and cherishing a horror of war. He’s kind of like a professor of English or some social science at an Ivy League university—wooly-headed enough to throw away the gods’ greatest weapon at a moment of dire military threat.
The Odin of the Vikings was most of all an extremely powerful magician, a wizard—not the nice kind of wizard like Gandalf, though he was one of Tolkien’s inspirations for the character, but the old kind of wizard—treacherous and murderous, with lies on his lips and blood under his fingernails. He delighted in war for two reasons—one in order to feed the wolves and ravens that were his familiars, secondly in order to fill his hall, Valhalla, with heroes who would stand with him at Ragnarok, the last great battle. To this end he raised heroes up and then brutally betrayed them. He was also, according to the eddas, a sexual predator and a known deviate.
The difference between these two Odins, I think, is suggestive of important—and generally unrecognized—elements in western culture. The script writers have confused Odin with the Yahweh of the Jews and Christians. It doesn’t even occur to them that a high god could be anything but kind and peace-loving, since we all have so thoroughly internalized Christian suppositions that even people who reject the Christian religion—and I assume that a large proportion of the people who made this movie do—can’t conceive of a religion founded on darkness and brute force and the domination of the weak by the strong.
What Lars is saying here is something we miss when we think about our culture. So many of our most basic assumptions are formed by Christianity that we confidently declare how good secularism is or will be. We don’t realize that our type of secularism has a source. And Lars knows what it is.
May 18th, 2011 | 2:53 pm | #1
For this very reason, Pope Benedict’s suggestion about a future where Christians exist as a “creative” minority has a kind of nightmarish quality. The Christian strand runs through our society in ways that are almost invisible to us; it’s part of the fabric of hospitals, universities, companionate marriage, even the cultural value of kindness. Pull out that thread, and do those other things fall away, too? I agree with the Pope that we might find out; we can already see what life is like in sociieties where Christians are in fact a minority.
The Walker article is quite good, but I’d add that the conflation of Odin with God (i.e., the God of Judaism and Christianity) predates the film “Thor,” and really originates with the comic strip’s creator, Jack Kirby. It was Kirby, a serious and perceptive student of Norse folktales as well as the Bible, who merged the triad Odin-Thor-Loki with Jehovah-Jesus-Satan, with touches of Cain and Abel and the Prodigal Son thrown into the “brotherly” relationship between Thor and Loki, and the paternal relationship between Odin and his sons. It’s not that any of this was done for a didactic puprose; but these were the sources Kirby clearly drew on to build drama and tell his own stories.
May 18th, 2011 | 6:14 pm | #2
“It doesn’t even occur to them that a high god could be anything but kind and peace-loving, since we all have so thoroughly internalized Christian suppositions that even people who reject the Christian religion—and I assume that a large proportion of the people who made this movie do—can’t conceive of a religion founded on darkness and brute force and the domination of the weak by the strong.”
Well, that is a funny conception of Yahweh Mr Walker have. I mean, this is the same God that “hardened” the heart of the pharoah to send all kind of plagues, the same God that flooded the earth killing almost al the human race and animals, the God that ordered entire massacres on cannanites villages, the God that cliamed that “Vengeance is mine” etc etc….I mean, it looks like some christians are not very sure of the kind of God they worship too…
May 18th, 2011 | 9:21 pm | #3
Sergio,
This unsureness is not what you think it is. Christians, including Hunter Baker who wrote this blog post, are very well aware of the Scriptural passages of which you speak, and we have spent a great deal of time thinking through how they fit together with all the information the Bible gives us about God.
The God of Christianity is kind and peace-loving, but that is not all that there is to be said about him. He is good, he is love, he is light, he is righteous, he is just. He abhors evil (would you want a God who didn’t?), and that is the short-version answer to why we see him rising up against Pharaoh and others.
May 19th, 2011 | 9:31 am | #4
Tom:
You have to excuse me but the extermination of the whole human race (including child and babies), the orders to commit massacres and wars of agresion against cannanites or the idea of hardening the heart of a king to send plagues to all their people (including murder of first borns), doesn´t look to me like the kind of actions of a God that “abhor´s evil” (more likely, it looks to me those actions are made by an evil God). Another possible interpretations is that Yahweh was just another tribal national God, that evolved from that terrible figure into a more paternalistic and kind God with universal aspirations. But then, that requires certain degree of demythologization, from jews and certainly from christians.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:23 am | #5
“Tom:
You have to excuse me but the extermination of the whole human race (including child and babies), the orders to commit massacres and wars of agresion against cannanites or the idea of hardening the heart of a king to send plagues to all their people (including murder of first borns), doesn´t look to me like the kind of actions of a God that “abhor´s evil” (more likely, it looks to me those actions are made by an evil God).”
This is my God whom I love, cherish, adore, worship, and praise. The Flood, the Caanite genocide, and allowing Pharaoh’s heart to harden are the loving consequences of depraved man’s sin.
God’s unfathomable mercy, grace, and love are amazingly shown by the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross who willingly died for our sins. This is undeserved grace by a loving God.
And check it out, I worship a loving God where numerous souls will experience an eternity without the love of God present for them.
May 19th, 2011 | 10:53 am | #6
Sergio,
You are not the first person to have thought of this and to have these objections..
If you are interested in reading an extended treatment of this topic by a Christian philosopher, consider looking at Paul Copan’s book, “Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God”.
It is definitely a serious topic and worth wrestling with.
May 19th, 2011 | 11:06 am | #7
Sergio,
You say “it looks to me.” Surely you know that the way things were 3,000 years ago may not have been quite the way they appear from a distance.
Paul Copan has written an excellent book on this, in response to New Atheists’ accusations that God was immoral. As part of my review of that book I wrote,
In other words, as Americans can easily misinterpret Filipinos or Nigerians or … today, how much more can anyone in today’s world misinterpret matters in the Middle East 30 centuries ago? To rush to judgment on God’s work in that period is to be guilty of incredible chauvinism, both chronological and geographical. I suggest you take a more careful look at it, for I’m sure you wouldn’t want to make that mistake. And I suggest you withhold judgment until you know better whereof you speak.
I suggest you also consider well that what you regard as “actions made by an evil God,” were actions taken to restrain and stop evil. I suggest you also consider well the evidence for God’s goodness in the Bible. His goodness is not merely kindness, by the way. That wouldn’t be goodness, it would be something far less deep and in some ways far less dangerous. God’s goodness is of the sort that will at the right time fight for what is good.
May 19th, 2011 | 11:08 am | #8
I see Steve has just mentioned the same book… a double recommendation for you.
May 19th, 2011 | 11:28 am | #9
Hunter Baker:
What Lars is saying here is something we miss when we think about our culture. So many of our most basic assumptions are formed by Christianity that we confidently declare how good secularism is or will be. We don’t realize that our type of secularism has a source.
Quite right, Mr. Baker. A secularistic mish-mash that ‘borrows’ and ‘steals’ from the Judeo-Christian worldview.
May 19th, 2011 | 12:56 pm | #10
Tom And Steve Billingsey:
Thanks for the recomendation. But if the argument is some “you can´t judge people from a different historical period or/and culture”, then I wonder if it is worth my time. I mean, I don´t suscribe to moral relativism (and I am surprised you do): slavery is as wrong today as it was 4000 years ago (anywhere) and so is murder. At least, of course he offers some ver good argument for moral relativism…
May 19th, 2011 | 1:30 pm | #11
If you don’t want to study the context and culture you’re talking about, that’s your choice, Sergio, but for your own sake I suggest you at least be more cautious about thinking you understand what you are speaking of. “Moral relativism” would be one good example of the kind of mistaken conclusion you can come to with the approach you seem to be taking.
May 19th, 2011 | 8:00 pm | #12
Tom :
I don´t have any problem studying the context and culture in which a text is produced. But there is no way that I will use that as an excuse for an immoral idea or act that appears on such writtings.
Now, you say that mudering people (including children) is ok or acceptable because the context and culture in which those acts took place, what is that if not a way to make values relative (in other words “moral relativism”). I will like to see an explanation, if you are kind enought.
May 19th, 2011 | 8:55 pm | #13
I’m not asking you to use it as an excuse for an immoral idea or act.
I’m glad you’re open to studying the matter. I still recommend you get Copan’s book. I have also written an explanation of my views on the so-called genocides in the OT. There is no good way to shorten it, so I won’t try to do that here. I take a different tack than Copan—a theological/philosophical rather than historical approach, and a minimalist one at that—but in the midst of that series you will find links to two of Copan’s historically-oriented articles.
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