Tyler Durden on Theophanies

I’m teaching on my favorite Genesis passage on Tuesday night.[1] Jacob’s mysterious wrestling match.[2] Genesis 32 is alternately vivid, complicated, dramatic, confusing and thrilling. The characters [3] are complex and layered. But there was one fun and surprising parallel that I thought warranted a post:

Introductory Thoughts on Genesis 32

The pericope culminates in an unhelpfully parsimonious verse…

32:24 “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

Which leads to the big question. Who, precisely, did Jacob wrestle?

The text frankly is coy. It’s abrupt. Honestly I wish verse 24 was like 5 times longer. The author spends 33 words detailing precisely how many of each ungulate Jacob set aside for his brother.

The verse calls him ‘a man’, elsewhere the Scriptures call him ‘an angel’ but neither of those can be the whole story, because at the end of the smack down…when everything is said and done…Jacob has a moment of recognition. It is like those final moments of a movie with a great twist ending, a film like the Sixth Sense of The Usual Suspects where someone we thought we had pegged is actually not even close to who we thought they were. Jacob realizes that his opponent was not just a man or even a cosmic messenger.

At the end of the fight Jacob realizes that he has in a confusing but indisputable way…fought God himself.

32:30 “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

And it gets weirder, because this actually happens several times in Genesis. A corporeal character will show up and the text is ambiguous about whether it is a person, an angel or God himself. But, these appearances are more than a curious spandrel of an ancient text…they compose a theme of the greater story.

You see, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God who in a confusing but indisputable way tends to show up…I mean actually show up…in a corporeal, physical, form, from time to time…usually at the climax of the story. Christian theologians call these appearances ‘theophanies’ which essentially is a fancy word for ‘times that God shows up’. Historically, Christians have interpreted the shadowy Genesis figures as appearances of the second person of the trinity…previews of the pre-incarnate Logos [4] …or, in other words…Jesus shows up.

Which means my favorite passage in Genesis shares elements of narrative structure with my favorite film…Genesis 32 functions like a scene from Fight Club…

Tyler Durden on Theophanies

You see in Fight Club, before we actually meet Brad Pitt’s character, he shows up five times…which incidentally is an important clue to how the story will play out. Now you probably won’t notice it the first time…most people don’t even notice it the third time. In all but one case he just blips on the screen for a single frame…but if you watch this film as many times as my wife and I have, you eventually notice that Tyler Durden makes shadowy and indisputable appearances before he is introduced as a main character. See if you can catch it in this clip: [5]


That is what I make of these theophonies…the places where God ‘shows up’ in an ambiguous but undeniably corporeal form…it is a preview of the coming main character.

It is a hint that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is predisposed to enter time and space as a corporeal human figure at the climax of the story. It foreshadows the incarnation…it foreshadows the climax of the story…it foreshadows the reality that God will ultimately wrestle with evil and with us in Jesus…and he will win.

This post was written while listening to the All Sons and Daughters Pandora Station
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[1] This is essentially a stand alone excerpt lifted from that talk. I’m sorry if that is lazy blog content…but our house has pass around roughly 6 discrete illnesses in the last month. A family is kind of like a patch network for meta populations of nasties. One of the theories of why less robust species persist is that in a discrete patch network with periodic disturbances, poor competitors who are good dispersers and early colonizers can essentially jump from patch to patch. This may or may not explain the species scale evolutionary persistence of poor competitors, but it sure does seem to explain how illness that hits a 6 patch (person) household will stick around for weeks.
[2] Genesis 32
[3] Jacob is, easily, the most disappointing of the patriarchs…and easily my favorite. He is complicated, self willed and clever. God literally has to throw down with him to finally get his attention…but he does. Such a great story.
[4] “He was with God in the beginning” (John 1)
[5] There is another clip that shows them all and then slows them down here.

A Treatise in Defense of My Man Card

Note: I am dipping into ‘the file’ again this week. This is an essay I wrote following a coffee break discussion with my co-workers about a year ago. Since I am likely in the midst of a string of film posts, it seemed appropriate.

I recently lost my ‘man card.’ There are a few factors at play here but the primary complaint is that I prefer ‘chick flicks’ to ‘action movies.’ Now let’s frame the issue precisely. Braveheart and Fight Club are my favorite movies. Pulp Fiction and the Matrix are in my top 10. On the other hand Jerry Maguire and Garden State are also in the top 10. I prefer well made movies with subtle but emotive soundtracks, good acting, philosophical themes and redemptive characters. It is immaterial to me whether these are shelved in the action or romance sections at Blockbuster. The problem is that only a couple of movies fit this description come out each year and I watch more movies that that. So the real issue is that if I am going to watch a mediocre or bad movie I would prefer a story about relationships to one with guns, fast cars and explosions.

Why I Watch Movies

I love story. Humans are fundamentally story tellers. Story has been at the center of human culture for millennia. This is actually one of the tragedies of the emergence of visual media as our culture’s dominant choice of entertainment; we have lost much of the narrative nature of our evolved and/or created race. Particularly as our sensibilities grow more postmodern and we reject meta-narrative, the quality of individual narratives seems even more essential. However, there are some in the visual arts that are actually fine story tellers, and I am interested in being involved in the narratives that shape the cultural and moral sensibilities of my society. So I watch movies.

It is therefore my contention that the prevalence of shooting, fast driving, chasing, exploding, punching and other ‘action’ sequences are usually departures from narrative. They are visual stimuli and seldom actually move the story forward in a meaningful way. If 40-70% of a 100 minute movie is comprised of action sequences that only leaves 30 to 60 minutes of story. I feel ripped off. And I think it is fundamentally a lack of imagination and symptomatic of a poor story or story teller.

As inane as chick flicks often are,[1] they do not have the option of shortening their narrative arc by a third or half through choreographed sword play or motorcycle chases. Each scene has to move the characters forward. Dialog is not optional. Relationships must happen (even if they usually happen badly). I prefer this.

Some Thoughts on Manhood

Admirable manhood is a specialized condition of true personhood.[2] My favorite quote on what it is to be a man was written about 1800 years ago by a man name Ignatius.

“I am not yet perfected in Jesus Christ, indeed I am now being invited into discipleship. At last I am well on my way to being a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen fascinate me so that I may happily make my way to Jesus Christ. Fire, cross, struggle with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs, crunching of the whole body, cruel torments inflicted by the devil – let them come upon me, provide only that I make my way to Jesus Christ. Once arrived there I shall be a man. Allow me to be a follower of my passion, of my God.”

Ignatius believed that passion was the heart of manhood. Being passionate enough about something[3] that life itself (as well as the intact nature of one’s limbs) paled in comparison. This theme emerges in both Braveheart and Fight Club (see inset) in nearly opposite ways and plays significantly into why I particularly appreciate these movies.

Hebrew Scriptures define the marks of manhood as humility, mercy and the love of justice. Since the thin themes of many action films often thrive on the principles of self reliance and revenge they actually depart from my fundamental principals of manhood and there is nothing intrinsically masculine in a preference for them.

Passion and love of justice are immaterial to the enjoyment of watching things blow up. And if the latter rather than the former is the requirement for holding a man card I gladly relinquish it.

Post script: I wrote this ~ a year ago. Then approximately a month ago I found this cartoon on the very good xkcd.com that made a similar observation and an opposite conclusion:

Post post script: For those keeping track at home, that is 2 Firefly/Serenity references in 3 posts. My man card might be in danger but my nerd card is untouchable.
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[1] And they do not get a free pass. Romances need an obstacle to keep the couple apart for 80 minutes. In the vast majority of these movies, this obstacle is miscommunication or some one else (often a husband or wife!!!). These are tired and dysfunctional obstacles and also symptomatic of a deficient story teller. Art should ennoble and inspire to the beautiful and heroic. I would be 10 times more likely to watch a movie about trying to make a marriage thrive (something I, with a significant portion of the American population, am currently trying to do) than another movie about falling in love (which was great fun, but I don’t really plan on doing again).
[2] This is a dense and dangerous idea that I am throwing out carelessly. At the heart of feminism is the question of, to what extent, masculinity and femininity are specialized forms of personhood. I am not qualified to speak to this with any authority and my language here is vague and sloppy. I’d ask my deconstructing friends to overlook my imprecision.
[3] In his case and mine, Jesus.