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An action movie and some vacuous theology

An action movie and some vacuous theology

Last updated on: September 24, 2026 at 3:57 pm by Dan Peterson

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An action movie and some vacuous theology 2026-09-24T15:57:50-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The movie poster for Runner (2026). Fair use, I hope. You’ll get a sense from the image above of the subtlety and cultured refinement that characters

With a Second-Generation Unit, I went out last night to see the movie Runner, which stars Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson. (I won’t identify the 2GU, neither by name nor even by gender, so as to try make targeting him or her for derision, criticism, and character assassination at least a little bit harder for The Usual Suspects.)

I’m very interested in what Angel Studios is up to and, truth be told, I was curious about how Runner fits in with overall Angel Studios approach. (I still am.) Besides which, I rather like Jack Reacher. (There. I’ve admitted it.) And the Alan Ritchson character in Runner is, as I had expected, very Reacheresque. It’s quite a violent film, and it’s not especially reminiscent of either The Chosen or King of Kings or Cabrini. Incidentally, I also found the Owen Wilson character just a tad irritating during the first quarter or so of the movie, notwithstanding the fact that I’ve always been rather fond of Owen Wilson. That said, I really rather liked Runner. More than I had expected to do. It’s an exciting movie and, I thought, a quite entertaining way to spend an hour and thirty-eight minutes. If you enjoy action films, you’ll very probably like Runner.

“Madeleine et les saintes femmes au tombeau
(“Mary Magdalene and the Holy Women at the Tomb”)
James Tissot [1836-1902]

Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), had a significant impact upon me when I read it shortly after its publication, and I continue to think highly of it. Dr. Davis is, so far as I’m aware, still with us as Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. I think that I’ll share a couple of passages that I marked in the book long ago:

[L]et me separate two questions about the resurrection of Jesus. The first is: Did it really happen? (Or What really happened?). The second is: What does it or should it mean to us? A surprising number of Christian scholars believe that the second question is more important than the first. Some argue that the first question is a modern question, quite alien to the New Testament texts. Hans Küng says, “All questions about the historicity of the empty tomb and the Easter experiences cease to count beside the question of the significance of the resurrection message.” After discussing what he takes to be the theological significance of the resurrection of Jesus in the synoptic gospels, Norman Perrin says, “These are the meanings of the resurrection so far as the evangelists are concerned, and as such they are more important than the question of ‘What actually happened’ in terms of appearance stories and empty tomb traditions.”

For myself, I would not know how to judge which of our two questions is more important. I am not even sure that such a judgment would mean anything that could be coherently expressed. But I am convinced that the resurrection means little unless it really happened. If the resurrection of Jesus turns out to have been a fraud or a pious myth or even somehow an honest mistake, then there is little reason to think about it or see meaning in it. (viii-ix)

I feel about the issue exactly as he describes. Moreover, I see the Book of Mormon and its historicity in the same terms, as well.

A view of the city of Graz, Austria (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Here’s a specific instance of what Stephen Davis had in mind:

[T]heologian Gordon Kaufman holds that the resurrection of Jesus means something like “God’s act begun in Jesus still continues.” He explicitly points out that “the question whether Jesus was alive again or not does not directly bear on the issue.” (60)

Many years ago, I participated for a week with a group of about twenty or twenty-five Jewish, Muslim, and (very, very liberal) Christian thinkers — including Gordon Kaufman — in a series of discussions in Graz, Austria. (An interesting and even amusing story lies behind my inclusion in the group, but that’s something for another occasion.). One evening had been marked off by the (very, very liberal) Christian organizers of the group for a public event at which we would share the Advanced Thoughts that we were experiencing, and Gordon Kaufman, now deceased but then a member of the faculty at Harvard Divinity School, was to be our representative speaker. Members of the religious community in Graz were invited to attend, but, for some reason, essentially the only members of the general public who actually showed up were about thirty local Muslims. Professor Kaufman proceed to give a lecture — I remember little about it in detail, except that it focused to a surprising degree on the American use of atomic bombs at the end of the war with Japan — that made it fairly clear that, for him, God was some sort of metaphor but apparently not a personal being with a will and who communicated in any explicit way with humankind.

The landscape of southeastern Austria, near Graz (Wikimedia Commons public domain photo by Dennis Jarvis, of Halifax, Nova Scotia)

When the event was opened up for questions after Gordon Kaufman’s remarks, the Muslims in the audience were clearly incensed. They had come, they said, in the hope of hearing insights from a prominent Christian theologian. They did not realize that, instead, they would hear the musings of an apparent atheist. It was intended to be an evening of interfaith dialogue and friendship. Having by then heard a great deal from Professor Kaufman (with whose name I had been familiar but whose writing I had never previously read), I could confidently have warned our benevolent (but very, very liberal Christian) organizer that what Dr. Kaufman had to say was extremely unlikely to be well received by an audience of faithful Muslims. And it most definitely was not.

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