This is the second entry in the “Redemptive Violence and Film” series between yours truly and Thomas. This is my first entry: “Terminator: The Eschaton.”
“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.” – Rev. 19:11
The summer blockbuster film Terminator Salvation follows the exploits of John Connor as he fights for the human disapora against Skynet, an artificial intelligence that seeks to obliterate humanity in favor of a world run by and for machines. It’s a bad movie, filled with ludicrous plot holes (Earth to machines: haven’t you seen Goldfinger and Austin Powers? Kill John Connor before letting him into your secret lair!), though the post-apocalyptic special effects are undeniably cool. Yet, with all its absurdities, something about Terminator Salvation nudges my Biblical-relevance-o’-meter. Is it Left Behind for our ironic post-industrial sensibilities?
I spent many hours in my youth listening to preachers who thought they had figured out the imagery of Revelation 19. They imagined the armies of the earth literally gathered on the plain of Armageddon (the Megiddo Pass) to confront Christ, the Rider on the White Horse, in physical battle. At the conclusion of this decisive battle, the “beast” and the “false prophet” who lead the rebellion against Christ are “thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur” (v. 20). The remaining combatants are “killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorge[] themselves on their flesh” (v. 20-21). (These scenes are only available in the “Unrated Director’s Cut” version of the Bible. The Disney Family Bible skips right to the “no more tears” part).
Here is “redemptive violence” at its thickest. Only after this cleansing apocalypse — and the ensuing, mysterious millennial period and final outbreak of rebellion in Chapter 20 — do we reach the quiet shores of the New Jerusalem in chapter 21, in which God “will wipe every tear from [his people’s] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (v. 4).
I will need to demur to the literalism of those “Summer Bible Conference” preachers who first introduced me to the starkly horrific elegance of the Bible’s apocalyptic literature. Precisely because the genre is apocalyptic, these images must be understood as images, impressionistic and sometimes nearly incomprehensible pictures of realities far deeper than their “literal” surface. Those preachers were correct, however, to note that the divine reckoning they represent, in which “kings, generals, and mighty men, [and] horses and their riders” are judged along with “all people, free and slave, small and great” (ch. 19, v. 18) by the blazing light and piercing truth of Christ, is a violent act.
So perhaps we can see John Connor as Christ figure, a Rider on a White Horse, expurgating the steel-cold machinations of sin, leading a remnant of humanity to its final salvation. I would like to say that this is so, except that Connor also embodies the trope of the tragically stoic hero, the man who must deny his humanity so that others can live. Maybe Connor is a kind of high Medieval Christ, staring distantly from an altar triptych with big, vacant eyes. Better yet, he might reflect a Nestorian duality, never truly entering into the price of his atoning violence. Either way, we, the movie audience, are invited to gaze at the spectacle of a mechanical ritual sacrifice without experiencing the expurgation of real blood, sweat and loss. “Terminator” ultimately offers us Salvation without kenosis. For the real thing, the Rider must win his White Horse by way of the Cross.