Theology and Marvel Universe

THEOLOGY AND THE
MARVEL UNIVERSE
Editedby GREGORY STEVENSON
Theology and Pop Culture
Series Editor
Matthew Brake
The Theology and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology,
religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies,
sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization
of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square. The
ology and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse
audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in com
mon: love for popular culture.
Titles in the Series
Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

Theology and the
Marvel Universe
Edited by Gregory Stevenson
LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954122

ISBN 978-1-9787-0615-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-9787-0616-3 (electronic)
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Sacred and the Superhero I
Gregory Stevenson
1 What Did It Cost? Sacrifice and Kenosis in The Infinity Saga 7

Kristen Leigh Mitchell
2 “I Was Never the Hero that You Wanted Me to Be”: The Ethics
of Self-Sacrifice and Self-Preservation in Jessica Jones 25
Taylor J. Ott
3 Mythology, Mimesis, and Apocalypse in Jonathan Hickman’s
Avengers 41
Matthew Brake
4 “Because You Exist”: Biblical Literature and Violence in the
X-Men Comic Books 55
Dan W. Clanton, Jr.
5 The Gospel According to Thanos: Violence, Utopia, and the
Case for a Material Theology 71
Tim Posada
6 “Those Are the Ancestors You Hear”: Marvel’s Luke Cage and
Franz Rosenzweig’s Theology of the Creation 85
Levi Morrow
7 Spider-Man and the Theology of Weakness 103
Gregory Stevenson
v
8 Of Venom and Virtue: Venom as Insight into Issues of Identity,
the Human Condition, and Virtue 121
Jeremy E. Scarbrough
9 Matt Murdock’s Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix’s Daredevil 139
Daniel D. Clark
10 Gods upon Gods: Hierarchies of Divinity in the Marvel Universe 157
Austin M. Freeman
11 The Thor Movies and the “Available” Myth: Mythic Reinvention
in Marvel Movies 173
Andrew Tobolowsky
12 Thor: Ragnarok, Postcolonial Theology, and Life Together 187
Kevin Nye
13 Savage Monster or Grieving Mother? Sabra and Marvel’s
Political Theology of Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine 205
Amanda Furiasse
14 Modern Re-Enchantment and Dr. Strange: Pentecostal
Analogies, the Spirit of the Multiverse, and the Play on
Time and Eternity 221
Andrew D. Thrasher
Bibliography 235
Index 255
About the Contributors 267
Acknowledgments
I want to thank series editor Matthew Brake for extending to me the invita
tion to propose a volume for this series on Theology and Pop Culture. I also
want to thank Lexington Books/Fortress Academic for championing the
publication of this book and its essays, and particularly Gayla Freeman for
her editorial assistance. My wife, Saysavad, is always due gratitude for the
patience she displays whenever I find myself embroiled in a project of this
magnitude. 1 have been a fan of Marvel for as long as I can remember, though
my earliest interest stemmed mainly from brief appearances by Spider-Man
on the television show The Electric Company. 1 owe a debt of gratitude to my
father, James Stevenson, for bringing home a large trash bag full of discarded
comic books (given to him by a friend and local bookstore owner) when I was
twelve. That bag of comic books, narrowly saved from a trip to the dump,
fanned my early interest in comic books into a flame. I am thankful also to my
children (Nicholas, Alexandra, and Isabella) whose own interest in the stories
of the Marvel Universe have helped to keep that flame alive.
vii
Introduction
The Sacred and the Superhero
Gregory Stevenson
There is a grand metanarrative composed by multiple authors spread out

over time that represents both unity and diversity throughout its interlocking
stories and that engages themes of justice, redemption, sacrifice, and the en
during conflict between good and evil. Although I am speaking of the Bible,
the same holds true for the Marvel Universe. One clear distinction, however,
between the biblical narrative and that of the Marvel Universe is that the
Bible is a closed canon, its story restricted to the books that comprise it. In
contrast, the Marvel Universe is an open canon given to endless expansion,
revision, and re-imagination.
Having begun in 1939 under the nomenclature of Timely Comics (changed
to Atlas Comics by the 1950s), what is known today as Marvel Comics first
took that name in 1961. It was at this time that Marvel had a novel idea that
would initiate massive ripple effects: “the idea that these characters shared a
world, that the actions of each had repercussions on the others, and that each
comic was merely a thread of one Marvel-wide mega-story” (Howe 2012,
47). Suddenly Marvel characters began appearing in each other’s books, their
stories interlocking and their fictional lives becoming intertwined. Although
easily manageable at the start, as the decades passed, the complexity of this
move expanded exponentially with new stories constantly being written and
new characters created. Thousands of characters propelling innumerable
stories shared the same narrative landscape. These characters would undergo
frequent revisions and alterations, sometimes having their entire origin stories
changed. As different writers took over a book, the same character might be
put to a completely different use. This idea that these thousands of characters
all inhabit the same universe and each play one role in an ever-expanding
play has resulted in “a collective narrative millions of pages long ... that has
no parallel in any other form of modem narrative” (Arnaudo 2010, 4).
1 Gregory Stevenson
The continuing expansion of this universe reached a new level with the
advent of cross-genre storytelling. No longer confined to the pages of comic
books. Marvel characters crossed over into film, television, and video games.
Today the Marvel Universe comprises not just eighty years and counting of
comic continuity, but also the twenty-three films (and counting) of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe (MCU), the films based on Marvel characters that pre
dated the MCU or that were owned by competing film companies, television
iterations (both live action and animated), and numerous video game stories.
Together these stories make up “the most intricate fictional narrative in the
history of the world” (Howe 2012, 6). Due to the frequent revisions of exist
ing stories and the constant introduction of new stories in new forms, there
can be no “official” version of the Marvel narrative, no definitive, canonical
form (Reynolds 1992, 43). This, however, is part of its rhetorical value as
it means that the narrative of the Marvel Universe is nothing if not flexible.
This element of flexibility is one feature the narrative of the Marvel Uni
verse shares in common with the biblical narrative, though they come at it
from different angles. After arguing to his audience that Psalm 95, a text
written many centuries earlier, speaks directly to their lives, the author of
Hebrews declares, “For the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12).
For a text to be “living and active” means that it is capable of constantly
speaking afresh to ever new situations and contexts. The biblical narrative
accomplishes this through processes of inspiration—the idea that the Spirit of
God is active in the process of communication. Though the Marvel Universe
holds no pretensions of inspiration, it boasts of a similar flexibility to speak
to different contexts, in different time periods, and with different functions by
virtue of its ongoing, self-renewing, and overarching narrative. It is, in short,
a “living mythology” (Bahlmann 2016, 169).
Mythological stories illuminate (although, as Matthew Brake demonstrates
in his essay in this book, they also have the potential to conceal): they can help
us to see ourselves and the world around us more clearly. This illuminative
function, combined with the narrative flexibility built into the Marvel Uni
verse, allows these stories to serve as potent vessels for theological reflection.
The essays in this book demonstrate this potential; yet before engaging them,
a few comments are in order. First, the stories of the Marvel Universe commu
nicate their theological message typically in subtle ways, weaving theological
ideas and implications within the very fabric of the tale. Whereas the injec
tion of explicitly religious elements (Christian, Jewish, etc.) is relatively rare
within these stories, implicit religious symbolism and more subtle typological
or Christological/Messianic themes and motifs are more common, presented in
a way that leaves the interpretation open to the reader (Arnaudo 2010, 41-43;
Holdier 2018, 79-80).
Introduction 3
Second, much is often made of the comparison between the superheroes

of today and the gods of ancient mythologies. However, 1 agree with Travis
Smith that it is not the godlike powers of these heroes, what Smith calls
their “faux-divinity,” but their character that makes them heroes (Smith
2018, 7-8). Even so, it is vital not to foreground character at the expense
of narrative. In other words, it is not their character alone, divorced from
narrative, that defines the superhero, but their character expressed through
narrative. Character and story share a symbiotic relationship: story shapes
character while character propels story. Consequently, it is the story, within
which larger-than-life powers are wielded and virtuous ethics displayed, that
engages our theological imagination. Not only that, but sometimes it may be
the irresponsible use of power in the story or the practice of not-so-virtuous
ethics that prompts the theological imagination. The essays in this book are
an exploration of select Marvel stories, but they are the stories not only of
heroes, but also of villains, antiheroes, and anti-villains.
Third, the fundamental issues and questions that have long driven theologi
cal and philosophical reflection are the same issues and questions that drive
superhero stories (Saunders 2011, 15). The conflict between good and evil,
the nature of responsibility, the ethics of violence, and explorations of sacri
fice, service, redemption, and power are all constitutive of both sacred stories
and the stories of the Marvel Universe. This shared obsession makes Marvel
stories fertile ground for the mining of theological insight and opens the door
to an abundance of possibilities for fruitful dialogue.
OVERVIEW OF ESSAYS
The theological framework for the essays in this book is that of the Abraha-
mic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and, to a lesser extent, Islam). This is
mainly due to the historical development of the Marvel Universe, which has
occurred primarily within the Judeo-Christian heritage (with occasional con
nections to Islam, such as the most recent incarnation of Ms. Marvel), as well
as to the constraints of putting together an anthology of essays in which the
content is heavily dependent upon the specific interests of the contributors.
As the Marvel Universe continues to embrace diversity in the years to come,
I expect that trend to be increasingly reflected in the scholarship produced.
The essays in this book reflect a high degree of diversity, however, in terms
of genre, theme, and type of analysis. Restricting the content to a specific
genre (comic books, for instance) or having all of the essays follow a specific
style of analysis (say, character study) would arguably generate greater sim
plicity. However, the essays in this book witness to the abundant possibilities
4 Gregory Stevenson
for theological analysis by representing various approaches and perspectives.

The book as a whole adopts a cross-genre approach, with the subject matter
coming from Marvel comics, Marvel films, and Marvel television. The narra
tive of the Marvel Universe is itself a cross-genre narrative, with comic books
often serving as the inspiration for film and television. However, this is not
a one-way street. Increasingly, the popularity of Marvel films and television
shows has dictated which comic books are published and the storylines that
populate them.
This collection begins with a grouping of essays that explore themes of
sacrifice and violence from different angles. Kristen Leigh Mitchell examines
The Infinity Saga cycle of MCU films as a means of probing the moral limits
of utilitarianism and demonstrating that the theological notion of kenosis is
key for defining true sacrifice. Whereas Mitchell exposes some flaws in tra
ditional theological conceptions of sacrifice, Taylor Ott explores some of the
social implications of sacrificial theology by interpreting the Netflix series
Jessica Jones in the light of feminist and womanist theologies. Ott argues that
the series challenges the traditional patriarchal virtue of self-sacrifice in favor
of the virtues of flourishing and survival. Then Matthew Brake looks at Jona
than Hickman’s 2012-2015 run on The Avengers and New Avengers in light
of Rene Girard’s theory on sacrifice and violence, helping us to better grasp
our own cultural inclinations toward violence and the roads that can lead us
down. Relying on three runs of the X-Men comics, Dan Clanton explores
how the Bible is sometimes distorted into a justification for violence against
one’s enemies. In doing so, he holds up a mirror to religious tensions in our
own society and shows how these comic stories offer insight into dealing with
real-world, religiously based violence. Then, Tim Posada takes us on a deep
dive into Thanos’ violent ideology, using the villain as a lens through which
to view issues related to social change and the interrelation of the material
and the spiritual.
As Marvel’s stories are heavily character driven, they provide a natural
means for addressing issues of identity and moral development. Levi Mor
row, accordingly, analyzes the “theology of the past” found in Netflix’s
Luke Cage. In dialogue with Franz Rosenzweig’s exploration of “creation”
and “revelation,” Morrow surfaces some fundamental ways in which the
past shapes present identity. Gregory Stevenson utilizes Dan Slott’s run on
The Amazing Spider-Man and The Superior Spider-Man, as well as the film
Spider-Man: Homecoming, to argue that it is not Peter Parker’s obsession
with responsibility that defines his character, but rather the particular way he
defines that responsibility, a way that coheres well with the biblical theology
of weakness. Then Jeremy Scarbrough looks at the character of Venom in re
lation to Kierkegaard’s “double danger.” He shows how the symbiotic nature
Introduction 5
of the “Venom skin” and its corresponding internal struggle between villain
and hero illustrates vital aspects of character formation and ethics. In his es
say on Netflix’s Daredevil, Daniel Clark examines Matt Murdock’s troubled
relationship with his Catholic faith and the important role of mentors as moral
and spiritual guides.
Two essays, in particular, draw our attention to some broader complexities
and issues related to the process of creating Marvel stories. Austin Freeman
takes us into the cosmic realm by comparing Neoplatonic hierarchies of di
vinity with the hierarchy of divinity within the Marvel Universe as a way of
getting us to think more deeply about Marvel’s “nested stories” and God’s
role as the Divine Author. Andrew Tobolowsky uses the Thor movies as an
example of interconnected storytelling and myth inheritance, demonstrating
the important role of individual creativity in mythic reinvention.
Marvel’s stories are a reflection of the times in which they are produced
and, as such, they can help us think through societal tensions in ways that
demonstrate both pitfalls and hopeful possibilities. Kevin Nye’s reading of
Thor: Ragnarok in the light of postcolonial theology offers some critical les
sons for American Christian history as well as hope for some positive ways
forward. Amanda Furiasse examines the character of Sabra as a representation
of Marvel’s attempt to address Israeli-Palestinian relations and the potential
for reconciliation, while Andrew Thrasher explores the tensions between sci
ence and the supernatural in the modern worldview and how the Dr. Strange
film highlights the role of the imagination in re-enchanting our world.
As editor of this book, I have greatly enjoyed reading (and re-reading)
each of these essays. In the process, I have gained new and valuable insights
into diverse areas of theological exploration as well as into these fascinating
stories that populate the Marvel Universe, and I have no doubt that readers
will find themselves equally enlightened. The stories of the Marvel Universe
have inspired readers and viewers for decades with their tales of heroism,
hope, and even, sometimes, tragedy. These stories move us, challenge us,
and make us think. It is my hope that the essays in this book will do justice
to that legacy.
Chapter One
What Did It Cost? Sacrifice and

Kenosis in The Infinity Saga
Kristen Leigh Mitchell
Traditionally, comic book films are appreciated for providing cathartic expe
riences of moral clarity through the depiction of good triumphing over evil.
Following a narrative structure that Joseph Campbell called the "hero’s jour
ney,” these stories typically center on a protagonist whose struggles propel
them on a path of personal transformation and fulfillment. The effectiveness
of such films depends largely on the audience’s ability to bond with the main
character, in order to experience a vicarious moral victory through a psycho
logical identification with the hero’s challenges and triumphs.
While these films often reach mythological proportions that border on the
religious, one of the criticisms of the genre is its tendency to offer a relatively
one-dimensional portrayal of evil. Villains, at times, seem to be little more
than demonic archetypes serving as plot foils for the hero. In this sense, the
genre has not strayed much from the standard action film, which Terry Chris
tensen summed up in his study of American cinema: "the bad guys act out of
greed or ambition, and the good guys act to stop the bad guys” (1987, 213).
But as C.S. Lewis once quipped, “you can be good for the mere sake of
goodness; you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness ... no one ever
did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong” (2001, 44). It is when
good ends are sought in excess of what is necessary, or at the expense of
others, that we begin to speak of evil. Hannah Arendt, the Jewish reporter
who was invited to witness the trial of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann,
spoke of the “banality of evil” (2006). John Milbank explains, “the horror of
Auschwitz ... is not the revelation of evil perpetrated for its own sake, but
rather a demonstration that even the most seemingly absolute evil tends to be
carried out by people who imagine, albeit reluctantly, that they are fulfilling
the goods of order, obedience, political stability, and social peace” (2003, 2).
7
8 Kristen Leigh Mitchell
This is why Christian theologians from Augustine to Aquinas and all the
way up to the present have spoken of evil not as an eternal or substantive
aspect of existence, but as a privatio boni—a privation, or perversion, of the
good. Augustine characterized sin as concupiscentia, or “distorted desire.” In
other words, it is a good outcome, sought badly. Even the figure of Satan is
understood in orthodox Christian theology as having “fallen” from goodness.
Within this theological context, then, evil does not really “exist”—at least not
in any necessary, eternal, or inevitable sense. Rather, evil is understood to
emerge as the consequence of distortions in human thinking, resulting from the
psychological limitations and cultural paradigms into which we are bom. These
distorted lenses cause us to develop a godlike sense of subjectivity that corrupts
our moral discernment and blinds us to the effects of our actions on others.
Christians refer to this basic condition of moral confusion as “original sin.”
The ideologies and orientations we absorb from birth impress upon our un
derstanding of the world in ways that disguise themselves as innate. Sin thus
appears to us most commonly under the guise of “common sense,” orderli
ness, and the relative peace of the status quo. As John McDowell explains in
his discussion of original sin:
such an inheritance assumes that its own way of seeing the world and acting in it
is not only legitimate but natural—its contingency and arbitrariness are accord
ingly masked. That is why those inculcated into the various forms of racism,
patriarchalism, consumerism, and imperialism .. . fail to see through their iden
tity-determining beliefs and find all manner of ways to justify them. (2007, 56)
These distortions convert our need for physical security into greed and mis
trust, our desire for love and affection into narcissistic ambition or blind obe
dience, and our right to autonomy into preemptive violence. Many commen
tators have identified this threefold struggle over “possessions, prestige, and
power” as a theme weaving throughout the Scriptures (Rohr 1995, 18). An
oft-overlooked passage in Genesis reveals these three core struggles to be at
the heart of what tempts Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge: she sees that it
is good for food, that it is a delight to the eyes, and that it is desirable to make
one wise (3:6). These three issues lie at the heart of the three main challenges
faced by the Israelites during their forty years in the wilderness, as well as the
three temptations Jesus overcomes during his forty days in the desert, reveal
ing himself to be the human who was “without sin” (Myers 1997).
Evil, then, is not something or someone that should be thought to exist out
there—a “bad guy” who can finally be eradicated by the “good guys.” Sin,
rather, is always lurking at our own doorstep (Gen. 4:7). Indeed, it is often
precisely when we start to project evil onto others that we are most likely to
become its unwitting perpetrators ourselves. Biblical scholar Walter Wink
What Did It Cost? Sacrifice and Kenosis in The Infinity Saga 9
has therefore criticized the comic book genre for its propagation of what
he calls the myth of redemptive violence', the belief that violence against
“evil” will save us. Wink argues convincingly that this myth is in fact the
dominant religion of our day—far more prevalent than Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, or Buddhism. It is so effective precisely because it is largely invisible.
“Violence simply appears to be the nature of things,” Wink writes. “It seems
inevitable” (1998, 42).
While The Infinity Saga certainly participates in the perpetuation of this
myth through an overall adherence to the standard tropes of the genre, the
saga taken as a whole also offers an impressive attempt to deconstruct it from
within, as an increasingly complex set of villains are met by an increasingly
nuanced assortment of heroes who struggle constantly with the question of
what makes them any different from their enemies. As Captain America
remarks in Age of Ultron, “Ultron thinks we’re monsters. That we’re what’s
wrong with the world. This isn’t just about beating him. It’s about whether
he’s right.”
“Every villain is a hero in his own story and believes that what they’re
doing is right,” Joe Russo observed in an interview with the Motion Picture
Association of America (Abrams 2018). This insight led to the decision to
cast one of Marvel’s greatest supervillains in the role of the protagonist for
Avengers: Infinity War. One only needs to consider masterpieces of cinema
like The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, and American Psycho to appreciate
the chilling effect that protagonist villains can have on audiences, who find
themselves sympathizing with the main character even while maintaining the
sense that their actions are wrong.
But the Russo brothers took this approach even further, attempting to place
the protagonist villain within a kind of “hero’s journey,” resulting in one of
the most hauntingly realistic portrayals of evil ever seen in a major comic
book film. Its effect on audiences was an almost total inversion of the kind
of moral clarity one typically expects from the genre, as an unusually large
number of fans came away from the film arguing that the villain was right.
Memes and YouTube videos began circulating in Thanos’ defense, and t-
shirts were printed endorsing “Thanos for president.” The general speculation
as to whether Thanos had a point inspired sites like Vox and Forbes to publish
lengthy articles in consultation with scientists and economists to seriously
consider the question. Their conclusions were divided.
This was not a simple case of misaimed fandom. Interviews with the Rus
sos make it clear that this effect was intentional, as the events in the film were
skewed in order to wholly reflect Thanos’ point of view. An earlier version
of the throne room scene in which Gamora condemns Thanos for kidnapping,
orphaning, and imprisoning her was later replaced with the version we see
in the final film, in which Thanos appears rational and benevolent while the
fiercest woman in the galaxy is reduced to an angry child, incapable of un
derstanding the difficult decisions that her father has to make. The rest of the
Avengers are likewise depicted as weak, incompetent, arrogant, and impotent
as they try to stop Thanos by brute force. Nowhere in the film does anyone
confront the mad Titan with the mathematical or scientific flaws in his ideol
ogy, and even Dr. Strange’s reference to genocide seems to fall flat in light
of Thanos’ seemingly more nuanced perspective.
In this way, Infinity War was crafted precisely to disrupt the audience’s
perceptions of who is good and who is evil, challenging us to dig deeper
in our moral discernment. Unfortunately, many casual moviegoers are ill-
equipped to engage in this level of analysis, especially when confronted
with the same consequentialist logic that is built into the fabric of our social,
economic, and political lives. Our common life is grounded in a “utilitarian”
approach to ethics that determines what is good based on outcomes, favor
ing whatever maximizes happiness and well-being for the majority of people
(however ambiguously defined), regardless of the means by which that out
come is sought.
From this perspective, Thanos’ argument actually seems to make sense.
Even the articles that set out to find flaws in his ideology were mostly lim
ited to a utilitarian point of view: Thanos was only “wrong” if it could be
determined that his idea wouldn’t have worked anyway—either because by
destroying half of all life he would be destroying many things which were
themselves “resources,” or because either way, within a couple hundred
years, the universe would be right back to where it started, and the sacrifice
would need to be repeated all over again.
But perhaps this is what Thanos means in Avengers: Endgame when he
says that he is “inevitable.” At its core, utilitarianism entails a premise that
a certain amount of suffering and inequality are natural and therefore inevi
table. Creative and collaborative alternatives are often overlooked in favor of
mathematical risk assessment and the justification of losses as collateral dam
age on the way to a desired outcome. Several studies have linked utilitarian
responses to psychopathy and a diminished capacity for empathy (Wiech et
al. 2013). At its worst, this cold and calculating mindset leads to processes of
dehumanization that determine the value of a human life based on its useful
ness toward a goal, as Thanos values the lives of everyone around him, even
his most loyal servant Ebony Maw.
For this reason, many are quick to disagree with utilitarian logic in theory,
arguing that the ends should never justify the means. And yet, this perspec
tive remains relatively ubiquitous in practice, as demonstrated by the classic
“trolley dilemma”—a thought experiment in which a person is told that they
control the switch to a trolley that is hurtling uncontrollably down a track

toward five people, a disaster that can only be averted by flipping the switch
and redirecting the car onto another track, where it will only kill one person.
Multiple studies have shown that approximately 90 percent of people will
choose to kill the one person in order to save five—unless that person hap
pens to be someone they love, in which case the percentage drops to about
one-third (Cloud 2011).
Trolley dilemmas abound in comic book films. DC fans will recognize this
as one of the classic dilemmas faced by both Batman and Superman. Sam
Raimi’s Spider-Man places Peter Parker in a similar predicament, having to
choose between his beloved Mary Jane and a group of children trapped in an
actual trolley car. The first Avengers movie also culminates in a classic trol
ley dilemma, as the World Security Council decides to destroy New York in
order to prevent the Chitauri from invading the rest of the planet. Typically,
our heroes always manage to find a “third way”—a creative solution that
reveals the tragic flaw in utilitarian logic: it demands a sacrifice.
Anthropologist Rend Girard has helpfully unveiled the complex psycho
logical mechanisms that underlie our cultural fixation with sacrifice. All hu
man societies, Girard argues, seek to quell the escalation of violence through
deeply internalized and unconscious patterns of transference that allow for
ritualized forms of violence to be carried out against surrogate victims whose
sacrifices are perceived as necessary for the greater good. Responsibility for
such sacrifices is typically either projected onto “the gods,” or onto the vic
tims themselves. But the true purpose of the surrogate is pragmatic: to prevent
the escalation of internal violence by satisfying the community’s desire for
vengeance against an object that can be externalized and eradicated. Sacrifi
cial victims are nearly always selected from among the socially marginalized,
since those who have no one to avenge their deaths can be made to suffer
without any threat of further escalation or retaliation (Girard 1977, 11-15).
Walter Wink’s notion of “the myth of redemptive violence” points to how
these processes get inscribed mythologically onto human cultures, tricking
us into thinking that such sacrifices are not only necessary, but natural and
inevitable. Our entire concept of civilization gets framed as a kind of trolley
dilemma writ large and played out ad nauseam. Peace always comes at a
cost. From this perspective, the “hero” is someone who is willing to sacrifice
themselves voluntarily, so that others will not have to be sacrificed unwill
ingly. The “super-hero," then, is a hero whose special powers or prowess
enable them to avoid dying, so that they can repeat the voluntary sacrifice
over and over again.
And yet these repeated sacrifices only serve to reinforce the underlying no
tion that the need for sacrifice will always continue, with no conceivable end
in sight. This highlights one of the main problems associated with the sacri
ficial mindset (aside from its basis in deception and its predilection for estab
lishing and maintaining patterns of oppression against the marginalized): it
requires endless repetition in order for it to “work.” Sacrifice is preventative,
not curative, which is why the ritual needs to be repeated over and over again
(Girard 1977, 102). It never truly offers a solution to the problem that it seeks
to resolve. As long as people continue to believe that violence can bring
an end to violence, it remains self-propagating, as Girard has shown, since
“everyone wants to strike the last blow, and reprisal can thus follow reprisal
without any true conclusion ever being reached” (1977, 26).
Captain America speaks from the prototypical hero’s perspective in Mar
vel’s The Avengers when he slights Tony for not being one to make the
“sacrifice play,” for not being willing to lay himself down on a wire and let
someone crawl over him. Tony offers the typical superhero’s response: “I
would just cut the wire,” which is precisely what he does at the end of the
film when he redirects the bomb intended for New York toward the Chitauri
spacecraft. But beginning in phase two, we start to see some of the costs as
sociated with both models of heroism, and the blind spots of the sacrificial
method are revealed. Over the course of the entire twenty-two-film saga, we
follow Tony and Cap on a kind of double hero’s journey, as they grapple in
parallel but opposing ways with the limitations of the myth of redemptive
violence, realizing that in the real world of triage, sometimes even our best
efforts to help still result in unintended consequences. Sometimes not every
one gets saved. Sometimes more enemies are created in the process. In light
of these complexities, how do we know when we are on the side of “good”?
What does it mean to do the “right” thing?
"A SOUL FOR A SOUL": SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCE

VERSUS CHRISTIAN KENOSIS
Underneath all those action-packed fighting scenes between good guys and
bad guys, the films of The Infinity Saga are engaging in a deeper investigation
of the moral limits of utilitarian violence and the true nature of heroism in
relation to sacrifice. Avengers: Infinity War brings this exploration to a fever
pitch, as multiple characters struggle with the question of whether and when
a preemptive sacrifice might be necessary for the sake of a greater good. Peter
Quill faces his own trolley dilemma when deciding whether to pull the trigger
on Gamora in order to prevent Thanos from getting the Soul Stone. Wanda
faces the same problem when deciding whether or not to destroy Vision in
order to prevent Thanos from getting the Mind Stone. Both ultimately choose
to go through with the deed, only to have the outcomes of their sacrifices
annulled by Thanos, who nevertheless praises them for their actions. “I like
him,” the deranged father says of his daughter’s boyfriend after he demon
strates his willingness to kill her. In this, Thanos sees a bit of himself in Peter.
These two sacrifices bookend and parallel Thanos’ own sacrifice of that
which he “loves,” in one of the most controversial and heart-wrenching
scenes of the entire saga. Gamora, unwilling to sacrifice the life of her sister
Nebula in order to protect the Soul Stone’s whereabouts, accompanies Tha
nos to Vormir, only to be sacrificed there at the altar of his benevolent delu
sions. With tears streaming down his cheeks, the mad Titan hurls the one and
only creature he has ever allowed himself to care about to her death. The Soul
Stone, apparently indifferent to Thanos’ motivations, accepts his murder of
Gamora as a legitimate sacrificial exchange—“a soul for a soul.”
What kind of “wisdom” is this? “This isn’t love,” Gamora rightfully pro
tests just before being tossed over the edge. And of course, it isn’t love—at
least not in any modern or Christian sense of the word. For regardless of
whatever feelings of attachment or admiration that Thanos came to feel
toward the young woman he abducted from Zen-Whoberis, his actions on
Vormir demonstrate that he ultimately sees her just like he sees everyone
else—as a means to an end. Thus, in the very act of “sacrificing” Gamora in
order to obtain that which he wants, Thanos discredits any claim on “love,”
since love is that which compels us to sacrifice our own needs and desires for
the sake of the other.
But perhaps this is to impose a Christian theological concept onto a film in
which no such framework exists. After all, The Infinity Saga does not seem
to be interested in the nature of love, but only in the nature of sacrifice. How
ever, it is important to note that Thanos does not toss Gamora over the edge
in order to obtain the stone out of a purely self-motivated agenda. Rather, he
does so precisely in order to fulfill what he believes to be a higher calling, one
that is ostensibly for the sake of others. In other words, Thanos counts himself
among the small percentage of people who are willing to kill someone they
love for the sake of a greater good. It is for this reason that Thanos “mourns,”
believing himself to have made the greatest sacrifice of all.
If the prospect of having to kill someone you love—particularly your own
child—in order to remain obedient to a higher calling is a story that sounds at
all familiar, it is because this is exactly how later theological tradition came
to interpret not only the story of Abraham and Isaac, but the entire Christian
conception of God in the doctrine of substitutionary atonement: God had to
sacrifice his only Son in order to save humanity from an even worse fate. In
Endgame, when Thanos threatens to reduce everything down to its last atom
if that’s what it takes to create a grateful universe, Cap castigates him, saying
it would be a universe “born out of blood.” But one might ask how this is any
different from the God of Genesis who destroyed the earth with flood in order
to create it anew. Indeed, is not our entire Christian narrative that of a world
bought by blood? Whether or not the parallels between the Western Christian
conception of God and one of the greatest super villains of all time were in
tentional, these similarities certainly invite us to reconsider the theology that
makes such a comparison possible.
In fact, the MCU’s depiction of the Soul Stone resonates with the creation
myths of many ancient societies—indeed, the imagery of tossing a sacrificial
victim off a cliff points directly to stories of human sacrifice found in ancient
Greek literature and mythology (Girard 1977, 94-98). Wink summarizes the
theme of these ancient myths as “the story of the victory of order over chaos
by means of violence . .. the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the
status quo” (Wink 1998, 48).
The Babylonian story of Enuma Elish is one of the oldest known creation
myths, and a primary example of how ancient cultures inscribed sacrificial
violence into their understanding of the universe. Recited every year in the
spring, it tells the story of how the universe was created out of a bloody con
test between the Divine Feminine—represented by the dragon Tiamat—and
her son Marduk—a prince who sought sovereignty over the world. On the
battlefield, Marduk slays his mother by slicing her body in two, and from
these two halves he creates the heavens and the earth (Dalley 1989). This is
literally a world “born out of blood,” as human beings are created from the
blood of Tiamat’s fallen army commander, for the purpose of being slaves to
the gods. Sacrificial violence in exchange for the gods’ favor thus becomes a
necessity that is written into the very foundations of the universe.
This understanding of the cosmos was radically contrasted by the biblical
creation story found in Genesis 1. Recorded during the Babylonian exile, the
first chapter of Genesis borrows language directly from Enuma Elish in order
to present a counternarrative that turned their captors’ understanding of the
world on its head (Carr 1996). A remarkably earthy text by comparison, the
Hebrew creation story is rooted in phenomenological observations of the uni
verse as an interconnected whole manifesting in dialectical tensions—dark
ness and light, day and night, earth and sky, air and water, plants and animals,
work and rest—all of which was declared to be good.
The affirmation that “it was good” is repeated eight times, as though to
insist that despite the seeming ubiquity of war, death, and human clamoring
for possessions, prestige, and power, the universe is not born out of sacrifice
and bloodshed, but out of water, breath, spirit, and the creative will of a pri
mordial imagination. Human beings were not created to be slaves to the gods,
but are made in the image of their Creator, imbued with the seeds of creative
imagination and the inherent longing for relationship. The instruction to “be
fruitful and multiply" reframes the entire focus of existence from debt and
death to life and abundance.
William Gilders argues that the blood sacrifice rituals of the Hebrew
tradition represented a deconstruction of the sacrificial rites practiced by sur
rounding cultures. Rather than seeking to placate or appease the gods by rais
ing up the smoke of burnt offerings, the Israelites understood themselves to
be sharing a meal with their Creator (Gilders 2004, 12-32). Naturally, these
meals occurred at God’s dwelling place—the Temple at Jerusalem—but this
was not the only site where transformation was expected to occur. Sacrificial
rituals were considered valid only insofar as they were accompanied by a
transformation of the people, made manifest in practices that gave special
consideration to the marginalized. Acts of love and mercy thus took pride of
place over ritual executions (Hosea 6:6).
Whenever the Israelites lost their way in this regard—either by forgetting
their responsibility to the marginalized, or by falling into the idolatrous habit
of making sacrifices to other gods in the hopes of getting their needs and
desires met—prophets rose up to remind the Hebrew people that they had
been chosen by God to follow a different path: “I have had enough of burnt
offerings. ... I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
. . . Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean.
Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed” (Isaiah
1:11, 15-17).
This reframing of ancient sacrificial practices can be found not only in the
prophetic texts, but also in stories that may seem from a modern perspective
to reinforce such practices. The story of Abraham and Isaac is unique in its
historical context not because a god asks a man to sacrifice his child, but be
cause the God of the Israelites tells Abraham not to, and provides him with a
ram instead. Similarly, what is unique about the story of Noah is not that the
Creator destroys the earth with a great flood (most Mesopotamian cultures
had a flood story), but that in the Hebrew variation of this myth, God offers
the unique promise that nothing like this will ever happen again (Bruegge-
mann 2010, 73-88).
The Hebrew deconstruction of sacrifice reached a climax in 70 AD, when
the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. A few decades ear
lier, a homeless rabbi of questionable parentage from a disreputable part of
Galilee was put to death in the most shameful manner possible: crucifixion.
This unspeakably gruesome form of state-sanctioned murder was reserved
especially for those who threatened the order and sovereignty of Rome—an
empire whose rulers called themselves “sons of god” (Peppard 2011, 46—49).
The Gospel tradition thus relays the story of how a poor Nazarene was killed
by the Roman government after being accused of sedition by a belligerent

mob desperate to prove its loyalties to the empire (John 19:6-16).
Shortly after this tragic event, a rogue band of Israelites began traveling
around making the bold claim that this man had been the “Son of God,” and
that his death on a Roman cross constituted a final “sacrifice,”/or the entire
world. Furthermore, these disciples claimed that this man had been raised
from the dead, a miracle signaling the annulment of death’s power. This ef
fectively disempowered all rulers who sought to wield the fear of death in the
service of power at the expense of the marginalized. Jesus’ death exposed the
violent underbelly of “pax Romana,” laying bare the tragic consequences of
the collusion between empire and religion, and his resurrection rendered all
such powers null. Terry Eagleton writes:
It is Jesus’ dedication to justice and fellowship that delivers him to the cross.
His solidarity with those who dwell in the borderlands of orthodox society, men
and women whose existence signifies a kind of non-being, prefigures the non-
being to which he himself is brought. ... So it is that an act of state brutality
also signifies a symbolic undoing of political violence. .. . Authentic power is
at war with the status quo, given that its source lies in solidarity with weakness.
(2019, 26-27)
Jesus’ crucifixion thus radically transforms the concept of “sacrifice” from a

necessary loss pursued for the good of the social order to the more radical and
subversive sense of se//-sacrifice, not pursued as an obligatory form of self
denial, but rather a liberation of the self from itself—the position from which
we are able to truly stand in solidarity with the suffering and the marginal
ized, even unto death. Paul’s word for this new understanding of sacrifice
was kenosis, a Greek word meaning to “empty oneself’ (Phil. 2:7). For Paul
and the early Christians, kenosis was not merely a description of something
God did, but of who God is (Moltmann 1974, 205). The God of Moses, who
called himself “I AM,” was a God whose very nature came to be revealed
in the active emptying of Selfhood into Other. This notion of the Divine
was later inscribed into Christian tradition as the doctrine of perichoresis—a
singular God whose nature was characterized as an interpersonal “dance” of
Threeness in Oneness.
This radical, paradoxical, and unprecedented understanding of God impels
Christians to find their identity precisely in the practice of losing it (Luke
17:33). For the early Christian martyrs, this meant making an empowered
leap into their own literal deaths when the cruelty of state-sanctioned murder
was inescapable. But for most Christians, the process entails a much slower
transformation over time, through everyday relational practices. Karen Arm
strong writes, “the habitual practice of compassion and the Golden Rule ‘all
day and every day’ demands perpetual kenosis, the constant stepping outside
our own preferences, convictions, and prejudices” (2009, 328).
This practice of “self-emptying” cuts through the distorted programming
of our “original sin” by inviting us to de-center our own perspective and
open ourselves to the experiences of others. This process typically involves
a certain amount of conflict and grief, as the satisfying delusions that have
maintained the negative peace of our personal status quos are brought forth
to die at the altar of reciprocal truth. This is precisely what is at stake in the
recognition of privilege, and in relinquishing the various forms of power we
have over others in any given context. Only through an acknowledgment of
our fundamental interdependence can we move into a communal and con
textual kind of truth that is neither blinded by the illusion of objectivity, nor
trapped in the nihilistic relativism of subjectivity. A third way emerges, one
in which we discover a much deeper sense of identity extending beyond the
individual self—a phenomenon that Paul referred to as “the body of Christ”
(1 Cor. 12:12-31).
It is important to distinguish this understanding of kenosis from the more
obligatory and submissive form of self-sacrifice that later came to dominate
Western Christian culture. Jesus taught that the poor, the oppressed, and
those who suffer for justice are “blessed” (Matthew 5:3-12) not because
poverty or oppression are good or necessary, but because marginalized peo
ple already know how to de-center their own experience. The challenge in
this case is to avoid rationalizing past experiences of oppression as necessary
sacrifices for some greater good, which only works to justify and conceal
violence, and ultimately results in its recapitulation, as Girard has shown.
The oppressed either identify with their suffering, and seek out repeated
experiences of subjugation, or project it onto a new surrogate, becoming
oppressors themselves. The way of Jesus offers a chance to halt this cycle,
by inviting us to unmask the truth about our suffering, and finally grieve it.
Only then can we transform our pain into a wisdom that can truly be placed
in the service of empathy and solidarity.
In Captain America: Civil War, Vision notes a rise in the number of con
flicts since Tony donned his first Iron Man suit, suggesting a possible causal
ity. But the real correlation is the opposite of what he assumes: it is not that
strength incites conflict by inviting challenge, but that solidarity with the op
pressed exposes conflicts that would otherwise have remained hidden under
neath the surface of our peaceful, everyday lives. Tony’s journey of kenosis
begins under just such conditions, working as a weapons manufacturer for
the U.S. military. He is totally inured to the costs of war until he becomes his
own collateral damage. Out of this experience of suffering, he forges a new
identity that allows him to stand in solidarity with others—an identity that he
cannot give up, no matter how many times he tries. Even Pepper finally real
izes that for Tony, Iron Man was never just a job. Tony is Iron Man, and this
is what makes his snap meaningful in the end—not because it represents a
dutiful sacrifice carried out for the sake of a greater good, but because it was
the final manifestation of a life lived according to an unshakeable commit
ment to stand with those who suffer, all the way up to the end.
Natasha’s final leap into death on Vormir can be similarly re-framed. The
absence of a fully fleshed-out backstory within The Infinity Saga echoes
the erasure of identity and dehumanization that Natasha experienced in her
assassin’s training, making her narrative arc within the films doubly tragic.
Having built the need for sacrificial death into the universe, the Russo broth
ers framed her self-sacrifice in utilitarian terms, believing that this constituted
a redemptive conclusion for the former assassin (Breznican 2019). Girard’s
work, however, would suggest that her character’s marginalized status within
the films made her the most likely to be sacrificed. This situation, when seen
through the lens of the early Christian martyrs, allows for a different interpre
tation of her sacrifice to emerge: when faced with the cruel but inescapable
demand for sacrificial death—a situation created by those in power, but pre
sented as though it were demanded by the gods—the martyr transforms that
which was a compulsory' task into a free decision. Eagleton writes:
the evolution of sacrifice arrives when the victim themselves becomes conscious
of their condition, and in doing so assumes agency of the event. . .. What was
a process to be endured becomes a project to be executed. Those who are cast
out can now be signs of the criminal nature of the status quo, and by making
this destiny their own, can become the cornerstone of the new dispensation.
(2019, 50-51)
"WHY DOES SOMEONE ALWAYS

HAVE TO DIE IN THIS SCENARIO?"
Christ’s incarnation and resurrection established a radical posture toward

existence that was life-affirming to its core. Just as the Hebrew creation nar
rative shifted the perspective of the Israelites from death to life in the midst
of the Babylonian exile, this new understanding of a God who was able to
work through death itself to make all things new again established a radical
paradigm shift that eradicated death’s sovereignty over human consciousness.
This humbling and empowering faith flourished for centuries in the cities and
deserts surrounding the Mediterranean. Emperors came and went—some of
whom supported the Christians, and some of whom persecuted them. But it
was not until the turn of the millennium that the faith itself was fully infil
trated by the old imperial logic.
Brock and Parker trace this shift to Charlemagne’s establishment of the
Holy Roman Empire, and to Pope Urban Il’s subsequent reversal of a thou
sand years of church tradition by lifting the Christian prohibition on the spill
ing of human blood. Rather than having to repent of their sins prior to being
baptized, soldiers could now kill as a means of being cleansed from sin. The
Roman church also created new Eucharistic language that turned Jesus’ once-
for-all sacrifice into something that would occur on the altar at every mass.
Brock and Parker write, “At the dawn of the Holy Roman Empire, Christian
ity began to lose its grip on the sinfulness of killing. A new age began—one
in which the execution of Jesus would become a sacrifice to be repeated, first
on the Eucharistic altar, and then in the ravages of a full-blown holy war”
(2008, 252). This gave birth to a particularly twisted iteration of the myth of
redemptive violence, one that flipped the script on who was the victim and
who was the villain. Those who invaded other people’s lands could now be
called “martyrs” and “defenders” of the Christian faith.
This shift further supported a new theory of Jesus’ death posited in 1098
by Anselm of Canterbury, who tried to use the new feudal economic system
as a metaphor for God’s grace. Drawing on the experience of crushing debt
that most people at the time faced, Anselm described how God in his mercy
sent his only begotten Son to earth to die on a cross, in order to save humanity
from the crushing weight of our sins—a debt that we owed to God but could
never repay (Anselm 1969). This theology was flawed at the outset, part of a
misguided pastoral effort to respond to an already-flawed question: why did
Jesus have to die? Not only did this position place Jesus’ death at the center
of the faith—leaving his incarnation, resurrection, teachings, and miracles
to fade into the background—but it presupposed that the violence must have
been necessary. God must have demanded the sacrifice. Thus, Christian faith
in the West finally yielded to the ancient sacrificial logic of imperial religion.
Of course, not everyone agreed with Anselm’s theory (it was never adopted
in the East). Even one of Anselm’s own contemporaries objected: “how cruel
and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent per
son as the price for anything . . . still less that God should consider the death
of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world”
(Abelard 1980). Nevertheless, Anselm’s ideas took hold in the Western
imagination, and suffering and sacrifice were glorified to the point of near
obsession. In fact, it was around this time that images of Jesus’ crucifixion
first began showing up in Christian art.
Rather than inviting Christians into a process of reciprocal selfhood in the
context of life-affirming community, the satisfaction theory left Christians
isolated in self-consciousness and guilt. Sin and repentance went from be
ing an interpersonal and communal affair to an individualistic undertaking,
characterized by private introspection and ritual purgation. Genuine kenotic
de-centering gave way to an ego-driven form of self-denial that was deeply
invested in its own self-righteousness. This toxic Western ideology of sacri
fice was able to theologically rationalize nine crusades, medieval torture, the
Inquisition, colonialism, native genocide, and chattel slavery.
At the first European slave market, medieval writer Zurara was inspired by
the suffering of the newly enslaved Africans, who had been captured under
the 1455 bull of Pope Nicholas V granting the King of Portugal the divine
right to reduce any non-Christians found in foreign lands to perpetual slavery,
and to appropriate their goods and lands to himself, for the sake of the Gos
pel. Speaking of the salvation that Zurara believed would be theirs because
of their sacrifice, he prayed that God would “place before the eyes of these
miserable people some awareness of the wonderful things that await them”
(Zurara 2010). It is a sentiment hauntingly similar to Ebony Maw’s words to
the dying Asgardians in the opening scene of Infinity War: “You may think
that this is suffering; no, it is salvation.”
This is why Thanos’ logic of salvation is as chilling as the American pub
lic’s inability to discern its error: we cannot name the sins of Thanos without
exposing our own. His ideology parallels that of the European colonizers,
who valued the concept of resources and profit over human lives. Indeed,
this is a mindset in which one human life can be sacrificially converted into
a “resource” for the benefit of others. Seeking paradise and promising salva
tion, the colonizers brought genocide instead, and ultimately sacrificed nearly
the entire existing population to create a “new world” for themselves—but it
was a false paradise, born out of blood.
The Protestant Reformation sought to correct what it saw as errors in the
Western religious understanding of sacrifice, but it mostly succeeded in
rearranging the liturgical furniture. The weight of Anselm’s debt was inter
nalized, and imperial arrogance gave way to a delusional sense of personal
responsibility that resulted in a highly individualistic culture marked by pat
terns of psychological splitting and facades of moral superiority. Later, the
thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also attempted to correct
the problem by limiting the influence of “religion” altogether, and sequester
ing conversations about truth, beauty, and goodness into the newly secular
ized realms of “science,” “art,” and “politics.” But this only served to further
disguise the influence of the old religion, and the sacrificial mindset found
new forms of expression within a secular milieu.
Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist and Jesuit priest from the early twen
tieth century, interpreted Darwin’s findings on the evolution of species as
wholly compatible with the creation story in Genesis 1. The universe was
“passionately alive, throbbing, and pulsating with energy and growth,” an in
terconnected and relational web of abundant life that was constantly engaged
in the process of being fruitful and multiplying (Delio 2015, 37). Yet most
of Darwin’s contemporaries interpreted his observations within the more
familiar narrative framework of survival, scarcity, and sacrifice, developing
a secular version of the myth of redemptive violence in which the sacrifices
of the weak were necessitated by the “gods” of biology through the process
of natural selection.
A similar mindset was also imbedded in the new economic system of
market-based capitalism: the fittest would survive through self-interest,
competition, and the sacrifices of the working class. Rather than creating
economic conditions that reflected the Christian belief in the inherent dignity
and goodness of every living creature, modern capitalism created new class
structures that framed the sacrifices of the poor as natural and inevitable.
Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge famously embodies this attitude when
he gripes: “If [the poor] would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease
the surplus population” (Dickens 1911, 18).
Concerns about “overpopulation,” while nothing new, have become in
creasingly widespread in the last century, partially on account of their as
sociation with rational, scientific reasoning. Most people assume that it was
Darwin who first suggested that if we don’t limit the population ourselves,
nature will limit it for us through famines, plagues, and other natural disas
ters. But in fact, both Darwin and Scrooge were influenced by an eighteenth
century thinker named Thomas Malthus, who used a “simple calculus” to
show that population grows exponentially while resources grow linearly, and
determined that human catastrophe was inevitable unless certain controls, or
corrections, were put into place.
Malthus sought to warn his fellow Englishmen that if we did not work to
reduce the population, another plague like the one that eliminated half of all
human life in Western Europe was inevitable:
The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce

subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the
human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation
. . . and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this
war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance
in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. (Malthus
1798,44)
However, Malthus was not a scientist; he was an Anglican priest with an eye
on kenosis, which he interpreted within a utilitarian framework. He believed
that scarcity was a situation ordained by God to teach virtuous, self-sacrific

ing behavior.
Malthus was critiqued by many of his contemporaries, and his “calculus”
has now been all but debunked by population data collected over the last
century, showing that the rate of global population growth has been on the de
cline since the 1960s, dropping off to sustainable levels particularly in areas
with more equitable resource distribution (Roser et al. 2019). But the belief in
the necessity of ritual purgation is strong, and Malthus’ ideas continue to hold
sway in American culture, especially among those who unwittingly accept his
influence over evolutionary ethics and class-based economics. We hear Mal
thus on the left whenever environmentalists call for “population control” as a
strategy for fighting climate change. We hear Malthus on the right whenever
conservatives suggest that we could end poverty by getting poor people to
stop having babies.
Aside from the scientific and sociological flaws of this strategy, Malthus’
biggest error was, ironically, theological. By failing to consider humanity’s
innate capacity for innovation and cooperation—qualities that Christians be
lieve are imprinted in us by a God who is both creative and relational—Mal
thus overlooked the possibility that human beings might actually be capable
of finding ways to live in equitable relationship with one another, distributing
resources to one another according to need, as the early Christians did (Acts
4:35). The insistence that greed and inequality are natural and inevitable only
serves to justify and perpetuate endless cycles of violence and inequality, as
Girard has shown.
“As long as it is assumed that war is always an available option,” writes
Stanley Hauerwas, “we will not be forced to imagine any alternative to war.”
And yet, even Girard, a scholar who devoted his life’s work to naming and
subverting these mechanisms, often fell into the habit of describing human
origins in such a way that made them seem inevitable. These myths of ori
gin are so powerful and persuasive because the sacrificial strategy is rooted
in our existential anxiety about survival, which clouds our judgment and
leaves us vulnerable to fear-based ideologies that seek to establish order and
equilibrium at any cost. Thanos is willing to sacrifice “everything,” even the
whole universe, if that’s what it takes to cleanse it of the destructive forces
he believes led to his home planet’s demise. He cannot see that his strategy
only replicates those forces, rather than eradicating them.
Returning to our discussion of original sin, we see that fears about survival
lie at the heart of our struggle over possessions, prestige, and power, as these
are all methods by which we seek to cheat death. Christians interpret the “tree
of Life” as Christ himself, who invites us into abundant life by destroying
our fear of death. But when we eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good
and evil,” we begin dividing the world into “good guys” and “bad guys” and
always see ourselves as justified, casting the blame onto another as Adam
and Eve both do. On that day we “die,” as thanatos becomes our new master.
Grasping for survival distorts our altruistic efforts, and frequently turns
them into patterns of paternalism and abuse. This process is usually uncon
scious, which is why it is insufficient to frame kenosis merely in terms of
“self-sacrifice” or focus on others. Tony, Cap, and Thanos all begin their
journeys with some variation of this, drawing from the well of their own
suffering in order to try and “help” others. In Age of Ultron, Tony’s trauma-
inspired protectiveness leads him to create Ultron—a character who mirrors
Tony and foreshadows Thanos in the belief that he knows what is best for
the world. Cap’s initial hubris runs counter to this, but is likewise rooted in
a basic orientation toward others; his dutiful commitment to self-sacrifice
leads to the discovery that by following orders, he has been working for the
enemy all along.
In Civil War, Tony and Cap find themselves on opposite sides of their
initial positions, with Tony learning to appreciate oversight and a communal
sense of responsibility, while Cap learns to trust his own instincts. In the end,
Tony’s path of kenosis leads him to embrace a larger sense of identity extend
ing beyond his own personal survival, while Cap’s kenotic journey means
“sacrificing” the role of the sacrificial hero altogether, choosing to live out
a normal life and die a normal death. Thanos, meanwhile, exhibits no such
change. When confronted with failure, he simply doubles down on his origi
nal plan, blaming others for their ingratitude rather than recognizing his own
error. Thus, his arc cannot be a true hero’s journey, since it represents a kind
of anti-growth, characterized by ever-deepening isolation and self-deception.
The true “hero,” then, is more than someone willing to fight for their ide
als, and it is more than someone who considers the greater good, or the needs
of others. A hero is someone who is willing to learn, to grieve, to grapple, to
grow, and ultimately to yield, in order to be shaped by the process of relation
ship. The Infinity Saga reminds us that we are all both hero and villain, both
wise and foolish, both selfish and compassionate, both vulnerable and strong,
and that the only thing really stopping any of us from becoming like Thanos
are those kenotic moments that invite us to soften our view on the world, to
lean into our pain, to loosen the clenched fist we have around the certainty
of our own self-righteousness, and to let go of our dogmatic perceptions of
who we think we are supposed to be. This is never an individualistic path of
heroism, but always a communal process of mutual transformation.
Chapter Two
"I Was Never the Hero that

You Wanted Me to Be"
The Ethics of Self-Sacrifice and
Self-Preservation in Jessica Jones
Taylor J. Ott
While the classic superheroes of comics’ golden age—for instance, Super

man, Captain America, Wonder Woman—functioned as predictably salvific
Christ-figures in their stories, the title character of the Netflix series Jessica
Jones fits squarely within the deconstructive tendencies of the so-called
“Third Age,” or postmodern era, of superheroes (Oropeza 2005b, 7-18).
Cynical and abrasive, Jessica not only introduces personality complexities to
the archetype but causes her audience to reframe the questions that superhero
stories are expected to ask. Her journey is characterized by the complexities
of human problems instead of primarily by super-human ones as she deals
with themes of trauma, addiction, and a general sense of emotional turmoil;
so rather than analyzing how a character’s heroism provides a parallel to bib
lical stories like that of Moses or Jesus, Jessica’s troubled navigation of her
world causes us to ask “does having superpowers mean that one is obliged to
act like a hero?”
The Netflix original series Jessica Jones' is perhaps most notable for its
darkness. The series tackles themes of sexual assault and coercion, sexual
and physical violence, addiction, and mental illness head on and does not
look away when those things get difficult to talk about. Season one revolves
around the title character’s attempt to track down and capture the season’s
villain, Kilgrave, who possesses the super-ability to make people obey any
command he gives them. His super-skill makes for interesting storytelling
since it means that action sequences between him and Jessica are rare; in
stead, he sends others to do his bidding and Jessica is required to restrain
her super-strength and propensity for “guided falling” (“AKA The Sand
wich Saved Me,” 1.5) so that she does not seriously harm her attackers,
who are also Kilgrave’s victims. It also means that the threat of danger is
25
26 Taylor J. Ott
ever present in Jessica’s world because she never knows what that danger
will look like—as she puts it, “I'm not safe anywhere. Every corner I turn,
I don’t know what’s on the other side. I don’t know who’s on the other
side. It could be a cabby who’s gonna drive me into the East River, okay?
It could be the FedEx woman. It could be the talk show host who was my
best friend” (“AKA Crush Syndrome,” 1.2). The world really is out to get
her; and part of what makes Kilgrave such a chilling character, especially
for viewers of populations that are statistically vulnerable to violence, is
the familiarity of the danger he creates. A woman attempting to avoid the
threat of violence (sexual or otherwise), harassment, stalking, psychological
abuse, and being told to smile by strangers could as easily be a plot point in
an autobiography as in a superhero series with a mind-controlling villain.2
Kilgrave functions as a metaphor for the power of patriarchy—an ever pres
ent but invisible threat that shows up in friends and foes alike.
When the season opens, Jessica is attempting to move beyond the trauma
inflicted on her by Kilgrave. In her not-so-distant past, we learn that she lived
under his control for a period of time in which he held her hostage, raped her,
and forced her to inflict harm on others (up to and including murder) at his
bidding. Although she already lived with a childhood in which she lost her
parents and consequently was adopted by the emotionally abusive mother
of a child star, Kilgrave marks a significant change in how she exists in the
world.3 While before she may have touted an edgy personality and a slight
disregard for interpersonal skills, now she keeps herself in a consistent state
of drunkenness to stave off her PTSD and her personal life resembles a train
wreck. She has been forced to use her powers for ill, so now in a misguided
attempt to protect others, she isolates herself and uses her powers only when
it makes her job as a private investigator easier. Jessica’s kidnapping marks
her to such an extent that Kilgrave continues to impact her development as a
character even as the storyline moves past him; her second-season encounters
with her previously presumed-dead mother, Alisa, and her adoptive sister,
Trish, cause her to again wrestle with her responsibilities, right to survival,
and sense of self in light of a past marked by Kilgrave’s influence.
With that in mind, this essay analyzes Jessica’s attempts to flourish as a
person in a post-Kilgrave life over the course of the first two seasons of the
Netflix series. The analysis reveals a conflict between the good of others and
the good of oneself—a theme frequently discussed by feminist and woman-
ist theologians and ethicists. By putting Jessica Jones in conversation with
several womanist and feminist thinkers, the series’ parallel deconstructions
of patriarchy and the hero/antihero archetypes offer a window into a feminist
critique of the ethical expectations placed on women by theologies formed
within a patriarchal framework. For their part, theologians can offer back to
"I Was Never the Hero that You Wanted Me to Be ” 27
Jessica Jones an image of personhood that integrates relationality and survival

in a quest for wholeness, even if that person happens to have superpowers.
JESSICA JONES ... THE HERO?
As Archie Bland notes, the ways in which superheroes are written at a given
time are reflective of the culture of their audiences (2016). He argues that the
moral clarity after World War II served as a catalyst for the “golden age” of
heroes like Superman or Captain America, who always knew what was right
and did it. As we approach the end of the second decade of the twenty-first
century, our superheroes are (slowly) becoming more diverse, but also lack
that clarity, reflecting a cultural “scepticism about authority and the trust
worthiness of heroes” and making the heroes themselves “more agonised
and contested than ever” (Bland 2016). It is thus more common for popular
movies and shows to feature characters that are more “antihero” than “hero,”
both within and outside of the superhero genre.
Although the antihero has roots in Greek comedy, the term began to be used
in the eighteenth or nineteenth century (there is some disagreement on this
among literary critics), and its usage reached much greater prominence begin
ning in the 1970s (Kadiroglu 2012, 2-3). In Dostoevsky’s 1864 work Notes
from the Underground, “antihero” is invoked as a kind of paradox in that the
protagonist is not heroic and concludes that his story was really not even worth
telling, yet he remains the protagonist anyway (Kadiroglu 2012,2). One literary
critic defines the antihero as “the chief person in a modem novel or play whose
character is widely discrepant from that which we associate with the traditional
protagonist or hero of a serious literary work. Instead of manifesting largeness,
dignity, power, or heroism, the antihero is petty, ignominious, passive, inef
fectual or dishonest” (Abrams and Harpham 2008). Another notes that while
“fictional heroes ... have displayed noble qualities and virtuous attributes. The
anti-hero ... is given the vocation of failure” (Cuddon 2013), and Rebecca
Stewart writes that the antihero is “a person whose moral compass is never
pointing firmly north” (2016,6). The category is thus somewhat broad and able
to encompass a range of character types, although some, such as The Punisher
of the Marvel Universe or Walter White of Breaking Bad, fit more obviously
than others because of their disregard for others or their lack of objection to
killing people. Jessica Jones, while widely hailed as an antihero, troubles the
category more than these more classic examples.
In the main narrative and in a series of flashbacks, Jessica flirts with the
idea of heroism and what that might mean for her. Though accustomed to
using her superpowers to help those closest to her, she is not quite sure that
28 Taylor J. Ott
she wants to be an all-out hero. In a flashback sequence, we see Jessica save

a girl from being hit by a taxi, after which she conspires with her best friend
and adoptive sister, Trish, to become a superhero. Trish is extraordinarily
supportive of this decision, making a mock-up of a costume and coming up
with a superhero name for Jessica (“Jewel,” in a nod to her alter-ego from
the Marvel comic books). But the next time that Jessica tries her hand at
super-heroism—this time by rescuing a man who is being mugged—she is
spotted and kidnapped by Kilgrave. Even after escaping him, her moments
of heroism are darkened by the murder he made her commit. Alongside a
palpable sense of self-loathing, she is aware of “how the best of intentions
can be shifted and coerced to darkness” (Purcell 2015). So when she finds
out that a young woman she was hired to track down is being held hostage by
Kilgrave, her first instinct is not to go hunt him down like we might expect
from a superhero show; it’s to run (and, ironically, while this is presented as
one of Jessica’s less heroic moments, it is exactly what victims of domestic
abuse are criticized for not doing) (“AKA Ladies Night,” 1.1). Throughout
the season, however, she rescues Kilgrave’s latest victim, Hope; she dedi
cates herself to the task of acquiring evidence of Kilgrave’s power so that
Hope will not be charged with her parents’ murders; she helps her neighbor,
Malcolm, who has also been controlled by Kilgrave, begin to overcome his
heroin addiction; and she ultimately wins the battle with Kilgrave. The season
closes with the image of Jessica sitting behind her desk, her phone ringing
with one call for help after another. She seems at least open to the possibility
of heroism again, and we see that she is continuing in that direction when she
returns for a second season.
Even though the narrative arc of the series progresses toward heroism,
reviews and analyses of the show are unable to speak about Jessica’s hero
ism without placing it in the framework of her flaws. They also lack a con
sensus of what her particular mix of heroism and character faults means for
how she fits into or breaks out of the classic comic categories of hero and
antihero. Erik Amaya notes that Jessica “cannot face the actual process of
healing” from her trauma, but that this makes her an even more compelling
superhero (2018). Others see the character holding a real heroism in tension
with a darker side—as Lynnie Purcell writes, “Jessica is allowed to be both
heroic and a survivor. She is allowed to be a drunk and someone who man
ages to talk her neighbor out of killing himself via drugs. She is allowed to
make mistakes and still win in the end” (2015). Still others name Jessica as a
classic antihero, pointing toward her imperfect methods of dealing with other
people, the situations she finds herself in, and her own psyche (Andrews
2016; Travers 2016), which together form a character that is “complicated
and sometimes downright difficult to like” (Lackey 2015). Audiences are left
“I Was Never the Hero that You Wanted Me to Be ” 29
unsure of whether to call her a hero or not, just like she is unsure of whether
or not she wants to be one.
The second season itself, however, offers two characters as juxtapositions
to Jessica’s brand of heroism that can be taken as useful tools for navigating
these questions. One is her mother, Alisa, whom she had previously thought
dead as the result of a car accident. As the season opens, Jessica becomes
aware of a mysterious entity who has been killing New Yorkers in violent
ways. Suspecting that the killer is powered because of the damage inflicted
on the victims, Jessica, Malcolm (now her associate private investigator),
and Trish take on the case. Upon finding the killer, though, Jessica discovers
that it is in fact her own mother, who like Jessica, underwent an experimental
treatment after the car crash that killed the rest of the family. Like Jessica,
the procedure saved Alisa’s life and gave her super-strength, but unlike her
super-powered daughter, it also left her with episodes of uncontrollable rage.
Triggered by Jessica’s investigation into the doctors responsible for the ex
perimental treatments, Alisa began murdering anyone who could compromise
the secrecy of her life and the doctor who had been keeping her safe for the
past seventeen years.
Strictly speaking, Alisa cannot be held fully culpable for those murders,
given that they were initiated by some kind of fugue state/survival instinct.
Yet, they do still have an effect on Alisa’s being and moral decision mak
ing; as she tells Jessica, “The more terrible things you do—I do—the easier
it gets” (“AKA Ain’t We Got Fun,” 2.8). She ends up as someone who does
not necessarily want to cause carnage, but she is willing to do whatever she
deems necessary to her own survival, up to and including murder. When Jes
sica kidnaps a man who was attempting to kill Alisa, Alisa tries to convince
Jessica that they should kill him to keep him from going to the police (“AKA
Shark in the Bathtub, Monster in the Bed,” 2.9). Cornered by the police
three episodes later, Alisa murders a police officer in order to escape, not
because her rage-state has been triggered, but because she makes a conscious
calculation (“AKA Pray for My Patsy,” 2.12). Despite moments of heroism,
like when she and Jessica work together to save a family from a burning car,
Alisa’s goal is to survive and avoid legal recourse for her actions—and she is
willing to make others pay steep prices for that goal. For her, heroism is only
considered a possibility when it costs absolutely nothing and is paired with
accountability only to herself.
Unlike Alisa, whose actions prioritize her freedom from responsibility over
the lives of others, Trish offers a model that takes the impulse to see heroism
as self-sacrifice to an extreme, thereby throwing the ambiguities of Jessica’s
character into starker relief. Long a supporter of Jessica’s more heroic tenden
cies, Trish also harbors a desire to be a superhero herself. In one flashback,
30 Taylor J. Ott
Jessica tells Trish, “I don’t get you. You have money, looks, a radio show,
creepy if not adoring fans, you’re a household name—what more do you
want?” Trish replies, “To save the world, of course” (“AKA The Sandwich
Saved Me,” 1.5). Partly out of a sense of her own powerlessness, heightened
by growing up alongside a superpowered adoptive sister and an emotionally
abusive mother, Trish seeks out more and more dramatic means to increase
her ability to help others. It begins with learning Krav Maga in season one
and evolves into an addiction to an experimental, performance-enhancing
drug in season two (though this is not the first time that Trish has struggled
with addiction). After the drug runs out, she tracks down the doctor who
performed the procedure on Jessica and Alisa and forces him to perform it
on her in hopes that she will end up with superpowers. She very nearly dies
in the process.
Trish represents an opposite of Alisa. Whereas Alisa’s goal is to survive
even at the cost of others, Trish’s actions imply that a life in which she is
unable to save others is not worth surviving. Since she believes that being
“powered” is the best, or possibly the only, way to be of help, she is willing
to risk her life for the possibility of being superhuman, even though she is not
directly involved in a life-threatening situation for which superpowers would
be especially useful, as Jessica is. Trish’s insecurities and struggles with ad
diction have led her to a self-imposed sense of moral duty to go find ways to
be a hero, and to fault Jessica for not doing the same. When Kilgrave returns,
it is Trish who insists that Jessica is the only one who can stop him. When it
becomes apparent that Alisa will continue to be a danger to others, it is again
Trish who insists Jessica must be the one to stop Alisa since Jessica is the one
with the super-strength (even though at the very end of the season, Trish ends
up killing Alisa herself, thereby proving herself wrong).
While the actions of both Alisa and Trish lead to unstable, unhealthy
understandings of their identities and their relationships with those around
them, Jessica attempts to create an alternate vision of heroism. To be sure,
she is no morally upright superhero like those that filled the “golden age” of
comics. There are good reasons to question her hero status. It would be dif
ficult to imagine Captain America making many of the choices that Jessica
makes—for instance, she begins a sexual relationship with the man whose
wife she was forced to murder while lying about how she is connected to
him (“AKA Ladies Night,” 1.1). In a scheme to steal a drug that will help her
capture Kilgrave, she plays into racism and cultural assumptions about addic
tion by using Malcolm as unwilling bait for a distraction (“AKA It’s Called
Whiskey,” 1.3). She covers up an accidental murder (“AKA Three Lives and
Counting,” 2.11). She also eschews any traditional superhero regalia for jeans
and a leather jacket.
At the same time, though, audiences need to be careful about the reasoning
used to characterize Jessica as “flawed” or an “antihero.” For one, female
characters are often subjected to a double-standard, and Jessica is no excep
tion. One has to wonder if her edgy personality is factored into analyses of
her archetype in ways that the personalities of male characters are not. Jes
sica’s refusal to embody social expectations of feminine behavior (which,
incidentally, is exemplified in the ways that Kilgrave forces her to act) should
not be conflated with anti-heroism. Furthermore, as Aaron Bady argues, what
are often referred to as Jessica’s “character flaws” are actually presented by
the narrative as the aftermath of trauma (2017). Jessica has been broken by
the violence inflicted on her. She struggles with alcoholism because whiskey
negates the effects of trauma; she struggles to maintain healthy relation
ships because her relationship with Kilgrave haunts her. Calling Jessica an
“antihero” thus becomes problematic in another way because it suggests that
the personal consequences of the suffering that has been inflicted on her are
some kind of inherent trait along the lines of the classic hero flaw, rather than
a burden placed on her by brutal, misogynistic violence. It also obscures the
fact that Jessica’s narrative arc is directed toward healing on personal and
interpersonal levels, albeit in jumps and starts (Bady 2017). At the end of
the second season, she reaches an unprecedented level of self-understanding:
“People die, more are born, and in between we just exist. I never wanted
more than that—to just exist. I’ve gone through life untethered, unconnected.
I wasn’t even aware that 1 had chosen that, ft took someone coming back
from the dead to show me that I’d been dead too. The problem is, I never
really figured out how to live” (“AKA Playland,” 2.13). Jessica thus defies
categories of hero and antihero because she is imperfect as a result of an
unjust world. The trajectory of her character development is away from that
trauma and toward a kind of heroism that does not require her to compromise
her survival and well-being, but if audiences identify being heroic with being
friendly, traditionally feminine, and uncomplicated, then she will never be
allowed to land squarely within the category of “hero.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the series’ creator, Melissa Rosenberg,
states that “for audiences—not studios, but audiences—to allow for a woman
to be morally ambiguous and at times ugly as a person in the same way
that Tony Soprano [The Sopranos] and Walter White [Breaking Bad] were,
it wasn’t acceptable. So that’s one of the things that 1 wanted to do with a
female superhero, I wanted to create one who was flawed like Iron Man. 1
wanted to make a female superhero who was like Tony Soprano” (Rosenberg
2015). By any measure, Jessica is flawed. The show is rare in that it gives
us a female protagonist who is complex and imperfect, like real women are.
And yet, as Bady again points out, she is not the kind of sociopath that Tony
32 Taylor J. Ott
Soprano is (2017). Her trauma has made her a person who struggles, but ulti
mately desires, to do the right thing, and that puts her somewhere in between
Alisa and Trish. As a series, Jessica Jones is not primarily about a superhero.
It’s about what it means to be deeply human in a world filled with tragedy
and moral uncertainty.
This realization, along with the dual juxtaposition of Jessica with the
characters of Alisa and Trish, helps to redirect the questions about heroism.
Instead of asking, “Is Jessica a hero?” we might ask, “Is she supposed to
be?” The show complicates the first question not only by troubling the audi
ence’s definition of a hero, but also by pointing toward questions about her
moral duty to the world as a person who happens to have superpowers. Is
Jessica morally obligated to be the one to stop Kilgrave? Her own mother?
Is it her duty to help others at the expense of her own physical, mental, and
emotional flourishing? These are not questions the superhero genre is often
poised to ask or answer, but they are questions feminist and womanist ethi-
cists and theologians have been asking for a long time. One of the hallmarks
of feminist and womanist theological thought is to challenge long-standing
Christian assumptions about the value of sacrifice in paradigms of salvation
and moral growth.
WOMANIST AND FEMINIST

READINGS ON SACRIFICE AND FLOURISHING
Just as Jessica Jones offers a reflection of women’s navigation of a patriar

chal world in a super-powered mirror, Jessica’s quest to balance doing good
with survival reflects the experience of many women. The question of how
much we are called to sacrifice, and a criticism of patriarchal structures that
put the burden of sacrifice on women, have been especially attended to by
womanist and feminist theologies.
Before delving into how these theologies might help shed a new light on
how we see Jessica, a note of caution is in order. Jessica Jones has been criti
cized for its narrative treatment of characters of color, and especially women
of color. The main characters in the series—Jessica, Trish, Alisa—are white,
and while the creators seem to have made an attempt for other characters to
reflect the actual diversity of its setting in New York, this means that charac
ters of color usually end up functioning in service to the stories of the main
(white) characters (Carroll 2018). Jessica herself often treats men of color
around her with either a lack of sensitivity or cruelty, as when she explains
discrimination to her Latino neighbor or implies that she thinks Malcolm
is incompetent as her associate PI. Distressingly often, characters who are
‘‘I Was Never the Hero that You Wanted Me to Be ” 33
women of color are created and then killed off to further the plot. As Shaadi
Devereaux writes,
one has to wonder what metaphor is offered, that she has to kill a Black woman
in order to finally obtain that freedom. She must literally stop Reva Connors’
heart in a single blow in order to experience her moment of awakening, enabling
her to walk away from a cis-heterosexual white male abuser. It brings to mind
how white women liberate themselves from unpaid domestic labor by exploit
ing Black/Latina/Indigenous women, often heal their own sexual trauma by
performing activism that harms WoC, and how the white women’s dollar still
compares to that of WoC. Like Jessica’s liberation is only possible through the
violence against Reva, we see sharp parallels with how liberatory white woman
hood often interplays with the lives of WoC. (2015)
Rosenberg, the series creator, has herself admitted that incorporating women
of color in major roles was not something that occurred to the writers when
work on the series began, but told Vanity Fair that she is committed to fixing
that problem in the third season (Rosenberg 2018).
While drawing parallels between Jessica Jones and womanist theology is
problematic for these reasons, womanist theology is also where questions of
survival have been primarily discussed within the field. As such, it can provide
a picture of survival that is fuller and more life giving than the one that Jessica
has managed to find up to this point. The hope in bringing these together is that
womanist and feminist theologies can illuminate the ways in which Jessica
really is obligated to promote the flourishing of others, if not in the ways ex
pected of a superhero, as well as the ways in which she is permitted—indeed,
obligated—to pursue her own flourishing.
Feminist theologians have been critical of theological systems which name
self-sacrifice as a characteristic particular to women for well over a century
(Andolsen 1981, 75). Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 1895 that “men think
that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women,
and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities
for its illustration as often as possible” (1993, 84). An imbalance in how the
burden of self-sacrifice is placed on men and women is not new, and it also
seems to have a perverse staying power despite regular criticism. In Changing
the Questions, published in 2015, Margaret Farley challenges “the potential
falsification of these concepts [of self-sacrifice and servanthood] when they
are tied to a pattern of submissiveness to men” (10). In a 2014 essay, Ko-
churani Abraham points toward the same patriarchal virtue theory as partially
responsible for violence against women in India, writing that violence is tol
erated “thanks to their gendered socialization in the so-called feminine virtues
of submission, self-sacrifice, and passivity” (99).
34 Taylor J. Ott
Abraham speaks from a context of women in India, but also speaks more
broadly about “cultures and religious traditions marked by patriarchy” (2014,
102), in which much of the world, including my own location in the United
States, could easily be included. She points out that “feminine virtue” is
the result of the Aristotelian idea of virtues as “ideal character traits” being
warped by a patriarchal society in which men are the only ones who answer
the questions “what is ‘ideal,’ and for whom?” Without the misogynistic
add-ons, the framework of virtue is helpful for asking questions about how
to become a good person and which traits should be developed in the self.
But when shaped by patriarchal assumptions about sexual difference, virtue
“becomes a burden on women because, in a culture informed by patriarchy, it
is the woman who is idealized as the epitome of virtue and expected to be the
transmitter of the traditional socio-religious norms.” Women are expected to
submit to the expectations of men, and often suffer because of them, for the
sake of the well-being of the family or in order to live into the standard set
for an “ideal woman” (Abraham 2014, 99). Furthermore, Barbara Andolsen’s
work implies a cycle that becomes implemented by the ideal of a self-sacrific
ing woman: women are enculturated in this ideal, which causes some women
to be “prone to excessive selflessness” already when they are then explicitly
presented with a Christian (mis)understanding of self-sacrifice. The impulse
created is for women to devote themselves to the development of others to
the detriment of their own well-being. Andolsen therefore concludes that the
virtue of self-sacrifice has limited normative power for women, since in a
culture shaped by patriarchal expectation, self-sacrificial virtue is more likely
to degrade women’s personhood than to fulfill it (1981, 74-75).
Theologians also note that an over-emphasis on self-sacrifice has roots
in “a Christology which concentrates upon Jesus’ self-immolation upon the
Cross,” thereby concluding that the meaning of love (especially agape) is
to sacrifice oneself for others. While some feminist scholars have turned to
other parts of theology (namely, models of mutuality based upon Trinitarian
theology) for an alternative ethic (Andolsen 1981, 69), Delores Williams
and Kelly Brown Douglas find models for a life-giving Christian ethic in a
re-examination of Scripture and the person of Jesus. This serves here as an
appropriate analytical lens for a genre that often hedges on Christ-figures.
Williams proceeds from a critical analysis of how surrogacy has histori
cally been foisted upon black women either by coercion (mainly antebellum)
or via social pressure (mainly post-bellum), writing that it is “a condition
in which people and systems more powerful than black people forced black
women to function in roles that ordinarily would have been filled by some
one else” (2013, 54). Due to this historical reality, she argues that traditional
Christian understandings of redemption, achieved by Jesus dying on the
cross for the forgiveness of human sin, presents difficulty for black women
because it causes Jesus to function as “the ultimate surrogate figure” as he
stands in for humankind, which implies that black women’s surrogacy can
also be seen as redemptive in some way. This causes Jesus to be a figure who
re-inscribes their oppression rather than freeing them from it (Williams 2013,
143). However, she goes on to point out that theologians have set a precedent
of drawing upon socio-cultural thought in order to understand salvation—for
instance, Anselm’s satisfaction theory used the social codes of chivalry to
explain how salvation occurred with Christ’s death. Black women’s experi
ence with surrogacy and survival, then, may be looked to as an interpretive
lens for understanding Jesus’ life and death as much as Anselm appropriated
chivalry or Origen looked to popular beliefs about the devil. Through such
a lens, Williams asserts that “salvation does not depend upon any form of
surrogacy made sacred by traditional and orthodox understandings of Jesus’s
life and death. Rather their salvation is assured by Jesus’s life of resistance
and by the survival strategies he used to help people survive the death of their
identity caused by their exchange of inherited cultural meanings for a new
identity shaped by the gospel ethics and world view” (Williams 2013, 145).
The vision of Christ that emerges is one focused on life instead of death.
The ministerial emphasis of the gospels reveal that Jesus’ purpose was “to
show redemption through a perfect ministerial vision of righting relations
between body (individual and community), mind (of humans and of tradi
tion) and spirit” (Williams 2013, 146). Since the cross marks a moment of
death, defilement, and sin, it serves as “a reminder of how humans have tried
throughout history to destroy visions of right relationships,” but Williams
argues that it is not the place where redemption occurs. She instead points to
ward the scene of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness as the place where Jesus
overcomes sin—it is here that Jesus resists the forces of evil which attempt
to destroy right relationship, and he does so through his ministerial vision of
life and not through death (2013, 147—48).
Douglas addresses similar concerns in her development of a “womanist
Black Christ,” in particular by pointing toward a social-political analysis of
wholeness. Like Williams, Douglas proceeds from the experience of black
women and finds that their social-political commitments entail a struggle
for wholeness on individual and communal levels, which is able to address
the necessity of overturning multiple types of oppression—“racism, sexism,
classism, and heterosexism” (Douglas 1994, 99). The Christological implica
tion of this is that Christ is found “in the Black community wherever people
are engaged in a struggle for that community’s ‘wholeness’” and that by
identifying Jesus with those struggling toward their own wholeness and that
of their communities, we come to recognize “that it was not who Jesus was,
36 Taylor J. Ott
particularly as a male, that made him Christ, but what he did” (Douglas 1994,
108). Since Douglas, again like Williams, emphasizes Jesus’ ministry in the
gospels as the starting point by which to understand him, she argues that the
work of Christ is that of a “sustaining, liberating, and prophetic ministry”
(Douglas 1994, 112-13). Following or imitating Christ thus means engaging
in work that is sustaining, liberating, and prophetic in the pursuit of wholeness
in a way that remains accountable to the most marginalized in the community
(Douglas 1994, 109). If white feminist theological ethicists (myself included)
are to learn from the lessons of womanist thought, we must attend to this last
point most closely. Feminist theology owes a great debt to womanism for the
ways in which it has enabled us to see God more clearly, but these insights
grow out of and are primarily written for the black community. White feminist
ethics must continue to prioritize the most marginalized in its discourse, which
means continuing to listen to black women and attending to the ways in which
oppression works along axes of race. White women’s liberation cannot come
at the expense of black women’s lives or of their erasure.
These womanist Christologies illuminate important aspects of discipleship
for anyone who is committed to following Christ.4 The over-emphasis placed
on self-sacrifice by patriarchal theologies, especially with regard to feminine
virtue, creates the impression that there is nothing more to the gospels than
dying for the sake of others. But with a more accurate understanding of Jesus’
ministerial vision as enacted through his life, the imitation of Christ becomes
a life-giving practice focused on what Williams points to as ethical principles,
healing, resisting evil, faith, prayer, and compassion (2013, 148). Further
more, this calls for a revaluing of ethical principles, yielding a prioritization
of survival and “quality of life for the community” (Williams 2013, 155). In
other words, the goal of Christian ethical action is survival and flourishing,
not death.
Rather than falling back on self-sacrifice as the ultimate “feminine virtue,”
Abraham offers the gospel theme of resistance as an alternative “feminist
virtue” (2014, 105). By fostering an ethos of resistance, women are able to
reject the burden of passivity in the face of oppression that is put on them
by a patriarchal system and instead “reclaim their subjectivity and agency”
by challenging structures of power that are based on domination (Abraham
2014, 104). Importantly, while a feminist ethic uncovers ideologies which
degrade women’s personhood and make up the basis of oppressive systems,
those ideologies do not operate at a purely intellectual level. Employing resis
tance means pushing back against real physical, psychological, and spiritual
violence. If women are to really live into the vision of survival and wholeness
that God wills, then resistance against the violence that threatens their well
being, and too often their lives, is essential.
“I Was Never the Hero that You Wanted Me to Be” 37
A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRIST, A DIFFERENT

KIND OF WOMAN, A DIFFERENT KIND OF HERO
Given that these feminist and womanist thinkers reveal the harmful ways that
self-sacrifice has been required of women, it becomes clear that in the case of
Jessica Jones, Trish Walker’s version of heroism—a willingness to sacrifice
one’s own life for the possibility of helping others—is the voice of (especially
white, heteronormative) patriarchy. It may seem ironic that a woman is rep
resentative of patriarchy in a series that so explicitly deals with themes like
sexual violence at the hands of its male villain, but as Shawnee M. Daniels
Sykes points out, patriarchy is often re-inscribed on the bodies of women by
other -women (2014), and in the case of self-sacrifice, it has not infrequently
been women who accept the ideology for themselves (Daly 1985, 100). The
character of Trish functions as the internalized expectations of patriarchy,
pushing Jessica to give all of herself to others and then trying to make her
feel guilty when she pushes back. But if Trish’s idea of a hero is someone
who focuses on saving others to the point of neglecting her own survival, it
is ethically right that Jessica responds to her with. “I was never the hero that
you wanted me to be” (“AKA Ladies Night,” I. I). It also becomes troubling
that Trish’s voice is the one that offers the most definitive judgment in the
series on the question of whether Jessica is acting heroically or not. This is
especially evident when Trish insists that the only moral choice for Jessica is
to kill her own mother, putting her in a position that is clearly psychologically
damaging when there are in fact other options.
Rather than an ethical norm of self-abnegating self-sacrifice, womanist
and feminist theologies offer an alternative norm of survival, wholeness,
flourishing, and resistance that is able to allow women to reclaim subjectivity
while incorporating regard for others, especially those most marginalized. So
while this alternative ethic does not hold Jessica responsible for saving others
in ways that harm her physically or psychologically, it also does not let her
off the hook. If Jessica is obliged to reject Trish’s brand of self-annihilating
heroism, she is also obligated to find an alternative to Alisa’s focus on self
preservation at all costs. Attention to one’s own survival does not imply that
flourishing may ethically be bought at any price. The God who gives life wills
that women flourish, and so it is Jessica’s right to ensure the preservation of
her own well-being. But the pursuit of whole life cannot come at the expense
of others’ wholeness, particularly that of characters of color. Jessica’s ethical
responsibilities, then, include healing her brokenness, accepting help from
others when necessary, resisting those forces which degrade her personhood,
and living so that her own flourishing also leads to the well-being of others
around her, especially those most marginalized in the community.
38 Taylor J. Ott
An analysis of Jessica Jones through a lens that is informed by feminist

and womanist ethics is limited by the ways in which the series works in meta
phor. In many ways, within the world of superhero symbolics, Kilgrave func
tions as an embodiment of patriarchal violence. As such, is Jessica obliged
to resist him? Feminist and womanist ethics would argue that the answer is
yes, since it is a matter of justice for society to work toward the eradication
of patriarchy, and the story as metaphor should reflect that. Furthermore, Jes
sica’s struggle to do the right thing regarding Alisa can be read as a metaphor
for the way anger can control a moral agent instead of enlivening the struggle
for resistance. If this is so, the decision to destroy Alisa can be understood
as resisting the temptation of anger as a controlling principle. But within the
literal terms of the story, it is difficult to argue that anyone, no matter how
powerful, being encouraged to think that they are obligated to kill a family
member, even for the sake of others, is a good. And if Kilgrave is seen liter
ally as a murderous, powerful person who causes Jessica real personal harm,
is it her moral duty to hunt him down? In light of the feminist and womanist
thought discussed in the previous section, risking one’s life and well-being
cannot be considered an ethical norm given that it runs counter to the norm of
survival, wholeness, flourishing, and resistance established by these thinkers.
If she really is the only person capable and it is the only way to preserve the
good of others, then it might at least be seen as a good or admirable choice
to stop Kilgrave (and certainly Jessica comes to see it as good for her to do).
However, the (understandable) inclination to see stopping a villain as a good
action needs to be tempered by a self-awareness of how social pressures cre
ate undue burden on certain kinds of people and resistance to a utilitarian
ethic that views some kinds of sacrifice as acceptable if done by certain kinds
of persons (mostly women and people of color) for the sake of other kinds
of persons (mostly men and white people). In the case of Jessica Jones, the
challenge forwarded by these womanist and feminist thinkers is to imagine a
way to value the life of Jessica as well as the lives of others, to resist thinking
which posits her flourishing as expendable, and to view actions which lead
to the preservation of her own life and well-being and that of those around
her—rather than self-sacrifice—as heroic.
Precisely because a series like Jessica Jones externalizes and literalizes
good and evil, violence and suffering, more emphatically and metaphorically
than our everyday reality, the audience is given insight into the effects of pa
triarchy, the damage wreaked by a sexist implementation of an ethic of self
sacrifice, and the depths of the effort required for survival that is experienced
by women, especially when impacted by violence, and those who struggle
with mental illness. For women, life is dangerous. This is where Jessica Jones
can also offer something to theology, both to feminist and womanist theolo
gies and to the field as a whole. The series presents theology with a detailed
picture of what it means to be an imperfect woman attempting to navigate an
imperfect world by showing that themes of trauma, poor choices, striving to
do what is right, violence, patriarchy, and resistance are deeply intertwined.
Jessica’s flawed decision making is inseparable from trauma, which is insep
arable from patriarchy and violence, but it is also not completely accounted
for by what evil forces have done to her. Her resistance to Trish’s heroic ex
pectations of her is connected to her refusal to become ultimately self-serving
like Alisa, but the alternative to those paths is not always clear. Jessica Jones
demonstrates that is it is possible to recognize the forces of good and evil,
yet still be steeped in ambiguity. What might it look like if theology—and
not just feminist theology—took the realities of sexual violence, the social
sin of patriarchy, and mental illness as seriously as this Netflix series does?
If theology on the whole understood these themes as deeply as Jessica Jones
does, what theologian would dare to engage victims of violence and tell them
to sacrifice themselves more? The way in which specific, gendered forms
of suffering inform Jessica Jones has led to a series in which women are
able to see their experience represented in all of its complexity. By utilizing
methods which proceed from women’s experience in the world, theology can
create spaces in which women can see themselves complexly—and therefore
truly—reflected, too.
So is Jessica a hero? She certainly may become one, but we as an audience
should want her to be in a way that adds to her flourishing as a person rather
than taking away from it. The ethical vision of heroism offered by Jessica
Jones problematizes the expectations of what a hero—and thereby what a
moral person—should be. As a character who is inseparable from the messi
ness of the world, that might mean that we need to re-evaluate how we expect
a hero to look and act along the same lines that womanist Christologies offer
a re-evaluation of what it means to look and act like Christ. The characters
of Trish and Alisa offer two ways in which the values of self-sacrifice and
self-preservation can become distorted, but by searching for an ethic in which
neither value is overlooked for the sake of the other, Jessica Jones offers the
possibility of a heroism that is not judged by a standard of self-sacrifice, but
by an evaluation of how the hero furthers her community’s wholeness and
flourishing without negating her own.
NOTES
1. This essay will be addressing only the Netflix series and not the comics of the
same name. Though the two share some similarities, the development of Jessica’s
40 Taylor J. Ott
character, plot lines, connections to the rest of the Marvel Universe, and thematic
elements vary quite a bit between them.
2. Statistics from 2014 show a 19.3 percent lifetime rape prevalence and a rate
of 43.9 percent for other sexual violence (Status of Women); one in four women are
victims of intimate partner violence; one in six women are stalked (Center for Disease
Control and Prevention).
3. In season one, episode five, Jessica’s voice-over narrates “There’s before Kil-
grave, and there’s after Kilgrave.”
4. There have been myriad debates and doctrinal controversies that have arisen
from Williams’ work which cannot be elaborated on here. But even though contro
versy exists, her work offers important insight for the ramifications of traditional
Christian doctrine on historically oppressed groups that is illuminative for the subject
of this essay, even if theological disagreement persists in the field.
Chapter Three
Mythology, Mimesis, and Apocalypse

in Jonathan Hickman's Avengers
Matthew Brake
Rene Girard is probably best known for his mimetic theory—the idea that
humans are imitative creatures. Not only do humans imitate each other’s be
haviors, but humans learn how to desire by watching other humans. A famous
example would be of two children playing in a nursery. If one child picks up
a previously discarded toy, then the other child will begin to fight with him
for it. Girard would say that the one child has learned that the toy is desir
able by observing the other child’s interest in it. As in this example with the
children, mimetic desire often brings us into conflict with others, eventually
culminating in an act of violence, and the original object of the conflict ceases
to matter. One act of violence, however, demands a reciprocal act of violence.
This begins an unending cycle of violence that only ends when the final
blow has been struck, which each party attempts to do. Girard maintains that
religion, and specifically the institution of sacrifice, developed as a means
of redirecting or channeling that violence into a different avenue, essentially
“tricking” society’s violence by directing it toward a victim or scapegoat that
offers no threat of retaliation and that the participants in the sacrificial ritual
believe is something that the divine commands. Girard maintains “that great
writers” are able to pick up on the true nature of human desire and the source
of conflict, not in any particular object, but in the imitative nature of desire
itself (Girard 1965, 3). They bring to light the truth of the human condition.
From 2012 to 2015, the main Avengers comic book title was helmed by
Jonathan Hickman, who told an epic, universe-ending tale over the course of
three years, covering Avengers #1-44 and New Avengers #1-33 as well as the
event comics Infinity #1-6 and Secret Wars #0-9. Avengers #1 begins on a
hopeful note, when a threat unlike any other threatens earth and most of the
main Avengers squad (consisting of the characters from the first Avengers
film: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk) get
41
42 Matthew Brake
captured on Mars. Captain America is sent back to earth in shame, but we

discover that months before, he and Tony Stark had been building an enlarged
roster, which could be called upon in the face of ever growing threats—an
Avengers Machine to build an “Avengers World." Ultimately, the heroes
succeed and quell the most recent threat; however, in a flashback at the begin
ning of the issue, as Steve wakes from a dream, he has the faint memory of
lying on the floor, surrounded by some of his fellow heroes, a group called
the Illuminati.1
In a concurrent title, New Avengers, released a few months later, Hickman
fills in this gap by revealing that months before the conflict in Avengers #1,
the Illuminati, at the time including Captain America, discovered that the
multiverse was dying via a series of “incursions,” when two different earths
from different universes would crash into each other, destroying both earths
and taking their entire universes with them. While all of Cap’s colleagues are
willing to consider the unthinkable—that they may have to destroy an earth
to protect their own—Cap is unflinching in his resolve to avoid choosing the
lesser of two evils. This puts him at odds with his colleagues, including his
brother-in-arms, Tony Stark, so the group mindwipes Cap while they proceed
to prepare for the inevitable. When Cap remembers what the Illuminati did to
him, he engages in a manhunt to track down its members and bring them to
justice not only for what they did to him, but for the inhuman thing they plan
to do, with his ire particularly directed toward Tony Stark.
It is my contention that Jonathan Hickman’s story is truly a great piece
of writing according to Girardian standards. It elucidates the mimetic nature
of human desire and exposes the structure of myth and tragedy, the former
which serves to conceal the true nature of conflict2 and true function of re
ligion while the latter unveils and exposes them. While Girard is more of a
literary critic and anthropologist than a theologian, his writings nevertheless
have theological import in their understanding of myth, the relationship be
tween human nature, mimesis, and violence (itself capable of being read as a
type of theological anthropology), and his understanding of the apocalypse.
There are a number of places throughout Hickman’s run where one can see
these Girardian themes. In Secret Wars, some of these themes are at play in
Dr. Doom’s own personal myth about being god on Battleword, his mimetic
conflict with Reed Richards, and the apocalypse that brings Battleword to
an end.3 The storyline between Namor and T’Challa throughout the main
Avengers run is a great example of mimetic conflict and vengeance.41 could
even argue that the very idea of the incursions between earths is a cosmic
illustration of mimesis. However, for our purposes, it will serve to focus
specifically on the relationship between Steve Rogers and Iron Man in Hick
man’s Avengers run-proper.
Mythology, Mimesis, and Apocalypse in Jonathan Hickman's Avengers 43
MYTH, TRAGEDY, AND SACRIFICIAL VICTIMS
For religion to work and for mimetic violence to be circumvented, a theo

logical explanation is required, which functions as a shell that hides the true
purpose of sacrifice from its practitioners. As Girard writes, “The celebrants
do not and must not comprehend the true role of the sacrificial act. The
theological basis of the sacrifice has a crucial role in fostering this misunder
standing. It is the god who supposedly demands the victims” (Girard 1977,
7). For religion to work and the cycle of revenge to be curtailed, the true
origins of violence must be hidden. A delusion must be created in order to
initiate “a sanctified, legitimate form of violence” to prevent sacrifice from
becoming simply another form of violence contributing to "the vicious cycle
of revenge” (Girard 1977, 24). The theological “deception” sets apart sacrifi
cial violence as a legitimate institution as opposed to simply another form of
violence that demands reprisal (24). Thus, a community cannot know that its
foundation rests in a mimetic conflict and cycle of revenge that has been put
to a halt by the sacrifice of a scapegoat.
The death of the scapegoat brings a halt to mimetic violence, thus causing
those who follow to see the scapegoat as a divine figure who brings peace
(Girard 2010, 22). Where the scapegoat is initially blamed for the disruption
in the community and cast out, the peace and stability his departure brings
about causes the community to view him as “a supernatural being” and “mys
terious savior” (Girard 1977, 86). The community may even wonder “whether
[the victim] is not somehow responsible for the miraculous consequences of
his own death or exile” (Girard 1977, 85). Girard explains elsewhere:
The myth is thus the lie that hides the founding lynching, which speaks to us
about the gods, but never about the victims that the gods used to be. Rituals then
repeat the initial sacrifice (the first victim leads to substitute victims: children,
men, animals, various offerings), and repetition of rituals gives birth to institu
tions. (Girard 2010, 22)
This founding act of murder, or the initial act of violence that necessitates
sacrifice as a response to an initial act of violence, requires an original vic
tim, the unanimity of all against one, and the institution’s “role is to make us
forget” how it came about (Girard 2010, 23). The institution is sustained by
a myth.
Hickman’s Avengers #1 begins by establishing a new era in the institu
tional structure of the Avengers. The story begins like a creation account:
“There was nothing. Followed by everything. Swirling, burning specks of
creation that circled life-giving suns. And then ... we raced to the light. It
44 Matthew Brake
was the spark that started the fire—a legend that grew in the telling.” Like
Genesis 1, this is a mythological account of the creation of the world—the
Avengers World, a massive expansion of the Avengers roster meant to offset
whatever outsized future threats the Avengers might face. At the center of the
story of the Avengers is Cap himself. As Tony tells Steve, the day Steve was
found changed everything! Hickman narrates later, “He was the first—our
very best” (Avengers # 1). In a way, Captain America himself is mythologized
within the institution of the Avengers, considered in many ways to be the
“first” Avenger, and he acts as the foundation stone of the Avengers World,
giving the call that activates this initiative.
At this point in the story, neither Cap nor the readers know that he is in fact
a scapegoat, the founding victim of this institution. Where Avengers begins
with a theological creation account and the emergence of life, its compan
ion title New Avengers begins with a pronouncement of death from Reed
Richards: “Everything dies. You. Me. Everyone on this planet. Our sun. Our
galaxy. And, eventually, the universe itself. This is simply how things are. It’s
inevitable . . . and 1 accept it” (New Avengers #1). New Avengers is a tragedy
compared to the mythology of the main Avengers title. Mythology covers
over the truth at the origin of all institutions, while tragedy reveals the truth.
Myth hides the account of the rivalry and conflict at the heart of society’s
foundation, while tragedy reveals the conflict between two parties that only
ends through a “braking mechanism” or a scapegoat that ends the conflict be
fore the entire society is destroyed (Girard 1977, 64-67). In this way, the sac
rificial victim is sacrificed and divinized and the violence leading to sacrifice
remains hidden (Girard 2010, 24). As the Illuminati erase Cap’s memories,
which I’m taking to be the original “founding murder,” Tony tells Steve, “I’ll
find some way to make this right” (New Avengers #1). The Avengers World
is Tony’s way of doing that, of making up his betrayal to Steve. The Aveng
ers World is built on the lie of a crisis within the ranks of the Illuminati itself,
a crisis resolved only by the turning of the all against the one, who becomes
a victim in order to maintain peace (Girard 1977, 78). Girard writes:
Foundation is never a solitary action; it is always done with others. This is the
rule of unanimity, and this unanimity is violent. An institution’s role is to make
us forget this. Pascal saw this clearly when he evoked the ruse of the “honest
man” defending the “greatness of the establishment.” Only a group can found
something, an individual never can. (Girard 2010, 23)
Although the language around Captain America and the inspiration he in
spires around the founding and gathering of the Avengers World is mytho
logical in scope, with even Tony waxing elegant about Cap’s inspiration to
the Avengers, the truth is that the Avengers World only exists to hide the
truth. This truth concerns the crisis within the ranks of the Illuminati about
how to handle the impending destruction of the universe and their sacrific
ing Captain America to reestablish peace. While Cap is mythologized in the
Avengers title, the tragic truth of his conflict and rivalry with the Illuminati,
and specifically his “brother” Tony Stark, is revealed in New Avengers. While
the scapegoating of Captain America works for a little while, the truth is
eventually revealed, reestablishing the conflict between Steve and Tony that
accelerates toward the end of the universe.
THE COMPLICATED FRIENDSHIP OF

STEVE ROGERS AND TONY STARK
Steve Rogers and Tony Stark have a long history of conflict with one another,
particularly in more modem depictions of the characters. In 1987-1988, Tony
and Cap were pitted against each other in the famous Armor Wars storyline,
in which Tony discovers that his armor designs have been stolen and goes
after a number of villains and shuts down their armor. Eventually, he moves
beyond the pursuit of villains and tracks down and seeks to destroy the armor
of the government operative Stingray. With Stingray’s armor not being based
on his designs, Tony falls under the ire of the U.S. government. Eventually,
Cap tracks him down and is defeated by Tony, but this confrontation damages
the two men’s relationship.
The year 1992 brought with it another chance for the two men to be put at
odds. In the crossover Operation: Galactic Storm, the alien Kree and Shi’ar
empires go to war. The Shi’ar create a massive bomb capable of destroying
billions of Kree lives, which unfortunately gets detonated. It is revealed that
the Kree’s own leader, the Supreme Intelligence, was responsible for the
events leading up to the detonation, believing its detonation would speed up
the Kree’s evolution. The Avengers find themselves split with half of the
team, led by Iron Man, believing that the Supreme Intelligence should be put
to death for its actions and the other half, led by Captain America, finding this
line of thought unconscionable. While the matter is put to a vote coming out
in favor of not killing the Supreme Intelligence, Iron Man goes against the
majority vote and puts the Supreme Intelligence to death.
Finally, in 2006-2007, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark find themselves on
opposite sides of another conflict, this time involving the Superhero Reg
istration Act, which seeks to have all superheroes register as government
operatives, no longer operating outside of the law. While Tony supports reg
istration, Steve does not, and they find themselves on opposite sides of the
conflict. While the main series focuses on various conflicts between the two
46 Matthew Brake
men and their respective super-teams, Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties

of War shows us a quieter moment between the two men as they make one
last bid for peace. Here, we find the heart of the ongoing conflict between the
two men laid out explicitly, which will also play a part in their arcs in Hick
man’s story. Tony tells Steve, “You’re the perfect man. You live by ideals
and standards that are ... impossible for anyone but you.... You dig in your
heels and fight even harder. Never mind whether you can win. Sometimes I
think you’d rather go out in a blaze of glory than face reality” (Casualties of
War#V). Steve, for his part, says, “What’s right is what’s right. If you believe
it, you stand up for it,” and he tells Tony, “[Y]ou’ve always thought you knew
best by virtue of your genius,” and he adds that Tony manipulates things to
get his way (Casualties of War #1).
This is the crux of the problem between the two men that drives their con
flict—not only their competing notions of the Good but I would say the envy
they feel for each other, which is akin to the stories of enemy brothers, such
as Cain and Abel, that Girard points to in his account of mimetic conflict. It
is telling that Captain America disdainfully refers to Tony as “brother” when
he recognizes that Tony plans on turning against him along with the rest of
the Illuminati (New Avengers #1). For Tony, his envy revolves around Cap’s
moral goodness. In the movie Captain America: Civil War, Tony tells Steve
about how Howard Stark used to brag about Captain America all the time.
“God, I hated you,” he tells Steve. Steve, for his part, particularly in Hick
man’s run, seems to suffer from insecurity about his own intelligence in the
presence of thinkers like Reed Richards and Tony. \n Avengers #31, Steve is
knocked out and has another dream of the Illuminati standing over him again.
This time, they mock his intelligence:
Reed Richards: It’s just, you’re not that smart.

Black Panther: If you wonder why we kept you around for as long as we did .. .
it’s because we felt sorry for you.
Black Bolt: Because you’re so stupid.
Namor: And now I bet all you can think about is how much Stark laughed at
you. You want to know the answer? It was a lot.
This insecurity about his own cleverness haunts Steve for the rest of Hick
man’s run. His resentment over the cleverness of people like Tony grows
and proceeds to escalate the conflict between the two men. The second half
of Hickman’s Avengers arc takes place eight months after Avengers 29-34,
when Cap remembers how his friends betrayed him. Cap tracks the Illuminati
to an abandoned base where he finds a hologram of Hank McCoy, aka the
Beast, and the Hulk playing chess. This hologram has the ability to interact
with Steve, and the two characters proceed to mock him:
Beasf. If you’re going to get serious about catching us ... you’re going to have
to come to grips with your shortcomings and adjust accordingly. After all, we’re
not playing a game with some kind of arbitrary rules, Steve. We’re playing you.
Hulk'. Better up your game . . . son. (Avengers #37)
As Steve is left alone in the room looking at this hologram, he proceeds to

pick up a piece of debris and angrily smash the hologram to bits.
HEROISM, MIMETIC CONFLICT, AND VENGEANCE
Steve’s problem goes beyond the righteous cause of bringing his former col
leagues and friends to justice. As A vengers #34 ends, Captain America stands
surrounded by his friends, and righteously declares his intentions to hunt
down the Illuminati, including Tony Stark. As Hawkeye asks Steve, “What
are you doing?” Steve responds:
I’m calling in everyone that’ll answer, Clint. I’m going to let them in on exactly
what’s been going on . . . and then we’re going to hunt down each and every
member of Reed and Tony’s secret society. . . . They’re planning to destroy
worlds.... Turns out our friends just happen to be the worst enemies we know.
But there is more going on here than the mere righting of a wrong, and in this
way, Hickman subverts the myth of the superhero in a very Girardian way. As
Girard points out, depictions of heroism tend to spiritualize the willingness of
the hero to fight and die for a noble cause. However, Girard reminds us that
even our “heroes” are a part of the violent conflicts in which they partake.
They do not end the conflict but perpetuate it through their own violent ac
tions (Girard 2010, 34, 82). Steve is not the solitary noble hero, but like all
human beings, he is caught up in the mimetic cycle.
One of the false assumptions of human nature that a Girardian reading of
a text reveals is the belief that we are essentially autonomous creatures. We
assume that our desires spontaneously arise from within. As Girard points
out, “It is this illusion which the great novel does not succeed in shattering
although it never ceases to denounce it” (Girard 1965, 16). Just so, Hickman’s
work does this as well. As the months pursuing Tony progress, it becomes
apparent to even Steve’s allies that there is something more than the pursuit
of justice at stake in Steve’s motivations. In New Avengers #26, Tony has
a conversation with Black Widow and Spider-Woman, both of whom have
48 Matthew Brake
abandoned Steve’s crusade. They tell Tony that the pursuit has taken its
toll on Steve, and their language indicates that they understand that there is
something unhealthy driving him. For Girard, desire is “borrowed” from a
“model,” with the one imitating being a “disciple” who imitates the model
or mediator’s desires. However, it is not the object of desire that ultimately
matters to the disciple, but the model himself. Girard writes:
The impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the mediator;
in internal mediation this impulse is checked by the mediator himself since he
desires, or perhaps possesses, the object. Fascinated by this model, the disciple
inevitably sees ... proof of the ill will borne him.... The subject is convinced
that the model considers himself too superior to accept him as a disciple. The
subject is tom between two opposite feelings toward his model—the most
submissive reverence and the most intense malice. This is the passion we call
hatred. (Girard 1965, 10)
Ultimately, human beings desire “being” or completeness, and they think

that their model has it. This initiates a rivalry between model and disciple,
whereby the model also attempts to thwart the disciple’s ability to attain what
the model himself has attained. For Girard, this dynamic forms the “basis of
all human relationships” (Girard 1977, 147). In the case of Steve and Tony,
it is not hard to imagine that Steve forms the model in the relationship. While
Tony envies Steve’s virtue, it is that very virtue that gets in the way of what
Tony wants (in terms of saving the earth, and being in the right by doing so).
However, Steve as the model likewise turns on Tony, and thus the mimetic
rivalry picks up steam.
This situation ultimately leads to a conflict, a conflict which rises in
intensity with each blow that is struck. Blood calls for blood, and each
blow demands retaliation. Each one wants to strike the final blow to end
the conflict (Girard 1977, 27-28, 151). Girard finds “an anthropological
interpretation of original sin” reflected in this human reality: “original sin
is vengeance” (Girard 2010, 21). It is in fact this ability to seek vengeance,
this original sin, that defines humans (Girard 2010, 22). One might call to
mind Genesis 4:10 and Hebrews 12:24 where Abel’s blood cries out for
vengeance. As violence consumes rivals, the distinctions between them
fade away. It doesn’t matter who struck the first blow, and it doesn’t matter
who was originally wrong or right. Mimetic violence gains a momentum
of its own “behind the backs” of those who are engaged in it. The original
reason for the conflict fades away, and they fight for the sake of it, as an
excuse for escalation. Eventually, this violence overflows its border and
affects the bystanders, and possibly, the entire nation or world of the rivals
(Farneti 2015, 11, 30, 33, 36, 46, 85, 87, 89-90). Girard postulates that
this is the reason many cultures fear twins and why the theme of enemy
brothers is a key theme in literature from various parts of the world. They
signal what he calls a “sacrificial crisis,” or the breakdown of a founding
mythology and rituals and the unleashing of vengeful mimetic violence
(Girard 1977, 52, 56-57).
In Steve’s quest for vengeance against Tony, he loses sight of the goal
of bringing Tony to justice. Increasingly, Steve is driven by a mimetic
vengeance that overpowers him and overflows into the rest of the Aveng
ers themselves. In the eight-month time gap, the Avengers have broken
into multiple splinter groups in conflict with each other, with members like
Spider-Woman and Black Widow becoming disillusioned by both Steve
and Tony. In the end, as their world is about to be destroyed in the final
incursion with the Ultimate Universe earth, Steve decides to spend his final
hours doing one thing—fighting with Tony. As Steve confronts Tony in
a modified War Machine armor, he tells him, “I do owe you . . . time to
settle up Tony” (Avengers #44). In this fight, Tony’s own mimetic jealousy
of Steve comes out. In the “mythological” account of their relationship in
Avengers #1, shown here in a flashback, Tony waxes poetic about the day
they found Steve and everything changed. While Tony lauds Steve’s good
ness then, here his desire for the model (Steve) reveals itself: “Do you have
any idea how tired I am of you reminding me how much better than all of
us you are?” (Avengers #44).
Violence consumes both men, and in their violence, the world they cre
ated together literally disintegrates around them. Not only does the Avengers
World fall apart and become consumed by their violence, but the world itself
is destroyed around them from the incursion of another earth (itself a type of
mimesis). As long as the myth of the Avengers World remained intact, the
mimetic violence between these two men was forestalled; however, that myth
was founded on a lie and a forgotten conflict, a conflict that was deferred by
the invention of the myth of the Avengers World by Tony. As in a tragedy
with two opponents where neither is completely right, we the readers are left
with “the fateful confrontation during which two protagonists exchange insults
and accusations with increasing earnestness and rapidity” matching “blow
for blow” (Girard 1977, 44). As Girard points out, we need our institutions
to stave off violence, although these institutions are founded on an original
victim. If, however, these institutions “lose their vitality,” then “the protec
tive facade of the society gives way; social values are rapidly eroded, and the
whole cultural structure seems on the verge of collapse” (Girard 1977, 49). As
both men are consumed by mimetic conflict, a helicarrier falls from the sky,
crushing both men and, with it, the myth of the Avengers World. As they die,
so does their world.
50 Matthew Brake
ESCALATING TOWARD THE APOCALYPSE
New Avengers #1 begins with a startling revelation: the universe is accelerat

ing toward an early extinction. Because the earths of the multiverse are collid
ing with one another in the incursions due to the actions of a group of higher
beings called the Beyonders (as well as the machinations of Dr. Doom), the
Illuminati find themselves faced with an impending apocalypse.
Girard has a surprising amount to say about the apocalypse. For Girard,
founding myths and the institutions they spawn only work as long as the truth
about the original victim remains hidden. When the truth about the violence
that is covered over is revealed, the legitimacy of the social order breaks
down; however, a key element of Girard’s theory is that the Christian nar
rative of Christ’s crucifixion lays bare the truth of all founding murders by
providing a story in which the innocence of the victim is explicated. By doing
so, the “system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the crucifixion narratives
as they reveal Jesus’ innocence, and, little by little, that of all analogous vic
tims” (Girard 2010, xiv). But if our institutions and their founding myths rest
upon the scapegoat, and institutions “are the only means that humanity has
found to postpone the apocalypse” (Girard 2010, 22) and to hold violence in
check, then the revelation about the truth of the scapegoat has the potential to
release unbridled violence upon the world. As Girard writes:
Freed of sacrificial constraints, the human mind invented science, technology

and all the best and worst of culture. Our civilization is the most creative and
powerful ever known, but also the most fragile and threatened because it no
longer has the safety rails of archaic religion. Without sacrifice in the broad
sense, it could destroy itself if it does not take care, which clearly it is not doing.
(Girard 2010, xiv)
Do we not see this even in the Illuminati’s attempt to create bombs that can
destroy alternative earths during an incursion, itself a type of cosmic mime
sis with both earths “desiring” the same space and violently destroying each
other through collision? While the scientific minds of the Illuminati, and Tony
specifically, create a number of incredible inventions during Hickman’s run,
including a Dyson’s Sphere that harvests the sun’s energy and is able to phase
a rogue planet through the earth, he is also capable of the terrible decision
to create destruction on a global scale. In our own world, Girard asserts that
“history has speeded up over the last three centuries,” with the breakdown
of “the wars of gentleman” to absolute war as the underlying principle of all
wars, accompanied by an increase in technology capable of destroying the
planet (Girard 2010, 14-15). Likewise, the acceleration toward the end of the
world in Hickman’s Avengers exacerbates the mimetic conflicts that already
exist, and once the founding myth of the Avengers World is uncovered and the
tragic truth of Captain America’s mind erasure is revealed, things continue to
accelerate toward extremes, as Girard would put it.
This acceleration toward extremes, and ultimately toward annihilation, is
how Girard conceives of the apocalypse, not as a violence unleashed by God
but as the “amassing” of our own mimetic violence “that is looming over
our own heads” (Girard 2010, xvi) now that the truth of all religious sacri
ficial systems and mythologies has been revealed. As Girard writes, “The
apocalypse is a real threat today on a planetary level because the principle of
reciprocity has been unmasked” which can only spell our doom because “hu
manity itself tends towards annihilation” (Girard 2010, 19). In other words,
once the vicious cycle of violence and revenge is uncovered, the tit-for-tat of
reciprocal violence, there is nothing left for that violence to do than to accel
erate toward catastrophe. As the myth of the Avengers World is uncovered,
the mimetic conflict between Steve and Tony spills over into the Avengers
themselves, and indeed, the entire superhero community. Existing mimetic
quarrels between other characters, like Black Panther and Namor, accelerate.
The Avengers find themselves splintered as violence overflows to the entire
world and the universe itself.
Avengers #44 does recount an attempt by Steve and Tony to bury the
hatchet one last time. They meet at a diner in the middle of nowhere, with
Steve begrudgingly listening as Tony explains that they still have a chance to
team up before it’s too late and save the universe. Tony draws Steve’s atten
tion to their waitress, Tamara, whose alias, Captain Universe, was a part of
the Avengers World even though she suffered from a brain injury sustained in
her alter ego. For a moment, Steve begins to believe Tony and asks him, “Are
we really going to find some way out of this?” to which Tony replies, “I know
we can.” At this, Captain Universe powers up, exclaiming to Tony, “Don’t
lie.... You promised us a great machine of salvation, yet built no such thing.
Do you know what lasting thing you built, Anthony Stark? Nothing. A house
built on lies.” Perhaps Steve and Tony could have built something together
if Tony could have established another lie and built another myth, but the
universe itself seemed intent on exposing all such lies. With all of Tony’s lies
exposed, the mimetic conflict between the two men accelerates, and the two
men’s violence paves the way for the apocalypse.
MYTH, CONFLICT, AND FINAL BATTLES
Hickman’s Avengers run ends with apocalyptic levels of violence. In order

to avoid the destruction of the universe, an alliance of alien races including
52 Matthew Brake
the Shi’ar, the Kree, and the Skrulls attack the earth with the intention of de
stroying it to save the galaxy, despite their gratitude to the Avengers for their
previous efforts in saving the universe during Hickman’s Infinity story. While
Iron Man is successful in saving the day, he merely postpones the apocalypse,
as the heroes of the Marvel Universe are faced with another incursion, this
time from the Ultimate Universe Earth, the setting for a line of Marvel comics
whose stories took place in a separate continuity. One could even say that the
conflict between Marvel’s regular continuity and its Ultimate continuity rep
resents a real-life mimetic conflict within Marvel’s own publishing line. This
rivalry between two lines comes to a head at the end of Hickman’s Avengers
run, with a conflict between Marvel’s main 616-continuity (the model) and
the Ultimate line, in which its earth is referred to as Earth-1610 (the disciple),
ending with an apocalyptic violence that partially destroys and absorbs the
Ultimate line into the main 616 universe. But even as Earth-1610 launches its
attack on Earth-616, Steve and Tony fight on the ground, each man seeing the
other as the problem, and each one secretly harboring jealousy of the other’s
traits. As both men are killed in the streets of New York City, Hickman nar
rates his last issue of the Avengers, “It started with two men. One was life ...
and one was death. And one ... always wins. Everything dies.” We can almost
hear an echo of Girard’s own words here: “[V]iolence is a terrible adversary,
especially since it always wins” (Girard 2010, xvii).
Hickman’s Avengers story does start with two men, although Avengers
#1 celebrates Captain America as the one founding myth of the Avengers.
As Girard would point out, the myth of autonomy is a lie. New Avengers #1
reveals the tragic truth that the myth covers up—the turning of the Illuminati
against Cap and the latter’s mind erasure. There is always a community of
at least two and a scapegoat at the foundation of every myth. This scapegoat
and the myth that grows out of it serves to hold violence at bay, but should
the myth be exposed as a lie, then the institution founded on it will fold as
well. Unless another myth can replace the old one, mimetic violence is un
leashed upon the world, and in our own age of accelerating mimetic violence
and lack of scapegoats, we, like the Marvel Universe, are accelerating toward
violence. As Girard notes, “the fighting will have cosmic consequences”
(Girard 2010, 115).
NOTES
1. Reed Richards, Black Panther, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, Beast
of the X-Men, Iron Man, Black Bolt of the Inhumans
2. This idea of myth as a lie covering over the truth of human nature is opposed
to many views of myth, which see it as revealing universal truth about humanity, the
universe, etc. The latter is espoused by popular Christian writers like C.S. Lewis in his
writings about Christ as the “true myth,” versus Girard, who sees the Christian mes
sage as inherently de-mythological. For more on Lewis’s view, see Lewis 1970, 41.
3. I hope to tentatively explore Hickman’s Secret Wars on its own merits in an
essay for another volume in the series.
4. This I explore in a future volume from McFarland on Black Panther, edited by
Joe Darowski.
Chapter Four
"Because You Exist"

Biblical Literature and Violence
in the X-Men Comic Books
Dan W. Clanton, Jr.
At the time of this writing in 2019, Marvel Comics’ X-Men have been around
for fifty-six years and have spawned three animated and two live-action TV
series as well as nine feature films, with three more films upcoming in the
next few years. At the same time, the worst attack on Jews in American
history took place in late October of 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in
Pittsburgh, and the terrorist was evidently motivated by religiously based
anti-Semitic assumptions. Nor is that the only incident in recent memory that
one could classify as religious violence. Given that the X-Men have often
functioned as a sort of parable for racism, the X-Men universe has regularly
included plots dealing with scripturally justified violence directed at mu
tants—humans with powers and abilities beyond those of ordinary humans.
In this article, I’ll examine three such plots involving Rev. William Stryker
and his religious crusade to wipe out mutants: the 1982 graphic novel God
Loves, Man Kills, its sequel in issues #25-30 of X-Treme X-Men (2003); and
the “Childhood’s End” storyline in New X-Men #20-27 (2006). I’ll also en
gage the theoretical work of scholars of religion and violence, a field that has
exploded since 9/11. In this field, scholars have developed “warning signs”
and taxonomies of religious violence based on motivations, behaviors, and
justifications, so that now we’re able to recognize and classify perpetrators
and acts of religious violence with more precision.
Incorporating this material will assist us in determining how Stryker em
ploys the Bible to justify/rationalize his violent actions against the mutant
community. The significance of such an engagement lies in the fact that
Stryker’s view(s) of mutants and the violent actions he takes based on them
are a melange of the different kinds of religiously motivated violence scholars
have identified, including violence based on racial/bioiogical beliefs, apoca
55
56 Dan W. Clanton, Jr.
lyptic and utopian ideologies, and, most obviously, scriptural definitions and
discourses of identity. As such, engaging Stryker’s appearances in X-Men
comics provides us a useful sampling of evidence and a fictional test case of
religiously motivated violence that we may use to further our understanding
of the topic, as well as an opportunity to answer a key question in scholarship
on this subject, viz., is there a way to combat such violence?
In the early 1980s, religiously justified violence wasn’t a hot scholarly
topic, and comic books certainly didn’t deal with weighty issues like this in
their brightly colored pages. Surprisingly, though, in 1982 Marvel Comics
published not a comic, but something they publicized as a “graphic novel.”
Titled God Loves, Man Kills (GLMK), this contribution to the X-Men comic
book series by Chris Claremont (the series’ main writer from 1975 to 1991)
and artist Brent Anderson showed that comics were capable of dealing with
mature and controversial religious subject matter. GLMK tells the story of an
army soldier turned Christian radio and televangelist preacher named William
Stryker and his religiously motivated attempts to eradicate mutants. We see
early on the lengths to which Stryker and his militant followers, or Purifiers
as they’re known, are willing to go to achieve their goal. In fact, the graphic
novel begins with two young children being chased down, murdered, and
then displayed on a playground swing, with a sign around one of their necks
declaring “Mutie.” Stryker’s plan—which was adapted somewhat in the 2003
film X2: X-Men United—is to kidnap Charles Xavier, a telepathic mutant and
the leader of the mutant group the X-Men who argues that mutants and hu
mans should coexist, and “brainwash” him using explicitly biblical imagery.
By this Xavier comes to believe that his X-Men students, and by extension,
all mutants, are evil, demonic creatures and as such deserve to be destroyed.
Stryker has developed a system that will amplify Xavier’s powers, and he
orders Xavier, who’s now convinced of the evil nature of mutants, to connect
with their minds and destroy them. Of course, the X-Men stop Stryker with
the help of Magneto, a powerful mutant who controls magnetism and is the
most important villain/foil in the X-Men universe. Magneto—who prefers to
use force instead of dialogue and advocates mutant independence from and
even subjugation of humans—tries to get Xavier to join him, but Xavier’s
students convince him to stay true to his dream of human-mutant peace, de
spite the ongoing success of Stryker’s religiously informed vision of mutant
genocide.
We begin our examination with Stryker’s plan, so we can see how it’s
constructed and what it might reveal about religion and violence. Our first
image of him in GLMK is him sitting alone in a large office reading Deuter
onomy 17:2-5 out loud. The text is a paradigmatic one for Stryker and the
story as a whole, as it exemplifies the kind of identity formation that Regina
“Because You Exist" 57
M. Schwartz examines in her work.' She probes the violence inherent in

the ways in which biblical literature serves to define persons and groups in
contradistinction to the Israelites, as a negative to the covenantal positive;
in her words, “To be Israel is to be not-Egypt; identity is purchased at the
expense of the Other” (1997, 19). As she notes, “Violence stems from any
conception of identity forged negatively, against the Other, an invention of
identity that parasitically depends upon the invention of some Other to be
reviled” (1997, 88). This formation of group identity via alterity (based on
notions of “difference”) allows a given group a way to say “We are who we
are because we’re not them.” This creation of what Mark Juergensmeyer
calls the “faceless collective enemy” (2003, 178) will be central in Stryker’s
thinking, as can be seen early in the story in a televised debate with Xavier,
who argues that mutants and humans should coexist. Stryker, though, claims
that mutants shouldn’t even be considered human, but should be classified
rather as “Homo Superior,” since they are “a different species altogether.”2
After the debate, Stryker’s men attack and kidnap Xavier and two of his
mutant students. They subject Xavier to a form of cognitive torture, implant
ing images of his students crucifying him into his brain with the goal of using
him and his powers to kill mutants. At one point during the torture, one of
Xavier’s students asks Stryker why he’s doing this to them, and he responds
coolly, “Because you exist. And that existence is an affront to the Lord.” The
panel containing this dialogue is outlined against a two-page series of sepia
panels depicting the events that contributed and led up to Stryker’s current
course of action. We learn that his pregnant wife Marcy delivered their baby
after a car accident in the middle of the desert, and that the child was a mu
tant. Stryker recounts how he then killed the child and his wife and blew up
the car to hide his crimes. His career in the army faltered, and he nearly hit
rock bottom until he read an article about mutants by Xavier. Coupling the
genetic information in the article with a newfound Christian identity, Stryker
tells how he came to realize that he hadn’t sinned when he killed his family.
His explanation forms the lynchpin of his motivation for violence:
The evil—the sin—was Marcy’s, not mine. She was the vessel used by God
to reveal unto me Satan’s most insidious plot against humanity—to corrupt us
through our children, while they were still in the womb. The Lord created man
and woman in His image, blessed with His grace. Mutants broke that sacred
mold. They were creations, not of God, but of the Devil. And 1 had been chosen
to lead the fight against them.
To complement this biological and Scriptural rationale, Stryker continues and

remarks that the more he learned about Xavier, “the more convinced 1 became
that he is the Antichrist—the supposed friend of mankind, who will lead us

instead to our destruction.”
In this one exchange, Stryker reveals the bases of his attitude toward mu
tants and why he feels that violence toward them is not only appropriate but
mandated. To begin with, his belief that Xavier is the Antichrist demonstrates
the apocalyptic tenor of his beliefs, as the title often indicates the sense of
cosmic dualism being played out in human history. Put differently, “Anti
christ” is used here by Stryker as a tool of group identity formation using
alterity. Stryker is employing both apocalyptic dualism and “othering” as a
way of creating a discordant identity for mutants. That is, if Xavier is indeed
the enemy of the righteous, then shouldn’t he be destroyed? If mutants are
less than humans, don’t they deserve their punishment? Juergensmeyer notes
in his work that this cosmic dualism is often echoed in the human realm, and
as such “acts of religious terror” can serve as “evocations of a much larger
spiritual confrontation” (2003, 150). Furthermore, in an examination of what
he calls “grand scenarios,” Juergensmeyer echoes Schwartz’s understanding
of the “Other,” noting that in this context, “War suggests an all-or-nothing
struggle against an enemy whom one assumes to be determined to destroy.
No compromise is deemed possible. The very existence of the opponent is
a threat, and until the enemy is either crushed or contained, one’s own exis
tence cannot be secure” (152).
Extending Juergensmeyer’s language of “war,” it’s also important to note
that Charles Kimball includes “holy war” as one of his “five warning signs”
of “evil” religion (2002, 154-85). We see obvious parallels to these schol
arly analyses in Stryker’s motivations as well as his actions: mutants are his
divinely ordained enemies, and they must be destroyed without mercy or
consideration in a conflict that is divinely mandated by Scripture and God.
Magneto, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, recognizes these techniques
when he comments on Stryker’s plan, “Once more, genocide in the name of
God. A story as old as the race.”
This construction, as well as a new racial/biological emphasis, is evident in
Stryker’s assertion that only humans are made in the image of God, a refer
ence to Genesis 1:26-27. This argument from creation is found not only in
the flashback panels, but is also the highlight of a massive rally Stryker holds
in Madison Square Garden. By this point, Stryker’s plan and its underly
ing religious alterity is no secret, as we hear a news reporter comment prior
to the rally that many religious leaders—even “fundamentalist evangelical
ministers”—are growing concerned about Stryker’s singling “out a specific
group of people” and branding "them as literally less than human,” noting
that this “betokens an attitude uncomfortably reminiscent of that held in Nazi
Germany against the Jews.” In his opening remarks, Stryker reinforces this
“Because You Exist” 59
attitude, as he quotes Genesis 1:1, 27 and 2:7 to establish what he considers

the “correct” origin of humanity. His reading of these texts vis-a-vis mutants
is key to understanding his rationale for violence against them. He continues,
We are beings of divine creation, yet there are those among us whose existence
is an affront to that divinity. God created man—the human race! The Bible
makes no mention of mutants. So where do they come from? Some—so called
scientists, humanists—say they are part of the natural process of evolution....
I say no! 1 say never! We are as God made us! Any deviation from that sacred
template—any mutation—comes not from Heaven, but Hell!
Stryker is engaging in several different arguments here. He is, firstly, creat

ing Juergensmeyer’s “faceless collective enemy” by claiming that all mutants
are the result of a devilish will and act, and as such all mutants have broken
the divinely mandated model of holy creation. As Juergensmeyer notes, the
advantages of having an “enemy-in-general” are clear: “These blanket char
acterizations of a people make the process of dehumanizing an enemy easier.
It is difficult to belittle and kill a person whom one knows and for whom one
has no personal antipathy” (2003, 177). Readers are shown the evidence of
this literal dehumanization in the disturbing opening scenes of the graphic
novel, in which two children are brutally murdered simply because they’re
mutants. Second, Stryker grounds his views of mutants in a biological or
racial claim. By including a jab at Darwinian evolutionary theory, Stryker
makes it clear that he doesn’t see mutants as evolutionary mistakes; rather,
they are a violation of the natural, divine order God intended. This racial
reading of biblical literature, intertwined with the dualisms of cosmic war,
is also present in a modern movement called Christian Identity. Most of the
groups included under this title hold specific racial views based on unique
readings of biblical literature (see Barkun 1997, 121-96, esp. 149-72). Stryk
er’s reading of Genesis is not far from these beliefs, as he sees the biological
origin of mutants as the result of the Devil, and thereby classifies ail mutants
as non-human, that is, outside the divinely ordained creational plan, and as
such an appropriate object for violence.
Third and finally, by couching all of these views as scripturally certified,
Stryker in effect provides both cause and justification for the violence he ad
vocates. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of scripturally justified vio
lence for scholars like Kimball. In a discussion of “absolute truth claims”—
one of his “warning signs” of religion becoming “evil”—he notes, “When
particular interpretations of these claims become propositions requiring
uniform assent and are treated as rigid doctrines, the likelihood of corruption
in that tradition rises exponentially. Such tendencies are the first harbingers of
the evil that may follow” (2002, 41). Kimball could be talking about Stryker
when he points out that "people armed with absolute truth claims are closely
linked to violent extremism, charismatic leaders, and various justifications for
acts otherwise understood to be unacceptable” (44). John J. Collins concurs
and claims, “the root of religious violence in the Jewish and Christian tradi
tions” lies in the absolutism afforded the interpreter by citing Scripture, which
is “guaranteed by divine revelation and is therefore not subject to negotiation
or compromise” (2005, 27).3 Stryker’s treatment of the Bible leads to his sub
sequent view of mutants as “others” as well as his genocidal plan for them.
Further evidence that the reverend sees reality through Bible-tinted glasses
is found in his exchange with Magneto at the rally. Once the Master of
Magnetism crashes into the Garden, Stryker quotes seven different biblical
texts over the space of only four panels, including such disparate sources as
Revelation 13:11, 15; 20:9b-10; Ecclesiastes 12:13; Leviticus 26:24; Isaiah
1:4; and Ezekiel 18:4. The net effect of such a high concentration of bibli
cal citations is to reinforce the characterization of Stryker as something of
a Holy Warrior, a man so invested in his particular vision of the biblical
narratives that he’s willing to kill his own family, not to mention a large
number of mutants on live television. It is obvious that Stryker and almost
all of his underlings hold the same absolutist view of Bible, a view that, as
we’ve seen, “confer[s] a degree of certitude that transcends human discussion
and argumentation” (Collins 2005, 32). This approach to the Bible and the
concomitant grounding of his other arguments in Scripture allows Stryker to
formulate a self-sustaining ideological system that promotes and portrays his
anti-mutant agenda as “natural” and obvious.
In the climactic scene of the graphic novel, Xavier’s X-Men mount the
stage and challenge the validity of Stryker’s views. This challenge isn’t
overtly religious and contains no quotations of or allusions to Bible. In
stead, Scott Summers (aka Cyclops) asks Stryker what gives him and his
views priority over anyone else’s. Cyclops also questions Stryker’s tactic
of “othering,” noting that it’s conceivable that mutants are the norm and
humans the deviation. Stryker becomes enraged, points at Kurt Wagner (aka
Nightcrawler), who’s blue, furry, and has a tail, and shouts, “You dare call
that thing human?!?” Kitty Pryde (aka Shadowcat), a young Jewish mutant,
pushes back at Stryker’s question by stating, “If I have to choose between car
ing for my friend [Kurt] and believing in your God, then I choose my friend!”
Stryker then calmly pulls a gun and prepares to shoot Kitty on stage in front
of the crowd, but he’s shot and wounded by a New York City police officer in
a series of wordless panels. The book ends with a moving exchange between
Magneto, Xavier, and Xavier’s students over the future of mutants and the
roles that force and love should play in that future. To no one’s surprise, love
wins the day with the X-Men, and Magneto leaves them to it. This optimistic
"Because You Exist" 61
ending doesn’t close the book on Stryker and his religious genocidal plans,
though.
Twenty years later, in issues #25-30 of X-Treme X-Men (2003), Chris Cla
remont—along with Igor Kordey (pencils) and Scott Hanna (inks)—returned
to the character of Stryker and the themes he addressed in GLMK. Briefly, the
plot of these issues (GLMK2) follows Stryker escaping prison to continue his
crusade against mutants. He enlists the help of an old foe of the X-Men, Lady
Deathstrike, and kidnaps Kitty Pryde. Intercalated with Stryker’s story are
scenes with a newer team of X-Men, and the two stories converge in a town
called Mount Haven. There, amid a community of mutant children, Kitty
meets and befriends the “local minister,” a smiling young man named Paul.
All is not as it seems, as Stryker, who’s been shadowing Kitty, eventually
reveals to her that Paul has killed all the former human inhabitants of Mount
Haven, who now lie decomposing in the catacombs beneath what’s revealed
to be a lab in which experiments were performed on mutants. Paul is actually
an AI program who took over the body of a mutant close to death, and he
killed all the humans because he saw them as soulless enemies, not children
of God. We also discover that Paul had injected “nannites” under his control
into mutants in Mount Haven to make them blissful, and that he wants to
upload his programming around the world to increase mutant happiness and
decimate humanity. As explosions rock Mount Haven, Kitty proposes to de
stroy Paul, burying herself underground in the process. Improbably, Stryker
volunteers to merge with Paul’s AI to contain him and his nannites until such
time as the threat is contained. Kitty escapes while Stryker/Paul is sealed in a
vault and buried alive under the weight of the destroyed city.
That these issues comprise a sequel to GLMK is obvious from more than
the title. Stryker here employs virtually the same interpretive moves and reli
gious rhetoric as he does in the first book. For example, as one might imagine
given what we know of Stryker, these issues contain several biblical texts that
reinforce a dualistic worldview, one in which there are good people and evil
“Others,” and the latter face a deserved punishment. These “othering texts”—
discussed above in relation to the work of Schwartz and Juergensmeyer—here
again provide a rationalization for violence. For example, when Kitty is in
capacitated by Lady Deathstrike before being kidnapped, Stryker ominously
emerges from the shadows and quotes aloud Revelation 18:4-5, 8. This text,
along with chapter 17, anthropomorphizes Babylon as a sexually promiscuous
woman who opposes God and revels in the suffering and death of the follow
ers of Jesus (see 17:5—6). As such, she deserves the punishment mentioned
by Stryker, that she “be utterly burned with fire” because God “judgeth her”
(18:8; cf. 17:16-17). Because of the iconographic proximity of Kitty’s inert
body to Stryker’s looming presence as he intones this quote from Revelation,
one might assume that his quote refers to Kitty as the "her” and “she” in Rev
elation 18. However, there is likely a dual meaning here just as there is in Rev
elation where “Babylon” is both a promiscuous woman and an evil city. As
such, Stryker’s symbolism may also be equating Mount Haven with Babylon.
The latter is unholy, sinful, and celebrates the demise of God’s children. Since
Mount Haven is a community where mutants are free and thrive, Stryker’s
view of them—as developed in the 1982 graphic novel—easily associates
them with the image of Babylon in Revelation 18, both in terms of actions
and consequences. 1 mentioned Schwartz’s work in connection with the 1982
text, but here Td also like to highlight how Kimball similarly understands this
hermeneutical move. Another of his “warning signs” of “corrupt religion” is
that “the end justifies any means.” One of the examples in his discussion of
this sign is “reinforcing group identity against outsiders.” Echoing Schwartz.
Kimball writes of the dangers involved “when group identity is defined in
ways that dehumanize people outside the community.” When this happens,
“the ‘other’ is seen not as a person but as an object posing a threat.” All too
often, the result is that “otherwise unthinkable behavior can be justified as a
means to the end of reinforcing and protecting group identity” (2002, 134).
Stryker spends considerable interpretive energy searching the Scriptures in
order to construct a discordant, “other” identity for mutants, and casting them
as the “other” makes it much easier to inflict violence on them.
Another echo of GLMK in these issues is Stryker’s use of biblical creation
language to construct mutants as “others” who lie outside the salvation his
tory of humanity. In an important exchange which I’ll return to below, Kitty
asks, “You’re a minister of God, Stryker. Why do you hate us?”4 Again, his
response is strikingly similar to the 1982 book, that is, he says, “1 look into
the mirror, I see the face of man that’s existed unchanged since the Garden of
Eden. You ask me to accept that mutants are cast from the same template?”
When Kitty pushes back, asking him if it’s possible that “there may be more
to God and his plans than you comprehend,” Stryker quotes Genesis 3:1
(“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the
Lord God had made”), implying that he considers Kitty’s questioning to be
nit-picking and deceptive. The results of his views are obvious: if mutants are
not made in God’s image (as those in Eden were) or if they’re to be identi
fied with the serpent—later seen to be Satan in the Christian tradition—then
mutants at best lie outside the covenants with God and have no place in God’s
plan of salvation, or at worst are impediments to the realization of that plan.
Either way, they’re “less” than humans, which makes enacting violence on
them that much easier.
Luckily for us, GLMK2 doesn’t simply replicate the first book; it also adds
new wrinkles to the portrayal of biblically sanctioned religious violence. One
“Because You Exist" 63
of these new wrinkles is the presence of Paul, who serves as a mirror-image

of Stryker, someone who inverts his ideology of hate toward mutants into a
religiously grounded hatred toward humans, the way Magneto functioned in
GLMK from a non-religious perspective. The catacombs littered with decom
posing human corpses serve for Stryker as evidence for the evils of mutant
kind and a justification for his own violent actions, as he tells Kitty, “Look
around, Pryde. Face my reality. My race is fighting for its very survival.”
Paul, however, argues that humans are “monsters” with no “soul,” and asks
Kitty, “Are we not charged to defend the righteous against the ungodly?”
It’s clear that Stryker and Paul have been characterized all along as holding
parallel views, and that characterization comes to a head here, when Paul con
cludes that humans “have no place in the Lord’s creation.” By showing us the
hideous result of Paul’s “othering” of humans—along with graphic images of
dead children—readers are reminded what kind of fruit Stryker’s own violent
ideology has bom and might bear again.
This identity is also present in a three-page sequence in which Kitty and
Stryker argue over his position, an argument in which they both employ Scrip
ture as evidence for their points. For example, as Stryker orders Kitty to repair
the damaged computer systems in the former lab, he refers to her as a “mon
ster.” When she protests, Stryker quotes aloud Revelation 13:11, 15, which
describes the second beast John sees in that chapter. This one arises from the
earth, not the sea, and has the power to kill those who would not worship the
first beast. It’s clearly subordinate to the first beast, as its function is to enforce/
mandate the worship of the first beast. In the context of issue #28, Stryker con
nects the text from Revelation to his characterization of Kitty as a "monster,”
thus aligning Kitty with this second beast.5 She responds by quoting a non-
canonical Jewish book called The Wisdom of Solomon (for the second time in
GLMK2). Her response is intended to challenge his scripturally based negative
view of mutants, as she notes, “Good is set against evil, and life against death:
so is the godly against the sinner, and the sinner against the godly” (33:14).
Stryker, after complimenting her knowledge of Scripture, quips meaningfully,
“The key of course, is knowing which is which.” After employing the creation
language I just discussed. Kitty turns on Stryker and exclaims,
You proclaim us as monsters, you tell people it’s God’s will to exterminate us
on sight. Why are you so surprised when some of us take you at your word and
reply in kind? You helped sow this wind, Stryker. Quit bitching now the time’s
come to reap the whirlwind!
In this response, which alludes to Hosea 8:7, Kitty demonstrates that Stryk
er’s argument from scriptural certainty isn’t’airtight, that is, she, too, can
64 Dan IV. Clanton, Jr.
quote sacred texts to complicate his dualistic worldview. By showing us this

argument alongside of Paul’s inverted viewpoint, GLMK2 problematizes
Stryker’s interpretive methods both here and in the first book. However, no
critique of Stryker’s ideology is as effective as Stryker himself modifying his
own position.
In issue #30, we finally learn Paul’s “origin story.” The being now known
as Paul was actually a computer program used by those conducting (pre
sumably illegal and definitely unethical) research on mutants. This program
detected a “light” in a young mutant prisoner named Paul, a light it could not
detect in his captors or other humans. This program—most likely some kind
of AI—took a shine to Paul, so when Paul became very sick, it decided to
help and protect him against those who had no light. Paul and the Al program
eventually merged amid what is described as a beautiful light, as the mutant
Paul spoke and quoted the Gospel of John 8:12 (“I am the light of the world:
he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of
life”). As the new Paul tells this story, we see Stryker whisper to himself in
amazement, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit.... Except a man be bom again, he cannot see the kingdom
of God” (quoting John 3:6, 3). Stryker evidently now sees this new Paul as
having been born again literally, that is, when the AI program and the fleshy
body of Paul joined in that flash of light, they were, for Stryker, “born of the
Spirit.” Based on this new, scriptural conviction, Stryker decides to volunteer
to sacrifice himself for the survival of Paul and all the mutants in Mount Ha
ven. Kitty is understandably skeptical, and asks, “Why the change of heart,
Stryker? Paul’s a mutant.” In what follows, Stryker attempts to explain his
decision, noting, “They built him as a weapon, but he found another path. He
chose to try to make himself better. The word of God made him anew. Can
you imagine what kind of miracle that is?” Kitty again expresses doubt in
Stryker’s motivations, but he reassures her, smiling and hands held aloft as if
he’s praying or blessing:
If we share a common ground in faith, who knows? We might find one for our
world, as well. And for humanity. With the best of intentions, Paul committed
the worst of crimes. But scales can be balanced. I believe he can be redeemed.
And—he isn’t the only soul who needs it.
Following this, the AI program inside Paul merges with Stryker as it had done
with the mutant Paul before. Kitty, weeping, locks them in some sort of pod
before the building collapses on them and she escapes. The issue ends with a
brief epilogue in which all the X-Men in these issues are reunited and happy.
Therein, Kitty warns against allowing “ourselves to be defined by the terror
"Because You Exist" 65
of what threatens to shatter us to bits,” and the arc comes to a close with a
final Bible quote: the final line of Psalm 23, “Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the
Lord for ever.”
Stryker’s sudden change of heart may strike some as improbable. How
ever, we should keep in mind the historical setting of GLMK2 as well as
Chris Claremont’s own view on religion and violence. One could easily read
GLMK2 as a post-9/11 attempt to redeem Stryker and perhaps rectify his use
of the Bible amid a torrent of anti-Muslim rhetoric, much of which stemmed
from Christian maximalists like Pat Robertson, one of the real-life inspira
tions for Stryker. After all, Claremont himself commented on the importance
of faith in his “Afterword” to the 2003 edition of GLMK. noting, “Are we all
in some manner or shape or form children of God? Or are some of us perhaps
more beloved than others? Therein, for me, lay the crux of the conflict in the
[original, 1982] novel, one that lasts to this day and factors into” [GLMK2],
He continues and argues that toleration and respect will be necessary for our
communities to endure, writing, “we need to find ways to get along, to play
nice with one another. We need to cherish that which binds us, and accept
with a measure of tolerance some of the things that make us different.” This
clearly parallels the message of inclusion and human-mutant solidarity at the
end of issue #30, which, in turn, echoes precisely the sentiments expressed
at the end of GLMK. In GLMK2, though, the message comes from Stryker, a
Bible quoting, avowed mutant hater, someone who’s spent the better part of
his adult life working toward the annihilation of mutants based on a theologi
cal reading of Scripture that results in calls for murderous violence. Further,
as I’ll discuss below, his repentance and self-sacrifice are consistent with the
attitudes and actions valued positively in the larger discourse of the X-Men
universe. Perhaps, then, a reader might see the conclusion of this story arc as
a redemptive rectification of Stryker and his use of the Bible. That is, if they
didn’t know that good characters in comics never stay dead or absent for long,
or if they never read any more stories with Stryker.
Only three years after GLMK2, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost brought
Stryker back in the “Childhood’s End” storyline in New X-Men #20-27
(2006). Since the plot of these issues employs a complicated narrative struc
ture and heavy use of flashbacks, I will rearrange the order of the events in the
interest of clarity and space. Beginning with issue #26, events pick up from
X-Treme X-Men #30, as Stryker is released from the pod in which he and
Paul were sealed by Kitty. Paul’s AI programming separates from Stryker,
who’s left alone and hapless. In New X-Men #26, Stryker explains his situa
tion to a young mutant named Jay Guthrie (aka Icarus). “I was a soldier—a
Crusader—one of God’s chosen to fight in the war against Satan. But then I
strayed, an X-Man caused me to doubt my role in this war.... She convinced

me I was wrong.”6 Stryker’s recollection is obviously faulty, as it was his own
idea to merge with Paul and sacrifice himself. Nevertheless, Stryker explains
to Jay that he was lost until “God gave me a second sign.” This sign is hinted
at in the opening pages of New X-Men #20, in which we see a filthy, pos
sibly homeless Stryker entering an abandoned church which used to be part
of his ministry. He approaches the altar and addresses a life-sized statue of a
bloody, crucified Christ and says that he served Jesus “faithfully” and “sac
rificed everything” for him, but now he’s “alone” and forsaken,” receiving
neither “guidance” nor “hope” from God.7 As Stryker produces a pistol from
his pocket and points it at his forehead, he asks for the “strength” to “light my
way back to you.” At this point a blinding light engulfs the crucified Christ,
and an astonished Stryker smiles as he drops his gun and whispers, “Thank
you, God.”
We learn at the end of issue #25 that this blinding light was the result of
a time-jump by Nimrod, a “super-advanced sentinel from the future.” There
are two important things to recognize here. First, the name Nimrod has a
powerful and mysterious biblical resonance, as he’s mentioned in Genesis
10:8-9 and described as “the first on Earth to become a mighty warrior” and
a “mighty hunter.” And second, in the world of the X-Men, the sentinels have
a long and terrible presence. They are machines built by humans to hunt and
attack mutants, almost decimating them at times. As such, a Stryker/Nimrod
team-up can only spell trouble for the X-Men, and Stryker wastes no time
using Nimrod’s historical databanks to “predict” and shape events to further
his anti-mutant agenda. With the help of this “gift of foresight,” Stryker starts
recruiting Purifiers again and rebuilds his ministry.
It’s also important to understand that these New X-Men issues take place
against the backdrop of a Marvel Comics crossover event in 2005 called
House of M. Basically, an Avenger called the Scarlet Witch has a nervous
breakdown after a personal tragedy and attempts to alter reality to undo that
tragedy. In the process, though, around 90 percent of the mutants on earth
are stripped of their mutant gene and subsequently their powers. As issue
#20 opens, we’re told that it takes place “two years before M-Day,” which
gives Stryker plenty of time to prepare and coordinate his assault on mutants
around that event. In fact, we learn in issue #20 that he even held a press con
ference days before M-Day in which he claimed, “God will give the world a
sign” soon. Then, in a TV interview, he adds that “God has taken the first step
[with M-Day], now we must take the next.” Clearly, this is a call for mutant
genocide, and Stryker’s plan is already in the works. This plan, as we’ve
seen above, is couched in biblical language. Issue #23 closes with images of
Stryker addressing a large crowd, telling them that “the seeds of Satan gained
"Because You Exist ” 67
strength and claimed our world.” As a result of human inaction. “Eden fell.”
Since M-Day, though, humans have a chance to make things right again, but
they “must decide” whether to “align with God to end Satan’s reign or turn
your back on the Lord once again.” The stakes are cosmic and ultimate, ac
cording to Stryker, because “This is Judgment Day.”
Much of the language here in Stryker’s plan should sound familiar, given
our discussion above on “othering” and the creation of an “enemy-in-general ”
in the work of Schwartz and Juergensmeyer. Here, though, Stryker empha
sizes two aspects of violent religious groups that have thus far been implicit
in the comics we’ve examined, viz., an emphasis on apocalyptic imminence
and “ideal time.” The former is a common characteristic of Jewish and Chris
tian eschatology: the sense that history is moving toward a climactic period
where there will be signs of the coming intervention of God which will take
the form of a judgment in which the righteous will be vindicated, but the
wicked will be condemned. Stryker’s call for humans (the righteous who are
aligned with God) to act against mutants (the “seeds of Satan”) to reclaim
and reconstitute “Eden” because today is “Judgment Day” fits neatly into this
inherited schema. However, the latter aspect I mention is also important to
unpack in order to understand Stryker’s assumptions. The term “ideal time”
is another one of Kimball’s “five warning signs” of religion becoming “evil.”
As Kimball writes, every religious tradition assumes that “something is badly
awry” with the world or with humanity; put differently, “We are not living
in the ‘ideal’ time” (2002, 104). He rightly notes that this fundamental tenet
can be the impetus for social reform and progressive policies geared toward
liberation and freedoms. However, as we see clearly with Stryker, “When
the hoped-for ideal is tied to a particular religious worldview and those who
wish to implement their vision become convinced that they know what God
wants for them and everyone else, you have a prescription for disaster” (104).
Stryker believes that the time is nigh to repair what is so wrong with our
world: the evil presence of mutants who’ve wrested the divinely ordained
right to live in Eden away from us. And he believes God has given him the
information and the power to affect that repair via an act of violence against
children.
Using information from Nimrod, Stryker manipulates the young mutant
Jay to provide information about the school that Professor Xavier established
for mutants. Specifically, Jay lets him know when a busload of students who
lost their mutant abilities and are now human is leaving the school. Stryker’s
Purifiers attack the bus, killing forty-two children. In issue #24, we’re shown
the funeral for these students, and, as I’ll mention below, we’re also shown
alternative visions of religiosity to that of Stryker, most obviously in the per
sons of the Catholic Kurt Wagner and the Muslim Sooraya Qadir (aka Dust).
68 Dan IF. Clanton, Jr.
Clearly, the focus on the mutants in this issue is on determining how they deal
with their loss and grief, whereas Stryker’s concern is to ride the momentum
of the attack and prepare for a more serious assault on the school. In this vein,
he addresses his Purifiers and assures them that “Eden approaches, and only
a handful of Satan’s children stand between us and Paradise.”
Stryker has long held the conviction that God has a plan and that he,
Stryker, recognizes that plan from Scripture and plays a central part therein,
all of which feeds his scriptural certainty and absolute truth claims. In this
issue, though, it’s also helpful to mention how Stryker treats his Purifiers
and subordinates. At one point, he barks at a Purifier, “God himself speaks
through me! You will not question my orders,” because “The Lord has set us
on this path and will not abandon us.” Not only do these remarks reinforce
scriptural absolutism, but they also point to another “warning sign” from
Kimball: “blind obedience.” Kimball notes, “When individual believers
abdicate personal responsibility and yield to the authority of a charismatic
leader or become enslaved to particular ideas or teachings, religion can easily
become the framework for violence and destruction” (2002, 72). Stryker ex
pects complete adherence to his orders because he sees them as cohering with
God’s divine plan for mutants as he (Stryker) finds in Scripture. Clearly, this
demand for “blind obedience” intersects with other facets of violent religion,
including charismatic leadership, absolute/final interpretations of sacred
texts, and the conception of “ideal time.” All of these, and other, characteris
tics of what Kimball often calls “corrupt religion” can lead to violence, and
this is what we see in New X-Men #26-27.
This attack occurs at the end of issue #26, right after Stryker shoots Jay
and leaves him to die, assuring him that he’ll be “reunited with [his dead girl
friend] who burns in Hell for loving a mutant.” As the assault on the school
begins, Stryker, his stole flapping in the breeze, dramatically raises his arm,
on which he’s wearing a gauntlet from Nimrod’s body, and says, “Tonight,
my children, we win the war between Heaven and Hell!” The attack doesn’t
go as planned, however. Key to Stryker’s plan was the murder of Dust before
the attack, as Nimrod’s databanks indicated she was a major threat to the
eradication of mutants. Stryker had thought Dust was dead, but that was just
a ruse. In fact, he confronts Dust during the assault, calling her an “abomi
nation,” but she replies, “No God would condone such horror! Such hatred!
You are the abomination!” At this point in issue #27, a mutant named Joshua
Foley (aka Elixir), still distraught over the murder of his friend Laurie Col
lins (aka Wallflower) by a Purifier, emerges from the shadows and (mis)uses
his healing powers to kill Stryker. While Stryker’s death may have ended the
attack on the school, his mission continues in the comics in various ways.8
And, as any good comic reader will tell you, nobody stays dead forever in
comics. In later comics, Stryker is brought back to life to again wreak havoc
“Because You Exist” 69
on mutants.9 As such, the impact of Stryker and his biblically inspired anti
mutant crusade casts a long shadow in X-Men comics, even after his death.
Does examining Stryker’s religious violence help us in addressing the
question of how to deal with that violence in the real world? I’ve addressed
this question in other contexts, and have always found more promise in
Charles Selengut’s recommendation of what an informed and critical laity
can accomplish than in the suggestion of Collins, who feels that if academ
ics want to stem the tide of religious violence, then we should dismantle the
certitude with which religious maximalists approach sacred texts (see Clanton
2008).10 The former focuses more on an internal critique and a consideration
of how material and ideological support should be disbursed, while the lat
ter runs the risk of seeming like a privileged imposition. Engaging Stryker’s
brand of religious violence in these comics permits us to continue this line of
thought, and allows us to make two important observations regarding scrip-
turally sanctioned religious violence in X-Men comics.
First, it’s both significant and ironic that Stryker and his biblically based
ideology of discrimination, dehumanization, and religiously justified vio
lence take place within a discourse that is patently unfavorable to them. That
is, the dominant discursive or “meta” point of view regarding these issues in
the X-Men comics is negative, preferring instead to signal at the least sym
pathy with mutants and at the most empathy for all those who are persecuted
and oppressed.11 Due to this ideological inclination, the comic has established
a discursive and thematic refutation of Stryker’s beliefs, that is, those beliefs
cut against the grain of the underlying assumption of not solely this graphic
novel, but the entire X-Men oeuvre, including all the various print titles, ani
mated versions, and live action films. As such, the overriding concern with
equality and freedom from persecution inherent in X-Men negates Stryker’s
beliefs, making the informed reader certain from the outset that those views
will find no purchase.
Secondly, it’s not just the overarching discourse of respect and integration
in X-Men that serves to vitiate against Stryker’s position. It’s also the numer
ous images and religious identities of characters, both human and mutant, we
see in X-Men. This is an understated emphasis in GLMK., but is explicit in the
two other major plot lines in which Stryker returns. Therein, we learn more
about the Jewish identity of Kitty Pryde, the deep Christian faith of Night
crawler, and the Islamic piety of Dust. Having these images and characters
offers an additional, alternative layer of presentation for religious concerns,
and as such undercuts Stryker’s maximalist identity. In other words, when
we see Kurt praying, holding the Bible and his rosary, at the mass funeral in
New X-Men #24—a funeral caused by the murderous actions of Stryker and
his henchmen—it shows the reader a religiosity rooted in the same texts and
history as Stryker’s, but one that’s in accordance with the aforementioned
ethic of respect and love. Similarly, we see Dust at the same funeral praying
the Janazah prayer in Arabic and later describing her belief in Allah to X-23.12
Scenes like these allow for the internal critique of Stryker’s religious views
advocated by Selengut (provided implicitly by Nightcrawler) at the same time
it reinforces the dominant ideology of the X-Men comics (exemplified by the
inclusion of Dust on the team). Noting this ideology and understanding the
possibility of that internal critique renders Stryker’s story in GLMK, GLMK2,
and the New X-Men issues useful for students of religion and violence, as it
allows us the opportunity to engage religious violence and its accompanying
scholarship in a fictional universe, but one that unfortunately feels all too real
in the twenty-first century. Hopefully, our doing so will allow us as interested
parties and scholars to be more aware of and intelligently responsive to the
causes and performances of religious violence in our own, real world.
NOTES
1. See Schwartz, 157-58, for specific mention of Deut. 17:2-5.

2. All quotations from GLMK are taken from Claremont and Anderson (1982).
3. See also Nelson-PalImeyer 2003, 10.
4. All quotations from GLMK2 are taken from Claremont, Kordey, and Hanna
(2003).
5. it’s unclear as to who the first beast would be, then. Perhaps Professor Xavier?
Mutants in general?
6. All quotations from New X-Men issues #24-27 are taken from Kyle, Yost, and
Medina (2006).
7. All quotations from New X-Men issues #20-23 are taken from Kyle, Yost, and
Brooks (2006).
8. Stryker’s mission is, for a time, led by one of his Purifier converts from these
issues, a former assassin named Matthew Risman. We also learn in New X-Men #36
that according to the “vision” Stryker receives from Nimrod’s information, he and
his Purifiers will win the war. However, “the Devil will strike back against” them by
sending “to this world a mutant so powerful” that Stryker and the Purifiers won’t be
able to stop it. Stryker refers to this mutant as the “Antichrist.” This storyline was
picked up in the major X-Men arc titled the “Messiah Complex” in 2007-2008.
9. In X-Force #3 (2008).
10. See also, e.g., Selengut 2003, 232-33 and Collins, 2005, 31-32.
11. For this view, see Perry (2005, 173-74); Kaplan (2008, 113); and Fawaz
(2016, 144-46).
12. It should be noted that many scholars have critiqued the characterization of
Dust as being stereotypical and too indebted to “Western” understandings of Islam.
See, among others, Stromberg 2011, 581-87.
Chapter Five
The Gospel According to Thanos

Violence, Utopia, and the Case
for a Material Theology
Tim Posada
Villains never win. That principle has guided superhero cinema since it be
gan with the film serial Adventures of Captain Marvel in 1941. Only a few
entries have dared break or bend that rule: In The Dark Knight (2008), the
Batman (Christian Bale) is framed for murder; Watchmen's, (2009) so-called
hero Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) ends global unrest by destroying New
York City; and Thanos (Josh Brolin) annihilates half the galaxy in Avengers:
Infinity War (2018). The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has a reputation
for generating profitable and humorous superhero films, but Infinity became
the series’ Empire Strikes Back (1980): an open-ended installment that rup
tured convention. For Salon, Infinity is “a dangerous movie for anyone who
cares about the future of American cinema” (Rozsa 2018), but audiences still
embraced the film to the tune of $2.04 billion at the box office worldwide.
Regardless, the third Avengers film is unlike its predecessors in scope, featur
ing more than thirty characters reprising roles from other MCU installments.
At the center of the film is Thanos, the mad Titan in search of six Infinity
Stones that will grant him the power of a deity. Following the film’s premiere,
the “snapture”—a reference to the villain’s final snap of his fingers that acti
vates an Infinity Gauntlet and turns half the galaxy’s population to dust—be
came a viral event, complete with a series of think pieces ranging from Forbes'
“Is Thanos Right About Killing People in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’?” to Vice's
“I Asked an Expert if Thanos Is Right.” Amid a galaxy of “finite resources,”
as Thanos describes the dire situation for all life everywhere, is he right?' To
say yes embarks upon a severe Machiavellian strategy divorced from ethics in
service of the greater good. But this is hardly new territory for ethical inquiry,
especially considering scandalous topics like collateral damage, as David Dark
considers in The Gospel According to America. Responding to a speech by
President George W. Bush that claimed “no insignificant person has ever been
71
72 Tim Posada
born,” Dark retorts, “If this is a kind of creed, then a phrase like ‘collateral dam
age’ is probably a kind of heresy” (Dark 2005, 4).
Thanos’ definition of acceptable collateral damage is clearly defined: half.
“It’s a simple calculus,” he claims, later adding, “If life is left unchecked,
life will cease to exist. It needs correcting.” Saving life is a noble cause, but
Thanos is an unlikely and unworthy prophet whose plan suffers from the
same logic he seeks to champion. He’s a materialist, someone who prioritizes
material over intellectual or spiritual needs. And he believes resources—ma
terial—must be preserved. However, Thanos is a contradictory materialist
whose violent means actually demolish much of the material he seeks to pre
serve. As a man of violence, he finds answers in his own brutal vocation as a
warlord. As a man, he is particularly cruel to women, seeing them as objects
(i.e., punishing adopted daughter Nebula by gradually replacing organic body
parts with robotic ones each time she fails at combat training) or as children
to parent condescendingly (i.e., favoritism of Gamora and consoling Scarlet
Witch). And as a bad materialist, he also allows his other adopted children,
the Black Order, to worship him for the sake of his cause.
To argue that Thanos is right to kill so many is a futile exercise. Silas Mor
gan faces a similar challenge in his application of Karl Marx, a vocal atheist,
to Christian theology. “Marx is not a sort of crypto-theologian, nor is there a
religious remainder in Marxism itself,” he says, “and yet I do think that Marx’s
critique of religion can help Christian theologies be more Christian and so aid
Christian churches in becoming more like the biblical ekklesia” (Morgan 2013,
2). Similarly, Thanos is no theologian and attempting to consider him one also
brings with it a bloody sea of genocidal baggage. But to understand why he
comes to such a conclusion is a more compelling goal for theological critique.
Thanos’ religious beliefs remain unknown, but his emphasis on materiality
provides hints of his metaphysical convictions. Unlike superheroes who react to
imminent threats, rarely trying to change the status quo but preserve it, Thanos
looks to the future with a lasting plan to feed the hungry and impact communi
ties in long-term ways. Of course as a supervillain, Thanos is a poor advocate
for social change. The argument here is that Thanos’ materialism is an aggres
sive reaction to beliefs that allow systemic wrongdoing to continue through
negligence and social indifference. The gospel according to Thanos, then, is
built on the ground not in the sky. He supports not a high but low theology—a
material theology—creating heaven among the planets.
CURSED WITH MATERIALITY
In part, Thanos is a caricature of socialism as a villain blinded by his own

plan to bring peace through dispassionate and fair—his words—distribution
The Gospel According to Thanos 73
of resources and misery. His extreme devotion to equality means some must
die to ensure equal prosperity for those who survive. He revokes idealism,
shirks ethics, in favor of a pure pragmatism. He lacks any clear ethical pa
rameters other than a broad grasp of the big picture. This resembles a unique
disciplinary dilemma. Cultural studies, a field of study that began in the
1960s, greatly draws upon “ethical assumptions” based on “Marxist human
ist origins” (Slack and Whitt 1991, 571). This would eventually result in the
emergence of key fields, ranging from race studies to feminism to colonial
ism, all in service of giving voice to marginalized peoples. Rather than advo
cate for ethics, as Douglas Kellner notes, “ethics tends to be subordinated to
politics and the moral dimension of culture tends to be underemphasized or
downplayed” (Kellner n.d.). Cultural studies assumes certain ethical positions
based on material forces that cause oppression but rarely addresses the field
of ethics directly.
Unlike Thanos, a pop culture socialist figure, cultural theory’s affinity for
material culture is not violent when it draws upon Marxist texts. As Silas
Morgan notes, Marx’s critique of religion focuses on ideology and power,
namely abuse. “Marx is not as interested in abolishing religion per se as he is
in exposing and critiquing its materialistic base,” Morgan says. “He is inter
ested in surpassing the abstractions of theological idealism and refocusing the
attention of true criticism on the oppressive and dominating dynamics of the
social world” (Morgan 2013, 10). On this point, Thanos is a poor example of
Marxism because he allows his adopted (and very brainwashed) children to
worship him. This occurs early in Infinity when Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-
Lawlor) presents an Infinity Stone to Thanos. “My humble personage bows
before your grandeur,” Maw says, kneeling as he speaks. “No other being has
ever the might, nay the nobility, to wield not one, but two Infinity Stones. The
universe lies within your grasp.” Here. Thanos accepts religious devotion to
further his cause. This is an affront to Marx’s well-known critique of religion,
especially Christianity. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,” Marx
notoriously says, “the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spirit
less conditions. It is the opium of the people” (Marx and Engels 2010, 175).
Material theology, according to Thanos, starts with material concerns but
ends when it conflicts with his goals.
A material theology is a kind of heresy to Christian groups that believe
their theology must transcend material concerns like feminism, race, and LG-
BTQ+ rights. For example, John MacArthur chastises evangelicals “demand
ing repentance and reparations from one ethnic group for the sins of its ances
tors against another,” accusing them of causing a “divide over ethnicity” and
embracing “fleshly factions” instead of becoming “one in Christ” (MacArthur
2018). For MacArthur, the answer is unity, but he does not consider the role
of racism at work today in the material world. Instead, he diminishes the topic
74 Tim Posada
by generically condensing it into “reparations.” He both assumes history does

not matter and ignores contemporary social wrongs, namely systemic racism,
instead seeing Christians who voice racial wrongs as enemies of union in
service of the flesh. Even genocidist Thanos sees the error in such thinking,
stressing equality for his plan to work; his genocide must be “dispassionate,
fair to rich and poor alike,” he tells Dr. Strange regarding his endgame.
Materiality—the flesh—matters, as many theological traditions claim, in
cluding liberation, practical, and political theologies. Notably, theology and
culture (TC), as an emerging discipline, draws less upon figures from cul
tural studies, originating instead in the works of theologians like H. Richard
Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Discussions of power at the heart of cultural theory
matter less for most TC scholars than theological justification for engaging
with culture (i.e., avoidance, dialogue, praxis). This can prove problematic,
John Reader says, since “[t]heology sometimes falls into a trap of respond
ing too rapidly and exclusively from within the limited resources of its own
tradition" (Reader 2017, 10). In response, emerging studies in material culture
(i.e.. New Materialism) place theology alongside ethics, race, gender, biology,
and ecology. This new approach resists the limits of a singular tradition by
combining multiple ones. Such a critical model is beneficial to TC scholarship,
easily lending itself to claims like those of Morgan, who says, “I consider
Marx better at being critical of Christianity than we are; he sees in religion,
and in Christianity specifically, a propensity to sponsor and promote material
conditions that dominate persons rather than emancipate them” (2013, 11).
While a Marxist approach to materialism applies to Thanos in part, his
materiality is concerned less with social structures and more with materials
necessary for survival. A material theology obliges Christians to consider how
interconnected the material and spiritual are. Such a view might meet resistance
from Christians (and Marxists for the opposite reason) who negatively perceive
the word “material” and its use in regard to possessions. For example, Gene A.
Getz’s A Biblical Theology of Material Possessions predominantly focuses on
a Christian’s relationship to “material possessions,” never citing Marx or other
materialist thinkers (2012). The idea that faith materially manifests in certain
practices (i.e., a church located in a building, baptism using water, communion
with edible food and drink) or that Christians must engage with materiality
(i.e., driving a car. using a bathroom, paying for goods) are not hotly debated
subjects within popular Christian communities. Rather than deem materialism
averse to Christianity, Terry Eagleton believes Christianity is deeply rooted in
materiality based on pressing mandates: “Salvation is not primarily a matter
of cult and ritual but of feeding the hungry and tending the sick. Jesus spends
much of his time restoring damaged human bodies to health, along with a num
ber of deranged minds” (Eagleton 2016, 48).
Eagleton continues: “Materiality is blessed for Christianity because it is

God’s creation” (2016,48). Creation—materiality—belongs to God. Ignoring
materiality means hurting the planet, hurting God’s sacred creation. Thanos is
rightly concerned about material needs since they brought doom to his home
planet. “Titan was like most planets,” he tells Dr. Strange, “too many mouths,
not enough to go around.” Amid many emerging perspectives on theology
and materiality, Anne Elvey proposes a Christian “conversion” through eco-
materialism that
requires an openness to understanding humans to be interdependent with a wider

more-than-human Earth community of which we, as human beings, are part... .
From this perspective, Christian texts and traditions can be understood within a
more-than-human framework as material cultural products of a particular Earth
species, handed on and interpreted within identifiable human communities and
places, or habitats. (2009, 150-51)
A material theology, according to Thanos, advocates for a more-than-human

universe community in service of the natural environment. But he simplifies
the problem, assuming population control is the only cure. Marxist discourse
surrounding population control remains sparse. Still, Marie-Anne Casselot
considers New Materialism—a more robust interdisciplinary toolkit rooted
in Marxism—beneficial in exploring ecofeminist concerns, namely “eugenics
and population control” understood from this perspective as “patriarchal and
imperialist tools for populating or un-populating the Earth” (2016,81). While
Thanos’ snap does not rely on problematic reproductive technologies, his sole
emphasis on population control is a stereotypically masculine simplification.
Wendell Berry questions the certainty of this approach. “Before we con
clude that we have too many people, we must ask if we have people who are
misused, people who are misplaced, or people who are abusing the places
they have,” he says. Berry examines the social and economic complexities
of material challenges, beginning with injustice and the disproportionate ef
fect overpopulation has on different continents. Thanos only teases this latter
point, disproportion, in his plan to equally annihilate half of each planet’s
population. He does not acknowledge root causes, as Berry does: “The worst
disease of the world now is probably the ideology of technological heroism,
according to which more and more people willingly cause large-scale effects
that they do not foresee and that they cannot control” (1987, 149-50). From
landfills overflowing with obsolete technology to underutilized recycling ef
forts, attempts to preserve and reuse finite resources progress far too slow.
The most common tool for progress, however, is violence, a problematic—
more accurately abhorrent—tool that jeopardizes far too many resources
and cheapens life, which matters little to Thanos, whose tactics reveal he is
76 Tim Posada
a subjective being attempting to objectively solve problems without all pos

sible data.
A VIOLENT MAN
The social justice villain is a long-standing tradition, from Blade Runner's

(1982) cyborg Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) desperately seeking liberation from
his creators/slavers to The Rock's (1996) General Francis X. Hummel (Ed
Harris) taking hostages to force government officials to fairly compensate
the families of fallen soldiers. Perhaps the most fully developed example of
a social justice villain in the MCU, however, is not Thanos but Killmonger
(Michael B. Jordan) in Black Panther (2018). The abandoned son of Wakan-
dan royalty, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens is instead raised in Oakland as an
orphan before joining special forces. He eventually returns to the fictional
nation of Wakanda, which has never been colonized, to usurp the throne and
arm oppressed black peoples around the world with special Wakandan weap
onry. He understands that oppression is rooted in control of material forces.
Alas, Killmonger succumbs to the same violence he champions. But unlike
other films that establish relatable motivation for a villain only to abandon
that cause come the final showdown—which occurs by the conclusion of
Thanos’ story in Avengers: Endgame (2019)—Black Panther concludes with
a promise to make reparations and better protect the oppressed. Killmonger
dies, but a redeemed vision of his cause lives on, violence bred from ven
geance replaced with altruism and greater government transparency.
Like Black Panther's Killmonger before him, Thanos is a brutal savior, a
common trope of Western cinema. From westerns to action films, violence
is the primary means to seek “justice” and “salvation” for a Christ figure in
“frontier [clashes] between savagery and civilization.” William Romanowski
continues: “This frontier formula sets up violence as the necessary and suf
ficient resolution to all the problems the story has raised, and audiences have
grown accustomed to finding drastic satisfaction in a violent resolution”
(2001, 124). For the first ten years of the MCU, superheroes functioned in
messianic roles to great success. Come Thanos, however, the same formula—
the same violent means—allows him to subdue all those superheroes with the
same ease they once enjoyed against their foes.
With superheroes, or film heroes more generally, the messianic figure is
a topic of study dating back to classic westerns like Shane (1953) and even
tually Superman’s feature film debut in 1978, most easily seen in Jor-EI’s
(Marlon Brando) final words to his son Kal-El, who would one day become
the Man of Steel: “They can be a great people, Kal-El,” the father says. “They
wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above
all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son.” While su
perheroes may be clever in their own rights—Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert
Downey Jr.) the inventor, Captain America (Chris Evans) the strategist, Dr.
Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) the academic—their ability to fight sets
them apart as effective and worthy saviors, a point of criticism for John Shel
ton Lawrence and Robert Jewett. “The supersaviors in pop culture function as
replacements for the Christ figure, whose credibility was eroded by scientific
rationalism,” they write. “But their superhuman abilities reflect a hope for
divine, redemptive powers that science has never eradicated from the popular
mind” (2002, 6-7). Rather than champion Christ’s teachings, however, these
heroes replace parables and wisdom with guns and violence.
Considering Lawrence and Jewett, Thanos is a hyper-Christ figure: dei
fied by his followers, certain in his own wisdom, and endowed with unique
abilities that come to full fruition in violence. Even co-director Joe Russo
claims he has a “messianic complex” in Infinity's commentary for the digital
download. From Thanos’ point of view, the use of violence is a necessity, and
as a messiah figure, he does not consider its use problematic, contradictory,
or evil. Conversely, superheroes also favor violent means to subdue local,
national, global, and here galactic oppression, and they equally believe their
goals are just and justly support their use of violence. Alas, the entirety of the
Avengers and their allies cannot stop Thanos in Infinity. For both heroes and
Thanos, who believes he is the hero of his story, they all champion what Wal
ter Wink calls “the Myth of Redemptive Violence.” On display in reality and
popular fiction, this altruistic violence is “the dominant religion in our society
today” (Wink 1998, 42). For Wink and a host of other theoethicists, using
violence to end violence is a contradiction that does not transcend its trap
pings but prolongs its grasp. As the events of Endgame reveal, Thanos’ plan
does not bring about peace. Civil unrest plagues the galaxy; post-traumatic
stress engulfs earth’s population; Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) transforms into
the rogue vigilante Ronin, killing members of organized crime; and even the
mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth) goes into seclusion, drinking his pain away
and developing the body to match. Even though the team quickly catches and
dispatches Thanos in the first act—after he destroys the Infinity Gauntlet,
sealing the fate of all snapped out of existence—hope is not found in his
demise. As John Howard Yoder says, Christians can only break free of this
cycle if they resist “unworthy means even for what seems to be a worthy end”
(1994, 154). Violence is not a transcendent act but submission to a fallen
social order. It destroys materiality, thus perverting God’s creation, which
Thanos can never truly understand, especially when another iteration of the
mad Titan arrives in the finale of Endgame with a new plan to merely wipe
78 Tim Posada
out all life and start over. He believes the curse of knowledge (the trauma of
survival and knowledge of life before the snap) must be removed entirely.
Supporting the war efforts of others in The Avengers and Guardians of the
Galaxy (2014) and implicitly aiding the world-ending events of Avengers:
Age of Ultron (2015), Thanos has long advocated for balance at the expense
of those finite resources he wishes to preserve. Compared to other villains,
Thanos is quite narrow minded, “callous,” according to Thanos actor Josh
Brolin in an interview on The Late Show. When host Stephen Colbert asks
why Thanos doesn’t merely “use the glove to double the resources” of the
universe rather than reduce the number of mouths to feed, Brolin responds,
“he could, but he didn’t think of that at the moment because he’s too callous”
(2018). Even sadistic foe Negan (Jeffery Dean Morgan) in The Walking Dead
(2010—)—who enjoys occasional murder with his barbed wire-wrapped bat
Lucille—avoids such a callous approach to human life. As the leader of the
Saviors—another distorted interpretation of pop culture Christ figures—
Negan brutally kills a selected few who refuse to fall in line, but he rarely
mass executes dissidents. “People are a resource,” he repeatedly says (“The
Big Scary U,” 8.5). Of course life should be preserved in a zombie apoca
lypse, but the point remains rather simple, as Wendell Berry earlier addresses:
The problem lies not merely in overpopulation but people’s place in the
world, how they use their gifts and possibly overuse resources.
Amid the heroism and ethical dilemmas that pepper superhero films, a
great tragedy lingers in every caped crusader’s adventure. Superpowers
and special abilities are controlled by violence, perverting their place in the
world. This is best explained in an example from Infinity. When Ebony Maw
captures Dr. Strange, he tortures Strange with special devices invented for
microsurgery. Thanos not only advocates war on a grand scale but transforms
something positive, like a medical tool, into a weapon. Starting in Iron Man
(2008), protagonists fear special powers and weapons reaching evil hands,
from Tony’s Iron Man suits to the Super Soldier serum to the Infinity Stones.
While Stark’s Arc Reactor, a self-sustaining energy source, serves as an
example of technology that can benefit society, it is largely a prop to help
Iron Man suits more efficiently soar into battle. Endgame relies on brains
over brawn in a time travel storyline based on strategy and ethical debate,
but the film still features the large ensemble fight in the third act, in which
Captain America finally says the comic series’ most iconic line, “Avengers
assemble,” before a grand battle ensues. The MCU spends most of its time
depicting inventive, spectacular action sequences, relying on the cycle of
violence, rather than ascending its trappings.
In the MCU, only two films present moments, besides time travel in End
game, contrary to the myth of redemptive violence: Doctor Strange (2016)
and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018). In the latter, nobody—main villain nor
henchmen—clearly dies. And in the film’s conclusion, the primary antago
nist Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) is, in fact, saved from the suffering she
desperately wishes to escape. Redemption for a misunderstood villain is not a
complete break from redemptive violence, but it does represent a glimmer of
hope. In Doctor Strange, however, the titular hero uses violence by necessity
until he cannot. This is especially problematic for Strange as a former surgeon
once bound by the Hippocratic oath, though the film does not adequately ad
dress this. Come the final showdown against the interdimensional entity Dor-
mammu, Strange cannot succeed with might. Only by trapping the creature in
a time loop, and dying over and over, can Strange slowly convince it to accept
his bargain to leave earth alone. Unlike other depictions of Christ figures in
popular action films, this is the rare example of a suffering one, aligning with
a simple revelation put forth by Barry Taylor and Craig Detweiler: “Jesus
didn’t commit violence: he suffered and died for it” (2003, 169).
Beyond a small handful of examples in the MCU, cyclical violence shows no
signs of ending. It remains a norm of material existence, a position shared by
politicians like U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Speaking on the “duty”
of American patriots to also remain devout Christians, he depicts past, present,
and future “battles” as “a never-ending struggle” that will continue “until the
Rapture” (Stone 2018). For Pompeo, and many others who share his position,
ending violence is not only impossible but not even the goal; the fight is ongo
ing, “until the Rapture.” Violence continues until the chosen ones reach utopia,
and the Pompeos believe that utopia exists beyond material reality.
HEAVEN IS A PLACE IN THE SOUL STONE
When Thanos confronts Iron Man, Stark is surprised to learn the mad Ti
tan recognizes him. “You know me?” Stark asks. “1 do,” Thanos responds.
“You’re not the only one cursed with knowledge.” The curse of knowledge
haunts Thanos. For him, knowledge is power, and with great power comes
a galactic responsibility. On the commentary for Infinity's digital download,
screenwriter Christopher Markus notes a “parallel between” Thanos and
Stark. “They're both aware of something from an early point and constantly
having to deal with being smarter,” Markus says. “Thanos is a futurist as
much as Tony Stark.” Of course for Stark, futurism involves global security,
while Thanos sees knowledge as an obligation to do something horrific to
prevent something even more horrific. And that curse forces him to sacrifice
“everything,” including his daughter, as he explains to the young Gamora in
the Soul Stone.
80 Tim Posada
In Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, Richard Reynolds claims su

perheroes preserve utopia, while supervillains attempt to “thwart’' it (1992,
24). For Thanos, superheroes are naive adversaries that will facilitate their
own demise. The galaxy’s current attempts to create utopia (technological
advancement, pluralism, harmony) are lies, according to Thanos, that hide
an eventuality for all life in the galaxy. Tony is far less fatalistic, but he does
see a need for something more than a single team of heroes, no matter how
mighty they may be. In Age of Ultron, he inadvertently creates the film’s vil
lain, Ultron (James Spader), while developing an automated global defense
system that would allow the Avengers to retire rather than gradually die in
heroic, but still fatal, acts. “Isn’t that the mission?” Tony says, defending the
motivation behind his actions after Ultron becomes self-aware and targets the
team. “Isn’t that the ‘Why we fight’? So we can end the fight. So we get to
go home.” A similar dilemma occurs in Captain America: The Winter Sol
dier (2014) when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) develops Project Insight,
including three helicarriers complete with an algorithm that can identify pos
sible threats and eliminate them before they evolve. Of course this attempt at
utopian preservation is easily corrupted by an unknown entity.
At least in MCU films, attempts to stop conflict before it occurs—creat
ing utopia with the help of artificial intelligence and defensive algorithms
operating armed flying ships—are perverted by villains. The one example
of utopia—Wakanda in Black Panther—includes a scandalous secret and
contradiction at the core of its preservation: Wakanda survives at the expense
of colonization across Africa and marginalized black folks worldwide. Su
perhero stories rely on exceptional individuals to preserve the peace, often
villainizing overreach by governing bodies and private groups. This is the
classic debate between capitalism and socialism, exceptionalism and fas
cism. Edward James chronicles the trajectory of utopia in science fiction
(sf), noting nineteenth-century authors’ emphasis on the possibility of utopia,
which they believed could occur “once the distorting effects introduced by
capitalism were removed” (2003, 220). This occurs in more recent examples
as well, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), featuring
humanity and other alien species working together to advance the pursuit
of knowledge unworried about financial compensation. However, as James
notes, twentieth-century sf authors mostly reversed course on capitalism:
Critics of utopia usually assume that the author is producing a risibly impracti
cal blueprint for a future society rather than (in most cases) a trenchant critique
of contemporary institutions in fictional form. But such criticism is made easier
by associating utopianism with socialism and communism, and thus the Soviet
bloc; and most sf writers have concluded that capitalism, for all its flaws, offers
more freedom than totalitarianism. (2003, 220-21)
Now, critique of utopia is far more common than its celebration. Attempts to
create earthly utopia in the MCU are fascist restrictions of free will. And yet
the concept of heaven, a different kind of utopia, is a common topic of study,
but it tends to remain a lifelong goal beyond the dirtied realm of earth.
N.T. Wright resists this distinction, especially the idea that “earth is a
kind of training ground for heaven”; rather, “heaven and earth are designed
to overlap and interlock” (2007). Similarly for Eagleton, Christianity con
cerns itself with “the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the
soul” (2016, 49). If this is true, the futurists of Marvel are right to act, for
earth and the cosmos rely on each other. This is quite different from views
espoused by those found on Desiring God, which supports Christian sup
port for violent action on earth but not in heaven: “Jesus shows us that it
is never right to fight for the sake of his spiritual kingdom, but that it is
right to fight on behalf of earthly kingdoms” (Perma 2006). For Wright,
heaven and earth are interconnected—interlocked—while Desiring God
widens the gap between material reality and the promise of God’s eter
nal kingdom, whether that kingdom belongs to this earth or somewhere
beyond material bounds. Desiring God softens the need to create utopia
now, instead claiming “Jesus is speaking primarily to individuals” during
key passages, like the Sermon on the Mount, rather than to communities.
By emphasizing the individual, not the community—something superhero
stories often do in their extreme depictions of exceptionality—social
change cannot truly occur (and to assume individuals, not communities,
are the primary audience of sermons occurs at the expense of historical
context). For Thanos, the individual is an obstacle to the community, even
if his individual choice to create a perverse version of utopia reveals his
own hypocrisy. That said, an overabundance of individualism damages the
whole when overpopulation occurs.
Overpopulation is a popular topic in sf series like Terra Nova (2011), He
lix (2014-2015), The 100 (2014-), and Travelers (2016-2018), along with
films like Downsizing (2017). More than pop culture fodder, Christianity
Today's Amy Julie Becker considers overpopulation a theological dilemma,
highlighting a common emphasis among many forms of Christianity around
the world to have large families—even noting “women and children face
hardship in the present when it comes to childbirth and family size” (2011).
She establishes what Christians ought not do, particularly “brutal” tactics
like abortion or family-size restrictions for the sake of population control
(Thanos would most assuredly disagree). However, she concludes no easy
solution exists, only “hope in the day when Jesus will return to set the world
right.” Becker examines the complexity of overpopulation, but to simply
state Jesus will eventually fix the problem removes responsibility from the
82 Tim Posada
global community, once more softening the need to create utopia now in
service of an eternal paradise beyond material reality.
Such sentiments are quite common across Western Christianity, permit
ting rational gaps filled with simple explanations to complex issues, allowing
them to continue unchallenged, through the use of platitudes about having
patience until Jesus returns or the common phrase, “The Lord works in mys
terious ways,” which does not appear in the Bible. Returning to Silas Morgan,
utopia is not “a purely eschatological expectation of that which lies in the
future but as the benchmark for what one should hope for in the redemption of
the past and strive for in the present,” and Christian eschatology does well to
consider “this critical dimension of utopia” (2013, 4). When theology about
the end of days, an abstract concept without a singular consensus, absolves
Christians of present action, it might be time to reevaluate that theology and
consider one that prompts just action.
WHAT'S THE ENDGAME?
A material theology acknowledges physicality, substance. Intent alone is not

enough. Drawing upon the Marxist concept of historical materialism, societ
ies are not formed merely by ideas but material forces. Theology divorced
from real-world concerns is not theology of use beyond symbolic practices
more suited for a church service (i.e., singing worship songs, formal prayers,
attending Bible studies) and not what that church service must prepare con
gregational members to do (i.e., feed the poor, protect the weak). As James
2:14-26 notes, faith requires action—or “works”—to remain alive. This is
not meant to diminish symbolic practices or consider them inconsequential
but to note the need for others as well. For example, in a study of 953 respon
dents from eighteen Christian colleges on “how different groups of students
perceive the influence of the total college experience on their spiritual forma
tion,” two of the “lowest means for nonacademic factors” included “expe
riencing diversity” and “volunteer or service projects” (Ma 2003, 330-31).
Beyond the classroom at Christian institutions, volunteer work and diversity
remain material matters disconnected from theology. Christian practice
should not transcend material existence but engage it, restore it, “correct it,”
as Thanos would say.
Despite the many hot takes and op-eds online, Thanos’ action are not
righteous by any standards, especially the pseudo-Marxist ones at play in his
characterization. Materiality must consider all life. Yet his material focus,
those environmental resources that continue to diminish, remains a worthy
topic for theological inquiry. Certainly the temptation to solve such problems
with a simple snap of a finger is a kind of catharsis that lingers behind many
major issues. If only war. poverty, racism, sexism, or transphobia could end
so quickly. Use of violence to bring about lasting change falls prey to this
logic, so too the speedy implementation of a sitting president’s executive or
ders that create laws with a signature in place of a snap. The best response to
such quick fixes involves a more holistic theology that prioritizes the needs
of living beings and the difficult work of progress in all its fleshly intrica
cies, understanding that care for material reality is care for eternal souls.
When those who claim to be good people do nothing—cede defeat because
the economy, social order, and government entanglements are too involved,
inconsequential to heaven’s promise—instead stalling until Christ’s return,
someone like Thanos might just step in and become a savior more violent
than peaceful, more rational than caring.
NOTES
1. All quotations from or references to this film are from Christopher Markus and
Stephen McFeely, Avengers: Infinity War, directed by Antony Russo and Joe Russo,
Burbank, CA: Marvel Studios, 2018.
Chapter Six
"Those Are the Ancestors You Hear"

Marvel's Luke Cage and Franz Rosenzweig's
Theology of the Creation
Levi Morrow
Marvel’s Luke Cage season two foregrounds a theological dimension

throughout its story arcs, but without using typical religious concepts like
God, faith, sin, prayer, etc. It does this by focusing on the characters’ pasts
and names, which it frames as distinctly theological. The overall effect is to
present the viewer with a theology of the past as a source of revelatory divine
meaning, if not outright instruction?
This theology finds a surprising echo in the writings of the early twentieth
century German-Jewish philosopher and theologian Franz Rosenzweig (1886—
1929). Rosenzweig’s writings present diverse, novel ideas on a variety of topics,
but it is his hermeneutical bent that resonates with Luke Cage.2 As a hermeneuti
cal thinker, Rosenzweig is fundamentally concerned with the way meaning is
constructed through the individual’s interactions with the world, texts, etc. that
predate her? Rosenzweig calls the “already-existing” world “creation,” part of
a broader framework based on the biblical terms “creation,” “revelation” and
“redemption” that underlies his magnum opus, The Star of Redemption? When
we experience revelatory moments of meaning in the present, they simultane
ously reveal our createdness through the way they play out in a context that
predates us.
In this chapter, 1 will explore Luke Cage's theology of the past, in light of
Franz Rosenzweig’s concept of creation. I will first trace out the character
arcs of season two’s three main characters, Carl “Luke Cage” Lucas, Mariah
Dillard nee Stokes, and John “Bushmaster” McIver, with a focus on how the
show foregrounds and theologically charges the characters’ pasts. I will then
lay out Rosenzweig’s theology of creation, based on his book The Star of
Redemption.5 This will enable me to return to Luke Cage and show how the
various character arcs are all driven by the characters’ pasts, with a distinctly
85
86 Levi Morrow
theological bent. I will conclude by noting the thematic of names in Luke

Cage and its parallels in Franz Rosenzweig’s letters.
CHARACTER ARCS
The three main characters each attempt to navigate their relationship with the
past in a different manner. Bushmaster’s development starts with his attempt
to live entirely based on his past, and ends with his acceptance that the past
cannot be simply, uncomplicatedly written onto the present. Mariah’s arc
moves in the opposite direction, from attempting to erase the past and free
herself from it to accepting its claims on who she is. Luke, meanwhile, shifts
from ignoring and denying the way his past has shaped him to accepting and
even finding revelatory validation in it. In order to highlight the role played
by the past in each, I will trace out the primary events of each character’s
storyline.
Bushmaster
John “Bushmaster” McIver begins his arc at the shores of the United States.
As we later discover, this is a return to the United States, and to New York
City specifically, from Jamaica where his family moved when he was a child.
He has come seeking his birthright, and he will employ distinctly violent aims
to get it.
Bushmaster’s first move is taking over the Jamaican gang dominant in
Brooklyn, but which has its eye on Harlem as well. This leads him into direct
contact with Mariah Dillard, who is trying to sell her arms business to any
gangster willing to buy it. He also confronts Luke Cage on the streets of Har
lem, announcing himself as “the stone the builders refused.”6 As he makes
clear as the season progresses, Bushmaster’s father was betrayed by Buggy
Stokes, his business partner and Mariah’s father, who wanted full ownership
of their joint ventures. Moreover, Mariah’s mother, “Mama Mabel,” killed
Bushmaster’s mother to keep her from claiming her rightful inheritance in
the business. Bushmaster therefore sees Harlem as his birthright, a birthright
violently stolen from him by the Stokes family. He therefore wants to right
this historic injustice by violently taking Harlem back from Mariah, at one
point attempting to burn Mariah and her daughter alive the same way Mama
Mabel burned his mother alive.
Bushmaster first confronts Mariah directly in the fourth episode of the sea
son. He begins to explain their shared history, though fuller revelations must
wait for the rest of the season. In this conversation, however, he describes the
“Those Are the Ancestors You Hear" 87
driving power of the past. “You hear that? ... The talkin’ blues. Those are the
ancestors you hear. They remember. You can’t erase the past. You can’t burn
it away. That’s the spell on you. That’s magic. Science in its purest form” (“1
Get Physical,” 2.4).7 In a theme that will re-emerge throughout the season,
science, magic, and the past (and eventually God as well) are all equated, and
are said to make a claim on the individual which she cannot escape. In the last
lines of the season, Luke’s father says, “Your strength is from God, Carl. 1
have no doubt in my mind about that. . . . Science? Magic? God? That power
flows from within. From inside.” The series represents the past as science,
magic, and God simultaneously, all in some sense “within” a person (“They
Reminisce Over You,” 2.13).
After his conversation with Mariah, Bushmaster proceeds to wreak havoc
on her plans. In the fifth episode, he sabotages the grand opening of her new
community center by killing her associates and mounting their heads on
spikes just inside the front doors. This brutality goes far beyond whatever vio
lence Bushmaster might have actually needed to use in order to achieve his
ends, and it prompts his uncle, Paul “Anansi” Macintosh, to criticize him se
verely. Anansi warns him that his crusade endangers the Jamaican immigrant
community in Brooklyn. Bushmaster’s attempt to right the wrongs of the past
threatens to annihilate his present, but Bushmaster simply does not care.
The seventh episode has Bushmaster continuing his crusade against
Mariah, despite having successfully taken both the “Harlem’s Paradise” club
and all of her money. In yet another conversation with Anansi, Bushmaster
gives us insight into his motivation. He describes how his mother, talking
about the importance of cleanliness and respectability, used to admonish
him for fighting and getting dirty. However, “her eyes always smiled. She
couldn’t hide her pride. Because she knew that I was fighter, a warrior, I’d
always be free. A McIver like my father. Never a puppet or a slave” (“On
and On,” 2.7). Bushmaster contrasts fighting for pride, freedom, etc. with
bourgeois life which strives for respectability and calm stability. It’s better
to go out fighting than to accept a partial victory. Defeating Mariah without
killing her cannot satisfy Bushmaster’s lust for vengeance, and killing her is
worth any cost.
Bushmaster’s continuing violence draws the attention of Luke Cage and
the police department, leading to his eventual downfall. His desperation
causes him to take a drastic dose of nightshade, the plant that gives him his
miraculous strength at the gradual cost of his sanity. He is eventually taken
home to Jamaica, broken and unsuccessful, possessing none of the things
he came to New York to claim. His attempt to live a life continuous with
the drama and glory of his parents’ past not only destroyed his present, it
consumed itself as well. His blind devotion to the past led him into battles
88 Levi Morrow
he could not win, ultimately pushing him to overdose on the drug that made
him supernaturally strong. He ends the show mentally and physical broken,
incapable of enjoying the wealth and power he strove to reclaim. Living faith
fully with respect to the past requires a full life in the present in which the
past can be made manifest.
Mariah Stokes
City Councilwoman Mariah Dillard nee Stokes plays a pivotal role in the
first season of Luke Cage, killing one of the main villains, her cousin Cornell
“Cottonmouth” Stokes, and taking over his arms business (along with the as
sociated criminal apparatus). When the second season picks up her story, she
is working on selling off the arms business so that she can buy herself a new,
legitimate life. Her plan is to open a community center as part of her “Family
First Initiative,” named for Mama Mabel’s slogan, “Family first.” This will
“redeem” Mama Mabel and the entire Stokes family, replacing their violent
effect on the Harlem community with benevolence and care (“On and On,”
2.7). She tries to deny the Stokes’ violent legacy while simultaneously replac
ing it with a legacy of beneficence for the community.
Despite Mariah's best efforts at escaping her past, her past comes looking
for her in the shape of John “Bushmaster” McIver. Before revealing their
connected pasts, or his violent intentions, Bushmaster buys Mariah’s gun
business from her. He then uses those guns to kill her henchmen and hunt her
down. He leaves her for dead as he burns her house down around her, and
she escapes only by the good graces of Luke Cage. She eventually agrees to
testify against Bushmaster in exchange for police protection and immunity
for her role in the arms deal, but this becomes unnecessary after Luke seem
ingly defeats Bushmaster.
Confronted with Bushmaster’s unending violence, Mariah gives up on her
project of escaping/rewriting the Stokes family history. She decides to regain
her criminal enterprise and go on the offensive against Bushmaster herself.
Moreover, she fulfills Anansi’s warnings about the effect of Bushmaster’s
crusade on Brooklyn’s Jamaican community. After capturing and interrogat
ing Anansi, Mariah walks him to the restaurant run by his wife, where she has
everyone inside killed. She personally shoots Anansi (and one other person),
after setting him ablaze while still alive. She reenacted her mother’s most
extreme act of violence, the violence she once tried to escape.
If Bushmaster’s thoughts and motivations are often expressed in dialogue
with Anansi, Mariah’s relationship is often worked out in dialogue with
her daughter, Tilda Dillard. In episode seven, Mariah explains to Tilda
why she went back to her old Stokes family ways, explaining that Mama
Mabel always said that pressure reveals who we really are; the pressure
of Bushmaster’s attacks has revealed that Mariah Dillard is really Mariah
Stokes. When Tilda says that Mariah has to leave the name behind, Mariah
responds that loyalty to her family, actively becoming part of the family
story, “redeems all of this,” redeems the violence inherent in said family
story (“On and On,” 2.7).
Where Mariah and Tilda agree is that they both thought Cornell’s death
would mean the end of the Stokes name, after which only “Dillard would
remain.” However, as Mariah now appreciates, that was mistaken. “Dillard
is a fantasy,” she says. “Stokes is real. Our blood is burden. A lot of people
had to die to make this family what it is.” The blood of the Stokes and the
blood of their victims muddles together in the weight of Mariah’s past.8 The
idea that she could choose to be a Dillard rather than a Stokes, a respectable
public figure rather than the head of a criminal organization, was nothing but
a fantasy. Episode nine ends with Mariah recommitting herself to the Stokes
family and its criminal lifestyle. “I’m done playing by the rules. Denying
who 1 really am. No more. 1 am who 1 am. And I want what’s mine” (“For
Pete’s Sake,” 2.9). In episode ten, just before she personally kills Anansi and
another Jamaican (while having all of the people in the restaurant executed),
she corrects someone who calls her “Mariah Dillard": "The name is Stokes.
Mariah Stokes” (“The Main Ingredient,” 2.10).
From this point on, Mariah embraces the name “Stokes” wholeheartedly.
She surpasses the wrongdoings of Mama Mabel and Cornell Stokes by bring
ing drugs into Harlem for the first time, even into “Harlem’s Paradise” itself.
Ultimately, it is the legacy of the Stokes family that brings about her end.
After Mariah ends up in prison, Tilda comes to visit her and kills her with a
poisoned kiss, a Stokesian act of her very own. After finally choosing to live
as a Stokes, Mariah quickly dies by a Stokes.
Luke Cage
Unlike Bushmaster and Mariah, Luke Cage doesn’t have a specific goal he
sets out to achieve and toward which he strives throughout the season. He
is primarily reactive, putting out fires and shutting down criminals as he en
counters them. However, he experiences a continuous arc of development in
two related areas: his anger and aggression, on the one hand, and his relation
ship with his father. James Lucas, on the other.
Starting with the first episode, Luke’s anger and aggression become increas
ingly evident as he struggles to shut down the sale of drugs with his name on the
package, and as he gets frustrated with a seemingly ineffective and restrictive
police force. Luke’s girlfriend, Claire, connects this to his relationship with his
90 Levi Morrow
father. She says that Luke should go talk to his father, who has recently moved
to town. She thinks that confronting his relationship with his father is the only
way Luke will get a handle on his anger. Luke repeatedly denies both the need
to speak with his father and the need to be less angry and aggressive. He says
that anger and aggression are just what it means to be a black hero in a white
world. His continuing argument with Claire becomes more intense over the first
few episodes, coming to a crescendo in episode three when Luke, in the heat
of the moment, puts his hand through the wall of their shared apartment. After
this, Claire leaves New York and stays off screen for the rest of the season.
Luke eventually does reconcile with his father, though only when circum
stances force him to do so. After briefly hiding himself and another character
from Bushmaster in his father’s church, they end up on the run together, along
with Mariah and Tilda. They slowly talk about how Luke felt abandoned by
his father while he was in prison, because his father believed he was guilty
despite his protestations to the contrary. Moreover, Luke’s mother developed
cancer and died while Luke was in prison, and James blamed Luke for that.
Slowly, as they talk, Luke comes to a healthier relationship with both his
father and his role as “Harlem’s Hero.” In the ninth episode, he decides not
to hand Mariah over to Bushmaster because he “was raised better than that”
(“For Pete’s Sake,” 2.9). Accepting his past ultimately leads Luke to choose
a less violent approach to stopping criminals.9
FRANZ ROSENZWEIG'S THEOLOGY OF CREATION
Franz Rosenzweig’s theology is deeply concerned with the way people create
meaning through the interplay between their lived experience in the present
and the pre-existing world that they experience. We are all bom into a world
that we did not create, and that world, with all its history, has a determining
influence on who we are. This already existing reality—in essence, the past—
is what Franz Rosenzweig called “creation.” The past is a critical aspect of
our existence, grounding our experience in the present (Gordon 2003, 197).
Rosenzweig lays this out, albeit somewhat opaquely, in the second part of
The Star of Redemption'.
Thus the concept of creation, which was our starting point, at the end emerges
here into bright daylight. It is the idea of the being-from-the-beginning which is
contained in the conception of being created “in the beginning.” Here we learn
that the world exists before all. It is simply there. This being of the world is its
pre-existence: “What are you making of the world? It is already made.” What
we recognized as the configuration in the world manifests itself as creature we
now recognize as the decisive mark of creation altogether. For now we grasp
“Those Are the Ancestors You Hear” 91
existence as being-in-existence, as pre-existence, and not simply any longer

as universal being that conveys everything individual within it. . . . Both the
existence of the world and the power of God merge in the new concept of
being-in-existence. Both are “already in existence.” The world is already made
on the basis of its creatureliness, its capacity for ever being created anew, while
God has already created it on the bases of his eternal creative power. And only
for this reason it “exists” and is yet renewed with each morning. (Rosenzweig
1971, 131-32)
Creation is the idea that the world exists as created, and God as creator,
primordially. Nothing existed before it, and every other truth comes after it
(Pollock 2009, 239-40). Creation is our pre-existence, the world into which
the individual is born.
With this, Rosenzweig pushes back against the idea that the individual cre
ates herself and her world (Pollock 2009, 239-40). Man is not the measure of
all things, because the human being is always preceded by the created world.
Rosenzweig identified this hubris, the idea that the individual or collective
can exist wholly in the present, without any past, as a critical error in modem
philosophy and theology (Batnitzky 2000, 42-43). The modern projects of
theology and philosophy therefore need repairing, says Rosenzweig, primar
ily in the sense of restoring the past to its former glory. Embracing the world
as created means recognizing God as creator and man as creature. It means
recognizing that the individual is always situated within God’s world and is
never in full control of world history.10 Man is a character in history, rather
than its author.
There is thus a certain humble piety in embracing our creatureliness, in
accepting the hermeneutical horizons within which God has situated us.
However, creation cannot determine who we are absolutely; we may start
within those horizons, but we also exceed them, living in the here and now. If
Rosenzweig identifies the past with the biblical term “creation,” he identifies
the present with “revelation.” Revelation has a critical role in creation itself,
which only becomes creation retroactively in light of revelation.
The past creation is demonstrated from out (of) the living, present revelation—
demonstrated, that is, pointed out. In the glow of the experienced miracle of
revelation, a past that prepares and foresees this miracle becomes visible. The
creation which becomes visible in revelation is creation of the revelation. At
this point the experiential and presentive character is immovably fixed, and only
here can revelation receive a past. But it really must do so. God does not answer
the soul’s acknowledgment, its “I am thine,” with an equally simple “Thou art
mine.” Rather he reaches back into the past and identifies himself as the one
who originated and indicated this whole dialogue between himself and the soul:
“I have called thee by name: thou art mine.” (Rosenzweig 1971, 182-83)
92 Levi Morrow
The wholly present moment of revelation, when the individual experiences

God’s commanding love, enlightens the individual regarding their past as
well. She suddenly sees that the name God calls her was her name all along.
In a sense, experiencing the divine in the present gives the individual a new
perspective on her past. She suddenly becomes aware that what she had
thought was a meaningless past was actually a divine creation. As one lead
ing Rosenzweig scholar put it, “Defining moments in one’s life, one might
suggest, shed light on the past and suggest the way one’s past has prepared
for and led up to these very defining moments” (Pollock 2009, 24142). The
past and the present shape each other simultaneously. We understand our past
through our present and our present through our past.
This circular understanding allows for the present as a ground from which
to critique the past. Rosenzweig’s understanding of creation, taken by itself,
risks sliding into uncritical sanctification of the past. If the past determines
who we are, then any act can be justified as conformity with the past. The
critical, circular relationship between past and present means that consider
ations rooted in the individual’s experience of the present can override or
shift the concerns of the past.
Created as a Jew
There is a biographical aspect of this theology that is worth highlighting.
Rosenzweig initially approached the past not just as a philosopher and a
theologian, but as a historian. Rosenzweig studied history in university,
writing his doctorate under the great German historian Friedrich Meinecke.
However, he eventually lost faith in historicism’s ability to establish the
meaningfulness of history or events (Mendes-Flohr 1991, 311-37). He took
up a radically subjectivist form of Christianity that denied any meaning to
the world or history at all (Pollock 2014, 51-96, 96-126)." He ultimately
decided not to convert to Christianity after an intense discussion with his
close friend, Eugen Rosenstock. Rosenzweig later said of the conversa
tion: “What it means that God created the world and [is] not just the God
of revelation—this I know precisely out of the Leipzig night-conversation
of 7.7.13. At that time, I was on the best road to Marcionitism” (Benjamin
2014, 19). Rosenstock convinced him of the importance of accepting, rather
than rejecting, the world (with this, the idea of redemption suddenly be
comes possible as well, but that is beyond the scope of this chapter). As op
posed to Rosenzweig's almost “Marcionite” theology, which saw the world
as opposed to God, Rosenstock convinced him that God created the world,
and thus the two could not be in opposition to each other. Accepting his
worldly creatureliness led Rosenzweig to embrace his Jewishness (Pollock
2014, 51-96). He was born a Jew, and it played (and would increasingly
play) a determining role in his life.
This is perhaps best demonstrated by an open letter Rosenzweig wrote
to his contemporary Martin Buber on the topic of Jewish law (Rosenzweig
1955, 72-92). The letter, known as “The Builders,” covers a lot of theologi
cal ground, but its main point plays on a homiletic rabbinic reading of Isaiah
54:13: “All your children shall be taught by the Lord, and great shall be the
prosperity of your children.”12 The rabbinic reading focuses on a Hebrew
pun: the Hebrew word for “your children.” “banayikh,” in Isaiah 54:13 looks
and sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “your builders,” “bonayikh.” The
rabbinic homily thus suggests that Isaiah’s words really refer to the “build
ers” of Jewish law, namely the rabbis themselves, who organized the rabbinic
legal corpus.13
This punning exegesis provides Rosenzweig with the underlying structure
of his argument for following Jewish law. While he in principle agrees with
Buber that any given individual could experience a revelatory divine “com
mand” within any act, not only those within the canon of Jewish law, he ar
gues to Buber that following traditional Jewish law is critical. This is because
while a person can theoretically experience any act as a divine command,
that divine command won’t necessarily be Jewish in any significant sense, it
won’t necessarily be a mitsvah (the traditional Jewish term, literally meaning
“command”). Rosenzweig and Buber are starkly distinguishing between writ
ten, generalizable “laws” and the instantaneous, singular “command” that a
person can sense within herself (Rosenzweig 1955, 75-76, 85-86).
Returning to the rabbinic homily, Rosenzweig comments, “In the words of
the Talmud, we have only to be sons, in order to become builders” (Rosen
zweig 1955, 88). Being a “son,” rooted in the Jewish past, is what enables
being a “builder,” someone who experiences the Jewish divine command of
a mitsvah. A person who experiences a revelatory “command” in the pres
ent senses the divine within a specific action and thus “builds” the corpus of
Jewish law by adding this action to it. This process, Rosenzweig argues, is
predicated on being actively engaged in the praxis of traditional Jewish law.
Otherwise, a person’s “command” may be a divine revelation, but it will not
be a Jewish revelation, and it will bear no relationship to traditional Judaism;
it will not “build” Jewish law. The relationship between the two terms of the
pun, between “children” and “builders,” is thus explained through the rela
tionship between past and present, creation and revelation.
Rosenzweig is essentially applying his ideas of revelation and creation to the
specific issue of Jewish law. For an action to be a Jewish action, it must partake
in the Jewish past, which is to say Jewish law. Jewish law is the collection of
actions that accumulated throughout the history of the Jewish people. Parallel
94 Levi Morrow
to creation, to the pre-existing world into which we are bom and which defines
us, Jewish law is the context in which any Jewish act occurs. While revelation,
the individual’s singular encounter with the divine in the present moment, can
take place in any act, in order for it to be a Jewish revelation it must take place
within a Jewish context, within the context of Jewish law. While Buber and
Rosenzweig agreed about the possibilities of revelation, they disagreed about
the necessity of creation. Buber seems to have shifted away from this position
in some areas over time, but in the realm of Jewish law he held firm: the law of
the past cannot have anything to do with revelation.14
As discussed above, Rosenzweig claims both that the present is grounded
in the past and that the past is discovered and shaped by the present. In “The
Builders,” this latter part of the relationship manifests in the capacity to de
termine which parts of traditional Jewish law to uphold and which to let fall
away. “The danger of looking back is, however, that, although one waits for
both, one fails to distinguish between the dead waste in the stream and those
whose slower speed is due to their proximity to the source” (Rosenzweig
1955, 89). The importance of the past veers too easily toward the uncritical
embrace of every single aspect of the past. However, there are inevitably ele
ments of the past that ought to be left behind intermingled with the elements
that bear personal religious significance for the individual; the trick is in de
termining which is which. Only the individual who follows Jewish law, the
“son,” can decide which laws to follow, which to abandon, and even which
new laws to add; only they can be a “builder” (Rosenzweig 1955, 86-88). It
is our rootedness in the past that situates and enables our free action in the
present (Pollock 2014, 85-94). In Rosenzweig’s case, it was his recognition
that he was created a Jew that led him to become one of the most creative
Jewish philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century.15
LUKE CAGE AND CREATION
Having laid out Franz Rosenzweig’s theology of creation, the time has come to
return to L uke Cage. Above, we examined the primary character arcs of the sea
son. What new aspects of these arcs come into focus in light of Rosenzweig’s
theology? How can his understanding of creation and revelation help us under
stand Luke Cage? As we shall see, the characters of Luke Cage are grappling
with the same issues Rosenzweig brings to the fore in his theology of creation.
Bushmaster
Bushmaster is obsessed with the past. He wants to embody the violent claims
of the past in present vengeance. He is so determined to achieve this goal that
he does not care what happens as a result. For all he cares, his friends and
loved ones can perish in the fire of the past, as long as the Stokes burn as well.
This is in fact what happens: Bushmaster successfully takes everything from
Mariah and causes her death (albeit indirectly), but the Jamaicans closest to
him in New York are killed in the process. He leaves New York a broken
man, relying on others to put the finishing touches on his vengeful project.
On one level, this is a cautionary' tale about obsession with the past. More
immanently, the story moves from this obsession with the past toward giv
ing the past its proper place. In the final episode of the season, a broken
Bushmaster’s closest friends take him home to Jamaica to recover, with one
remarking, “Johnny finally got to top of the hill. Now, he can’t even enjoy
the view” (“They Reminisce Over You,” 2.13). He succeeded in his goal of
destroying the Stokes, but was himself destroyed in the process.
In Rosenzweig’s terms, Bushmaster embodies creation. If creation is the
idea that the past constitutes who we are in the present, Bushmaster tries to
be defined by nothing other than his past. In his attempt to right the injus
tices of the past, he constantly runs into the real consequences of his actions.
Bushmaster’s opposition between healthy, respectable bourgeoisie life and
making war for the sake of the past leaves no room for a meaningful present.
He finds meaning in the past to the exclusion of a thriving, present-based
life. Bushmaster demonstrates the dangers of the creation, of rooting your
life (religious or otherwise) in the past. Religious meaning cannot be derived
purely from the past. This is why Rosenzweig anchors the awareness of cre
ation within the experience of revelation, to enable a critical evaluation of the
former. Without a sense of revelation in the present, Bushmaster is destroyed
by his faith in the past.
Mariah Stokes
Mariah, as we have seen, attempts to do just the opposite, to deny creation.
Mariah wants to deny that she has any past whatsoever. If she could get
her way, she would create her new life ex nihilo, embracing the convenient
“fiction” of her married name, “Dillard.” She wants to escape the criminal
violence of her family’s past and make herself anew, exactly the type of hu
bris against which Rosenzweig was fighting. Creation, Rosenzweig argues,
means recognizing the limits of human existence, starting with the historical
situation of the individual. The individual is always situated in a certain mo
ment, meaning she has a past that critically shapes who she is; to deny this
is to deny creation.
It is only once Mariah learns to embrace her family past, to embrace cre
ation, that she speaks about redemption. Speaking to Tilda about the impor
tance of passing on the family legacy, Mariah remarks, “It redeems all of this.
96 Levi Morrow
Redeems me” (“On and On,” 2.7). All of Mariah’s crimes take on a different,
redeemed meaning when she begins to live a life illuminated by the fullness
of her past. However, she quickly goes too far in the other direction and falls
to the same fate as Bushmaster. She embraces her past uncritically, allowing
it to override the concerns of the present. She sees it as a dichotomy, either
Stokes or Dillard, rather than looking for an integrative option.
Luke Cage
Luke is the only one of the characters who manages to achieve a stable
relationship with his past. He begins the season by denying his relation
ship with his past, but ultimately ends up embracing it. However, unlike
the others he is able to do so with balance and moderation. When he shifts
from denying his relationship with his father to accepting it, he does not
do so at the expense of his life in the present. When his father asks Luke
to come away with him, Luke refuses in favor of remaining in Harlem as
its protector. However, the manner in which he protects Harlem becomes
less volatile and aggressive, a shift Luke attributes to his upbringing at the
hands of his father. Luke successfully balances both creation and revela
tion, past and present.
A notable turning point in Luke’s arc takes place when Bushmaster para
lyzes him and kicks him into the Hudson River, though we only hear about
this later. While unconscious underwater, Luke has a vision of his past. He
recalls a time when his father and mother came to visit him while he was in
prison, and in this vision his mother tells him that she believes his innocence.
Describing this experience to his father, Luke says that he felt God was telling
him that “The world may be my problem but it’s not always my fault” (“On
and On,” 2.7). Luke thus frames his vision of the past as a divine revelation,
a source of critical divine guidance about how he should live his life. This is
the most explicitly theological presentation of the past, and it guides the title
character toward a meaningful, purposeful life.
Thus all three main characters participate in the show’s theology of the
past. The past is a necessary and unavoidable source of guidance and mean
ing, one marked as divinely significant. While the show eschews typical
religious rituals and discourse, it foregrounds theological language such as
“revelation” and “redemption.” It attributes great significance to the past, and
its one explicitly religious character, Pastor James Lucas, identifies “God”
with whatever element in the past that makes a person who they are (“They
Reminisce Over You,” 2.13). The show thus provides a theology without a re
ligion (in stark contrast with Netflix’s Daredevil, where the main character’s
religion takes center stage), manifest in the events of an individual’s life and
in the facts of her past. The righteous individual, the hero, is the one who can
find meaning in the past without being a slave to it.
THE THEMATIC OF NAMES
By way of conclusion, 1 want to draw attention to the theme of names that

runs throughout Luke Cage season two, and which has striking parallels in
Franz Rosenzweig’s writings. Luke insists that people should call him “Luke
Cage” instead of the name his father gave him and still insists on calling him,
“Carl Lucas.” Bushmaster corrects people who call him “Johnny,” telling
them that he goes by “Bushmaster” now. And perhaps most intensely, Mariah
struggles personally with whether she ought rightly be called “Dillard” or
“Stokes,” and all the while Bushmaster aggressively rebukes anyone who
calls her "Dillard,” saying she is really a Stokes.
What is the relationship between a name and that which it names? Is the
connection inherent, with the name expressing some characteristic inherent
in the named object, or is it conventional, with the name saying more about
those who use it than about that which it names? Moreover, no one typically
chooses their own name. Names are something we give to others, something
we use to denote people and objects which we encounter. So to say that a
name is “our name” is not to say that it belongs to us so much as to say that
it is what others have always called us. It carries the weight and connotations
of the life we have lived, the encounters of our past.
Franz Rosenzweig was very sensitive to these and other issues regarding
the working of names. In “The New Thinking,” Rosenzweig notes that “the
problem of the name of God is only a part of the logical problems of the name
in general” (Rosenzweig 2000b, 129).16 His small book Understanding the
Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God, is dedicated entirely
to the question of how names work, with a specific focus on how this affects
people who try to use names to understand their world.17
In a move more parallel to the stories of the names in Luke Cage season
two, Franz Rosenzweig also wrote two letters expressing deep concern with
the nature of his own name. In the first, he writes to a friend about why his
own German first name, Franz, is so dissatisfying to him.
One thing is certain, I have no real feeling about my first name. I can only guess
why this is. It seems to me that it may be because my parents gave it to me with
out any particular feeling, simply because they “liked it” (and why did they like
it? because at that time it was “different”; only later were there other Franzes
in the Jewish community of Cassel). It’s as though my parents had seen it in a
98 Levi Morrow
shop window, walked inside, and bought it. It has nothing traditional about it,
no memory, no history, not even an anecdote, scarcely a whim—it was simply a
passing fancy. A family name, a saint's name, a hero’s name, a poetic name, a
symbolic name, all these are good: they have grown naturally, not been bought
ready-made. One should be named after somebody or something. Else a name
is really only empty breath. (Glatzer 1953, 57; emphasis added)
Rosenzweig here complains that his first name, Franz, lacks any weighty
past. His parents chose it on a whim, as if they had impulse bought it while
waiting in the checkout line. It expresses their present moment in Cassel,
their relationship to a social context that prized individualism and didn’t have
anyone named Franz, but it does not have a past. It expresses a bourgeoise in
dividualism rather than a Jude-sein, a being-Jewish, an existential belonging
to a collective with a shared past.18 Ideally, Rosenzweig said, a name should
not be “empty breath” but a naming-after, a recurrence of the past within the
present moment (cf. Rosenzweig 1971, 188). It’s not something you can just
buy at the store and take home, but something that has to sprout organically
out of the past. If our pasts play a determining role in who we are, then our
names should reflect that.
In contrast to how his parents named him, Rosenzweig had a strong sense
of what his real Hebrew name should have been.19
Now I know perfectly well that my [Hebrew] name is Levi, which is supposed
to correspond to Louis. But this is a ticklish matter, for the whole am haaretzus
[ignorance] of my early years is bound up with it. Only Levites can properly
be called Levi.. . . Grandfather Louis’s name was, of course, not Levi, though
I had Levi carved on father’s tombstone without bothering to investigate. As I
later found out from Uncle Traugott’s tombstone, his real name was Yehudah
[Judah], which also, of course, corresponds to Louis: the connecting link is the
lion Judah of Jacob’s blessing. Consequently my correct name should have been
Judah ben Samuel, which is exactly the name of the great man whose middle
sized reincarnation upon the road of ibbur [transmigration] I am: Judah ha-Levi.
(Glatzer 1961, 167)20
As this letter to his mother makes clear, Rosenzweig identified strongly with
the medieval Jewish philosopher and poet Judah Halevi. In addition to the
numerous parallels between Rosenzweig and Halevi’s respective theologies,
Rosenzweig spent much of his final years, while suffering from crippling
paralysis due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, translating Halevi’s poetry
from medieval Hebrew into twentieth-century German (Rosenzweig 2000a;
Benjamin 2009, 65-102). He felt the weight of Halevi pressing out of the past
and into his own life, and was convinced that his Hebrew name should reflect
that, rather than reflecting an incidental, momentary impulse.21
Rosenzweig’s struggle to reject a name rooted in the present and find for
himself a name rooted in the past echoes the drama of names in Luke Cage.
Bushmaster shares Rosenzweig’s desire for a name bearing the weight of the
past. He throws off the name “Johnny McIver” in favor of the name of the
rum brand that was stolen from his family, along with all the money it was
worth, by the Stokes. He wants to be named for the violent past that calls out
for retribution. Mariah, at least initially, takes the opposite approach. She
wants to take a new name, Dillard, representative of a brighter present rather
than the dark past of the family name, Stokes, into which she was born. Luke
wants to forget his father and the name his father gave him, replacing them
with a name and life of his own making, much like Mariah.
All three characters choose between the names their parents gave them
and names they would create for themselves (in contrast to Rosenzweig,
who wants to choose between the name his parents gave him and a name
he dreams up out of the past). The different names, however, have different
significances in each case. Bushmaster chooses a name that expresses the
violent past, rather than his given name reflective of the Jamaican com
munity in the present. In the language of The Star, he wants creation but
not revelation. Mariah is the opposite; she chooses a name for her present,
rather than accepting the name of her past. She wants to have revelation
without creation. Both Bushmaster and Mariah learn the hard way that you
have to have both. You can’t let your past consume the present, because
the present is where people live, and they will all suffer if given over
wholly to the past. And you can’t pretend the past doesn’t exist, because
you will one day wake up to discover that it has consumed your present.
Luke begins on the same page as Mariah, attempting to deny his past, but
throughout his arc he learns to accept his past and the meaning it bears
for his present life. Luke Cage thus presents a challenge for its audience,
asking if they can see their own names as carrying the divine significance
and meaning of the past.
NOTES
1. As a recently released series, Netflix’s Luke Cage has received relatively little
scholarly attention, particularly in connection with religion. That said, for a good
look at some of the religious themes in the first season of Luke Cage, see Derry et
al. 2015, 123-55.
2. For brevity’s sake, "Luke Cage” refers to Luke Cage season two.
3. Batnitzky 2000; Gordon 2003. Batnitzky and Gordon disagree about whether
Hans Georg Gadamer or Martin Heidegger is a better comparison for Franz Rosenz
weig’s hermeneutics. See Gordon 2003, 12n29, 133, 182-83.
100 Levi Morrow
4. Der Stern der Erldsung in the original German. While Rosenzweig wrote al
most exclusively in German, for simplicity’s sake I will cite only from the standard
English translations.
5. Discussing creation in this context will also require discussing revelation.
Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption is ultimately inseparable from the other two, but
the requirements of space force us to leave it out of this paper. Fortunately, creation,
and the adjunct role sometimes played by revelation, are sufficient for exploring the
theology of the past in Luke Cage. However, it is worth noting that typical forms of
organized religion really only appear in The Star when Rosenzweig begins to discuss
redemption.
6. This line, originally from Psalms 118:22, has a history all its own when it
comes to pop culture in general and Jamaica in specific. For example, see Erskine
2001,97-109.
7. All quotations from Luke Cage are copied from Springfield! 2019.
8. This echoes Rosenzweig’s idea that commitment and sacrifice, found in their
peak form in the self-sacrifice of martyrdom, come together to create truth. See
Batnitzky 2000, 42-46. Compare also Bushmaster’s comment, quoted above, about
being a warrior rather than a puppet or a slave, and our discussion below of the past
as fundamentally amoral.
9. After this point, Luke’s father departs the show for the remainder of the sea
son. Luke eventually returns to his violent approach at the very end of the season,
choosing to replace Mariah as Harlem’s ruler in order to take a more proactive ap
proach to crime prevention.
10. This is most striking in Rosenzweig’s discussion of redemption and in his
rejection of the modern idea of historical progress. For the former, see the excellent
discussion in Pollock 2014, 209-15. For the latter, see Rosenzweig 1971, 99-100,
225-27.
11. This is in contrast to earlier depictions of Rosenzweig’s “conversion” as a shift
from skeptical philosophy to revelational faith, which Pollock claims all ultimately
stem from the depiction in Glatzer 1953. See Pollock 2014, 5-8.
12. Translation taken from the New Revised Standard Version
13. Cf. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakhot 64a.
14. In “The Builders” itself, Rosenzweig discusses Buber’s shift away from this
position when it comes to traditional Jewish texts.
15. Of particular note is a letter Rosenzweig wrote to Meinecke explaining why
he could not accept the academic teaching position Meinecke had arranged for him,
instead choosing to devote himself to the education of the German-Jewish com
munity, following the “dark drive” that he “names” his Judaism. See Glatzer 1953,
94—98. Amid powerful imagery, Rosenzweig frames his innermost self as something
he inherited from the past:
I descended into the vaults of my being. ... I approached the ancient treasure
chest whose existence I had never wholly forgotten. . . . Then 1 climbed back
again to the upper stories and spread out before me “what treasures I had found:
they did not fade in the sheer light of day. These, indeed, were my own trea
sures, my most personal possessions, things inherited, not borrowed! By own

ing them and ruling over them I had gained something entirely new, namely the
right to live. [Emphasis added]
In this letter, Rosenzweig depicts his return to Judaism as a return to his deepest
self, which is itself a return to his inherited, communal past. In fact, Rosenzweig cre
ates an opposition between “things inherited” and “things borrowed,” such that the
only way for something to be deeply personal and inherent to the self is for it to be
part of a person’s past, rather than something picked up in the present.
16. Rosenzweig doesn’t explain what he has in mind with this line, but based on
The Star and Understanding the Sick and the Healthy, he means something like what
the connection is between a name and the object to which it refers, particularly in light
of the way objects change over time.
17. Rosenzweig 1999. See also the helpful introduction by Hilary Putnam, who
reads Rosenzweig’s theory of names with an analytic bent.
18. On the unique form of collective being of the Jewish people according to
Rosenzweig, see Gordon 2003, 198-202; Pollock 2014, 121-23.
19. It seems to have been common in Rosenzweig’s day for many Jews to receive
a name in both German and traditional Hebrew.
20. For an excellent discussion of both this and the previously cited letter, see
Benjamin 2009, 67-68. For a discussion of the logic behind this second letter, see
ibid., 68n7.
21. Rosenzweig’s tantalizing reference to the doctrine of “transmigration,” of the
rebirth of souls in new bodies generation after generation, should probably be taken
as a playful metaphor rather than a literal, metaphysical claim.
Chapter Seven
Spider-Man and the

Theology of Weakness
Gregory Stevenson
Since his debut in 1962, Spider-Man has regularly been hailed as one of the
most popular of all superheroes. This popularity derives from two features of
his heroic identity: his relatability—the normal, real-world problems that af
flict him make him a super-powered reflection of ourselves—and his respon
sibility—represented by his frequently expressed motto: “With great power
there must also come great responsibility.”1 By means of these two poles of
relatability and responsibility, Spider-Man changed the paradigm for what a
superhero could be (Fingeroth 2004, 146). Yet, neither of these is unique to
Spider-Man. He is not the only superhero with relatable, real-world problems.
Other superheroes struggle with money troubles, relationship problems, and
failure. Likewise, though he may vocalize the relationship between power
and responsibility more frequently, it is certainly not unique to him. Virtu
ally every superhero attempts to use their power responsibly. In fact, it is a
requirement for being a superhero.
What sets Spider-Man apart is how he understands the nature of power
itself. Perhaps more than any other superhero, Spider-Man embodies the
paradox that true power requires weakness. Viewing Spider-Man in light of
the biblical theology of weakness clarifies the deeper nuances inherent in
this character’s embrace of power and responsibility. These nuances are on
display in two recent examples within the Spider-Man canon: Dan Slott’s
2012-2018 run on The Amazing Spider-Man/The Superior Spider-Man
and the 2017 Marvel film Spider-Man: Homecoming. Examining recent
explorations on this theme in different genres (comics versus film) and in
different formats (long-form storytelling versus a contained story) high
lights the consistency of the theme and its integral nature to the character
of Spider-Man.
103
104 Gregory Stevenson
THE THEOLOGY OF WEAKNESS
A constant theme throughout the Bible is God’s inversion of the values and
standards of the world (Ortlund 2010, 86, 107). Those things deemed pow
erful by worldly standards (wealth, status, ambition, physical strength) are
proven ineffectual in the light of God’s activity in the world. This theme is
best captured in the paradox that true power manifests through weakness.
Throughout the Bible God often works most powerfully through charac
ters who appear weak by worldly standards—an elderly Abraham, young
shepherd boy David, a teenaged Mary (for a fuller survey of this theme see
Ortlund 2010, 88-106). Luke in his Gospel expresses this paradox through
his rendering of the Divine Reversal, the notion that God upends the value
system of the world. Thus the Jesus of Luke repeatedly declares that “the
first shall be last and the last shall be first” (13:30), that “those who exalt
themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be ex
alted” (14:11; 18:14), and that “whoever is least among you all is the great
est” (9:48). In the book of Revelation, John informs the seven churches that
victory comes through weakness—through a willingness to endure suffering
and even to accept death. Revelation also captures well a central notion of the
Christian faith, that is that the cross of Christ is the quintessential symbol of
power through weakness. The saints “triumphed” over Satan “by the blood
of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11).
One of the best places, however, to witness this “theology of weakness,”
as Marva Dawn calls it (Dawn 2001, 35), is in Paul’s letters to Corinth. The
church at Corinth appears fully invested in the value system of the world and
impressed by worldly notions of power. They are drawn to influential teach
ers (1 Cor. 1-4), seduced by impressive pedigrees (2 Cor. 10), and captivated
by displays of spiritual power (1 Cor. 14). In response Paul reminds them that
“God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the
weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:27). As Ortlund has
effectively shown (2010, 100-101), Paul explores this paradox of strength
through weakness most consistently in 2 Corinthians where he declares that
“victory comes through captivity (2:12-17) . . . sufficiency through insuffi
ciency (3:1-6) .. . life through death (4:7-15). . . blessing through suffering
(6:3-10). . . salvation through grief (7:2-10). . . abundance through poverty
(8:1-2, 9) . . . commendation through denigration (10:10-18) . . . boasting
through hardship (11:16-30).” In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul invokes his own ex
perience when he details a “thorn in the flesh” that left him weak and which
God would not remove despite Paul’s repeated prayers. Paul learned from
this that when his own power is stripped away, Christ’s power is then able
to work through him (Dawn 2001, 45). So Paul declares, “That is why, for
Spider-Man and the Theology of Weakness 105
Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses. . . . For when I am weak, then I am

strong” (12:10).
Throughout the biblical tradition, the notion of power through weakness is
a comment on how God operates in the world with respect to human agency.
When I am nothing, when I learn to give up control over my life, then God’s
power is able to manifest through me because only then is my will, my ar
rogance, and my desire for control no longer standing in the way. Defined
in broad theological terms, this weakness is complete submission to the will
of God (Dawn 2001, 37). Several theologians further define this weakness in
terms of its practical expression. It requires an awareness and acceptance of
one’s finitude and limits (Packer 2013, 15, 54; Kreeft 1989, 24), a rejection of
the worldly pursuit of wealth, achievement, and status as the mark of power
(Dawn 2001, 45, 49), an embrace of humility and dependence over against
pride and the independence it spawns (Kreeft 1989, 25), and an acknowledg
ment of our “inability finally to control our life situation relationally, circum
stantially, financially, healthwise” (Packer 2013, 87-88).
Jurgen Moltmann says that the power of God is displayed through weak
ness most meaningfully in the form of the crucified Jesus. The doctrine of
kenoticism (the self-emptying of God through the act of incarnation) reveals
the paradoxical truth that “God is not greater than he is in this humiliation.
God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more
powerful than he is in this helplessness” (Moltmann 1974, 205). Peter
Kreeft, asking how we enact this paradox of the cross in our own lives,
looks to the saints as a model, declaring that they embody the power and
weakness inherent in the cross of Christ by “heroically” giving of them
selves to relieve the suffering of others while at the same time accepting
their own suffering. In other words, they both fight against and accept suf
fering (Kreeft 1989, 23-24).
Whereas this theological tradition of power through weakness highlights
submission to the will of God, Spider-Man has never been an overtly reli
gious character and the interplay of power and weakness in his characteriza
tion is not grounded in a specific relationship with God. Rather, Spider-Man
represents a secularized version of this theological principle, albeit one with
distinct spiritual overtones.
A SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN?
In the latter part of Dan Slott’s ten-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man, he
presents a story arc that demonstrates it is not the motto itself (that with great
power comes great responsibility) that defines the character of Spider-Man,
but rather how Peter Parker defines and implements that motto. Dan Slott’s
exploration casts the character of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in sharp relief,
exposing the true essence of his power and responsibility, through a series of
contrasts with others who likewise attempt to wield power responsibly.
Set-Up: The Amazing Spider-Man #698-700

In a wildly controversial move, Dan Slott in late 2012 brought his “Big
Time” story arc to a close by killing off Peter Parker. Otto Octavius (aka
Doctor Octopus), one of Spider-Man’s long-time enemies,2 was dying from
a debilitating disease. Refusing to accept his finitude, Octavius employed
technology he had created to swap his consciousness with that of Spider-
Man’s. Suddenly Octavius finds himself in Peter Parker’s healthy body, while
Parker’s consciousness is now imprisoned in Octavius’ dying form. As Peter
Parker lies dying in Octavius’ body, he sees his life flash before his eyes
while Octavius (in Parker’s body) stands over him dressed as Spider-Man.
In that moment, the technology Octavius used to achieve the mind swap cre
ates a link between Octavius’ consciousness and that of Parker’s so that Otto
Octavius witnesses all of the memories of Peter Parker. Overwhelmed by the
weight of Peter’s memories, Octavius promises the dying Peter that he will
faithfully carry on his legacy as Spider-Man, but confesses that he doesn’t
know how. In response, Peter informs him that “with great power must come
great responsibility.” As Peter Parker dies in Octavius’ body, Octavius stands
tall in Spider-Man’s body and vows to fulfill that mission, declaring, "Know
this, I will carry on in your name. You may be leaving this world, but you are
not leaving it to a villain. I swear. I will be Spider-Man. Better yet with my
unparalleled genius—and my boundless ambition—I’ll be a better Spider-
Man than you ever were. From this day forth, I shall become ... The Superior
Spider-Man” (The Amazing Spider-Man #700; hereafter ASM).
By transferring Spider-Man’s life and mission to one of his greatest vil
lains, Slott allows us to witness how power and responsibility play differently
in the hands of another. Slott establishes the contrast from the outset in that
Octavius’ refusal to accept the limitations of his own mortality and the arro
gance and ambition that drive him to become a “better” Spider-Man identify
an approach that will make power the more important element in that equa
tion. With a new Spider-Man comes a change in title for his flagship series,
for Octavius’ Spider-Man is not merely “Amazing” but “Superior.”
The Superior Spider-Man #1-31

Otto Octavius shares much in common with Peter Parker: both had a tragic
childhood, both are scientists, both attained power through an experiment
gone wrong, and both have a soft spot for Aunt May. The key difference, of
course, is that Octavius is a villain. By casting a villain in the role of Spider-
Man, Slott presents us with a mirror-image that is more akin to that of a
twisted, fun-house mirror. Otto Octavius, as Spider-Man, has vowed to fulfill
Spider-Man’s mission to use his power responsibly. Consequently, Otto’s
stated goal is “to make this world a better place” (The Superior Spider-Man
#20; hereafter SSM).
A primary difference between hero and villain is that heroes are reactive
whereas villains are proactive (Fingeroth 2004, 161-62). According to Fin-
geroth, unless there is no alternative, the hero does not actively seek change
but instead reacts to threats and dangers. As a hero, Peter Parker lets himself
be controlled by the needs of others, responding to situations as they present
themselves. A villain, however, refuses to give up control, preferring to shape
their own destiny and the destiny of the world. In his desire to be a superior
Spider-Man, Octavius identifies Parker’s reactive nature as a weakness, de
claring Parker “a man of limited vision. No plans. No schemes” (SSM #4).
Though he has taken on Spider-Man’s responsibility, Octavius rejects Peter
Parker’s approach to that responsibility, believing he can improve upon it.
Driving those “improvements,” though, is an understanding of power that is
based on arrogance and a refusal to accept limitations.
What drove Otto Octavius as a villain is the same thing that drives him as
a hero: unrelenting ambition. Refusing to be bothered by “the small stuff,”
he sets his sights on making the world a better place and ending criminal ac
tivity in New York once and for all. His ambition pushes him to be superior
to Peter Parker in every way—as a hero, a scientist, and as a man. Because
Otto defines power in line with the worldly emphasis on status and influence,
he seeks public accolades for his victories, frets that the credit for his scien
tific achievements will now go to Peter Parker (whom he is impersonating)
rather than to himself, and takes time out of his hero duties to finish Parker’s
doctoral thesis because he cannot bear not to possess his well-earned title of
“Doctor” (SSM #1). Otto’s arrogance generates a condescending attitude to
ward the police (whom he treats as his minions), toward his enemies (whom
he calls “dolts,” “imbeciles,” and “idiots”), and even toward the very people
he saves, identifying them as “senseless cattle” and declaring that he will
be a better hero than they deserve (SSM #10). His arrogance also results in
a refusal to accept failure or embarrassment. Whereas Peter Parker blamed
himself for his failures. Otto Octavius blames others (SSM#T). Whereas Peter
Parker good naturedly poked fun at himself and took public humiliation in
stride, Otto badly beats up Jester and Screwball when they embarrass him in
public (SSM #6).
Due to his sense of superiority, Otto believes he needs no one’s help and
views independence as a sign of strength. As a scientist, he refuses to work
with others at Horizon Labs and, as a hero, severs his ties with the Avengers.
He declares that it was these very ties to other people that made Peter Parker
“weak” and “dependent” and so, Otto concludes, relying on allies cannot
make him stronger but “only weaker” (SSM #6AU).
Another distinguishing feature between Octavius’ Spider-Man and Park
er’s Spider-Man is their attitude toward limitations. Peter Parker had always
limited himself as Spider-Man by refusing to use his full strength out of fear
of hurting someone or even killing them. Shortly after taking over Spider-
Man’s body, however, Otto realizes how much strength Peter Parker truly
had and that he must have been holding back all those years. He vows not
to hold himself back and to use all power at his disposal in the fight against
evil. This marks a defining distinction in their dueling understandings of
power and responsibility. For Peter Parker, power used responsibly is power
restrained. For Otto Octavius, “great power” means “might makes right” and
“great responsibility” is the willingness to use that power to stop evil at any
cost. Otto believes that the ends justify the means so that any use of power,
if it brings an end to evil, is responsible. When Otto destroys Wilson Fisk’s
building with no concern as to whether Fisk himself died in the process, Of
ficer Carlie Cooper questions his actions. Otto counters that “to let evil flour
ish while I have the power to stop it . . . that, Officer Cooper, would be the
most irresponsible act of all.” Captain Watanabe chimes in: “So might makes
right?” Otto replies, “1 prefer the phrase ‘With great power comes great re
sponsibility.’ But yes, Captain, it does” (SSM #15).
Otto believes that the greater good justifies the use of any form of power
at his disposal. One such form of power is technology. In order to increase
his efficiency at crime fighting, Otto sends out 8,000 Spiderbots to patrol the
city, utilizes giant robots to fight evil, and creates a system to reroute lesser
crimes to the police and fire departments so he can focus on the big picture. In
one instance, Otto convinces a Horizon employee to give him technology that
allows him to collect data from all over the city. When the employee protests
that it is “too much power for one guy,” Otto responds that limiting his access
to power is what would be irresponsible when he argues, “I see everything
in this city. Everything! That is my power! And my responsibility—to watch
over and judge you all!” (SSM #5). Otto is so convinced that technological
power is the ultimate expression of his responsibility that he creates his own
tech company called Parker Industries and installs himself as CEO. When
he announces to Aunt May his grandiose goal to use Parker Industries to
“change the world,” Aunt May, thinking she is talking to her nephew, says,
“That’s not how I raised you. Pride goeth before a fall” (SSM #20).
That fall, however, will not come easily. Rather than setting up the Supe
rior Spider-Man as a straw man to be easily torn down, Slott forces both the
audience and Peter Parker himself to question whether Otto might be right.
Though Otto believed he had killed Peter Parker when he took over his body,
Peter’s consciousness actually survived, buried deep within the brain they
share. Peter has witnessed what Otto has been doing in his body and at times
begins to question himself in light of Otto’s successes. Otto’s unrestrained
use of technology has allowed him to capture four times as many criminals
and to stop more thefts than Peter Parker ever did.
The question of whether or not the ends justify the means has long been at
the heart of the debate over responsible uses of power. Otto believes that any
use of power is justified if it results in stopping evil, whereas Peter argues
that power must be restrained even if that leads to the persistence of evil.
Peter’s refusal to kill his enemies raises an ethical question when those same
enemies go on to kill again. Slott employs this debate as a means of clarifying
the differing approaches of these two Spider-Men when a murderous villain
(codenamed Massacre) that Peter Parker had previously apprehended escapes
from prison and murders thirty-five more people. Otto vows to kill Massacre
as Peter’s consciousness ineffectually protests that it is not up to them to
decide who lives and dies (SSM #4). Peter’s protest begins to sound hollow
even to himself when Otto points out that thirty-five innocent people died
because Spider-Man refused to kill. Otto argues that there is ‘’only one solu
tion”—killing Massacre. Peter’s consciousness, however, argues that there is
always hope for redemption. That is the crux of the matter. Peter is willing to
accept the possibility that the villains he captures might one day harm others
again because he believes that the possibility for redemption must always be
preserved. Due to his own sense of inferiority, coupled with the guilt from
all of those he failed to protect, Peter Parker is a man perpetually on the
road toward redemption and he cannot bear to deny that path to others. Otto,
however, declares that Massacre cannot be redeemed because once a killer,
always a killer—so he puts a bullet in his brain (SSM #5). The irony is that
Otto himself is a former killer on the path toward redemption, yet in his ar
rogance he fails to recognize that potentiality in others. It is Peter’s willing
ness to embrace his own weakness and need for redemption that allows him
to extend that hope to others.
Otto’s path toward redemption, however, involves learning what Peter
Parker already knows—that weakness bom of humility, dependence, self
restraint, and sacrifice is the true measure of strength. As the world Octavius
built starts to crumble around him with the city and his employees turning
against him, his company in dire straits, and his attempts at heroism failing to
stop crime, he suddenly begins to doubt his approach. Then, when the Green
Goblin kidnaps his beloved Anna Maria Marconi, Octavius for the first time
feels truly powerless. In a not-so-subtle nod to a popular appropriation of the
Jesus story, Octavius even begins to ask himself, “What would Parker do?”
Finally acknowledging his own inferiority and his need to depend on others
(both things he previously denigrated as weaknesses), Octavius admits his
inability to save her. So, for the first time truly embodying Peter Parker’s
understanding of power and responsibility, Octavius sacrifices himself by
erasing his consciousness from Peter Parker’s body and relinquishing control.
Before he does, though, he tells Peter in their shared psyche, “For I know . . .
only you can save her. Because you are the Superior Spider-Man” (SSM#30).
In Spider-Man’s body, Otto Octavius attempted to use the power at his
disposal as responsibly as he knew how. The problem was that he understood
power in terms of social status, strength, achievement, and global influence,
and he defined the responsible use of that power as making the world better
at any cost. Peter Parker’s unique understanding of power and responsibility,
however, comes into clearer focus as we see how he adapts to being back in
his body but in a world that Doctor Octopus has created in his absence.
The Aftermath: The Amazing Spider-Man (2014) #1-18 and (2015)

#1-31
With Peter Parker now back in his own body, the contrast with the “Supe
rior Spider-Man” is stark and immediate. He apologizes for all of the harm
Octavius did in his stead, deals with an act of public humiliation by mak
ing jokes at his own expense, and risks his life to save one of his enemies.
In other words, he chooses the weaker path of humility and self-limitation.
Unlike Octavius, whose blind ambition led him to want to save “the world”
and caused him to view “the small stuff’ as unworthy of his attention, Peter
Parker initially believes that he also can take on the world and will no longer
need to bother with “the small stuff’—until he sees a woman being robbed
and realizes that, for him, there is no “small stuff.” He says, “This will always
be exactly where I belong. The world of. . . Your Friendly Neighborhood
Spider-Man” (ASM [2014] #15).
That title—Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man—stands in opposition to
any method that relies on worldly forms of power. It represents a provincial,
restrained approach to power that emphasizes humble service and a focus on
the small stuff. Yet the environment in which Peter Parker now resides will
challenge his self-identity by offering the temptation to embrace worldly
power, for the world he inhabits is the world built by Otto Octavius. In this
world, Peter Parker is now Dr. Parker: a billionaire, CEO, and tech mogul
with worldwide influence. For the first time in his life, he possesses the sta
tus, wealth, and influence that society defines as true power. How will his
understanding of responsibility adapt to these new challenges? Almost im

mediately, there is cause for concern.
Corrupting Octavius’ wayward approach to heroism was an unrelenting
lust to be “better,” to be “superior.” Throughout Slott’s run, the term “bet
ter” functions at times as a sort of red flag for when a sense of responsibil
ity is corrupted by arrogance. Otto Octavius, upon taking the mantle of
Spider-Man, declared that he would be a “better Spider-Man” (ASM #700),
a “better hero” (SSM #10), and that he alone would make the world a “bet
ter place” (SSM #20). So, when the Parker Industries building is destroyed
by a saboteur and Peter responds by boldly declaring that they will rebuild
Parker Industries “better” than before, that word becomes a signal that Peter
is becoming infected with the same arrogance that defined Octavius (ASM
[2014] #18). Then, with the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (2015),
titled “Worldwide,” Peter has made good on his promise as Parker Industries
is now a global company with offices around the world. His name resides on
forty-seven buildings and he is one of the most wealthy and influential men
in the world.
Peter admits, “Running a global company like this is the most power
I’ll ever have.” In recognition that he has moved into a whole new level of
power—a power defined by money, status, and technological influence—Pe
ter, while wearing his Spider-Man costume, realizes he has a press conference
and, while changing into a suit and tie, states, “Time to put on my real power
suit.” This dismissal of Spider-Man as his “real power” in favor of corporate
influence, coupled with an inversion of his famous motto when he introduces
a new Parker Industries technological achievement by announcing “With
great power . . . comes greater speed, storage, and battery life,” demonstrates
that Peter Parker has become fully invested in the worldly trappings of suc
cess (ASM [2015] #1). Despite his earlier assertion to the contrary, he has
abandoned the small stuff, which highlights the central tension for this new
incarnation of Peter Parker: can he be a Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
on a worldwide stage?
Peter Parker does his best to wield this newfound power responsibly,
while maintaining his Spider-Man duties as well; yet, it quickly becomes
apparent when he starts behaving proactively that Spider-Man’s mission
does not cohere well with this kind of power and on this large a stage. When
Peter brings aid to a remote, third-world village, all it does is make them a
target of the Green Goblin (ASM [2015] #4). When he creates Webware to
improve people’s lives, he ends up having to hack it to stop a virus, leading
to widespread nausea among users and charges of violating privacy (ASM
[2015] #29). When Spider-Man helps Silver Sable invade Symkaria to stop
a civil war, he becomes an international terrorist in the eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D.

(ASM [2015] #26).
Highlighting how Peter Parker’s embrace of worldly power distorts his
mission as Spider-Man, Slott sets up a series of contrasts with three other
individuals who also attempt to use power responsibly. One such contrast
is with the figure known as Regent. Regent views super-human powers as a
threat to humanity and so creates technology that allows him to steal those
powers for himself, believing that he alone is able to use those powers re
sponsibly. He even twists Spider-Man’s motto by declaring, “With unlimited
powers must come unlimited responsibility” (ASM [2015] #12). Regent
echoes the arrogance and refusal to accept limitation of Otto Octavius when
he announces his goal as making the world a “better place” and that saving
the world requires doing whatever it takes (ASM [2015] #13). When he de
clares, “I am power incarnate! I am the only savior humanity needs!” Regent,
like Octavius, lacks the self-awareness to see the irony in his declaration that
superpowers are evil even as he greedily acquires them for himself (ASM
[2015] #14).
A second contrast occurs with the newly resurrected Ben Reilly. As a clone
of Peter Parker, Ben Reilly shares the same childhood memories that defined
Peter’s conception of power and responsibility. Yet repeated trauma has
warped his understanding of those concepts. Though Reilly masquerades as
the Jackal, one of Spider-Man’s classic villains, he is adamant that he is not
a villain and continually reminds his associates that “we’re the good guys”
(ASM [2015] #17). Reilly has created New U Technologies and intends to
utilize the technology of cloning to end suffering by bringing back clones of
those who have died. His goal, as he tells Peter, is “To use our power respon
sibly. To save everybody’s Uncle Ben” (ASM[2015] #22). What makes this
seemingly noble goal villainous, despite Reilly’s repeated protestations that
they are “the good guys,” is that it is based on a refusal to accept limitations,
in this case the limitation of death.
Another signal that Peter Parker is heading down the wrong path with his
embrace of technological power occurs when he first learns about this New
U technology. Even as Anna Maria Marconi cautions him of the potential
dangers, Peter arrogantly declares that he can use this technology to save not
just one person as Spider-Man in the past sought to do, but to save “millions.”
This ambition mirrors that of Octavius, which is highlighted in this scene as
Octavius (whose consciousness is still alive inside the Living Brain robot)
agrees with Peter’s decision (ASM[2015] #16). Just as Otto Octavius became
more like Peter Parker by living in Peter’s world, the longer Peter Parker lives
in the world created by Otto Octavius, the more he starts to become like Oc
tavius. Peter only begins to resemble the hero we know when his step-father,
Jay Jameson, becomes deathly ill and, rather than use New U technology to
save him, Peter lets nature take its course. What ultimately distinguishes his
“responsibility” from Ben Reilly’s is this willingness to accept the limits of
his power.
Perhaps the most interesting contrast that Slott establishes, though, is be
tween Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Tony Stark/Iron Man. Now a billionaire
technological industrialist who moonlights as a superhero, Peter Parker has
become a mirror-image of Tony Stark. Stark represents everything Peter
Parker has been aspiring to: possessing all the worldly trappings of status,
wealth, and influence, yet using them responsibly. However, Peter Parker
doesn’t fit in this world. When a Parker Industries press release announces
that Spider-Man is serving as both company mascot and Peter’s personal
bodyguard (as Iron Man originally did for Stark), a reporter asks him,
“Doesn’t that just make you a poor man’s Tony Stark?” (ASM [2015] #1).
Peter tries but fails to live up to the image of Tony Stark, even once com
plaining, “Man, how does a guy like Tony Stark do this? Have a life, run a
company, and be a super hero” (ASM [2015] #13). Adding insult to injury,
Mary Jane Watson is now working for and presumably dating Tony Stark,
demonstrating that not only is Peter failing at being Tony Stark but Tony
Stark is essentially better at being Peter Parker! So when Tony arrives for a
fundraiser, Peter uncharacteristically acts out of ego and envy, arguing with
Tony over whose company is better (ASM [2015] #13).
What all of this bravado masks is Peter’s sense of inferiority compared
to Tony Stark. Whereas Stark has somehow figured out how to use wealth,
social status, and technological power responsibly, Peter Parker discovers
that is not the kind of hero he is. Symbolizing the distinction between them
is their differing attitudes toward secret identities. When Spider-Man makes
a reference to secret identities, Iron Man replies, “Pfft. Those went out with
dial-up” (ASM [2015] #15). This is why Peter Parker can never be Tony
Stark. His secret identity is more than just a method to protect his loved
ones. It represents an embrace of weakness by humbly refusing to take credit
for his accomplishments as Spider-Man. Despite the constant temptation to
invest in the worldly system of power, Peter Parker needs to relearn that his
greatest strength is the “weakness” of humility, sacrifice, self-limitation, and
dependence.
This re-education begins when Peter discovers that the path he is on has not
made him more like Tony Stark, but more like Otto Octavius. Having trans
ferred his consciousness into a new human body, Octavius confronts Spider-
Man with this harsh truth: “Isn’t it obvious? Using Parker Industries as bases?
These spider-bot-like vehicles? Proactively going after your enemies? You're
using all of my strategems from back when / was Spider-Man” (ASM [2015]
#31). In particular, Spider-Man’s reliance on technology (Webware, Spider-

Mobile, Spider-Copter, Arachno-Rocket, voice-activated webshooters), espe
cially that of his armored costume, signaled his desire to be more like Iron Man.
Richard Reynolds argues that superhero costumes function “as a sign for the
inward process of character development” (Reynolds 1992, 29). Spider-Man’s
armored costume, with its technological bells and whistles, represents the false
path he has taken toward power so getting back on the right path will involve
a change of costume. In the final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (2015)
run, Peter reclaims his heroic identity by grounding it once again in weakness.
Rejecting independence and choosing sacrifice, he relies on his employees to
help him completely destroy Parker Industries. Then, in a symbolic showdown,
Doctor Octopus sets off an EMP designed to shred Spider-Man’s armored suit.
When that happens, we see that underneath it Peter has donned his original,
non-tech costume. Spider-Man declares, “This is the only suit I’ve ever needed
to beat you, Otto” (ASM [2015] #31). That suit in its utter simplicity signals
that Spider-Man’s true power never came from wealth, technology, or social
influence, but from a strength of character that chooses suffering, sacrifice, and
simplicity.
Return to the Friendly Neighborhood: The Amazing Spider-Man

#789-801
In the end of his run on The Amazing Spider-Man, Dan Slott has Spider-
Man return to the essence of his heroic identity, an identity defined by a
particular form of weakness. Having lived a life of status, wealth, and in
fluence, his decision to implode Parker Industries has left him stripped of
everything—essentially a return to the sad sack Peter Parker from his earlier
days. He has gone from CEO back to Daily Bugle employee, from being a
billionaire back to broke, from the penthouse to sleeping on a friend’s couch,
from being acclaimed in headlines worldwide to a self-proclaimed “World’s
Biggest Loser” (ASM Lamenting the loss of what he had, Spider-Man
complains to the Human Torch: “It’s like I’d finally gotten everything right
for once, you know? . . . Helping people all over the world, as both Spider-
Man and Parker. This was what I’d been working toward my whole life! So
of course I managed to blow it all up” (ASM #790). He then attributes this
downfall to his stereotypical “Parker luck” (ASM #795).
He is wrong, though. Being a billionaire CEO was not getting “everything
right”—for Tony Stark, maybe, but for Peter Parker it was getting everything
wrong. He is not a “worldwide” superhero, but a “neighborhood” one. The
“Parker luck” that he so often laments is also not the bane he thinks it is. It is,
in fact, one of the things that keeps him humble and weak—that keeps him
from becoming Tony Stark, yes, but also from becoming Otto Octavius. One
of the first acts of heroism Spider-Man performs in his newly downtrodden
life is to save a man’s food truck from destruction (ASM #789). In the grand
scheme of things, it counts as “small stuff,” but for that man it was all he
had. That Parker luck is a constant reminder that “getting it right” is being a
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
The final issues of Slott’s run hammer the point home that it is in his weak
ness that Spider-Man is the strongest. Norman Osborn has bonded with the
Carnage symbiote to become the Red Goblin. After putting Spider-Man’s
loved ones in jeopardy, Osborn offers him a deal: give up being Spider-
Man forever and he will spare his loved ones. Osborn forces him to choose
between the Spider (strength) and the man (weakness). Peter, however,
sees it differently, declaring that Osborn made a mistake because it is Peter
Parker, the “man in Spider-Man,” that is the true source of his power (ASM
#798). The contrast between their opposing ideas of power is most clear in
the final showdown when Osborn boasts that his victory will come because
“I’ve always been the stronger man! Needing no one else! And willing to do
whatever it takes to win!” (ASM#800). With this emphasis on independence,
a refusal to limit himself, and the ends justifying the means, Osborn echoes
the misguided sense of responsibility professed by Octavius, Regent, and Ben
Reilly. Peter, however, replies that his strength comes from his dependence
on friends and family, whom he calls “the greatest asset of all,” and then he
demonstrates that the true mark of a hero lies not in winning, but in the sac
rificial giving of oneself when he throws his body in front of a bullet meant
for Norman Osborn (ASM #799, 800).
B. J. Oropeza observes that many of Spider-Man’s iconic images in both
comics and film resemble that of Christ on the cross. Yet, Oropeza concludes
that it is more in the humanity of Jesus rather than in the divinity of Christ that
we see Spider-Man best represented (Oropeza 2005a, 139-40). His point is
well taken, though as he notes, the two cannot be divorced. Moltmann argues
that it is in the cross where the power of the divine meets the weakness of
humanity—not to overcome it but to merge with it (Moltmann 1974, 205). In
the cross, we witness the unlimited power of God embracing the weakness
of human flesh, the limitation of death, the humility of servanthood, and the
choice of sacrificial suffering. In this sense, the cross is also a perfect symbol
for the essence of Spider-Man who is not both Spider and Man as separate,
coexisting entities, but is a true merging of the “super” and the “human.”
Ben Saunders also recognizes that Spider-Man’s weakness is crucial to his
heroic identity, arguing that his heroic failures and his “encounter with his
all-too-human limitation” make him more of a saint than a hero (Saunders
2011,94). I agree, though Saunders shifts the focus more toward tragic events
that happen to Spider-Man and which are mostly outside of his control. In
stead 1 argue that what truly makes him saint-like is the choice of weakness.
Otto Octavius demonstrated what Peter Parker could be if he chose the path
of worldly power. But Peter Parker expressly rejects that path. Shortly after
Peter’s fall from grace, Loki (attempting to repay a favor) offers to turn back
time to a point when Peter was at the height of his wealth and influence. After
reclaiming his body from Octavius, Peter found himself thrust into this world
of privilege. Now, he is given the opportunity to choose it—and he rejects
the offer (ASM #795). He has learned that the most responsible use of power
lies with the small stuff.
Dan Slott’s final issue is a throwback that takes place in the earliest days
of Spider-Man’s career. It is an origin story with a revisionist twist. The story
unfolds from the perspective of a man named Kenneth whom Spider-Man
saved in a convenience store robbery three weeks after the death of Uncle
Ben. It is here, according to Slott, that Spider-Man first uses the “Friendly
Neighborhood Spider-Man” line. The story then jumps to the present day
where that same man, now much older, trips a criminal who is attempting
to escape from Spider-Man. As Spider-Man swings away, Kenneth’s young
daughter complains that her first superhero sighting had to be of the “lame”
Spider-Man. She claims that Thor, Captain Marvel, or Black Panther would
have been much cooler because they save the world. Kenneth replies that
Spider-Man “saves a world every single day” (ASM #801). Otto Octavius,
Regent, and Ben Reilly all sought to use their power to save “the world.”
What Spider-Man represents is that true power is found in saving “a world.”
It is in the small stuff—in weakness—that the most responsible use of power
occurs. And Slott suggests that it is this recognition that we change the world
a little at a time—that five dollars given to someone in need is just as respon
sible a use of power as five million given to a charity, that the simple, daily
choices we make to do good are as important as decisions made in the upper
echelons of corporate empires—that makes Spider-Man the most relatable
and influential hero. In Peter Parker’s own words: “That’s how we all save
the world . .. one friendly neighborhood at a time” (ASM #800).
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING
The 2017 Marvel film Spider-Man: Homecoming3 further supports this

analysis by presenting elements viewed as weaknesses within a secular value
system (humility, self-limitation, dependence, sacrifice) as the essence of
Spider-Man’s power. In the film Peter Parker is initially defined by ambition.
He is driven by a lust for the recognition, status, and respect that others enjoy.
As Peter Parker, he wants to shed his “loser” status. As Spider-Man, he wants

to move beyond the bike thefts and other petty crimes he combats. He aspires
to be an Avenger, but is stuck in high school. The high school symbolizes
Peter’s sense of smallness and inferiority. He eagerly tells his best friend
Ned that he is “beyond high school” and that he will be leaving to join the
Avengers upstate, becoming increasingly depressed and anxious as that call
never comes. Since he views dependence on others as another sign of child
like status, Peter even plans to jettison his friends, telling Ned that he doesn’t
need “a guy in a chair” to help him.
Similar to Dan Slott’s storyline, Spider-Man: Homecoming explores Peter
Parker’s understanding of power and his character development through his
interaction with Tony Stark and his relationship to his suit. In contrast to
Slott’s storyline, Tony Stark functions here not as a rival to Peter Parker but
as a mentor. In Tony Stark, Peter sees everything he aspires to be. Yet, Tony
Stark lives in a very different world than does Peter Parker. It is a world of
privilege, wealth, status, and technological advancement. Adrian Toomes
(aka the Vulture) reminds Peter of this when he tells him that guys like Stark,
“the rich and the powerful,” don’t care about “guys like us.” Whereas Adrian
Toomes informs Peter that Peter isn’t Tony Stark, Tony himself, on three
separate occasions, tells Peter that he shouldn’t be like him. In an early scene,
Tony tells Peter not to do anything he would or wouldn’t do, essentially say
ing, “Do not be me.” Later, after Peter’s disastrous actions at the ferry, Peter
says to Tony, “I just wanted to be like you.” Tony replies, “And I wanted
you to be better.” What does that look like? What would make Peter Parker
“better” than Tony Stark. A hint occurs earlier when, after saving Peter from
a lake, Tony tells him to focus on helping the little people, to be “a friendly
neighborhood Spider-Man.” Peter takes this as an admonishment and a rein
forcement of the notion that he is just a child, too immature to play on the
big stage. But there is more to it than that. Contained within that advice is
the suggestion that what Peter perceives as his weaknesses may in fact be the
key not only to being a better superhero than Iron Man but a better man than
Tony Stark.
As mentioned earlier, a superhero’s suit often signals character develop
ment. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter’s relationship to various suits marks
his journey of self-discovery. Initially, Peter’s “crappy costume” (as Shocker
calls it) composed of a cheap, homemade combination of hoodie and sweat
pants symbolizes his low-grade superhero status. When Peter acquires a new
suit from Tony Stark, that new suit symbolizes the hero he thinks he needs to
be. With this new tech-infused suit (576 web shooter combinations, facial rec
ognition, voice-activation, etc.), he has become a mirror-image to Iron Man.
In his mind, the suit with all its technological wizardry has become the source
of his power. This is evident when Tony, following the failure at the ferry,
demands Peter return the suit and Peter protests that he is ‘’nothing” without
it. Stripped of his suit, and thus of the superhero status he craves, Peter returns
to his “crappy costume,” his humiliation complete.
The loss of his technological suit, however, turns out to be the key to his
recognition that his power is best manifest through weakness. In the final
showdown with the Vulture, Peter finds himself rejecting the fierce inde
pendence he previously embraced and turning to his friend Ned and even his
frenemy Flash Thompson for help. Earlier at the ferry, Peter played at being
the hero he thought he needed to be by relying on the suit and its technology,
but it failed in spectacular fashion. As the ferry is torn in half by an energy
blast, Peter strikes a crucifixion pose while trying to save the passengers.
That pose, though, really just exposes Peter’s false understanding of sacrifice
as it is Iron Man, not Spider-Man, who saves the people on the ferry. Peter’s
attempted sacrifice here resulted from a desire to be “strong”—to be the hero
who saves the day and thus prove himself to Tony Stark. Near the end of the
film, however, Peter embodies a different form of sacrifice: giving up his own
happiness by abandoning his date for the sake of duty and risking his own
life to save the life of his enemy, the Vulture. These sacrifices stem not from
a desire for recognition or to correct one’s mistake, but from a willingness to
embrace suffering for the sake of others.
The most critical scene for Peter’s self-realization occurs when he is
trapped underneath a collapsed roof. Straining against the weight pressing
down on him and unable to budge it, he is about to give up. Then, in a nod to a
classic scene from the comics, he sees his face reflected in a puddle. His mask
is torn with only half of it covering his face so that reflected in the puddle is
a person who is half Peter Parker and half Spider-Man. Remembering Tony’s
words that he shouldn’t have the suit if he is nothing without it, he encour
ages himself by first saying “C’mon Peter” only to then shift to “C’mon
Spider-Man” four times. In this moment, Peter realizes that his strength as
Spider-Man comes first and foremost from Peter Parker—meaning it is not
the spider bite that makes him powerful but the strength of his character. Peter
needed to be stripped of that which made him outwardly powerful (Stark’s
technological suit) in order to find the strength within.
At the end of the film, Peter’s embrace of humility and self-limitation takes
center stage when he is finally offered the very thing he has long desired—a
chance to move upstate to the Avengers’ mansion and to become an official
member of the team. This opportunity is punctuated by the offer of a new,
even more technologically advanced suit. To Tony Stark’s surprise, Peter
turns it down. He rejects the power of the suit and the status of the Avengers
in favor of looking out for the little guy and being a friendly neighborhood
Spider-Man. The subtitle of the film, “Homecoming,” functions on multiple

levels. It refers to the Homecoming dance that features in the film and sym
bolizes Peter’s high school identity. On a larger, meta level, it signifies the
long-awaited return of the character of Spider-Man to Marvel Studios. But
on the most important level, it symbolizes Peter Parker’s realization of where
his true home lies—in the neighborhood looking out for the “little guy.” Peter
Parker first had to lose his way in order to find his way back home.
THE SPIRITUALITY OF SPIDER-MAN
What makes Spider-Man the most relatable of superheroes is not simply that
he has everyday problems like we do. but that he shows us how to be strong,
not in spite of weakness, but through it. What makes Spider-Man’s approach
to power unique is not the desire to use his physical gifts responsibly, but
that he offers us a different definition of power from that most operative in
the world. More so than any other superhero, Spider-Man (though he often
has to relearn this lesson) rejects the definition of power as status, ambition,
wealth, self-interest, and independence (the value system of the world) in fa
vor of power as the willing embrace of suffering, dependence, humility, and
sacrifice (the value system of the kingdom of God). Like the saints of old,
Spider-Man accepts his own suffering as a means of alleviating the suffering
of others. Though not overtly religious like Daredevil or some other super
heroes, Spider-Man is arguably the most spiritual of all Marvel superheroes
in terms of what he represents for he encapsulates the profound spiritual
principle of strength through weakness.
NOTES
1. This motto first appears in Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), the same issue where
Spider-Man makes his first appearance.
2. The first appearance of Doctor Octopus is in The Amazing Spider-Man #3
(1963).
3. All quotations and references are from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis
Daley, Spider-Man: Homecoming, DVD, directed by Jon Watts (Culver City, CA:
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2017).
Chapter Thirteen
Savage Monster or Grieving Mother?

Sabra and Marvel's Political Theology
of Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine
Amanda Furiasse
The Marvel superhero Sabra, also known as Ruth Bat-Seraph, remains among
Marvel’s most divisive yet little-known comic book characters. Although Sa
bra is no longer a mainstay in Marvel comics, she was once one of Marvel’s
most popular comic book characters. Created in the aftermath of the 1967
Arab-Israeli War, Sabra first appeared in the X-Men II and Incredible Hulk
II series where she was introduced to readers as an Israeli citizen living with
mutant powers, including the ability to fly at jet speed, super-human physical
strength, and fluency in more than four languages. After her initial appear
ance on the comic book pages as a minor character in the Incredible Hulk II
series, the character soon evolved into a major character in the X-Men II se
ries where she appeared as a supporter of the mutant cause. Professor Xavier
invited her to join his elite team of mutants, though she never took them up
on the offer. Decades later, she remained a popular mutant character well
into the 90s and early 2000s where she appeared in some of Marvel’s most
popular comics, including Civil War and Secret Invasion.
To date, little has been written about Sabra and her crucial role in the
Marvel Universe. This is largely the result of her character’s divisive and
controversial legacy. However, during the late seventies and early eighties,
Sabra was expected to allay enmity between Israelis and Palestinians with the
former taking responsibility for arousing violence as opposed to merely being
subjugated to it. One of the most formative moments of her life was grieving
the loss of her son to a terror bombing. Sabra sought to avenge his death by
marshalling her super powers. The past however complicated her pursuit for
justice, reminding her that the violence she wanted to overcome was inflicted
by her as well. To redress the pain caused by her son’s tragic death, Sabra
prioritized diplomacy over revenge. I draw on Sabra’s liminality as a griev
ing mother as well as a savage monster to highlight limits to the theology of
205
206 Amanda Furiasse
reconciliation that gained impetus after the Camp David Accords in 1978
and started to wither away after the Oslo Accords in 1993. The assumption
that peace would ensue once Israelis reconcile with their worrisome past ad
vances representations of Arab communities as defenseless victims in need of
Israel’s motherly protection and diplomatic genius. Sabra’s American authors
ultimately forefront a complex and contradictory portrait of the Israeli state’s
role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the Israeli state simultaneously
represented as a savage monster who incites anarchy and a grieving mother
who fulfills our messianic expectations for a just and lasting peace in the
Middle East. Her story forefronts a distinctive liberalism that informed how
Americans during the late seventies and early eighties understood the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, with diplomacy as a panacea to such regional conflicts
its defining marker.
Ruth Bat-Seraph’s story follows common American stereotypes about
young Israeli Jews. She is born near Jerusalem to an Israeli war hero who
raises her on a special government-run kibbutz. Her mutant powers first man
ifest themselves in her youth, and they include enhanced physical strength,
agility, stamina, reflexes, and the ability to fly. Her body can also withstand
impacts of high-caliber rifle fire.
The Israeli government exploits Sabra to bolster Mossad, the Israeli In
telligence Agency. She spends most of her youth away from her family,
training with Mossad to become a weapon in their war against local terrorist
groups. Her special abilities should have enabled her to withstand Mossad,
but instead they became the reason why Mossad manipulated her to serve
its interests. Periodically, the contradiction of being powerless amid having
super abilities overwhelms Sabra. She fails to consolidate the ideal mutant as
imagined by the Israeli government, fluctuating instead between naive trust
and skepticism of governmental institutions.
The government weaponized her mutant abilities, representing some obvi
ous similarities to the stories of other mutants, including both Magneto and
Wolverine, who like Sabra were routinely subjected to government manipula
tion and surveillance. As in the case of other X-Men stories, the government
intervenes and subjects her to persistent testing and manipulation. Rather than
enjoy a relatively peaceful and normal childhood, Sabra instead undergoes
intense military training to become a highly skilled Mossad operative. The
presence of government surveillance and manipulation remains an early and
recurring source of Sabra’s anger. Her frustration and rage over her manipu
lation at the hands of government officials in turn moves Sabra to fluctuate
between naive trust and critical skepticism of government institutions.
For instance, in X-Men II #67, Sabra is manipulated into supporting Opera
tion Zero Tolerance, a global anti-mutant campaign committed to completely
Savage Monster or Grieving Mother? 207
eradicating mutants. Her participation in Operation Zero Tolerance’s perse

cution and even genocide of other mutants eventually leads her to confront
her deeply held assumptions about herself and her relationship to her govern
ment. She eventually betrays Mossad and provides classified information to
Professor Xavier’s students that ultimately helps them escape government
surveillance. While the government effectively transforms her into an in
strument of violence that they can use against individuals and organizations
deemed to be a threat to Israel’s national interests, Sabra, however, routinely
draws on her superpowers to defy the government as well.
Her relationship to Windstorm further represents the fragile boundary
between embodying state surveillance and anarchy. In Marvel Super-Heroes
#6, Sabra saves Windstorm from dying of a drug overdose on the streets of
Tel Aviv. Like Sabra, Windstorm remains haunted by traumatic experiences
in her past, using drugs as a mechanism to drown her sorrow and even at
tempts to kill herself. Sabra refuses to allow Windstorm to die and uses her
regenerative powers to restore her back to life. While her regenerative powers
are a crucial component of her mutant powers, this marks the first time in the
comics that Sabra uses them to save someone. In the process, Windstorm is
bestowed with mutant powers, including the superhuman ability to control
the winds. Upon being restored to life, Windstorm decides to join the Israeli
military where she is trained to become a soldier. However, in the process of
training to become a soldier, Windstorm transforms. She rejects her savior
and establishes a terrorist group called Israelis for Anarchy to threaten Israeli
leaders and international politicians working for peace and reconciliation in
the region. For instance, the organization targets Israel’s most sacred and
historic institutions, including a kibbutz, where Windstorm holds the U.S.
ambassador’s son hostage (Marvel Super-Heroes #6). Comic book authors
make clear that Windstorm’s hatred for Israel and disdain for the entire in
ternational peace process builds on Sabra’s own recurring struggle to trust
and support international institutions. Amid Windstorm terrorizing the inter
national peace process, Sabra neither kills nor strips her of her superpowers
(Marvel Super-Heroes #6). Sabra after all distrusts the peace process as well.
A watershed moment transpires in Sabra’s Israeli identity and commit
ment to the state when she encounters the Hulk. In Incredible Hulk II #256,
Sabra mistakenly assumes that the Hulk is working with Arab terrorists. Af
ter his plane crashes near the city of Tel Aviv, Sabra confronts the Hulk and
assumes that he was responsible for a recent terrorist attack against local
communities. However, as Sabra begins to drain the Hulk of his power, she
discovers that the Hulk had in fact been trying to protect a young Arab boy,
named Sahad, from her violent wrath. The young Arab boy reminds her of
her own son who died in a tragic terrorist attack. In X Men II #67, a group
208 Amanda Furiasse
of Palestinian terrorists ambushed her son Jacob along with several other
Israeli school children on their school bus. She avenged her son’s death by
arresting the accused terrorists in Palestinian territory, without waiting to
receive government clearance. She made no secret of her son’s emotional
impact on her, describing her life as entirely “empty” and “devoid of hopes
and dreams” {X-Men II #67). Witnessing the Hulk’s grief over the young
Arab boy’s tragic death, Sabra suddenly realizes that while she had assumed
that she was a savior, she was in fact the true villain all along.
The author Bill Mantlo makes clear to the reader that grief over the tragic
loss of her son has turned her into the very thing that she seeks to fight and
destroy. Now upon witnessing the Hulk’s sorrow and grief over Sahad’s
tragic death, Sabra questions who was the true monster all along. She falls on
her knees in disgust of herself and struggles to find any words to describe her
grief. Mantlo describes the scene in the following way: “It has taken a mon
ster to awaken her own sense of humanity” {Incredible Hulk II #256). Rage
binds Sabra to a contradictory character who both grieves the loss of human
life and causes similar grief for others, an Israeli mother seeking to kill the
monster who is no one else but Sabra herself.
This is not the only instance where Sabra routinely straddles the line be
tween savior and villain in the comics. In addition to her confrontation with
the Hulk, her encounter with the Syrian national hero Batal also subverts the
reader’s assumption that Sabra is in fact the clear hero of the story. In New
Warriors #58, Sabra first encounters Batal when she is assigned to protect
the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin at the United Nations to ensure
Rabin brokers a successful peace deal between Israel and Syria. However, an
unknown force takes over her mind and turns her against international peace
keepers and Batal. Sabra’s mind control is only broken when she hears some
one reciting the traditional Jewish prayer of the dead, the Mourner’s Kaddish.
Through recitation of Jewish prayer, Sabra regains her ability to think clearly
and realizes that she had become a monster and nearly destroyed the entire
peace process between Israel and Syria.
This inversion of the common superhero trope of a clear good hero and
evil villain makes Sabra unique in that her story does not follow a traditional
superhero arc. It is perhaps possible that this inversion of a very common
superhero trope represents an attempt on the part of her authors to both in
novate the superhero genre and deliver a poignant political critique of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As her initial creator, Bill Mantlo was well known
for his creative ability to innovate the superhero genre and deliver complex
social critiques of American politics and ethics.
At Marvel Comics, Mantlo forged a reputation for his very public com
mitment to social justice and even earned his law degree from the Brooklyn
Law School (Staley 2017). However, he often found himself at odds with
the executive staff at Marvel Comics. By the 1970s, Marvel Comics was in
creasingly moving toward a corporate-minded, profitability model. This shift
caused a mass exodus of creative talent as writers increasingly left and tried
to start their own independent comics. Mantlo was among the few talented
writers who remained loyal and committed to the company. This was despite
the fact that Marvel executives only offered him a freelance contract with few
benefits (Staley 2017).
He also remained committed to writing comic book characters that exem
plified the core struggles of America’s underclass. For example, Cloak and
Dagger, which Mantlo created around the same time as Sabra, featured a
black and white teenage superhero duo who battled drug dealers and traffick
ers to redress complex social issues plaguing New York City streets. Social
institutions, specifically the police and law enforcement agencies, are subject
to constant criticism as Mantlo routinely assesses the law’s failure to protect
the most vulnerable members of society. Mantlo thus inverts the reader’s
ethical expectations and represents society’s most trusted institutions as in
fact completely inept and unable to serve and protect the most vulnerable
members of society.
Mantlo explained that his characters’ moral complexity represented an
attempt to redress the suffering and experiences of immigrants in America
(Shayer 2010). With political and social institutions commonly vilifying im
migrants, he wanted to offer a nuanced and complex portrait of daily life for
immigrants as they struggled to survive and prosper in a society where the
law failed to protect them. His characters are thus forced to openly defy the
law and operate in morally complex worlds where the apparent line between
good and evil is not always clear.
This perspective on American institution also seems to shape Mantlo’s
understanding of Sabra’s inner struggle to trust government institutions. For
example, Sabra defies her orders from Mossad when she discovers that they
are working in concert with other governments to murder every living mutant
(X-Men 77 #67). She offers important intelligence to Professor Xavier and his
X-Men team that ultimately helps them escape capture. Sabra then is not the
only morally ambiguous character, but government institutions are as mor
ally ambiguous as Mantlo’s characters with institutions commonly unable
and unwilling to protect society’s most vulnerable members. Rather than
depict the villain as an outside or completely evil character or institution, the
comics instead represent Sabra and the institutions that she works for as the
chief villain.
In addition to reflecting Mantlo’s own complex understanding of American
society, this poignant inversion of the common superhero trope of a clear
210 Amanda Furiasse
moral line between good and evil might also represent an attempt on the part
of Sabra’s authors to deliver a political critique of the U.S. government’s
inability to effectively work with Israel and redress the ongoing Israeli-
Palestinian conflict. The comics make this point explicitly clear with both the
recurrent use of political symbols and Sabra’s relationships to American and
international governing bodies.
In the case of political symbols, Sabra literally wears the star of David,
the Israeli state’s central political emblem, across her chest and flies over the
skies of Israel alongside Israeli fighter jets as local Israelis herald her as “The
Super Heroine of the State of Israel.” In Contest of Champions #2, Sabra
also explains that she derives her superhero alter-ego name, “Sabra,” from
the people of Israel. As she explains to Iron Man, “Like the spiny pear that
is the symbol of the Israeli people from which 1 derive my name” (Contest
of Champions #2).
Serving as a literary representation of the Israeli state, her relationships to
other characters and actions typifies Israel’s complex and often contradictory
relationship to American institutions. For example, Sabra never completely
accepts Professor Xavier’s invitation to join the X-Men but also never en
tirely rejects the invitation and agrees to aid the X-Men at various points
in the comics. In addition to providing crucial intelligence to the X-Men,
she also provides protection to Storm and other X-Men when she discovers
them in dire need of help after fighting off an attack in the North Sea (X-
Men 7/7 #31). However, she also remains an outsider to the X-Men and even
maintains a divisive relationship with other members. In one instance, she
purposely aggravates members and expresses a continual interest in exposing
their greatest personal flaws and weaknesses (Excalibur I #121).
When she does agree to fight alongside American mutants and superheroes,
she often ends up causing more damage with her vulnerability to mind ma
nipulation continually threatening her commitment to international peace. For
example, when she is assigned to protect the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin while he is in New York trying to broker peace talks with Israel’s
Middle East neighbors, an unknown force takes a hold of her mind and turns
her against international peace keepers (New Warriors #58). In the end, the
peace talks are an abysmal failure with Sabra the primary one responsible for
their failure. While she might be an ally to American mutants and superheroes
as they work collaboratively to redress international conflicts, she remains a
completely unreliable ally who jeopardizes the entire peace process.
Her relationship to other Arab characters in the comics is even more di
visive and complicated. Although Marvel Comics in the early 1980s created
only a few central Arab characters, the Arabian Knight remained among the
few examples of a strong and independent Arab superhero. Created by Bill
Mantlo at the same that he created Sabra, the Arabian Knight first surfaces as
Sabra’s counterpoint in Saudi Arabia. Like Sabra, the Arabian Knight is one
of Saudi Arabia’s greatest and most beloved national heroes who works on
behalf of the Saudi Arabian government to redress conflicts in the region. He
derives his power from three magical weapons which he discovers once be
longed to his ancestors {Incredible Hulk #257). In Contest of Champions #2,
the Arabian Knight partners up with Sabra and Iron Man but initially resists
working with her, citing her Jewish background as problematic to him. In
later comics, their divisive relationship is peppered with even more harmful
stereotypes about Arab communities. In Union Jack #1, the Arabian Knight
rejects the idea of working with Sabra, arguing that her true social role is that
of wife and mother.
Sabra’s relationship to other American and Arab characters seems to mir
ror Israel’s complex and evolving role in international politics. In the decades
leading up to Sabra’s first appearance in the comics, Israel was continuing to
grapple with the lasting effects of the 1967 Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War.
This war was historically unprecedented in that Saudi Arabia played a crucial
and important role in contributing key military equipment, including heli
copters, armored cars, artillery batteries, and guns, as well as highly trained
troops to the region (Sela 2000, 37). While the Israeli military might have
halted the Egyptian military’s offensive after they crossed the Sinai Penin
sula, the war highlighted the emergence of Saudi Arabia as a competitor to
Israel in shaping the future of the Middle East.
This vulnerability was further exacerbated with the United Nations’ his
toric 1975 declaration. A few years after the Yom Kippur War. the United
Nations General Assembly issued Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism to
be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” For Israel, the declaration
served as irrefutable evidence of Saudi Arabia’s growing influence in shaping
international governance with officials blaming the UN’s decision on pres
sure from Saudi officials (Bennis 1997, 49). The UN’s decision delivered a
particularly significant blow to Israeli confidence with the international dec
laration attacking the state’s historic and formative ideological pillars.
In the aftermath of these political humiliations, Israeli officials increas
ingly agreed to negotiate with their neighboring Arab states with the U.S.
government playing a crucial role in brokering these early agreements. In
1978, the first of these negotiations ushered in the Camp David Accords
which were signed by the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime
minister Menachem Begin (Quandt 1986, 357). A year later, Egypt and Israel
signed the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty which included not only a cessation of
war, but a promise from Israel to completely withdraw its forces from the
Sinai Peninsula (Quandt 1986, 357). The peace talks were internationally
212 Amanda Furiasse
heralded as the beginning of a new era for Arab-Israeli relations, and Sadat
and Begin even received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize in what appeared to be
a sign of things to come.
However, in the 1980s these peace agreements were persistently breached
and in some cases even completely broken. By 1982, the Israeli military
launched a strategic military operation in Southern Lebanon to attack and
remove PLO forces encamped in the region. The operation defied interna
tional peace treaties with the UN general assembly years earlier recognizing
the PLO as a representative organization for the Palestinian people and even
granted the PLO the right to participate in deliberations on Palestine (James
1983, 613). The conflict in Southern Lebanon continued to escalate and in
September of 1982 Lebanese soldiers massacred Palestinian and Lebanese
Shiite civilians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (al-Hout 2004,
272).
Although just a few years earlier international officials celebrated and
awarded Israeli officials with the Nobel Peace Prize, by the 1980s UN of
ficials were investigating Israeli officials for their role in the genocide of
Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. The UN general assembly castigated Is
rael for their negligence and breach in their international peace negotiations.
Israel increasingly proved to be an unreliable ally in the region who pioneered
international peace treaties while simultaneously and contradictorily jeopar
dizing the entire peace process.
Sabra embodies this complicated understanding of Israel’s role in inter
national politics. Like the modern Israeli state, Sabra sometimes puts aside
her differences and works collaboratively together with American and Arab
peace keepers to fight global injustice. In Contest of Champions #2, the
Arabian Knight recognizes Sabra’s importance as the two slowly grow to
respect each other. Sabra also plays an important role in the formation and
maintenance of international peace-keeping agency devoted to bringing to
gether superheroes and mutants to redress international conflicts, such as the
X-Men and SHIELD. In the case of Operation Zero Tolerance, Sabra enables
SHIELD and the X-Men to stop the army of Prime Sentinels hunting mutants
around the globe (X-Men 11 #69). Sabra’s commitment to international peace
keeping even forces her to break her commitment to Mossad as she decides
to hand over secret intelligence that Mossad has gathered about the X-Men to
Professor Xavier (X Men II #67).
However, her cooperation with international peace keepers and organiza
tions such as SHIELD and the X-Men remains limited with her vulnerability
to mind manipulation and commitment to Mossad impeding her capability
to fully commit herself to international reconciliation. Since she declines
membership into both the X-Men and SHIELD, Sabra sporadically surfaces
in varying stories. When she does appear, it is typically to gather intelligence

on other mutants and superheroes who often express a disinterest and even
distrust in her perceived motives.
Despite Sabra’s inability to fully commit herself to international peace, she
continues to manifest an explicit hope for future reconciliation and peace in
the Middle East. She always defers to the counsel of international governing
bodies when faced with the threat of regional and international conflicts. In
stark contrast to Sabra, Windstorm expresses a very clear pessimism and
distrust for the international system. For example, in Marvel Super-Heroes
#6, Windstorm stages a coup against the Israeli government as they attempt
to negotiate with international peace keepers. When she kidnaps the U.S.
ambassador’s son who has disabilities, Sabra is finally forced to end her cre
ation and strips Windstorm of her powers. In the end, Sabra’s commitment
to international governance takes precedence over her personal relationships
and commitments.
This naive optimism and belief in international governance’s capability to
overcome personal evils and national conflicts reflect her American authors’
belief in the stability of the international system. In the aftermath of the
U.S. military’s humiliating defeat in Vietnam, President Carter devoted his
presidency to normalizing relations between Communist governments and
governments seemingly at odds with U.S. foreign policy (Hargrove 1999,
153). President Carter’s faith in the peace process was thus predicated on a
certain optimism about the undaunted stability of the international system. In
the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Carter administration viewed
the conflict as a crucial witness test to his foreign policy’s efficacy in the
Middle East (Terry 1990, 153-55). For the Carter administration, the Camp
David Accords ultimately proved that his policy of normalization and calcu
lated strategy of deferring to international governing bodies was effective for
protecting human rights and facilitating the peace process in the Middle East
(Alam 1992, 76). The Reagan administration did not necessarily defer from
this strategy and continued to forge international treaties with states once
deemed to be irreconcilable enemies. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, President Reagan issued an international peace plan that demanded
self-government for Palestinian communities and a cessation of Israeli settle
ments in Palestinian neighborhoods. In the end, Reagan’s treaty prohibited
Israel from exercising permanent sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank
and deferred to the peace plan put forth in the UN Security Council Resolu
tion 242.
This optimistic hope in the possibility and even inevitability of reconcili
ation is also predicated on a liberal American Christian belief in Jewish suf
fering’s redemptive potential. In her first appearance in the comics, Mantlo
214 Amanda Furiasse
describes Sabra as enduring a tragic and horrifying loss, the murder of her
young son, Jacob. Although Sabra is immensely powerful and can even save
those near death, she cannot save her son. Moments after she witnesses her
son get on a bus for school, a Palestinian terrorist group randomly selects that
bus as their next target. Sabra finds herself completely powerless to stop the
attack or save her son and other schoolchildren on the bus. The grief and suf
fering endured from her son’s death drives Sabra’s commitment to protecting
and facilitating the international peace process.
However, her suffering also simultaneously jeopardizes and threatens her
commitment to the peace process. In the Incredible Hulk II #256, Sabra’s
transformative confrontation with the Hulk forces her to reassess how her
grief and suffering has transformed her into the very thing she sought to
fight and defeat. While she initially jumps to the conclusion that the Hulk is
a mindless monster like Goliath and threatening innocent civilians, her initial
assumption is flipped on its head when Sabra witnesses the Hulk grieving
over the tragic death of the young Palestinian boy, Sahad. Like Sabra’s own
son, Sahad died in a seemingly senseless and random terrorist attack. As
the Hulk weeps over the tragic and senseless loss of Sahad, the Hulk voices
aloud to the reader that the young Arab boy died “because of what some holy
books had to say.” In response to the Hulk’s conclusion, Sabra confirms to
the reader that the young Palestinian boy’s senseless murder reminds her of
her son Jacob’s tragic death and acknowledges that she is not only culpable
in his death but that she has become a monster.
This transformative confrontation between the Hulk and Sabra might
blame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on senseless religious squabbles, but
it also implicates Israeli Jews in the ongoing conflict and death of innocent
Palestinian civilians. For Mantlo, Israeli Jews’ grief and suffering has not
transformed them into heroes but has instead turned them into the very mon
sters that they once sought to eradicate from the world. This representation
of the conflict might initially invert the reader’s expectations and critique
suffering’s redemptive potential, but the confrontation ultimately ends with
Sabra recognizing her culpability and role in Palestinian suffering. Sabra’s
suffering thus ultimately enables her to recognize that she is as culpable for
the ongoing violence and fulfills a redemptive character arc.
Unlike Sabra, Windstorm is unwilling to allow her suffering to transform
her into a better person. She instead prefers to exist as a monster who is un
willing to evaluate how she has become the cause of others’ suffering and
grief. While the reader might expect Windstorm to express gratitude for Sa
bra’s life-saving efforts, Windstorm instead rejects her savior and goes on to
start a terrorist organization committed to destroying the entire Israeli-Pales
tinian peace process (Marvel Super-Heroes II #6/4). In the end, Sabra’s com
mitment to saving a suffering drug addict ultimately leads to the creation of

a super-villain. The reader is never told why Windstorm turned to drugs and
found herself dying on the streets of Tel Aviv. However, it can be inferred
that Windstorm endured some sort of trauma in her past. As Sabra’s creation,
Windstorm perhaps represents what Sabra could become if she refuses to
reconcile with her past and evaluate her culpability in Palestinian suffering.
This emphasis on suffering’s potential to transform Sabra is again height
ened with comic book authors’ use of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The Mourner’s
Kaddish is a traditional Jewish prayer used in burial rituals. The Book of Job
serves as the prayer’s central inspiration with the prayer’s final quotation,
“May the One who creates harmony on high, bring peace to us and to all
Israel,” lifted directly from Job 25:2 (Diamant 2007, 20). In the Book of Job,
this final quotation refers to the possibility that Job’s tragedy can ultimately
be “transformed into a hard-won blessing” (Diamant 2007, 20). The prayer
thus emphasizes the transformative potential of suffering, promising mourn
ers that their grief over the loss of a loved will one day become a blessing.
Moreover, the Mourner’s Kaddish also calls upon those who mourn to forgive
themselves and the dead with the demand to forgive a central aspect of the
prayer’s emphasis on suffering’s redemptive potential (McLoughlin 2006, 4).
This emphasis on suffering’s redemptive potential ultimately provides an
important window into the processes by which Sabra’s American authors
were trying to make sense of Jewish suffering. In the aftermath of the Ho
locaust, American Christian theologians increasingly tried to make sense
of Christendom’s historical failure to protect Jewish communities and even
contribute to Jewish suffering. Some Christian theologians chose to apply a
Christian framework on the Holocaust and interpret the suffering of Jews dur
ing the Holocaust as redemptive (Buhring 2008, 101). If the suffering of Jews
during the Holocaust was not in fact redemptive, then what purpose could it
possibly serve? Some Christian theologians argued further that the suffering
Jews endured during the Holocaust enabled Jewish communities to become
like early Christian martyrs and cultivate the “divine quality of self-giving
love” (Raphael 2003, 12). For American Christian theologians, the applica
tion of a redemptive framework to the Holocaust ultimately redressed the
problem of Jewish suffering in Christian theology (Haynes 1994).
Sabra’s American authors apply a similar theological framework to Sabra’s
tragic past. Typifying the suffering of Jewish communities in the aftermath of
the Holocaust, the horrific murder of Sabra’s son ultimately fosters her com
mitment to protect and defend the Israeli state. However, Mantlo also subtly
critiques this framework and represents her suffering as obscuring her ability
to fully recognize Palestinian suffering. Mantlo’s critique demonstrates how
liberal Americans in the 1980s were beginning to critically assess Israeli
216 Amanda Furiasse
Jews’ role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and trying to imagine a frame

work of peace that assigned culpability to the Israeli state.
Although Mantlo critiques a simplistic framework for redemption, Sabra
nevertheless reconciles with her past and ends up reinforcing the assumption
that Jewish suffering is inherently redemptive. This belief in redemption
ultimately ushers in a theology of peace that promotes the assumption that
reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians requires a process of
forgiveness, repentance, and justice. This theology of peace is deeply remi
niscent of global political theologies of reconciliation.
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Christian theologians were increasingly
reinterpreting the theological concept of reconciliation and applying it to
global political conflict zones, including Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Korea,
Palestine, and South Africa. Reconciliation theology was unique in that it re
assessed theology’s political significance and the processes by which certain
theological concepts could influence historical and political conditions on the
ground in conflict zones. This emphasis on the historical and political in turn
reassessed the conditions and experiences of the oppressed and how the op
pressed and oppressor could ultimately achieve some form of reconciliation.
In the case of South Africa, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were
pioneering new strategies to facilitate truth and reconciliation between black
and white South Africans. By the early 1980s, global news coverage of the
struggle over apartheid in South Africa rapidly transformed Desmond Tutu
into a global icon and household name with Tutu awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1984. Tutu’s reconciliation theology remained grounded in the Afri
can theological concept of Ubuntu. Popularizing this local African tradition
to Western audiences, Tutu described Ubuntu as the process whereby oppres
sor and oppressed can facilitate interracial reconciliation in South African
society (Tutu 1999, 162). However, reconciliation is not merely about the
oppressed forgiving their oppressor or the oppressor trying to spin what Tutu
calls an “exculpatory self-justifying tale” (Tutu 1999, 163). Rather, reconcili
ation requires that the oppressor recognize the hurt and pain that they have
caused to others and repent for that injustice. According to Tutu, Ubuntu is
the central core of being human, because it allows human beings to “belong
to a community and achieve a social harmony which is the essence of com
munity” (Waldmeir 1998, 254). Without forgiveness, the desire for revenge
threatens to undermine a community’s harmony and thus harms both the op
pressed and oppressor.
This concept has in turn been applied to varying conflict zones, including
Israel-Palestine. For example, Donald Shriver in the late 1970s was trying to
facilitate a theology of reconciliation that could reconcile Israelis and Pales
tinians. For Shriver, reconciliation required that Israelis confront the collec
tive shame of their nation’s true history. Shriver uses the example of an Israeli
woman that fled rising anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe along with her family
to seek refuge in Israel. Although she had always believed that her home in
Israel was voluntarily abandoned by Palestinian families in the aftermath of
1948, decades later, when the Palestinian family that once owned the home
revealed that Israeli soldiers forcibly removed them from the home, she felt
shame and disgust over her nation’s true history (Shriver 2008, 164-65). In
the woman’s own words, “I didn’t stop loving my country, because of that,
but my love lost its innocence” (Shriver 2008, 166). According to Shriver,
this capacity to recognize one’s true national history and repent for this
shameful past was the key to facilitating an authentic process of reconcilia
tion between Israelis and Palestinians.
Sabra’s transformative encounter with the Hulk seems to typify this pro
cess of reconciliation. Like Israeli Jews or white South Africans facing their
nation's shameful history, Sabra realizes that she is a monster who is respon
sible for the death and suffering of young Palestinian children, such as Sahad.
The image of the young dead Palestinian boy in turn reminds Sabra of her
own son as she realizes that her desire for revenge and anger over her tragedy
has caused her to facilitate even more violence and tragedy. Representative
of Jewish suffering in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Sabra’s process of
reconciliation suggests that Israeli Jews cannot allow their tragic past and
suffering to transform them into monsters who are incapable of understanding
the experiences of Palestinian communities. Reconciliation between Arabs
and Israeli Jews is thus represented as a process whereby Israeli Jews unmask
their pride and shame.
Sabra’s process of reconciliation is also imbued with messianic imagery
and tropes as her American authors apply clear parallels between her struggle
and that of other messianic characters in Jewish and Christian theology, in
cluding both King David and Christ. Wearing the messianic star of David
across her chest, Sabra facilitates truth and reconciliation not necessarily
through her physical strength but instead successfully facilitates truth by
acknowledging her own weaknesses and personal failings. Rather than repre
sent her physical strength as her greatest asset, her authors instead invert the
reader’s expectations and represent her physical strength as in fact her great
est weakness. Sabra’s capacity to recognize her weakness and repent for her
past crimes while also forgiving Arab communities for the murder of her son
ultimately allows her to resolve conflicts and facilitate peace.
Sabra’s character draws the reader to an alternative eschatology to the
one espoused by white evangelical Christians such as Hal Lindsey in his
wildly popular novel Late Great Planet Earth. Published in 1970, the Late
Great Planet Earth also paints a world where Jewish suffering allows for
218 Amanda Furiasse
the possibility of redemption. But this world is imagined as one prepared

for Christ’s return. While Jews will have regained the opportunity to repent
for their sins to Christ, others, including Muslims, are painted as eternally
damned. The novel mentions Islam only once in response to Egypt’s Nasser
proclaiming “Our Basic Aim will be to Destroy Israel” (Lindsey 1970, 72),
and explicitly ignores Palestinians and other Arabs all together. Sabra’s
American authors differ sharply from Christian millenarian novelists such
as Lindsey in imagining a redemptive future that includes Palestinians
and other Arab communities. While they mention Palestinians and Arabs,
however, they fail to offer them a voice. For example, the young Arab boy
Sahad does not even speak to Sabra and remains mute as Sabra confronts
her culpability in his death. When Arab characters are finally given oppor
tunities to speak and engage with Sabra, they usually reject any opportunity
for real engagement with the Israeli Jewish superhero. The relationship be
tween Sabra and the Arabian Knight remains superficial at best as the two
resort to bickering and the Arabian Knight argues that Sabra belongs in the
home where she can fulfill her prescribed social roles as wife and mother
(Contest of Champions #2).
Palestinian leaders are also completely absent from Sabra’s story. This
complete dearth of Palestinian leaders from her story renders few if any roles
for Palestinians. The only roles typically allotted to Palestinians involve be
ing either a defenseless child or evil terrorist killing innocent children. Pal
estinian characters are consequently not imbued with any agency in Sabra’s
story. The absence of Palestinian voices renders this political theology of
reconciliation devoid of an authentic Palestinian perspective. Her American
authors consequently create their reconciliation theology from their own lim
ited racial, national, and religious perspective. Furthermore, Mantle’s critical
assessment of Israel’s contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is devoid
of any Palestinian voices or any Arab perspective on the conflict.
Although Sabra’s story was replete with many flaws, including the use of
racist stereotypes about Arab communities, her authors tried to imagine that
peace was in fact possible for Israelis and Palestinians. Living in the after
math of the Camp David Accords, Mantlo created the character of Sabra in
a historical era in which the United Nations and international law agencies
seemed to be ushering in a new era of peace and reconciliation between Israe
lis and Palestinians. The work of political activists and theologians in South
Africa and Northern Ireland further proved that reconciliation was possible
if only leaders facilitated a process of forgiveness and repentance between
oppressors and oppressed. Sabra’s story thus serves as a testament to Ameri
cans’ faith in the international system’s capability to advance global peace.
However, decades after Sabra first appeared in the Incredible Hulk II series,
she suddenly disappeared as a prominent character in the Marvel Universe.
Although Marvel authors attempted to reimagine the character in Astonishing
Tales II #6 which was released in 2009, this reimagining of the character po
litically sanitized her story. The tragic death of her son Jacob in a terrorist at
tack was removed from her story and replaced with a story about her father’s
sacrificial death in a Hydra-directed plot to kidnap her. This reimagining of
the character contains absolutely no reference to Sabra’s ongoing struggle to
forgive and reconcile with her Arab neighbors nor to her internal struggle to
redress her monstrous impulses. Rather than focus on Sabra’s relationships to
Arab communities and other Arab characters, her authors are more concerned
with her relationship to the fictional global terrorist organization Hydra.
More than a decade has passed since this final appearance of the character
in 2009. If her continued absence from the Marvel Universe is any indica
tion of Americans’ attitudes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, American
authors cannot even imagine that peace is still possible between Israelis and
Palestinians today. As Sabra’s memory and legacy continues to dissipate, any
hope of a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also
continues to fade with it. Can Marvel authors reimagine the character to re
dress the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s current political circumstances? Could
this reimagining of the character incorporate the diverse experiences and
perspectives of Palestinian communities? Only the future will tell if Marvel
authors will one day reimagine how the dynamic and multifaceted character
of Sabra could once again serve as a poignant reminder to Marvel’s growing
global audience that reconciliation is always possible.
Chapter Eight
Of Venom and Virtue

Venom as Insight into Issues of Identity,
the Human Condition, and Virtue
Jeremy E. Scarbrough
The question of identity plagues the fields of philosophy and theology. When
and why do we call something good? Who am I—am 1 to be defined by this
action or today’s temperament? Such issues pervade the comic book world
as well. When is someone a hero, antihero, villain, or anti-villain? Can “vil
lainous” describe a good person in an unfortunate situation? Is the altruism
of an egoist “good”? Consider the 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War, is
Thanos “evil” or simply a utilitarian environmentalist? For some, identity is
concealed. For others it is proclaimed, and yet some are still trying to find
theirs. For some, a mask is an effort to conceal an identity; for others, it is
an escape into authenticity. Yet, for some antiheroes or anti-villains, the per
sona by which they are identified represents more of an inner struggle and
an insight into which side is winning. Was the Green Goblin really the same
person as Norman Osborn? Is the vampire Morbius a malicious villain, or
just a man desperate for a cure? Virtue presupposes that a certain character
ought to work its way out in our ethics. Unfortunately, this takes time—thus
the complexity of character formation.
Given the potential impact of one’s superpower (e.g., destroying cities
while trying to protect them), the question of identity becomes: What makes
someone a “hero” rather than a “nuisance”? Was J.J. Jameson right to persist
in labeling your “friendly” neighborhood wall crawler a menace? Spider-Man
is friendly, but if being a neighborhood hero means seeking the neighbor
hood’s best interest, is the damage of a super-human showdown justifiable as
“collateral damage”?
Identity becomes exceedingly complex as we explore inner conflict. Ac
cording to Soren Kierkegaard, the Christian life involves a double danger
(DD). It is a necessary tragedy to overcome one’s egoistic impulses only to
121
122 Jeremy E. Scarbrough
meet antithesis—rejection by the very people one wishes to save (Kierkeg

aard 1949, 68, 157-65). For the Christian, the temptation of the wide path—
the way of the world—is the first danger. To choose the narrow path—the
way of Christ—is to welcome a second danger. As Jesus stated, “You are
not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world
hates you” (John 15:19, NASS'). Kierkegaard focused primarily upon the ini
tial profession of faith and the subsequent sacrifice demonstrated in a life of
charity. Such a commitment not only poses a threat to one’s self-interested
conceptions of the good life but also welcomes persecution and antithesis
from the world.
There is a third danger worth pondering, however. (Whether it should be
properly understood as “Third Danger” or merely a sub-distinction of the
first, it is nevertheless a different sort of danger, and therefore warrants con
sideration as a third type).1 Whereas the profession of faith involves an initial
pledge of life-orientation, the commitment to charity involves an existential
living out of this pledge to self-sacrifice and service over self-interest. And
yet there remains within us something that often wars against even our deep
est values and altruistic desires. This daily inner struggle further complicates
character identity because it looks different at different stages of emotional
development, and our strengths and weaknesses may change with new sea
sons of maturity as we grow in Christ. To live as Christ sometimes feels
discouraging, therefore, because it asks of us a moral excellence that is not
yet fully ours—though we have a salvific expectation of this glorified perfec
tion at the end of our journey. We are called to virtue, but we cannot achieve
excellence without Christ actively at work within us. Curiously, the power of
Christ is perfected in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9); that is, this daily struggle
appears to be a purposeful part of the Christian’s character development.
And so the Christian welcomes not only a submission of will to Christ and a
sacrifice of self-interest for others; he or she also welcomes a daily antithesis
within, thereby threatening to frustrate and discourage the Christian in spite
of their profession.
Similarly, it is a dangerous thing to be a hero. C. Stephen Evans has
explored application of DD in the heroism of Spider-Man and the X-Men
(Evans 2005, 161-75). In subverting self-interest to the responsibility that
comes with great power, Spider-Man overcomes the first danger. Neverthe
less, he battles rejection, animosity, and misrepresentation from the city he
serves—precisely because he became a hero. The X-Men likewise represent a
group of mutants who have rejected self-interest in order to use their gifts for
the greater good. Yet, in exposing their powers to save others, mutant groups
such as the X-Men welcome an impassioned rejection from those who hate
what they fear, and fear what they do not understand.
Of Venom and Virtue 123
While DD is analogous to both the Christian life in particular and heroism

in general, its significance becomes exceedingly complex and symbolic with
anti-heroic characters like Venom. Spider-Man overcame egoism to embrace
the responsibility of heroism, and he faced the backlash of second danger,
but when he encountered the parasitic alien-skin known as the symbiote, he
experienced a new depth to conflict—an emotional struggle with an appetite
for destruction. To wear the Venom-skin is to welcome a third danger. This
danger is best understood within the life of Edward Brock, the history of the
symbiote, and the nature of their symbiotic union—a daily dichotomous walk.
This essay will explore questions of identity, internal struggle, and Ki-
erkegaardian double danger involving the symbiotic nature of the Venom
skin. I argue, first, that Venom serves as an effective metaphor for the
Christian understanding of the human condition and struggle with the sin-skin
and, second, that the character and fortitude required for any host to wear the
alien-skin without being overcome by its appetite offers valuable insight into
Virtue Ethics and the salvific understanding of glorification.
WE ARE VENOM, BUT WHO AM I?

A STORY OF MORAL IDENTITY
The past and identity of the entity now known as Venom is exceedingly
complex. An unnamed alien symbiote first called itself “Venom” after being
rejected by Peter Parker and bonding to Eddie Brock. Brock eventually sepa
rated himself from the living skin as well. Thereafter, the alien bonded with
others but continued to refer to itself (becoming progressively more indepen
dent) as Venom. When Brock manifested a mutated form of the living suit, he
called himself Anti-Venom. The name Venom, then, is a complex aspect of
both Brock’s and the alien’s own identities. Traditionally and most popularly,
the name refers to their specific union. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring
some of the complexities of both their shared and individual histories. While
this intense history has been revealed slowly, in a non-linear progression, 1
will trace significant moments of their past in a linear manner.
Alien Origins
The alien tissue, called a symbiote, came from a planet named Klyntar. Symbi
otes merge with a host, strengthening and evolving it, and feeding upon chemi
cals in the brain produced by adrenaline and emotion, such as phenethylamine.
(This is why Venom had an initial taste for brains, which he later attempted
to curb with chocolate.) While symbiotes have unique personalities, they are
greatly influenced by the personality and emotions of their host. While they
prefer strong and noble hosts and just causes, a corrupt host can corrupt the
symbiote; in turn, a corrupted symbiote can corrupt its host.
The Venom symbiote first bonded with a genocidal alien from an icy
planet—believing him to be heroic. This union facilitated within the symbiote
a proclivity to predation and aggressiveness. Having bonded on an emotional
level, the symbiote became protective of its host. This caused other symbiotes
to distrust it greatly, and it was outcast (Venom: Space Knight #8; Venom
Super Special #1). The symbiote was discovered by the Kree, and used in the
Kree-Skrull War. After serving its purpose, its memories were erased. The
symbiote (now unaware of its past2) was thereafter trapped on a ship, which
crashed on Battleworld (Venom: First Host #1-3; The Amazing Spider-Man
[2018] Annual #1).
When Spider-Man's costume was tom in battle on this world, he attempted
to use a device that would mend his costume. Unknowingly, he accidentally
released the symbiote, and it bonded with him (Secret Wars #8). Feeding on
Peter Parker’s emotional need to be a protector, the symbiote used Parker to
go play hero while Parker believed himself to be sleeping. After realizing that
the suit was alive and trying to control his body, he sought to remove it. A
series of events led to a fateful moment at Our Lady of Saints Church, where
the piercing echoes of the church bells helped to finalize the separation. Pe
ter’s rejection created a growing seed of bitterness within the alien skin, and
that evening, it encountered a tormented companion similarly embittered by a
hatred for the web-slinger. Together, they formed the infamous Venom (The
Amazing Spider-Man #252-59, #298-300, and #315-17; hereafter abbrevi
ated as ASM', Web of Spider-Man #1).
Eddie Brock and the Venomous Union

Brock’s past is one of tragedy and desperation for a sense of meaning and
companionship. After his mother died in childbirth, his father distanced him
self. This created a need for lasting companionship. Inspired by Watergate,
he became a journalist in the name of justice. Unfortunately, in his zeal,
he falsely exposed a fraudulent, compulsive confessor as the criminal Sin-
Eater. When Spider-Man caught the true criminal, the media brought shame
to Brock’s career, and he was unable to find any work short of contributing
“venomous” tabloid trash. The loss of respect in his career brought shame to
his private relationships as well; his father disowned him and his wife left.
To make matters worse, he learned that he had adrenal cancer (Shooter et al.
2007; The Amazing Spider-Man Super Special #1; Venom: Lethal Protector
#3; ASM #300, #375; Venom: Dark Origin #1-5).
Brock desperately needed the emotional stability and camaraderie of long

term companionship; and emotional extremes are nourishment to symbiotes.
Their mutual bitterness toward Spider-Man coupled with Brock’s overpro
duction of adrenaline initially attracted the symbiote and fostered this union,
but the darkness within Brock also encouraged a further corruption within the
symbiote. On that fateful night when they first bonded, this conflicted Catho
lic was somewhere between suicidal, repentant, and desperate for justice.
The Venom-skin greatly enhanced Brock’s strength and imitated many of
the powers learned from Spider-Man, in addition to the alien’s natural shape
shifting and camouflaging abilities. The symbiote and host are also able to
share prior knowledge, which is how Brock discovered Parker’s identity.
Despite his hatred for Spider-Man, Brock had a strong, if distorted, moral
compass when it came to justice and innocence (ASM #330-33, #344-47,
Annual #25).
Lethal Protector or Villainous Vigilante?

Spider-Man and Venom eventually formed a truce: as long as Spider-Man
did not pursue Venom, Venom would not pursue Spider-Man. When Venom
resurfaced in San Francisco, Spider-Man’s sense of responsibility for having
created Venom caused the wall crawler to break his covenant and pursue the
seemingly villainous Venom. The Venom that Peter found in San Francisco,
however, was not a ravenous beast but a Lethal Protector—an anti-heroic
vigilante sharing Parker’s deep concern for justice and the innocent, though
not his convictions concerning questions ofjust and due punishment for the
guilty. Nevertheless, Brock revealed more of a sensitivity to issues of just
cause during these years. When attacked by a man whose son was collateral
damage in one of Venom’s former rampages against Spider-Man, Venom
rationalizes the attack as just and seeks to escape rather than retaliate. Parker
returns to New York, convinced that this Venom—though rough around the
edges—was more of a hero than a villain. Venom remained in San Francisco,
devoting himself to the just cause of protecting the poor and the innocent
(Venom: Lethal Protector #l-6).3
Separation Anxiety
As the symbiote evolved in strength, knowledge, and resilience, so too grew
its appetite—and with it grew a sense of enmity and distrust between it and
Brock, as Eddie continually struggled to resist its destructive impulses and
cannibalistic taste for brains (Venom: The Hunger #1). After learning of his
cancer’s aggressive progression, and following a religious revival within
himself, Eddie sold the symbiote but remained tormented by both withdrawal
(a continual yearning to reunite) and hallucinations (visions of the alien call
ing Brock to give into a phantom appetite for violence).
The Venom-skin eventually encountered and bonded with former Scorpion,
Mac Gargan. With this host—though not necessarily to its preference—the
gluttonous appetite was greatly nourished. This monstrous symbiosis became
the most infamously evil of the Venom manifestations, feeding regularly on
available victims or enemies. Bearing great guilt for the symbiote’s action,
Brock (unsuccessfully) attempted suicide after learning of this unfortunate
series of events {Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #7-8; Venom #1—18; hereafter
abbreviated as V).
After Martin Li (Mr. Negative) miraculously healed Brock of cancer, the
new antigens in Eddie’s body caused a reaction to the remaining remnants
of the Venom-skin. So, when he encountered Gargan, Brock’s body reacted
to the original symbiote by transforming him into Anti-Venom. Now with a
heightened immune system and healing powers, he was more powerful than
and dangerous to any symbiote as he was able to cure any disease or cancer
ous agent. (Moreover, he was now able to cure people of their attachment to
symbiotes). Considering this a second chance, Brock set out to do good and to
rid the city of cancerous evils, eventually sacrificing the Anti-Venom skin in
order to cure a significant number of people (ASM #569, #671; The Amazing
Spider-Man Presents: Anti-Venom: New Ways to Live #1-3).
The U.S. military eventually removed the symbiote from Gargan, and with
drug-induced suppression, attached it to veteran Flash Thompson to create
Agent Venom. (But the suppressant was not completely successful and, like
Brock, Thompson had to keep his anger in check in order to guard against the
Venom-skin’s appetite for destruction.) Flash was a significant influence on
the symbiote—both in care and in character; he treated the suit as a partner
and modeled for it the admirable heroic virtue for which it really longed on a
deeper level (ASM #648, #645; Venom [2011] #1-42). During this time, the
symbiote was forcefully removed and bonded to Superior Spider-Man (Otto
Octavius in control of Parker’s mind and body), thereby creating Superior
Venom and only complicating the trail of corrupt and confusing influences
upon the impressionable symbiote (Superior Spider-Man #22-25).
After the symbiote reunited with Flash, Agent Venom came to work
closely with the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy as an Agent of
the Cosmos. During this time, he learned much more about the Klyntar race
and its struggle with a primeval appetite (Guardians of the Galaxy [2015]
#21-23; Venom:Space Knight #5-9). Alas, Flash continued to struggle with
suppression of the Venom-skin, and the Venom-skin progressively uncovered
deeper layers concerning its corruption and proclivities.
After a final separation from Flash Thompson, the symbiote encountered

and bonded with ex-Army Ranger Lee Price. Highly desirable as a soldier,
Price turned out to be undesirable as a partner. His strength of will kept the
symbiote’s influence at bay, yet Price carried within him a bloodlust all his
own. After the symbiote was removed from Price, Brock reunited with it.
Though Brock longed for this reunion, and although the symbiote had been
positively influenced by its partnership with Flash, seeds of corruption never
theless remained from this series of subsequent hosts and unfortunate events
(Venom [2016] #1-6; V#150).
Venom Returns
Eddie continually faces a bent and conflicted nature in the alien—struggling
with potential re-corruption and recurrent appetite. All he really wants is
to live within this communion with minimal conflict and repercussion. By
this time, the alien has evolved quite a bit and has a distinctly independent
nature—even forcing Brock to sleep so that it can ponder its own agendas.
The symbiote itself has become more conflicted in self-awareness as its own
desires clash with those of its host. Consulting with a priest while Brock slept,
for instance, the symbiote expressed remorse and resolved to earn Eddie’s
love and trust by becoming, once again, a lethal protector (V#154).
Various events continued to raise questions of trust, self-interest, appetite,
and mental/emotional stability. And yet it seems clear that there is within
the alien-skin a light of loyalty and honor, of goodness and conviction. The
Venom-skin is corrupted, to be sure, with a proclivity toward instances of
horrific desires and actions, but it is not evil in and of itself. Similarly, Brock
is a lonely and broken man—desperate for identity, appreciation, and purpose
(self-worth), and therefore susceptible both to the influence of his own emo
tions and to the appetite of the sentient creature within. But if character is
to outweigh action (setting aside complexities of “guilt” for the moment), it
seems that Brock is not a “bad guy.” He consistently reveals a strong aware
ness and deep conviction concerning moral objectivity.
Corruption and Conviction: Conflict in Communion

Recent comics have revealed a darker aspect to the origin of the symbiotes
(a story intertwined with creation narrative). As it turns out, in the beginning
of the universe, there was not nothing; rather, there was a void, a realm of
absolute darkness wherein a god named Knud slept. When the Celestials
suddenly appeared and began to repel the darkness with the light of creation,
the disturbed and resentful Knull declared war on the Celestials, but once
wounded, he fell to a planet below. Knull remained in recovery, while also

bonding pieces of himself to that planet’s lifeforms, and controlling this col
lective of symbiotes via a unified hive mind. He later sent out an army of
symbiote creatures (some of them in dragon form) to seek and destroy other
planets, while he controlled them telepathically from afar. On earth. Knull’s
symbiotic dragon, Grendel, was wounded not by Beowulf but by Thor. This
severed Knull’s intergalactic mind control over the symbiotes, as part of his
consciousness was trapped within Grendel though his body was far from
earth. The symbiotes without a master bonded to earthly hosts {Thor: God of
Thunder #6; Venom [2018] #4).
Now severed from the drive of a raging, bloodthirsty mind, the symbiotes
found themselves overwhelmed by the virtue, nobility, and goodness of these
new hosts. So, elsewhere in the universe, the symbiotes—now converted to
a love of goodness and an admiration for virtue and heroism—surrounded
Knull’s body, imprisoning it in darkness. Klyntar (literally “cage”), then, is not
really a planet but the location of Knull’s imprisonment {Venom [2018] #1-6).
The Klyntar hive mind kept secret this shameful past and, thereafter,
sought out good and admirable hosts. If paired with a weak or imperfect host,
and therefore susceptible to corruption, that symbiote would then be exiled,
destroyed, or purified in order to prevent a permeating infection of the hive
mind. (Since the hive mind is all connected, one corrupted symbiote in close
proximity to another could pervert the purity of the entire hive mind.) While
more could be said, the backstory presented here should suffice for the expo-
sitional purposes of this essay. But before we can effectively draw out theo
logical and moral metaphors, we should review the Christian understanding
of the nature of sin and the essence of the human condition.
OF SIN AND SYMBIOSIS
Holly Ordway has insightfully observed that moral binaries in storytelling

are often essential for grasping a big-picture perspective (Ordway 2015). At
the end of the day, the moral question is a binary one. However, the myriad
ways that moral questions and the problem of sin reveal themselves within
our individual experiences and throughout the course of our lives unfolds in a
series of shades of gray. Insofar as we portray ourselves to be Spider-Man and
our antithesis as a venomous monstrosity that wants to eat our brains, then it
is difficult to see Venom as much more than mere monster. On the other hand,
if we look beyond that binary and ponder the complexities of the Venom-skin
and its symbiotic relationships, we may find that we are more like Venom
than Spider-Man. Perhaps Spider-Man is an ideal; Venom is the reality.
The story of Venom is a rich ground for ethical and theological explora
tion. But our primary concern involves the nature of sin and the struggle of
the human condition. Here it is essential to understand, first, that there is a
sin-condition, a warring nature within every human being (Rom. 7:15-23; 1
John 1:8), and, second, that an excessive pride (hubris) amounts to a perver
sion of appetite. From these two foci we observe a number of powerful points.
Piercing the Sin-Skin: An Autopsy of Enmity

It has long been said that pride is the principal manifestation of a corruption
that gives birth to a host of further manifestations of corruption. What should
be understood here, though, is that pride comes back to an issue of appetite.
So it will be more helpful to understand that all of sin finds the root of its
corruption within a perversion of appetite. Many Christian philosophers
stress the point that evil has no ontological existence; it has only a parasitic
existence. Sin is a perversion identifiable only by its manifestation within
the good thing that it has corrupted (Geisler 2004, 106; Copan and Litwak
2014, 44). As articulated by Harold Willmington, “Sin must not only disguise
itself as the good, but must also actually connect itself to the good. In itself
sin has no unifying power. Here sin may be likened to a virus, and the good
to a healthy cell” (Willmington 2011, 558). Sin is. as Milliard Erickson put
it, any lack of conformity of one’s inner disposition, in which one’s will and
relationship to God is twisted (Erickson 1998, 453, 596). Telos (purpose/
designated function) is, therefore, a concept central to understanding both sin
and morality. Creation includes designated purposes. To function according
to those purposes is good. To misuse a good thing is the essence of sin—a
teleological perversion.4
According to Romans 3, the human condition is quite grave. No one is
good nor does good. Each perpetuates injustice. Evil reveals itself in us like
a poison. We dwell in bitterness. We seek destruction and bloodshed, and
we are ignorant of the path to peace. Our nature is depraved and filthy. We
are unclean, infected, and carried away by our degenerate natures (Isa. 64:6).
What is interesting about corruption is that it is, so to speak, highly impres
sionable. As Christian philosopher and theologian Norman Geisler put it, “A
fallen conscience is fallible. It reflects an innate capacity to know right from
wrong, but it does not guarantee that it will always be accurate; it can be dis
torted (Rom 2:15) by culture, choices, and, at times, even ‘seared’ by intense
evil (1 Tim. 4:2)” (Geisler 2004, 77).
The Venom-skin serves as an effective metaphor for the human condi
tion—from both the perspective of the host and that of the alien. Unless
cleansed/purified, exposure to the extreme emotions of a host’s hatred, pride,
and bitterness corrupts the symbiotes; a corrupted symbiote in turn corrupts

its host. All it takes is one moment of rage for a symbiote to succumb to a
monstrous appetite for violence. The issue of appetite is central both to the
nature of corruption and to one’s susceptibility to that corruption. “For the
flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these
are in opposition to one another” (Gal. 5:17).
Our analogies of this struggle take several forms. Within the symbiotic
union. Brock represents the rational mind (reason/understanding) set against
the primal desires of an alien flesh. But this metaphor has two analogous
offspring of its own: (1) Brock himself, subject to the human condition,
must continually battle the desires of his own flesh, and (2) the alien-skin
is nevertheless a rational creature, facing its own struggles between reason
and appetite. For the host, the alien amplifies his/her emotional proclivities
and desires. To grant even slight foothold to one’s passions is to welcome
an opportunity for the possibility of succumbing to the alien-flesh. For the
impressionable alien-skin, it is only after an introduction to the appetite of a
corrupted host that the alien skin too becomes corrupted, and thereafter influ
ences subsequent hosts. Here we might reverse the metaphor. The essential
nature of the human being is an immaterial rational substance, alien to, yet
meant to be bound with, a material form. Although we were created good in
the fullness of our telos, and innocent in the essence of our original nature,
after an initial pairing with the instability of a sinful disposition, we, like
Venom, have become unable to redeem ourselves.
To have a sinful nature is to have a proclivity toward a bent habituation—
a teleological perversion of appetite. While the Venom-skin may not be the
best metaphor for pride per se, sinful pride is nevertheless an excess of ap
petite, and the struggle with appetite is the very story of the Venom-skin. It
is our story as well.
Bent for Corruption: An Appetite for Destruction

Many aspects of creation pivot from a sense of appetite, and appetites thrive
on a healthy state of desire. However, once desire becomes perverted in any
way, it impacts the host—resulting in a sort of deficiency/malnutrition or a
sense of excess/obesity. The human condition, then, might be best understood
as the perversion of natural desire. As Joy McDougal explains, “Sin takes the
form of a distorted delight that falsely idealizes one’s fellow creatures and
leads to a sentimental attitude toward them.... Sin does not destroy what we
are .. . it disfigures our creaturely reality so that we become a parody of that
identity” (McDougall 2011, 59).
Jeremiah 17:9 proclaims, “The heart is deceitful above all things and be
yond cure,” while James 1:15 insists it is the offspring of desire which gives
birth to sin. Erickson clarifies that desire plays an important teleological role
within the created order, but when moral degeneration begets malformed
desires, malignancy becomes apparent. At bottom, human desires are le
gitimate. Nevertheless, “a number of natural desires, while good in and of
themselves, are potential areas for temptation and sin. . . . There are proper
ways to satisfy each of these desires, and there are also divinely imposed
limits. Failure to accept these desires as they have been constituted by God,
and therefore to submit to divine control is sin” (Erickson 1998, 614-15). Ar
istotle understood that appetite/desire is locus to human telos; since character
is formed by habits, and moral excellence (or virtue) is an issue of character,
he believed the habituation of desire to be pivotal to ethics and eudaemonia
(human flourishing and the good life). It is reason and the ability to act con
trary to our desires that sets human beings apart from the animals, after all.
Moderation—staying between the excesses and deficiencies of appetite—is
thus essential to ethics.5
Aquinas later expanded Aristotelean themes. As Kenneth Boa summarizes,
for Aquinas, “desire is the transcendental relation of a creature to its final end.
Since man is a microcosm of the hierarchy of creation, his desires of appetites
reflect this diversity” (Boa 2004, 17). Moreover, “just as the appetite tends
toward the good, so the intellect tends toward the true” (18). Hierarchically,
Aquinas acknowledged both individual and communal needs, “but he subor
dinated all of these needs to the highest human need of beatitude” (19). All
of human activity, then, pivots around teleology:
Desires . . . must be controlled by reason, not for the purpose of eliminating

them, but in order that... they may serve rather than hinder the quest for man’s
final end. . . . There is some continuity between the natural and supernatural
ends. ... The deep, insatiable need of uniting ourselves to that which is capable
of perfecting us... exerts a constant pull on the will, and to this extent the will
is determined. (22-23)
Following the tradition of Plato, Augustine understood this struggle on a sig

nificantly larger scale. We are not just warring between reason and desire; we
are aliens and strangers attempting to live amid and seek the good even within
corruption, all the while holding ourselves to a standard that lies beyond the
corruption. We live tethered to Babylon (it is our host, you might say), and
yet we live as foreign ambassadors of Jerusalem (Boa 2004, 13). (In a similar
way, the alien-skin is often tethered to violent hosts. Still, it seeks solace in
the hope of one day dwelling within the heart of a hero.)
According to Augustine, our true nature is determined by our loves.6 Now

this observation has interesting application. When the ravenous appetite of
the corrupted skin overcomes a host, it is really because there dwells within
the host a secret desire to know such an appetite satiated. The key to the pu
rification of the symbiote involves a host that is so admirable that the alien
loves and longs to be more like the host. John Edwards similarly insisted that
the development of an appetite for moral excellence was related to the devel
opment of a desire for deep communion with God (Boa 2004, 30).
Of Valor and Virulence

Venom is just the monstrous face of an enslavement to one’s desire and the
bestial manifestation of an insatiable hostility. Brock often finds himself suc
cumbing either to the will of a corrupted alien-skin or to a sense of depravity
within himself. He holds a deep-seated desire for the good—justice for the
innocent—but also a perverted sense of desire that revels in the violence of
vengeance. He even admits that the alien “can't make you do anything you
don’t really want to do” (Venom: Sinner Takes All #3, 10). Despite this, there
are numerous times wherein Eddie and the alien-skin express a deep desire to
escape corruption, to do good, and to avoid evil.
As a comic hero, Brock’s self-control is an ideal—a source of encourage
ment and hope that self-control is possible', it is an ideal of virtue because
such self-control is uncommon. In reality, we need help to change into the
sort of being able to control it (Phil. 3:19-21). Consider C.S. Lewis’ analogy
of a family pet as metaphor for the Christian transformation. “We treat our
dogs as if they were ‘almost human’: that is why they really become ‘almost
human’ in the end” (Lewis 2001, 194). Likewise, controlling the sin-skin is
impossible without the mediating, transformative power of Christ in us.
The Third Danger

Let us now return to the Kierkegaardian notion of two dangers. The first
danger is an issue of choice, a wager that presents a lasting danger in one of
two senses. For the one who refuses to submit to his/her Creator, this choice
will be an ultimate detriment, in light of eternity, to happiness, wholeness,
and identity—a momentary freedom, but an infinite loss. For the one who
submits to the lordship of Christ, this choice becomes a danger in the sense
that it will result in some temporal losses—including, perhaps, a rejection of
certain orientations and identities that one might prefer to hold. The question,
then, is to whom shall I submit—self or God—and whom shall 1 serve—Cre
ator or creation?
While the first danger represents the salvific struggle of faith-orientation,

the second danger involves the trials and persecutions that accompany this
narrow path (faith-in-action). This is clear in John 15:19. If one walks in
the way of the world, the world will love its own. If one walks in the way of
Christ, he/she will be rejected by the world. In choosing to walk this path, one
welcomes a sense of danger and estrangement from non-believers. To choose
Jerusalem is to identify with the ultimate good of the Kingdom to come, but
one must continue dwelling in Babylon as resident alien in the meantime.
So, the second danger is rejection and opposition from those who despise
the aliens who don’t love Babylon as they do. If the first danger involves
a self-submission to God, and the second involves a vulnerability to others
which accompanies self-abandonment, the third is present all along—it is a
continual struggle for self-control in order even to be capable of either form
of self-surrender.
As the analogy maps onto comic lore, the first danger is still an ultimate
answer to the moral questions: What is the good life? How should I live?
Whom shall 1 serve—self or other? The benefit or detriment is still, here, an
issue of the soul. According to Plato, an egoist who seeks an immoral means
to a self-interested end suffers an imbalance and injustice within his/her soul.7
One can never really know the good, and by extension the good life, so long
as one’s soul suffers sickness. The hero’s first danger involves the choice to
reject egoism and hedonism and to take up the mantle of protector or justice
seeking vigilante. The second danger is an unfortunate rejection by those
that the hero is attempting to save. Mutant heroes are often feared and hated
precisely because of their powers.
In characters like Venom, however, there is also a third danger—the daily
dichotomous walk (any recovering addict knows this struggle well). The
symbiotic nature of the Venom-skin means that there is deep conflict between
two versions of one’s self; to wear the alien-skin is to carry the burden of its
impulsive nature, The sin-nature is not removed until glorification. We are
therefore, at any moment, antagonists unto ourselves. The salvific journey
itself, while we are maturing sin-vessels, is a dangerous one. To walk this
path is to stumble along, to fear a potential for backsliding, to despair of
overcoming the same obstacle that has been a hindrance for years. Amid this
journey, our vessel wars against us. There is a warring nature within, and it is
a threatening hindrance to both confidence and progress. This nature, a third
danger, is a symbiotic struggle for self-control. As Paul confesses:
For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would
like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. . .. Nothing good dwells in me,
that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is
not. For the good that 1 want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do
not want.... Although 1 want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my
inner being I delight in God’s law; but 1 see another law at work in me, waging
war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at
work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
that is subject to death? (Rom. 7:15-25)
Despite our initial choice in overcoming the first danger, and notwithstanding
any harms or hindrances from others, we are a harm and hindrance unto our
selves. While the spirit may be willing, the flesh is weak (Matt. 26:41). This is
the Venom-skin struggle. Moreover, we can identify with it from multiple an
gles. We are the host. We identify with Brock. We understand the rage that one
feels when having suffered injustice. Additionally, we are like the alien-skin:
uncorrupted in the essence of our origin, yet significantly influenced by the
things to which we have attached ourselves along the way, we now carry within
us a bent, impulsive disposition. We also understand Brock’s struggle as host
to a corrupted appetite. We are “aliens and strangers” urged “to abstain from
fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). In the comic lore,
the struggle of appetite is as much the alien’s anxiety as it is Brock’s burden.
ON VIRTUE AND GLORIFICATION
As our desires wage war against our soul, sin becomes a habitual enslavement
of our spiritual will to the insatiable appetite of our flesh. Erickson calls this
a flight from reality (Erickson 1998, 632)—from both the ability to discern
truth (e.g., Jer. 17:9 and Rom. 1:18-31) and the opportunity to discover
our true identity. Furthermore, this highly impressionable depravity grows
with subsequent encounters of excessive passions—lust, anger, resentment,
bitterness, etc.—and by the subverting of reason. The perversion of reason
encourages a twisting of facts in order to justify one’s own self-interested
and questionable behaviors—even in the name of an altruistic “justice.” Paul
warned that sin seizes any opportunity to produce in us a “coveting of every
kind” (Rom. 7:8), and James taught that where such passions rule, “there is
disorder and every evil thing” (James 3:16). The key, both to the good life and
to salvific maturity, therefore lies within a habituation of one’s appetite and a
purposeful reorientation toward excellence. This is virtue ethics.
Venom as Virtuous
Excellence is a process—a continual struggle to reach and maintain an ide
alistic middle ground between the extremes of our appetite (excess and defi
ciency). So, conscience and conviction are prerequisites for growing toward
virtue. Brock and the symbiote do not always make the best choices, but con
science and conviction are revealed in both characters. Brock has struggled
with these for the better part of three decades. The alien revealed its struggle
with questions of conscience and conviction more in depth amid its reunion
with Brock in 2016:
Eddie worries about me. . . . Says I’m sick. Don’t feel sick. . . . Understood
feelings before, but simple feelings—like colors, bold and bright. Happy. Sad.
Angry. Then . . . met Spider-Man. Feelings got complicated. Learned guilt. . . .
Learned feeling: betrayal. Learned first words they called me. Monster. Parasite.
Bad. Sometimes when we swing, Eddie’s mind drifts. Then we can push in a
direction.... To find criminals. Eddie doesn’t know we do this. Wrong to trick
him? But not wrong to stop criminals. . . . Eddie says we have to hide. . . . [But]
Feels good to be a hero. . . . Did do bad things, too. Can’t deny. . . . Am I mon
ster? Parasite? Bad? Can’t be bad. Wasn’t bad with Flash. Fought with heroes.
Jhas a hero. (T#154, 6-18)
Virtue requires a moral sensitivity and an awareness regarding what is mor

ally excellent enough to imitate (Phil. 4:8). Both Brock and the symbiote
seem to be aware of this. Recalling Jesus’ words about the eye as lamp to the
body (Luke 11:34-35), it appears they must have their sight fixed upon some
sense of intuitive goodness since this moral sensibility resonates so strongly
within.
Virtue (i.e., moral excellence) is the sort of thing that is only achieved
through relentless persistence in imitation of an ideal example. As explained
by philosopher Louis Pojman, “eventually, the apprentice-like training in vir
tue gained by imitating the ideal model results in a virtuous person who spon
taneously does what is good” (Pojman and Fieser 2009, 148). While Brock
may not be the ideal role model at this stage in his journey, he nevertheless
displays a persistence in his resistance to the venomous appetite as well as in
his desire to serve the innocent.
Brock’s early life reveals an original desire to fight for justice. In his initial
symbiosis, he is torn between the alien appetite and warring ideals ofjealousy,
vengeance, and justice within his own heart.8 As Brock and the symbiote each
learn to control both their individual and symbiotic appetites, Venom begins
to habituate his appetite and direct his power toward serving the less fortunate
and the unprotected. Though they continue to struggle with the power of the
passions and the emotional currents of corruption, both Brock and the alien
have grown more admirable in many ways—and they continue to persevere
in their aim for moral excellence and self-control.9 Thus, Venom possesses
the virtue of fortitude—a virtue necessaty for the acquisition of subsequent
virtues—and he aims desperately for temperance. So in this, if nothing else,

Venom serves as a role model. He may not be a hero in the deepest sense,
but he longs to be. Flawed though he may be, as he continues to stumble, he
is nonetheless persistent in long suffering for the good and often aims for the
moral excellence of a hero.
This is a struggle with which we are all familiar (Jas. 3:2). Indeed. Jesus
reminds us that the weakness of our willing spirit in succumbing to the pow
erful persuasions of our flesh should be kept continually before our prayerful
minds (Matt. 26:41). As within Venom, we find within ourselves a struggle
between the person whom we desire to be and the one whom we find our
selves to be. Nevertheless, we are called to aim for excellence, to love the
good, to seek the noble, and to imitate the admirable (Phil. 4:8). Despite our
weaknesses and failures, fortitude produces character, and character, hope
(Rom. 5:3-4). So virtue is realized within a life of discipline. Discipline
matures us and refines us. To wear the Venom-skin and play the part of the
hero requires, at bottom, not principles, but a certain caliber of character—a
continual habituation and the pursuit of moral excellence.
The Paradoxical Double Danger of Symbiosis: When Spirit

Changes Flesh
There is, it seems, a sort of double danger for the symbiote as well. Yet
within this danger there is hope! After the initial bonding of Brock and
the symbiote—when they first became “Venom”—this new identity reso
nated so potently with the alien that it continued to embrace this identity
thereafter, even when separated from Brock. That is, Brock had a lasting
impact on the alien. Both Brock and Flash Thompson (as well as Spider-
Man) significantly influenced the moral sensitivities of the Venom-skin.
Moreover, like Brock, the symbiote itself began to emulate heroism and to
grow into a healthier state of mind, able to resist the impulse of appetite.
There is, then, a sort of charismatic allure that virtue in the host holds over
the adjoined flesh.
In the backstory of the Klyntar it was the noble influence of a goodness
reflected within humanity that began to purify the symbiotes (once separated
from Knull’s influence). Virtuous character, tethered to the alien skin, began
to purify the alien skin! There is, therefore, a double danger for the Klyntar;
to bond with a virtuous host is to lose part of one’s prior identity and to grow
into a different sort of creature.
So, too. Christ has the power to change the Christian (Col. 1:22)! The lusts
of our flesh are purged as we become more like the one to whom our exis
tence is now tethered—Virtue Himself, the nourishment of our soul, the sub
stance of our identity. We are the alien skin, transformed by a host in whom
darkness and corruption become unintelligible. Therefore, to remain attached
to our host is to welcome this purge of our impurities. Declared dead to sin,
we are made alive in Christ (Ephesians 2). While the process is ongoing amid
our lifetime, we, like Venom, can expect the struggle to continue. In the end,
however, the Christian has a hope that will unfortunately elude Brock so long
as he continues to rely on his own strength of spirit to keep at bay the beast
of a corrupted appetite.
It is the Spirit of the Lord wherein lies freedom and transformation (2
Cor. 3:17-18). The redemptive Spirit of Christ working in the believer is the
purified Symbiote of peace, propitiation, and moral perfection. The process
of sanctification is symbiotic—it is not us, but Christ in us; it is not of works
that none may boast, and yet it asks something from us nonetheless. But un
like the Klyntar, unlike our sin-skin, the Christ-skin is pure by nature and
incorruptible. The Christian glorified, then, is the full embodiment of the
Christ-Christian symbiosis (Gal. 4:15).
Our moral liturgies, virtuous practices of self-control, and heroic rituals of
self-sacrifice are not enough in themselves to purify our own consciences.
This requires our adjoining to a host already virtuous enough to purge our
will—thereby refining our character into the sort of being that carries within
itself a purified conscience and a tempered soul. So the paradoxical double
danger is this: With great strength of character and a purified will (i.e., with
Christ in us) it is the Light that infects the Darkness. To tease out the anal
ogy a bit further, in the full maturity of our symbiotic union with Christ, we
become more like Anti-Venom; in the state ofglorification, no evil can touch
us, nor can it dwell in our presence. Darkness becomes unintelligible when
surrounded by light. So, although we fight a daily struggle with a venomous
sin-skin, there is hope! Although it will not be found in his strength alone,
there is hope for Eddie Brock, as well!
NOTES
1. Consider, for example, the problem of evil. The logical and evidential issues
usually preoccupy dialogue. Despite rationalizations concerning logic, probability,
and evidentiary considerations, however, there is nevertheless an existential problem
of pain, which must be lived out.
2. Just because one loses one’s memory, however, does not necessarily mean that
one’s habituations, appetites, or temperamental proclivities are gone.
3. Interestingly, it was Wolverine who first encouraged Venom’s transition to
antihero (Venom [2018] Annual #1). The influence of such heroism (of one who has
demonstrated great fortitude in the face of double danger) is a significant point to
which we will return. Add to this the significance of Wolverine’s past encounter with
Klyntar symbiosis (Web of Venom: Ve ’Nam #1).
4. Furthermore, human beings were created as image-bearers of the Creator.
Therein lies a great sense of dignity central to our moral intuitions.
5. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.5-6, 1108b 11-1109b26.
6. See Augustine, City of God XIV.28.
7. For the story of Gyges, see Plato, The Republic, 359c-360d; concerning Plato’s
account of the soul as it relates to the question of virtuous justice vs egoistic injustice,
see Phaedrus 253d-256e and The Republic 580d-e, 588b-589e.
8. Here Willmington’s observation resonates profoundly, concerning the desper
ate and insecure, inner-warring nature of our sin-skin. “Sin often must strive against
itself. . . . [For example] a promiscuous heterosexual is sickened at the sexual per
version of a homosexual. But this is not so with the good. . . . Good has only one
enemy, the evil; but any evil has two enemies, the good and another conflicting evil”
(Willmington 2011,558). Consider, likewise, C.S. Lewis’ observation about this war
ring nature: “The more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others” (Lewis
2001, 122).
9. Perhaps this is to be expected, as they have continually been exposed to exem
plars such as Spider-Man. After all, 1 Peter 2:12 speaks to the influence and allure
of moral excellence. It seems that excellence exemplified becomes quite contagious.
Chapter Nine
Matt Murdock's Ill-Fitting

Catholic Faith in Netflix's Daredevil
Daniel D. Clark
Japanese novelist Endo Shusaku often compared his Catholic faith to an ill-
fitting coat, a coat he could never quite wear comfortably nor one he could
ever cast off. In 1934 at the age of eleven, Endo, at his mother’s insistence,
was baptized into the Catholic faith. Maintaining that faith would be a life
long struggle. In a time of growing nationalism and imperialism in Japan,
Endo, as a young man, faced suspicion and at times harassment for hav
ing adopted the enemy’s religion. A far more serious challenge to his faith
came from his own cultural presuppositions, which were deeply informed by
Shinto and Buddhism. That the natural state of humanity is sinful, that the
individual must actively resist sin, that a savior is needed to make atonement
for the sins of the world, that the individual needed to acknowledge a per
sonal, sovereign God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent were
all ideas that, while foundational to Catholicism, rattled Endo’s Japanese
sensibilities. Endo himself tried repeatedly to abandon the faith, but found
himself returning to it. Catholicism, which had been forced upon him by his
mother, had become such a part of his identity that try as he might, he could
never escape it:
There were many times when I felt I wanted to get rid of my Catholicism, but
I was finally unable to do so. It is not just that I did not throw it off, but that
I was unable to throw it off. The reason for this must be that it had become a
part of me after all. The fact that it had penetrated me so deeply in my youth
was a sign, I thought, that it had, in part at least, become coextensive with me.
(Johnston 1980, xv)
Like Endo, Matt Murdock in Netflix’s Daredevil series finds his Catholic
faith, at times, a troublesome yet inescapable part of his identity. Murdock
139
140 Daniel D. Clark
questions not only the real-world efficacy of Catholicism in the face of wide
spread injustice, suffering, and corruption, he also doubts his own ability to
bring about lasting changes within his community. But as much as he might
question that faith, his need for the moral clarity of his faith proves greater
than his doubt as Murdock's Catholicism functions, in part, as the catalyst for
his vigilantism. Catholic doctrines concerning helping the weak and vulner
able and Murdock’s own sense of guilt compel him to act outside the law.
Ultimately, Murdock’s compulsion to help those in need flows from a mix
of Catholic teaching and his own anger and bitterness from the suffering in
his own life.
Murdock’s faith also works to restrain his desire to hurt others, though he
encounters many voices tempting him to release his inner devil. Murdock
recognizes his impulse toward violence and seeks meaningful and moral
boundaries for these compulsions. His Catholic faith provides some restraints
as Murdock’s belief in the sanctity of life and in the possibility of redemption
for all prevents him from taking the lives of his enemies. Murdock’s frequent
self-examinations and his questioning the morality of his impulses also work
to constrain his violence. To this end, Murdock at first reluctantly, but in time
purposefully, pursues mentors in Father Lantom and Sister Maggie, looking
for both their approval and moral guidance concerning his use of violence in
the name of justice.
THE CATHOLIC CATALYST TO ACTION
Matt Murdock’s childhood is filled with personal trauma. His mother, suf
fering from postpartum depression, abandons him and his father, Jack, when
Murdock is an infant. His father, a boxer with a mediocre record of 24-31,
raises his son alone. As a nine year old, Murdock idolizes his father, seeing
him as a hero, and may have been attempting to emulate this vision when he
saves an elderly man from being run over in traffic. Though he pushes the
man to safety, the resulting accident dumps drums of hazardous materials
on the roadway. Murdock’s eyes are splashed with chemicals leaving him
blinded but his other senses uncontrollably heightened. Not much later, Mur
dock’s father, desiring his son’s respect, wins a boxing match the mob has
instructed him to lose. As he is walking home after the fight, Jack Murdock is
shot by a mob hitman. Young Murdock is awakened by the gunshot that takes
his father’s life. Seemingly orphaned, Matt is taken in by the Saint Agnes Or
phanage. His heightened senses only compound his suffering as he is unable
to shut out the amplified voices and sounds surrounding the orphanage. These
traumas leave Murdock alone, angry, and bitter.
Matt Murdock’s Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix's Daredevil 141
The Catholic orphanage, however, provides Murdock a means of directing

his anguish toward a positive end. Father Lantom, one of Murdock’s primary
mentors after the death of his father, tells an eleven-year-old Murdock that
anger is “a perfectly understandable reaction to your situation, but it’s not
sustainable. . . . [Yjou’re going to have to deal with your anger, Matthew.
Find a way to harness it, or it will destroy you” (“Please,” 3.2). Lantom may
even be the first to encourage Murdock to focus his rage toward becoming a
lawyer as he observes how easily Murdock enjoys both fighting and arguing
(“Please,” 3.2).
Though Murdock is an unwilling resident at Saint Agnes, he is learning
the Catholic Catechism (“Please,” 3.2), elements of which form some of his
core moral values and motivate him to seek justice as an adult. For example,
several catechisms reflect Murdock’s opposition toward corruption. One
catechism asserts that those with power must “serve the legitimate good of
the communities. . . . Regimes whose nature is contrary to the natural law,
to the public order, and to the fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve
the common good of the nations on which they have been imposed” (Catho
lic Church 1993, 1901). Another catechism claims that authority “must not
behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good as a ‘moral
force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility’” (1902). Still another
encourages opposing those with power who “take measures contrary to the
moral order” (1903). As an adult, Murdock becomes a lawyer to be a force
for good. Using his ability to hear changes in heart rhythms, he recognizes the
innocent and defends them from corrupt authorities. It is not surprising then
that Murdock feels so strongly compelled to oppose Wilson Fisk, who, while
claiming to work for the common good of their community, Hell’s Kitchen,
does not hesitate to intimidate, use physical violence, and even kill individu
als to achieve his goals.
Other catechisms reinforce Murdock’s compulsion to take direct action
against corruption as they remind Catholics of their moral obligation to
work toward justice, especially for the weak, the needy, and the powerless.
One catechism reads, “The duty of making oneself a neighbor to others and
actively serving them becomes even more urgent when it involves the dis
advantaged” (1932). Another asserts, “There exist also sinful inequalities
that affect millions of men and women. These are in open contradiction of
the Gospel: ‘Their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer
and more humane conditions’” (1938). Murdock transforms these abstract
teachings into concrete actions as he uses his heightened senses and fighting
skills to confront corruption and to defend the vulnerable, which Murdock, at
least initially, views as his fulfilling of God’s purpose in his life (“The Path
of Righteousness,” 1.11).
142 Daniel D. Clark
MURDOCK'S AMBIVALENCE TO
THE CATHOLIC FAITH
Though Murdock identifies as a Catholic and is influenced by Catholic teach

ing, he experiences ambivalence toward the Church itself as he feels com
pelled to act outside the normal bounds of Catholic activism while subcon
sciously desiring the Church's approval. This ambivalence is demonstrated in
one of the earliest scenes in the series as the adult Murdock ostensibly goes
to Father Lantom for confession. Murdock, however, is unable to articulate
his plan for action or his need for the Church’s sanction; rather, he describes
his father’s unexceptional career as a fighter while highlighting his father’s
ability to take a punch, to be knocked down but never knocked out. Murdock
seems to be describing not only his father, but his own alter ego. Murdock
describes his father’s eyes going dead, his letting his inner devil out as he
would beat his opponents mercilessly once trapping them in the corner of
the ring. Murdock tells the priest that when he was younger, he didn’t under
stand his father’s rage, his letting his inner devil out, but now, as an adult,
Murdock implies he does. Father Lantom attempts to shift the conversation
toward Murdock’s confession: “Perhaps this would be easier if you tell me
what you’ve done.” Murdock enigmatically tells the priest, “I’m not seek
ing penance for what I’ve done, Father. I’m asking forgiveness ... for what
I’m about to do.” Unsettled with the morality of the course he has set for
himself, Murdock seeks not so much forgiveness but moral affirmation from
the Church. Murdock finds himself compelled to act while subconsciously
questioning the adequacy of his own moral compass (“Into the Ring,” 1.1).
Murdock further illustrates his ambivalence toward the real-world suf
ficiency of his faith after the murder of his client, Elena Cardenas. Carde
nas’ landlord and Fisk subordinate Armand Tully had been attempting to
evict Cardenas and the other tenants from their rent-controlled apartments.
Fisk orders Cardenas’ death, making her appear to be a victim of a purse
snatching that turned violent. After watching Fisk publicly proclaim his
outrage and sorrow over the death of Cardenas, Karen Page, Murdock’s
law assistant, asks Murdock if his faith helps him deal with these types
of injustices. Murdock responds, “Not today” (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9).
Page then tells Murdock, “If there is a God and if he cares at all about any
of us, Fisk will get what he deserves. You have to believe that.” Murdock
responds confidently, “I do” (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9). Murdock’s faith
provides small comfort after the death of Cardenas, but his assurance that
Fisk will be brought to justice may rest more in his faith that he himself
will be God’s instrument of judgment rather than in any Christian teaching
concerning God's ultimate judgment.
Matt Murdock’s Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix’s Daredevil 143
Though Murdock feels compelled to act, he seems suspicious of his own

motivations and seeks sanction from Father Lantom for his vigilantism, which
Lantom hesitates to provide. Murdock recognizes his violent tendencies, a de
sire to release his inner devil. Although he can rationalize the utility of killing
Fisk, Murdock lacks confidence that his decision is not tainted by those violent
desires and thus seeks to gain Father Lantom’s approval. Before confronting
Fisk, Murdock asks Lantom if he believes in a literal devil. Lantom tells of his
friend and Rwandan village elder Gahiji, who was respected by both Hutu and
Tutsi. Even though a militia commander had ordered his death, the command
er’s subordinates could not bring themselves to kill a man so widely admired.
The commander came to the village himself, spoke to Gahiji for hours, and then
dragged him out of his hut and butchered him and his family in front of the
villagers. “In that man who took Gahiji’s life,” Lantom says, “I saw the Devil.
So, yes, Matthew, I believe he walks among us, taking many forms.” Murdock
replies, “What if you could have stopped him from ever hurting anyone again?”
Lantom asks, “Stopped him how?” (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9). While Lantom
shares Murdock’s contempt for injustice and desires to see oppressors removed
from power, Lantom suggests moral limits exist when confronting injustice.
THE INSUFFICIENCY OF THE LAW
Murdock’s compulsion to fight against corruption is further fueled by his

sense of Catholic morality and his own frustrations with the failure of the law
to meet out justice. In his closing arguments defending hit man John Healy for
killing a mob boss named Prohaszka, Murdock describes a fundamental differ
ence between morality and law: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, forgive me
if I seem distracted. I’ve been preoccupied of late with ... questions of moral
ity, of right and wrong, good and evil. Sometimes the delineation between the
two is a sharp line. Sometimes it’s a blur.” While Murdock notes that some
believe morality is a subjective construct in which there is no “sharp line, only
[a] blur,” he bristles at a law that ignores morality. Murdock’s Catholic back
ground at times places him at odds with his own profession. In this courtroom,
Murdock knows his client is guilty, yet because of the lack of evidence, the
law works in favor of the guilty, which further spurs Murdock’s vigilantism.
Murdock’s closing argument emphasizes both his fidelity to upholding the
law and his frustration that the law is incapable of making moral judgments.
Murdock argues,
A man is dead. And my client, John Healy took his life. This is not in dispute.
It is a matter of record, of fact, and facts have no moral judgment. They merely
144 Daniel D. Clark
state what is.... What was in my client’s heart when he took Mr. Prohaszka’s
life? Whether he is a good man or something else entirely, is irrelevant. These
questions of good and evil, as important as they are, have no place in a court of
law. Only the facts matter.... Based on these, and these alone, the prosecution
has failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that my client was not acting
solely in self-defense. And those, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the facts.
My client, based purely on the sanctity of the law which we’ve all sworn an oath
to uphold must be acquitted of these charges. Now beyond that, beyond these
walls he may well face a judgment of his own making. But here in this court
room the judgment is yours and yours alone. (“Rabbit in a Snowstorm,” 1.3)
After the jury is unable to reach a verdict and Healy is released, Murdock
fulfills his own prophecy . That evening, dressed as Daredevil, Murdock con
fronts Healy. After a brutal fight, Murdock forces Healy to reveal that Wilson
Fisk had hired him to kill Prohaszka. Healy then faces his own judgment by
killing himself out of fear that Fisk will kill his entire family for surrendering
his name.
While Murdock’s faith has taught him to oppose injustice forcefully, his
sense of morality coupled with his frustration with the limits of the law
further motivate him to embrace vigilantism. However, the most significant
catalyst to Murdock’s ever-increasing aggression against corruption may
well result from his sense of guilt. As Murdock acts outside the law at
tempting to bring about justice, he quickly realizes his attempts often lead
to consequences for the people he believes he is helping. The deaths of
Cardenas, newspaper writer Ben Urich who was investigating Fisk, and El
liot Grote, an Irish mobster turned informant whom Murdock was protect
ing, trigger Murdock’s guilt as he blames himself for not having acted more
aggressively. Murdock tells his law partner, Foggy Nelson, that he wants to
kill Fisk because of the murder of Cardenas. After Ben Urich’s graveside
service, Murdock tells Father Lantom, “He was a good man, and he’s gone,
because I haven’t stopped what’s happening to this city” (“Daredevil,”
1.13). After Grote’s funeral, which only Murdock, Nelson, and Page attend,
Murdock tells Father Lantom without conviction, “It wasn’t my fault. . . .
1 did everything I could to protect my client.” Lantom asks Murdock what
he wants, Murdock replies, “Forgiveness” for “not doing more.” Lantom
tells Murdock that he believes, as Murdock himself had just claimed, that
he had done all he could to keep Grote alive. Murdock replies, “Then why
do 1 still feel guilty.” Lantom’s response encourages Murdock to turn his
guilt into action:
Guilt can be a good thing. It’s the soul’s call to action. The indication that some
thing is wrong. The only way to rid your heart of it is to correct your mistakes
and keep going until amends are made. I don’t know what you didn’t do or what
you should have done but the guilt . . . means your work is not yet finished.
(“Penny and a Dime,” 2.4)
Lantom’s advice further feeds Murdock’s need to work outside the law to
bring about justice.
CATHOLIC RESTRAINTS
Catholic charges to oppose evil, to help the weak and needy, and to oppose
injustice synthesize with Murdock’s inborn rage and propensity for brutality
turning him into the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, a masked vigilante who is quick
to use violence against those who prey on the innocent. Though his vigilan
tism is fueled by his Catholic faith, this same faith creates unsteady moral
restraints against Murdock’s baser violent tendencies. Murdock possesses
two core Catholic beliefs that set boundaries for his vigilantism: the sanctity
of human life and the belief that even the worst person can find redemption.
These Catholic values are so ingrained that Murdock consistently refrains
from killing and even puts himself in jeopardy to prevent others from doing
so. Murdock also repeatedly holds out hope to his opponents, believing they
can change their lives. These core beliefs do not go unchallenged, however.
Murdock’s guilt in failing to save those under his protection, his doubts about
the efficacy of these moral restraints, his desire to end Fisk’s corruption, and
his supposed loss of faith after the second death of his former lover Elektra
shake Murdock’s commitment to these values. He wrestles with these issues
by holding imaginary conversations with his dead father and Fisk. These con
versations allow Murdock to bring his deepest fears about his own motives to
the surface and ultimately to overcome them.
Sanctity of Life
Throughout all three seasons of the series, Murdock never quite fully em
braces his Catholic faith, yet he finds himself unable to escape its grip, par
ticularly when it comes to his belief in the sacredness of life. Murdock will
not kill. He takes seriously the catechism that charges, “The fifth command
ment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely sinful. The murderer
and those who cooperate voluntarily in murder commit a sin that cries out
to heaven for vengeance” (Catholic Church 1993, 2268). Another catechism
explicitly notes, “Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves
the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship
with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its
beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself
146 Daniel D. Clark
the right directly to destroy an innocent human being” (2258). While fighting
with Frank Castle against the Irish mob, Murdock prevents Castle, a vigilante
who does not share Murdock’s respect for life, from killing any of the mob
sters. Murdock throws his billy club, knocking a gun out of Castle’s hand as
he is about to shoot a fallen mobster. Later in the fight sequence, Murdock
stops fighting his opponent to grab a hammer from Castle just as he is about
to smash it into a mobster’s head (“Penny and a Dime,” 2.4). Murdock repeats
this feat in the season three finale during a three-way fight between Murdock,
Fisk, and Poindexter, a mentally fragile FBI agent whom Fisk manipulates, as
he twice prevents Poindexter from killing Vanessa Marianna, one of the few
people Fisk actually loves (“A New Napkin,” 3.13).
Murdock holds so firmly to the value of human life that he confronts
those who disagree. While chained to a roof, he challenges Castle’s belief
that killing criminals is the best means for ending crime. “I don’t kill any
one,” he tells Castle. “People don’t have to die.... I believe it’s not my call,
and it ain’t yours either” (“New York’s Finest,” 2.3). Later, when assassin
Elektra Natchios recruits Murdock to help her reveal the criminal activities
at the Roxxon Corporation, Murdock tells her, “I happen to respect human
life. If we do this . . . if. . . then I need to know you’re at least going to
pretend to feel the same way. Nobody dies. Do you understand?” (“Regrets
Only,” 2.6).
Possibly the clearest example of Murdock’s respect for life comes when
Murdock confronts Roscoe Sweeney. In a flashback to Murdock’s college
days, Natchios has tracked down Sweeney, a man who, unbeknownst to Mur
dock, has caused much of the suffering in his life. At Elektra’s prompting, the
two break into Sweeney’s mansion. When Sweeney returns, Elektra subdues
him and reveals that Sweeney is the man who killed Murdock’s father. After
tying Sweeney to a chair, Elektra encourages Matt to beat Sweeney, which
Murdock does. Elektra then directs Matt to kill Sweeney, but Murdock de
clines. Even faced with the man who had his father killed, who mocks and
threatens Murdock’s life, and even with Elektra goading him to kill Sweeney,
Murdock declines. His respect for the sanctity of life is stronger than his im
pulse for revenge (“Kinbaku,” 2.5).
Though Murdock will not kill, he certainly desires to do so. After the death
of Elena Cardenas, Foggy Nelson asks Murdock if he had ever killed anyone.
Murdock replies, “No, but I wanted to. After Elena, after everything Fisk had
done, 1 went to a warehouse I thought he’d be at. 1 went to kill him” (“Nelson
v. Murdock,” 1.10). Murdock, though, fails to kill Fisk. Even in the third sea
son where Murdock has supposedly renounced the Catholic faith, Murdock
cannot bring himself to kill another human being. His faith creates tension
between his desire to act decisively and his need to restrain his more violent
Matt Murdock, 's Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix's Daredevil 147
urges. He tells Father Lantom, “I know my soul is damned if I take his life.
But if I stand idle, if I let him consume this city ... people ... will suffer and
die” (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9).
Possibility of Redemption
Closely tied to Murdock’s view of the sanctity of life is his belief that anyone
can be redeemed, further restraining Murdock from ending another’s life.
While Frank Castle has Murdock chained to the roof of a building, Murdock
challenges Castle’s belief system by holding out to him the possibility of
redemption, not only for the people Castle is trying to kill, but for Castle
himself. Murdock essentially argues the Catholic catechism that every hu
man being contains the divine imprint of the image of God, and though
“disfigured” by sin, every person can have that image “restored to its original
beauty and ennobled by the grace of God” through “Christ” the “Redeemer
and Savior” (Catholic Church 1993, 1701, 1702). Murdock attempts to rouse
Castle’s conscience, asking him if he ever considers the fact that he is kill
ing human beings, who, despite their crimes, are capable of goodness. Castle
rejects Murdock’s claim, “I think there’s no good in the filth that I put down.”
Murdock then enters the theological realm as he tells Castle:
Murdock: I live in the real world, too, and I’ve seen it.
Castle: Yeah? What have you seen?
Murdock: Redemption, Frank.
Castle: Ah, Jesus Christ. (“New York’s Finest,” 2.3)
Castle’s rather ironic juxtaposition of the profane use of Jesus Christ with
the word redemption illustrates the different moral lines Murdock and Castle
have drawn for themselves. Both use violence against criminals, but more
important to Murdock than permanently ending evil is allowing for the pos
sibility that those he fights might be redeemed. Castle, however, seeks a
permanent judgment; redemption, to Castle, is irrelevant and nonsensical.
As Murdock holds out the possibility of redemption, Castle refuses to con
cede, but he has no response to Murdock’s charge. Castle stands attempting
to re-establish his dominance, even though Murdock is chained. Murdock
tells Castle, “You’re unhinged, Frank. You are. You think God made you a
one-man firing squad.” (This is a rather ironic statement as Murdock at some
level believes his own vigilantism is divinely prescribed.) “But you’re wrong.
There is goodness in people, even in you.” Castle, incapable of a reasoned
response or of accepting Murdock’s message, resorts to ending the argument
148 Daniel D. Clark
by punching the bound Murdock in the head, rendering him unconscious

(“New York’s Finest,” 2.3).
Foggy Nelson recognizes how closely tied Murdock’s identity is to his
belief in the value of life and in the possibility of redemption, even when
Murdock has seemingly turned his back on his faith after the second death
of Elektra. Murdock claims he is going to kill Fisk, but Nelson suggests to
Karen Page that Murdock won’t follow through with his threat. He says,
“Eventually, he’ll come to his senses. Matt’s Matt because he believes that
everyone deserves a shot at redemption.” Karen replies, ’’Except Fisk.” Nel
son corrects her: ’’Everyone. It’s a Catholic thing” (“A New Napkin, 3.13).
Restraining the Inner Devil through Prayer?

Murdock also restrains his impulses through wrangling with his own con
science. Canadian novelist David Adams Richards notes, “Not one of us
doesn’t pray to God continually—even if it is only to tell God to go to hell.
. . . That is 1 believe that the conversations we hold by ourselves are always
with God” (Richards 2009, 30-31). In Kevin Smith’s "Guardian Devil” story
arc from the flagship Daredevil comic book series, Matt Murdock repeatedly
holds these conversations with God as he complains about the immorality,
indignity, and suffering of humanity, his own weaknesses, the seemingly pu
nitive nature of God, and even his own doubts about God’s existence (Smith
2003, 21, 44). In the Netflix series, Murdock holds these conversations with
his dead father and an imaginary Fisk. Through these conversations Murdock
contemplates his seeming inability to protect the innocent, his sense of guilt,
his own desire to inflict violence, and the morality of killing Fisk to free
Hell’s Kitchen from his corrupt control.
The first of these conversations occurs when Murdock happens upon a
crowd protesting Fisk’s release from jail. An imaginary Fisk appears taunting
Murdock, telling him that his suffering is a result of God being angry with
him, that he will not prevent Karen Page from being killed, and that he is re
sponsible for the deaths of his father, his one-time trainer Stick, and Elektra.
Murdock’s only response is to repeatedly tell Fisk to stop (“No Good Deed,”
3.3). Later, after Murdock fails to keep Melvin Potter, the man who made
Murdock’s Daredevil suit, from being arrested by the FBI, this imaginary
Fisk appears again, revealing Murdock’s inner turmoil even more profoundly:
[Y]ou did hesitate before you left. Were you waiting for a messenger from the
Lord to stop you, like he stopped Abraham from killing his son? Were you dis
appointed no messenger arrived ... or relieved that you didn’t have to risk your
life for a weak-minded criminal? You’re not strong enough to beat the man I
sent for you. You’re not smart enough to beat me. You couldn’t do it alone. You
couldn’t do it with your friends. Your father never knew when to lay down. He
was too proud. You will die the same way. (“Aftermath,” 3.7)
Again, Murdock has no response to his inner voices, as they force Murdock
to acknowledge his deepest fears.
Murdock only begins to face these fears as he conjures up his dead father
after learning that Sister Maggie is his mother. Enraged that neither his father
nor Sister Maggie revealed the truth, he confronts the ghost of his father not
only for hiding his parentage but also for needlessly dying while trying to
live by some inner code. Murdock’s accusations, however, reflect his own
questioning of his Catholic faith and the code he himself lives by. As much
as Murdock claims to be different from his father, he cannot escape his faith.
Murdock tells his father that he will not live by a code that causes others to
suffer, and that when he finds Fisk, he will kill him. But Murdock is deceiv
ing himself. He can no more escape his inner moral code than he can stop
defending the weak.
The last of these conversations is the strangest but reveals most explicitly
Murdock’s inner turmoil and fear. Murdock, sitting alone in Fogwell’s Gym,
listens as his dead father stands behind him and warns that he is too angry
and that Poindexter will likely kill him. Murdock’s ethereal father reinforces
Murdock’s belief that he is cursed by having a devil inside him. Through the
voice of his dead father, Murdock is finally able to confront the central moral
issue of whether his methods in fighting corruption are moral or if his fighting
corruption is simply an excuse for him to use violence. As his father accuses
Murdock of rationalizing his violence, Fisk’s voice begins to overlap with
Murdock’s father’s, eventually replacing it altogether:
Would you be honest with yourself? You put on that mask because it lets you
feel all right with who you really are. It lets you hurt people and makes you
feel like it’s for something important. . . [Fisk’s voice joins Jack’s.] something
good, maybe even for God. But that ain’t the truth, and we both know it. [Fisk’s
voice now alone.] You and your father are cut from the same cloth. A corrupt
boxer who takes as much satisfaction in inflicting pain as he does money for
taking dives. And his son, who’s trying to convince himself he’s any better than
his criminal father. You were born from nothing. You remain nothing. (“Rev
elations,” 3.9)
Murdock, like Castle earlier, has no response except violence. Murdock

stands, turns toward Fisk, screams, and begins punching and kicking the
apparition until Fisk is on his knees, face bloodied. Murdock breaks the
phantom’s neck but then finds himself sitting alone on a bench next to the
empty boxing ring (“Revelations,” 3.9). Though Murdock can rationalize
the utility of killing Fisk and fantasizes about taking his life, Murdock’s
150 Daniel D. Clark
Catholic-formed conscience still prevents him from doing so. These prayer
like conversations force Murdock to confront his own fears and the morality
of his intent.
CATHOLIC MENTORS AS DEMONIC RESTRAINT
Murdock’s inner demons are most effectively kept at bay because of his reli
ance on mentors. Murdock realizes the dangers of giving reign to his inner
devil, thus he seeks mentors to help him set moral boundaries for his darker
nature, first with Father Lantom and later with Sister Maggie. Other men
tors, however, act as demonic foils to Lantom and Maggie, as they attempt
to undercut Murdock’s moral core. Finally, this mentor motif becomes most
explicit when Murdock is juxtaposed with his primary adversaries—Frank
Castle, Benjamin Poindexter, and Wilson Fisk—who all resemble Murdock
far more than he would like to admit. These three all suggest that the lack of
a mentor results in unrestrained brutality and destruction.
Murdock recognizes his inclination toward violence, but he also recognizes
that such urges must be checked. Throughout the series, Murdock looks to
Father Lantom, and later to Sister Maggie, for guidance. Murdock seeks both
sanction for his vigilantism and safeguards to prevent himself from unleash
ing his inner devil. Though, as Sue Sorensen notes, clergy are often portrayed
as “buffoon[s] or charlatan[s]” in literature and film, Lantom is not one of
those (Sorensen 2014, 12). He is intelligent, world weary, and possesses the
characteristics Sorensen suggests are necessary for a good counselor: “listen
ing, accepting, waiting, and then listening some more’’ (2014, 43). Lantom
resists providing easy answers but rather probes Murdock so he can discover
for himself the path he should follow.
Late in the first season of the series, Murdock seeks Father Lantom’s per
spective before confronting Fisk. Murdock suggests that killing Fisk may be
the only solution. Lantom, however, reminds Murdock of his Catholic values
even as Murdock questions the effectiveness of those values in freeing Hell’s
Kitchen from Fisk. Lantom presses Murdock to consider the morality of murder
ing another human being, cautioning him that many have rationalized their own
barbarity because of the barbarity of their opponents (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9).
Lantom further presses Murdock to evaluate his motivation: “[T]he question you
have to ask yourself is are you struggling with the fact that you don’t want to kill
this man but have to? Or that you don’t have to kill him but want to?” (“Speak of
the Devil,” 1.9). When Murdock finally confronts Fisk, Fisk implies that he had
Cardenas killed to lure Murdock into the open, to force a confrontation. Enraged,
Murdock threatens to kill Fisk, but is easily defeated and barely escapes being
Matt Murdock's Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix's Daredevil 151
killed himself. Days later, Lantom walks into his church to find Murdock sitting
alone on a pew. Murdock tells Lantom that he failed in his attempt to kill Fisk.
Lantom again nudges Murdock’s conscience, “[A]re you disappointed that you
didn't succeed or maybe a little relieved?” (“The Path of Righteousness,” 1.11).
Murdock doesn’t answer. In that same conversation, Murdock asks Lantom
why, if God has a purpose for each person’s life, “did he put the Devil in me?
Why do I feel it in my heart and my soul clawing to be let out if that’s not part
of God’s plan?” Lantom again gently prods Murdock toward restraint: “Maybe
you’re being called to summon the better angels of your nature” (“The Path of
Righteousness,” 1.11). Although Murdock often has murderous intent, he never
takes a life.
Sister Maggie also becomes a mentor who pushes back against Murdock's
violent nature and his eventual bitterness against God. After the death of
Elektra at the end of Netflix’s Defenders, Murdock rages against God and
attempts to jettison his faith, but without success (“The Defenders,” 1.8). He
experiences what Madeline L’Engle describes as “part of a healthy grief not
often encouraged ... to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence”
(L’Engle 1996, xvi). Like C.S. Lewis after the death of his wife Joy David-
man, Murdock feels abandoned by God. Lewis writes,
[G]o to [God] when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and
what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of a bolting and
double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The
longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. (Lewis 1996, 6)
Murdock does turn away, in a sense. He doesn’t so much abandon his belief in
God as he comes to a new understanding of God as one who causes suffering.
Murdock compares himself to Job as one who bled and sweated for God be
cause he believed he was “God’s soldier.... Well, not anymore. 1 am what I do
in the dark now. I bleed only for myself.” Maggie removes her cross necklace,
takes Murdock’s hand, and places it in his open palm. He tosses the necklace on
a bed and tells Maggie that she wasn’t listening. Murdock tells Maggie that he
doesn’t hate God, but that he has simply “seen God’s true face.” Maggie takes
the cross necklace and hangs it over Murdock’s lampshade. Though Murdock
claims to have abandoned God and tells Maggie he is not concerned with what
God wants, he still does not kill (“Resurrection,” 3.1).
DEMONIC MENTORS
Father Lantom and Sister Maggie’s voices are not the only voices that at
tempt to influence Murdock. These other voices may take on the role of what
152 Daniel D. Clark
Northrop Frye describes as demonic parodies. Frye notes that in biblical nar
ratives, “every apocalyptic image has a demonic narrative or contrast” (Frye
1982, 176). Steven Marx describes Frye’s idea of demonic parody as “a nega
tive inversion of the original story” (Marx 1994, 170). Other mentors enter
Murdock’s life and attempt to undermine his faith—his value of life and his
belief that any person can be redeemed. Stick, a blind member of the Chaste,
attempts to pull a nine-year-old Murdock away from his Catholic moorings
hoping to turn him into a weapon in his war against the Hand. Stick con
tradicts Murdock’s upbringing, telling him, “[T]he only way guys like you
and me can survive is to grab [the world] by the throat and never let go,” a
philosophy more akin to Fisk’s than one based in Christianity. Twenty years
later, Stick tells the adult Murdock, “1 need a soldier. Committed. Not some
bleeding heart idealist hanging onto half measures.” Stick then directly ques
tions Murdock’s central belief about life, asking Murdock accusingly how
many he’s killed “protecting the city.” Murdock remains silent while Stick
mocks him for not being able to “cross that line” when needed (“Stick,” 1.7).
Although Stick fails to develop Murdock into a dispassionate killer, Murdock
does begin to question the utility of his non-lethal methods.
Both Elektra Natchios and Frank Castle also tempt Murdock to question
his belief in the value of human life. Natchios admits to their first encounter
not being a matter of fate. She claims Stick sent her on a mission to separate
Murdock from his path to be a lawyer, to separate him from his friends, to
separate him from his moral core, but she failed when Murdock refused to
murder his father’s killer. Natchios says, “There’s a light inside you. I tried
to snuff it out in college. I’m so lucky I failed” (“Guilty as Sin,” 2.8). Castle
echoes Stick, telling Murdock his methods are little more than half mea
sures. Murdock seems to relent: “I understand. You’re right. My way isn’t
working. So, maybe just this once [Murdock crosses himself, knowing he
would be violating God’s law and his conscience.] Maybe your way is what
it’s gonna take” (“.380.” 2.11). Ironically, Castle, after berating Murdock
for his feeble efforts, warns him that crossing the line of killing another
human being is not a line one can step back across. Though Murdock intel
lectually assents to the utility of killing, his conscience still prevents him
from crossing that line.
The significance of this mentor motif becomes all the more apparent as
Murdock is portrayed as not that different from his primary antagonists—
Castle, Poindexter, and Fisk. All have suffered personal traumas; all have
deep-seated psychological urges toward violence, and all of them struggle
to see beyond their own suffering. The primary difference between Murdock
and the other three characters is his moral core, which is reinforced by his
mentors and friends Nelson and Page. Castle has no mentor; Poindexter loses
his mentor to cancer; Fisk also forgoes a mentor. Without mentors, all three
give reign to their most violent impulses.
Frank Castle recognizes in Murdock a kindred spirit, who, as Castle says,
is only “one bad day away from being me” (“New York’s Finest,” 2.3). Both
have Catholic backgrounds. Both received close quarter combat training.
Both lost family to mob violence—Murdock lost his father and Castle his
wife and children. Both refuse to stand idly by, feeling compelled to confront
those guilty of causing destruction: Murdock attacks those who bring vio
lence to Hell’s Kitchen while Castle kills anyone associated with the deaths
of his family. Castle rationalizes his killing, noting that the criminals he kills
will never commit another crime. Focused on his desire for revenge, he repels
any suggestion that he might need help. After discovering Castle’s Catholic
past, Murdock, attempting to have Castle consider the morality of his killing
mobsters, asks him if he still attends Mass. Castle simply replies, “Stop now,
Red” (“New York’s Finest,” 2.3). Without a mentor, Castle hears no voice of
caution and acts freely on his vengeful impulses, killing his enemies without
restraint.
Ben Poindexter, too, seems to mirror Murdock, but unlike Castle, Poindex
ter contains his psychopathic tendencies while under the care of his therapist
Eileen Mercer. Sister Maggie’s description of a young Matt Murdock could
just as easily apply to Poindexter: “He was alone in the world, in his private
darkness, surrounded by strangers.... He was plagued by awful nightmares.
. . . Everyone in Matthew’s life abandoned him” (“The Devil You Know,”
3.6). Even Murdock acknowledges the similarities, but denies that they are
the same: “He didn’t have any parents.... Spent a lot of time fighting.... I
didn’t have anyone either, but I’m nothing like him” (“Upstairs/Downstairs, ”
3.8). Murdock is correct insofar as he didn’t develop a propensity to kill.
Poindexter’s therapist quickly diagnoses his personality disorder and pro
vides him with structured guidelines and techniques to restrain his desire to
kill, which allow him to function within society.
After years of therapy, Poindexter’s progress is stunted when Mercer,
coughing and breathing with an oxygen tube, announces that she cannot con
tinue as his therapist. Poindexter seems incapable of empathizing with Mercer
who is dying of cancer; instead, he becomes enraged that she will no longer
guide him. She encourages him to maintain an ordered lifestyle and find a
job that has a strict structure. She also encourages him to find a new mentor:
“Your internal compass isn’t broken, Dex. It just works better when you have
the North Star to guide you.” He initially follows her advice in maintaining
an ordered lifestyle and working jobs that have a strict structure—a suicide
hotline, the military, and then the FBI—but without a mentor, his disorder
begins to reassert itself. While working at the hotline he begins to encourage
154 Daniel D. Clark
a suicidal caller to kill his abuser instead of himself. Later, while working for
the FBI, he kills two surrendering Albanian gang members ("Please,” 3.2).
When the FBI assigns Poindexter to monitor Fisk, Fisk uncovers Poindexter’s
past therapy sessions and positions himself as Poindexter’s new North Star.
Fisk then cultivates Poindexter’s desire to kill, encourages him to stop tak
ing his medications, and finally destroys any remaining vestiges of restraint,
turning him into an exploitable psychopathic assassin.
Wilson Fisk is what Matt Murdock would look like if not for the restraints
of Catholicism. To some, however, Murdock seems no different than Fisk.
Betsy Beatty, a parole officer who Murdock warns to leave town, tells
Murdock that he “and Fisk are cut from the same cloth” (“Aftermath,” 3.7).
Although Murdock rejects the idea that he and Fisk are alike, they are more
similar than not with a thin thread separating the two. Their rage seems ready
to overwhelm them. They are quick to brutalize their opponents. Though
Murdock may not kill, he lets his inner devil out—he breaks bones, smashes
faces, and leaves opponents permanently scarred and disfigured. One im
age further suggests how much these two men share. The series juxtaposes
an image of Murdock, alone in the church basement, grieving the death of
Elektra, with an image of Fisk, alone in his cell, grieving his separation from
Marianna. Both men briefly face each other (see figure 9.1), trapped and lost
in their own sense of loss (“Please,” 3.2).
Ultimately, however, Wilson Fisk represents Matthew Murdock’s demonic
parody. Like Murdock, Fisk has read the Bible, but he draws heterodox con
clusions from it. While being transported after his first arrest, Fisk narrates
Figure 9.1. Matt Murdoch and Wilson Fisk grieving. (Daredevil, "Please," 3.2)
Matt Murdock's Ill-Fitting Catholic Faith in Netflix’s Daredevil 155
the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. Most homilies about this parable
challenge congregations to identify with the Samaritan. Other more candid
sermons focus on the abused traveler or the hypocritical religious leaders who
fail to aid the beaten man, but Fisk draws unique inspiration from the bibli
cal text. He observes that he had always thought of himself as the Samaritan,
as someone who cared about his community, but that he had been deceiving
himself. He says, “1 am not the Samaritan.. . . I’m not the priest or the Levite.
... I am the ill intent who set upon the traveler on the road that he should
not have been on” (“Daredevil,” 1.13). Fisk embraces his nature, identifying
himself with the thieves in the parable, recognizing that he lives to dominate
through the bald use of power.
Fisk further parodies Murdock in his public displays of morality and
faith. Murdock struggles with morality, with his faith, with his belief in a
benevolent God, but he never stops believing in God no matter how angry he
becomes with God. Fisk, however, sees morality and faith as tools for gaining
power, for manipulating public sentiment. After the death of Elena Cardenas,
Fisk proclaims his outrage over her death. He claims he mourns her death and
is angered by the fear that dominates the city, blaming Daredevil for its suf
fering (“Speak of the Devil,” 1.9). Later, when visiting a comatose Marianna
after she had been poisoned, Fisk tells her,
1 don’t know how to pray. My father was not a religious man. My mother wanted
to be ... 1 think, needed to be, but she never quite found it within herself. I’d seen
it in movies, and watched it on television. I read it in books when I was a child,
after I was sent away. And I tried to mimic the words ... the sentiment... but it
was false. It was imitation of faith. So, I can’t pray for you. (“The Path of Righ
teousness,” 1.11)
Though Fisk cannot pray, he does indeed imitate faith. Freed from prison
by the Court of Appeals, Fisk speaks to angry protestors outside the hotel
in which he had been under house arrest. He portrays himself as the victim
and suggests a respect for faith while painting Daredevil as the actual villain.
“They sent someone to frame me. Daredevil. The killer who’s now show
ing his true colors, who has tried to murder people in newspaper offices and
churches . . . attacking our sacred institutions. Believe me. Daredevil is our
true public enemy” (“Reunion,” 3.11). As he speaks, the protestors slowly
lower their signs, overcome by Fisk’s counterfeit displays of morality and
faith.
Murdock, however, demonstrates that he cannot escape his faith no matter
how ill fitting that faith may be. In their final confrontation, Fisk is bloodied
and on his knees. Murdock points at Fisk and screams, “You want me to kill
you.” Fisk growls, “No prison can keep me. You know that. Come on, kill
156 Daniel D. Clark
me!” Confronted with the opportunity he’s fantasized about, Murdock shouts,
“No! God knows I want to, but you don’t get to destroy who 1 am” (“A New
Napkin,” 3.13). This final scene juxtaposes Murdock’s moral core—one that
compels forcible acts against injustice while preserving life restrained by
faith and conscience—with Fisk’s moral core—one that seeks its own power
while consuming life unrestrained by any morality other than utility.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, Murdock’s faith, which demands that corrupt power be opposed

and that the poor and downtrodden be helped, is, in part, the catalyst for his
vigilantism. Murdock, unsure of the morality of his mission and realizing his
own propensity for violence, desires church sanction and direction. His belief
in the sanctity of life and the potential of every person to receive redemption
prevents him from taking another’s life. Murdock, however, wrestles with
the efficacy of such a view in the face of overwhelming abuse and power.
Through prayer-like conversations with himself, that may in fact be con
versations with God, and through the guidance of Father Lantom and Sister
Maggie, he is able to establish his own moral compass. This mentoring motif
becomes central to the narrative as characters who follow their own impulses
or are guided by corrupt mentors meet destruction, suggesting that no one
can face life alone.
Chapter Ten
Gods upon Gods

Hierarchies of Divinity in the
Marvel Universe
Austin M. Freeman
Just why is Thor a god anyway?1 He’s clearly got a body. He gets drunk,
suffers pain, and doesn’t seem to possess any remarkable wisdom or intel
ligence. And if Thor is a god, what does that make Galactus? The “Cosmic”
element in the Marvel Universe is well known thanks to recent films, and the
concept of a comic book “god” well represented in the hero Thor and in the
Celestial Ego,2 not to mention previous films such as Fantastic Four: Rise
of the Silver Surfer. But the world of ostensible deities in the Marvel comic
universe is much larger. Behold the three-faced Living Tribunal, the abstract
entities such as Omniversal Eternity, the One Above All, and the remarkably
Jack Kirby-like God of Fantastic Four #511. Each Marvel writer seems
always to be one-upping the other with new, awe-inspiring omnipotent enti
ties. This reticence to close off the upper echelons of power likely stems from
a desire to continue telling fresh stories at larger and larger scales, but can
also effectively prevent writers from infringing upon the rights of the true
Almighty by “reducing” God to a comic book cameo.
This chapter has two goals. The first is to map the mysteries of Marvel’s
celestial hierarchies and bring them into conversation with the hierarchies of
Neoplatonist theologies, such as those of Plotinus. Those gods considered
“lower” are, like these ancient gods, more involved with the physical world
and more concrete. They correspond to the cosmic gods of the Platonist hi
erarchy. The higher gods are those who shape the universe or multiverse on
a large scale and who represent the Demiurges or creator deities. Yet higher
than this are those who embody abstract principles, or, in the Platonist sys
tem, the hypercosmic gods. The Living Tribunal sits above even these, acting
as final arbiter and mediator between creation and the “supreme” deity of the
Marvel Universe, equivalent to the Intelligence or Nous which is the summit
of Neoplatonist creation. The One Above All sits higher still, embodying an
157
158 Austin M. Freeman
unspeakable transcendence that is beyond time, space, body, gender, and all
apparent limitations. This parallels the Neoplatonist One.
The second part of the paper uses the “Jack Kirby experience” to make
sense of “degrees of omnipotence,” and will introduce Tolkien’s concept of
sub-creation and Vanhoozer’s work in Remythologizing Theology to argue for
a concept of God that analogizes the relationship between author and work.
By thinking of nested fictions—that is, of authors writing stories about other
authors who write about still other authors—we can see how, for example,
the Living Tribunal might be omnipotent over the whole Marvel universe,
and yet the One Above All more powerful even than him—as the author of a
“fictionally” omnipotent character. In turn, the true God is omnipotent over
all works whatsoever.
HIERARCHY IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
Marvel’s cosmic system bears a strong resemblance to that of the Neopla-

tonists. Developing out of the school of Plato and flourishing throughout
Late Antiquity, the Neoplatonists attempted to synthesize traditional Greek
religion with the abstract thought of philosophy. Their fundamental impetus
was the reconciliation of the problem of the One and the many, which led to
the positing of many gradations of being between absolute spiritual unity and
the multiplicity of the observed physical world.
We shall first proceed up the Neoplatonist hierarchy, beginning with the
lowest forms of divinity and proceeding to the very highest. It is important to
note at the outset that this particular ranking is somewhat artificial, as there
are many different Neoplatonists who create their own unique hierarchies;
from the simplest to the most intricate, each theologian views the chain from
the visible world up into the One in their own way. The particular hierarchy
below is a combination of Plotinus, Proclus, and lamblichus, created in the
interest of paralleling the ranks of divinity within the Marvel universe more
clearly. It is not—and this bears repeating—a hierarchy as actually articulated
by any particular Neoplatonist. The rank of demiurge, especially, is mis
placed in terms of a purely Neoplatonist conception, which would place the
demiurge much higher. But in this, Marvel resembles a Gnostic rather than a
Neoplatonist pattern.
This essay will chart Marvel’s own hierarchies of divinity and remark upon
some interesting convergences. Note, however, that just as the Neoplatonist
hierarchy above is in an important sense an artificial one, so too the follow
ing map of the Marvel multiverse must also be seen as a heuristic construct.
Because of their very nature, none of these entities with the exception of Thor
Gods upon Gods 159
appear as regular characters in any comic series. They are occasional, cross
series guest stars. Furthermore, there are simply too many authors, too many
issues, too many retcons and continuity changes to create a perfectly consis
tent (or perfectly accurate) “ranking” in the way described here. Nevertheless,
some general themes emerge. The ranking used by Thanos in Thanos Annual
#1 is a helpful guide. Here, a future Thanos tells present Thanos about the
power hierarchies of the multiverse with the aid of a visual ranking pyramid.
On top there sits the Living Tribunal. Underneath are Eternity and Infinity,
followed by Love, Order, Chaos, and Hate. On the bottom rank are Galactus,
a Celestial, Eon, Odin. Zeus, and the Stranger. Note that neither the One
Above All nor the lesser gods like Thor are pictured in the panel. Those read
ers unfamiliar with these beings, rest easy, for they will be explained below.
What is important here are the clear levels of power set out in the panel. Let
us start from the bottom.
The Cosmic Gods: Thor and More

Closest to mere mortals are the cosmic gods, or the gods as popularly con
ceived. Borrowing from lamblichus, the Latin Neoplatonist Sallust explains
the division between the cosmic and “hypercosmic” gods. “But of the gods
some are cosmic and others hypercosmic. I call those cosmic who fabricate
the world” (Sallust 1793, 6). These are the traditional gods of Homeric
mythology, especially the Twelve Olympians so familiar to schoolchildren.
Even as early as Plato’s day, philosophers attempted to downplay Homer’s
telenovela-sty\e divinities into more palatable forms. Thus, the story of the
Judgment of Paris is not a literal event but a metaphor for the gods bestowing
gifts on the world. So, for Sallust, “of the cosmic gods, some are the causes
of the world’s existence, others animate the world; others again harmonize it,
thus composed from different natures; and others, lastly, guard and preserve
it when harmonically arranged” (1793, 6).
Likewise, Thor and the Asgardian gods, Marvel’s versions of Hercules
and the Olympians, and the other mythological figures Marvel has added
sit at the lowest end of the Marvel hierarchy. Each of these beings range in
power, with figures like Odin shading up into the next rank under some writ
ers.3 Mirroring the antique impulse to gather and organize every god anyone
has ever heard of, the Marvel universe plays host not only to the Norse and
Greek pantheons but to the gods of the Polynesians, ancient Mayans, and so
forth.4 But in what sense can Thor be considered a god? How could a god
be trounced by a mere mortal, even with the added benefit of gamma rays?5
Henrichs lists three defining characteristics of divinity, at least in the clas
sical Greek mind: (1) immortality; (2) power; and (3) anthropomorphism
(Henrichs 2010, 29). Thor clearly fulfills criteria (2) and (3), but he can also
be considered immortal in a qualified sense. Depending on who’s talking,
Thor is either cyclically immortal (part of a wheel of cosmic death and re
birth), functionally immortal (immortal unless killed), or simply so long-lived
that he appears immortal from a human perspective. By this definition, many
of the more powerful races in the Marvel Universe are also functionally gods:
the Eternals (including Thanos), the Watchers, and more.
Thor is very clearly a god in the traditional sense noted above and not
simply a highly advanced alien as he has been recently portrayed (perhaps
significantly, this trend began with ardent secularist Warren Ellis). However,
the thunder god’s association with space is not ill fitting. The classical gods
were heavily associated with the planets—their names remain the monikers
of our cosmological companions to this day. The ancients considered space to
be part of the heavens, and the planets to move in an orderly manner because
they were the celestial bodies of the gods. The idea that the planets have souls
remains even up to the end of the patristic age where they are downgraded to
angels rather than gods.
As such, the idea that the cosmic gods dwell in space is quite appropriate.
This is why they are cosmic and not hypercosmic in the first place. Just like
the Neoplatonic gods of the lower order—those they adapt from earlier Ho
meric conceptions—these cosmic contenders are intimately involved in the
affairs of mortals, even descending into petty grievances, annoyances, and
love affairs. They are gods, yes, but of the lowest order, and subject to many
of the limitations of mortal flesh.
Demiurges: Galactus and the Celestials

Plato’s Timaeus speaks of a “demiurge” (28b and passim), a divine creator
who contemplates the Forms and crafts everything in the universe according
to this eternal design. This demiurge is clearly distinct from the world itself,
since he finds it spinning in disorder and brings order and harmony to pre
existing matter. He is perfectly good and creates (that is, fashions rather than
brings forth ex nihild) out of goodness and generosity. He desires that all
things should be as good as possible. He makes the lesser gods (the planets)
as well as the human creatures, even going so far as to craft their faces, limbs,
and so forth.
The Neoplatonists generally conceive of the Demiurge as synonymous with
Nous or Intelligence (e.g., Proclus 1971, 206). Elsewhere, the Demiurge and
the World Soul may be two sides of the same coin: the Demiurge the side that
faces downward toward the material realm and the World Soul that which
faces upward to contemplate the eternal world of Idea (compare Mohr 1982,
Gods upon Gods 161
46). But as we have seen, when they speak of the Demiurge as “creating” the
World Soul or the cosmos, they mean shaping pre-existing matter into an or
derly arrangement. It was the Gnostics, and not the Neoplatonists, who place
the Demiurge lower in the spectrum of divinity, conceiving as they do of the
material world as intrinsically evil. The Demiurge is therefore virtually the
source of evil in the cosmos, since it has created the evil material world, and
seems closer to being Satan than God. For the Neoplatonists, by contrast, the
material world itself is not evil; rather, undifferentiated matter—matter with
out form—is evil insofar as it is the direct antithesis of the One, form without
matter (Plotinus, Enneads 1.8.14; 2.4). This particular element of the hierarchy
is perhaps the most artificial of our arrangement.
There are certain physical beings in the Marvel cosmos that, like the demi
urge above, bear responsibility for shaping and guiding the development of
the universe as a whole. Galactus, for instance, is the Devourer of Worlds and
the Lifebringer, a force of nature responsible for the cycle of extinction and
rebirth that is intrinsic to the universe, a balance between Eternity and Death.6
Though “related” to the World Soul Eternity, Galactus is far more directly
involved in the universe and even makes friends with humans (Ultimates,
Vol. 2, passim).
The Celestials use human history as a grand experiment, manipulating evo
lution on a universal scale in order to perfect creation. They modify human
kind, giving it the genetic potential to create both mutants and superheroes.
The offspring of the unfragmented first Universe, these “Space Gods” per
form incalculable manipulations on species across the multiverse, constantly
testing and growing them for purposes unknown.
Like the Gnostic demiurge, many of these Marvel demiurgic deities are
evil or insane. But even those entities still holding to their prime directive,
such as Galactus, are for the most part beyond the concerns of good and evil
which plague most mortals.
Hypercosmic Gods: Love, Hate, Order, Chaos

Again, according to Sallust, the hypercosmic gods create, not the world, but
essences, intellect, and soul (Sallust 1793, 6). These gods are the sources of
eternal principles within the world, says fellow Neoplatonist Proclus (1816,
6.1). He also refers to them as the kings (Greek hegemonikoi) of the cosmic
gods. While the cosmic gods are generated by the levels above themselves,
these hypercosmic rulers are free from generation and may be called unbegot
ten. “For, as Plato says, principle is unbegotten. For it is necessary that every
thing which is generated should be generated from a principle, but that the
principle should not be generated from any thing” (1816, 6.1).
Similarly, in the Marvel multiverse, above the world-shaping demiurges

lie the embodiments of certain cosmic concepts. Mistress Love, Master Hate,
and the brothers Order and Chaos embody the fundamental oppositional
principles of reality. They are not regularly occurring characters in any par
ticular series, but only crop up at specially important times, such as in Infinity
Gauntlet. Love and Hate might also be termed attraction and repulsion. As
abstract entities above the level of Galactus, they are less visible and less
present than the lower gods, requiring the use of M-Bodies in order to appear
in physical form. It is rumored that Order and Chaos manipulate specific
events in the world, but their control is so fine, or rather so intrinsic to the
universe, that their activities are usually imperceptible. Likewise, Love and
Hate have some involvement every time their eponymous emotions are felt.
These entities can be labeled “hypercosmic” since they do not truly exist
in any localized sense inside the universe. They are omnipresent, or at least
present at each point in which their respective principles exist. It is unclear
whether the same beings embody, for example, Chaos and Order for the en
tire multiverse or whether there is a different being for each universe within
the Marvel multiverse, though the latter seems far more likely given what we
note about Eternity below. They are at least capable of existing outside of our
normal universe, since they visit the Dimension of Manifestations for physi
cal bodies and use a sixteen-dimensional meeting space in order to converse
with Eternity and other divinities {Infinity War: Quasar #37).
World Soul: Eternity

Beneath the Intelligence but ruling over the created world and its principles,
there is the World Soul. This universal Soul is never directly involved with
the lower world, although it comprehends what happens there. Rather, it is
always invested in the higher world of intelligence. It is simultaneously a
debtor to the world above and a benefactor to the world below (Plotinus 4.8,
69).7 The Soul comes from the Intelligence, separated and yet not separated,
the unique expression of the Intelligence in the physical world (4.3, 132).
Indeed, the Soul shapes the cosmos as a whole, rather than specific elements
within it.8 The World Soul forms the matter of the universe after the design of
the Intelligence. It relates to the Intelligence as matter to Idea (5.1, 94). “The
universe, moved eternally by an intelligent Soul, becomes blessed and alive.
The Soul’s presence gives value to a universe that before was no more than an
inert corpse, water and earth, or rather darksome matter and nonbeing” (5.1,
93). The World Soul, because it is bodiless, is at the same time everywhere and
nowhere in the cosmos (4.3, 137-38). Plotinus indeed describes the cosmos as
a living organism containing all other organisms (5.9, 53).
Gods upon Gods 163
Individual souls arise from intelligences as large numbers arise from

smaller ones. “They preserve both identity and difference. Each is subsistent
being. But all are one together” (4.3, 132). Likewise, “Our soul is the same as
The Soul which animates the deities: strip it of all things infesting it, consider
it in its original purity, and you will see it to be of equal rank with The Soul,
superior to everything that is body” (5.1, 93). For Plotinus, the soul is not
in the body—instead the body is in the soul (4.3, 145). All individual souls
participate in the World Soul, yet it is more than the sum of all souls.
The cosmic entity known as Eternity represents the totality of the Marvel
Universe, and is a close Marvel parallel to the World Soul. He is represented
as a vast humanoid outline filled with starscapes and planets, and wearing
an elaborate headdress (e.g., his first appearance in Strange Tales #138).
Prior to Secret Wars #9, Eternity and Infinity represented Time and Space,
respectively. At present, Eternity is the embodiment of the Eighth Marvel
Universe, while Infinity is the embodiment of the Seventh (Ultimates, Vol. 2,
#6).9 They have two “siblings”: Mistress Death and Oblivion. Death does not
appear on Thanos’ hierarchy, so we will set these aside and focus on Eternity.
Importantly, Eternity represents just one universe. There are different Eterni
ties for each alternate universe in the multiverse. As the totality of all that
exists in the universe in both time and space, including Chaos, Order, Love,
Hate, Galactus, and so forth, Eternity is simply beyond the comprehension
of most beings.
Just like the Neoplatonist World Soul, Eternity contains all things lower
than itself, yet it is more than the sum of its parts. It possesses a conscious
ness and a will distinct from those of the entities below it. It is both the sum
of all organisms and a single living organism in itself. It is omnipresent, om
niscient, and omnipotent toward the universe which it personifies. Like the
World Soul, it does not come into existence on its own, but does shape and
determine all of existence once it is formed.
Intelligence (Nows): The Living Tribunal

Above the worldly and material soul lies the Intelligence (Greek Nous). Each
particular physical being has a Platonic form or conceptual archetype from
which it derives. Just as the Platonic forms lie above and behind their concrete
instantiations in the physical world, the Intelligence corresponds to the totality
of these forms, similar to the way in which the World Soul is the totality of
every particular soul. The One produces the Intelligence directly; it is the best
after the One and superior to all others (Plotinus, Enneads 5.1, 98). But the
Intelligence is still a being, still something that depends upon something yet
higher for its own existence. It is distinct from and derivative from the One.
The One is an undivided unit while the Intelligence is the (singular) sum of
many different units (5.1,99). The Intelligence is the “vestibule” which intro
duces us to the One itself. It is the trace of the absolutely unified Goodness that
we can still detect in the multiplicity of creation (5.9, 48). Since thinking is in a
way distinct from thinker, the Intelligence implies both identity and difference
(5.1,95; 3.8, 170; cf. also 3.8, 171-72).
Though it cannot be divided into parts or sections (5.1, 94), it is not per
fectly simple since it still includes conceptual distinctions (6.9, 79-80). The
Intelligence is identical with and contains all beings, not locally but concep
tually (5.9, 51). Just as the genus contains all its constituent species (5.9,
51-52), so “the Intelligence, accordingly, is itself the authentic existents. It
is not a knower that knows them as somewhere else. They are not prior to it.
They are not after it. Of being it is rather the lawgiver, or—better still—the
law” (5.9, 51). If the Soul shapes the cosmos, the Intelligence is like the skill
that guides the artist in his performance (5.9, 49). The Intelligence is the ar
chetype of the living organism we call the cosmos (5.9, 53). Sometimes it is
identical to Being and the Ideas (5.9, 53), though the ideas of lower or ignoble
things belong rather to the realm of the Soul (5.9, 56). At other times, “The
Intelligence gives existence to Being in thinking it. Being, by being object
of thought, gives to the Intelligence its thinking and its existence” (5.1, 95).
In short, the Intelligence is the highest thing apart from the One itself. It is
omnipresent and contains all existing things as their model or paradigm. It is
the law of all that exists. It rules and governs the cosmos just as the cosmos
shapes its individual material constituents. The Intelligence contemplates the
One and mediates the One to all that exists, insofar as creatures reach contem
plation of the One only by surpassing contemplation of the Intelligence itself.
Within the Marvel canon, such a being would correspond to the sublime
Living Tribunal. There is only one Living Tribunal. It exists across all uni
verses, and its power is unsurpassed among created beings. It reports directly
to the One Above All, who is its only superior. A gold and silver humanoid
with three faces, some covered with a veil, the Living Tribunal is the final
court of appeals for cosmic concerns. Its three faces symbolize Equity, Ven
geance, and Necessity. Its power is in fact so tremendous that when the most
powerful cosmic entities entreat it to intervene to stop Thanos from wielding
the Infinity Gauntlet, it refuses to involve itself in such minor affairs (Infin
ity Gauntlet #3). When Adam Warlock destroys these entities after he gains
control of the gauntlet, the Tribunal restores them with a snap of its fingers
(Warlock and the Infinity Watch #1). The Infinity Gauntlet stops working
merely because the Living Tribunal says so (Infinity War #4).
The Tribunal is the embodiment of the Marvel multiverse—not just of a
single universe as Eternity is. It contains within itself all other cosmic entities
Gods upon Gods 165
and manifestations, including, we presume, an infinite number of Eternities.

As such, the nature of the Tribunal is directly consonant with that of the Nous
of the Neoplatonists, even to the extent that lesser divinities participate in it.
Its three faces, distinct but united, symbolize a sort of multiplicity-in-unity
redolent of Nous' lesser oneness. While the oneness of the One is above the
concept of “being,” the Intelligence represents the totality of being. Likewise,
the Living Tribunal represents and rules over the totality of the Marvel mul
tiverse under the auspices of the One Above All.
The One Above All

The One, in the Neoplatonist hierarchy, is above all thought, being, time,
space, and comprehension (Plotinus 3.8. 174). It is not even properly said to
exist, since the One is the source of existence rather than a participant within
it (6.9, 77). Likewise, it does not think, since thinker and thought create a
duality which the One transcends (1.2, 113; cf. 6.9, 76). We meet the One
“neither by knowing nor by the pure thought that discovers the other intel
ligible things, but by a presence transcending knowledge.” The One cannot be
spoken or written about. Our speech serves only to create a path or a direction
down which the seeker must travel. Awareness of the One only comes about
as a result of mystical union with the One itself (6.9, 78). The best way to
rise to contemplation of the One is through contemplation of its child, Being
(6.9, 80). But rather than conceiving of the One as a radical absence from
being(s), the One is instead infinitely present to all. We are merely ignorant
of the truth, fugitives from the divine and from ourselves (6.9, 83).
The One is perfectly simple (6.9, 1031). It creates, but without any motion
or change in itself. It is the cause of causes, that which makes reality possible
(6.1, 79-80; 3.8, 173). “This, then, it may be said, is the primal begetting:
perfect—seeking nothing, having nothing, needing nothing— The One ‘over
flows’ and its excess begets an other than itself; begotten turns back towards
begetter and is filled and becomes its contemplator” (5.2, 107). The One
“does not bestow its gifts at one moment only to leave us again; its giving
is without cessation so long as it remains what it is. As we turn towards The
One, we exist to a higher degree, while to withdraw from it is to fall. . . . Life
not united with the divinity is shadow and mimicry of authentic life” (6.9,
85). As is surely evident, this concept of God heavily influenced prominent
Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius.
The One Above All has only made three major appearances in comics: as
a glowing golden humanoid in Thanos: The Infinity Finale, as a rather scary
homeless man in The Sensational Spider-Man #40, and as Jack Kirby in Fan
tastic Four #511. When Thanos wields the Infinity Gauntlet and possessess
“omni-reality perception,” he achieves only “a fragmentary glimpse” of the

One’s vast power. The very fact that Thanos addresses the being as “grand
one” speaks volumes. Canonically, there is no being more powerful than the
One Above All in the Marvel multiverse. As the demon Mephisto remarks,
while the virtually omnipotent Living Tribunal is simply the most powerful
kid on the playground, the One Above All is the Principal. He is the fictional
stand-in for the actual God of Western tradition. For this very reason, he
rarely makes an appearance and his character remains vague. Too much fa
miliarity drains the drama from his appearance and decreases the reverence
we ought to feel toward the pinnacle of Marvel’s fictional deities. Clearly,
this character can only be identified with Plotinus’ “One that is above all” (to
ho esti pro panton; Plotinus 6.9.11, 88).
While the One Above All follows the lineaments of the Abrahamic God,
his character is always kept vague enough to avoid alienating or favoring any
particular religion. For example, when he speaks to Peter Parker about endur
ing his Aunt May’s death, he notes, “I’ve asked a lot more from people much
closer to me than you” (Sensational Spider-Man #40). This is a quite subtle
reference to Jesus’ passion which simultaneously acknowledges Christ with
out specifying Him as eternal Son or definitively addressing what happened
on the cross. Likewise, in Fantastic Four #72, Uatu the Watcher asserts “his
only weapon ... is love!”—an allusion to the well-known Christian trope also
agreeable to just about anybody else.
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY: WHY THE SIMILARITY?
Reading Marvel’s cosmic storylines can cause a very Plotinian dizziness as

our gaze ascends upward into ever-higher realms of omnipotence. But it is
safe to assume that there are no Neoplatonists (or even regular Platonists) in
Marvel’s bullpen. So how does one explain this remarkable symmetry? Is a
divine hierarchy a universal human impulse, arising from extended medita
tion on absolute power? Does the proliferation of ever more cosmic deities
come about solely as a result of the need to tell ever newer and more exciting
stories of ever more vast and epic scope? While we can only speculate, it
seems that the urge to create new cosmic powers and to situate them as more
or less mighty than others has (at least) two causes—one of which is distinct
from the Neoplatonists’ philosophical motivations and one of which might
be shared, in a way.
First, and most pragmatically, the majority of creators are reticent to of
fend their readers, and there are few things more potentially offensive than
a religious insult. In order to tell stories about awe-inspiring beings while
maintaining a certain level of artistic distance from that which might cause
Gods upon Gods 167
offense, creators simply construct a separate category of lesser divinity—still

functionally transcendent, but explicitly not the “real” God. Note that while
virtually every pantheon or figure from polytheistic religions find their place
in comics, there is a strict absence of appearances by the God of the Abra-
hamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), at least as one god among
many.10 As stated above, whenever the Abrahamic God (or His closest Mar
vel stand-in) does crop up, He is usually the one true Supreme deity, on a
decidedly different level than the other gods.
But comic books need to be sold continually. Writers and artists must con
vince the reading public to invest money in their product not just once, but over
and over. They do this, of course, by attempting to tell great stories with com
pelling characters, inspiring a sense of wonder and excitement. Comic books
can explore ideas and images still unavailable to other media. As such, Marvel
takes advantage of big ideas to create awe-inspiring storylines that stretch the
bounds of the readers’ imagination. Readers, though, also experience fatigue.
In order to maintain interest, content must be constantly freshened. Authors
introduce new characters—bigger! better! stronger!—which will shake up the
status quo to which the audience has grown accustomed. And whereas in 1938
children were amazed simply to see a man lifting a car over his head, nowadays
comic fans require more. In a medium as unconstrained as comics, one need
only pitch the idea that, for example, the embodiment of our reality is being
kept in chains by a mysterious force from before the dawn of time, and then
enlist the talent of an artist to make it happen (Ultimates, Vol. 2, # 1).
Secondly, and in line with Neoplatonist concerns, the Marvel hierarchy fol
lows from an intuitive sort of philosophical reflection. The more philosophi
cally fundamental a Marvel deity is, the more powerful they are considered
to be. A single, highly individual being like Thor is less powerful than the
mechanical laws of the cosmos, which are less powerful than the principles
by which these laws are organized, which are less powerful than the cosmos
in which these principles are instantiated, which are less powerful than be
ing itself, which is less powerful than the hyper-essential Being which gives
rise to being as we know it (the creator of all). We have here a hierarchy of
ontological necessity set in motion by a Prime Mover. But, contrary to all
published Marvel canon, there is a type of being more powerful even than the
One Above All. I am speaking, of course, about the Author.
THE JACK KIRBY EXPERIENCE:

AUTHORSHIP AND DEGREES OF OMNIPOTENCE
So far, we have attempted to use the real world to analyze the notion of divine
hierarchies within comic books. Now, we reverse the polarity and use comic
books to analyze the notion of hierarchies of power, existence, and omnipo

tence within the real world. And, as so many things have done, it starts with
the Fantastic Four.
In Fantastic Four #511, the team journey to the afterlife in order to resur
rect the recently killed Thing. After making it past profound obstacles, the
three surviving members receive an offer they seemingly can’t refuse: imme
diate entry into heaven. But they reject the offer, as it would mean an end to
their adventures. They want to continue pursuing their curiosity and solving
problems for now. They want to keep seeking." This is apparently the right
answer to a test they didn’t realize they were taking. The gates swing open;
they enter to find an older man in an artist’s study, sketching away on a draft
ing board. He bears a remarkable resemblance to Jack Kirby.
The team is surprised. We, as the readers, are delighted. Of course Kirby is
the “Creator.” They ask God why he looks the way he does. In keeping with
a well-trodden comic book trope, God appears in whatever way his viewers
most readily accept, a pop form of divine accommodation. “That’s what my
creations do. They find the humanity in God,” he remarks poetically. The
phone rings, and God answers it. He begins talking about plot points for
Black Panther, and actually adjusts his plan based on unheard input from the
other end. Who is on the phone? “My collaborator. ’Nuff said.” God’s draw
ings are simply “contributions” to the “grand tapestry.” He too is part of a
larger reality which includes both God and the free creatures he sets into mo
tion. “We’re all a part of the process,” he explains. “You're no one’s puppets.
. .. Nobody can do your living for you.”
Before ushering them off, he heals Reed’s face (previously “permanently”
scarred by Doctor Doom) with his pencil. He hands them a sketch of them
selves as old people, smiling, happy, together. Beneath the picture are the
words “To be continued!” Since God’s sketches become reality, this implies
God will guarantee they have a “happy ending,” with the sketch as pledge.
More than this, their adventures will continue, just as they wished when they
turned down heaven in the first place.
Marvel’s One Above All is omnipotent. He can do whatever you can
imagine him to do, except stop being fictional. But now let us complicate the
picture. What if I wrote a story in which the One Above All decided to do ex
actly that? What if, in my story, he left the Marvel multiverse and entered the
real world? Many comics have actually played with similar notions, writing
stories set in “Earth Prime” (Deadpool famously knows he is a comic book
character and speaks directly to his readers). Grant Morrison’s Multiversity
is the most innovative example of this. Within Marvel, Earth-1218 is sup
posed to be the actual world in which the reader lives. But by the very act of
writing a story about Earth Prime, we render it fictional rather than real. It
Gods upon Gods 169
is impossible to write a story about Earth Prime without creating instead an

alternate fictional earth. Our story now simple becomes a nested story within
a frame narrative portraying an earth very similar to ours. This process can
repeat ad infinitum, with further nested stories piling atop one another. We
might picture a final panel of Fantastic Four #511, in which we pan out to
find the real Jack Kirby sitting at his desk smiling fondly as he illustrates
himself into the issue meeting and conversing with his characters as the
“One Above All.”12
At this moment, in this single panel, there are four levels of reality, four
all-powerful creators each successively more all powerful than the next.
First, there is the One Above All within the Fantastic Four story itself, the
one the heroes meet. He is (fictionally) all powerful, able to erase or recreate
their universe on a whim. But above him there sits a being who controls his
every move, able not only to alter that universe but to wipe the omnipotent
One Above All character from existence. This is the Jack Kirby of the final
panel, revealed to be the author of a fictional comic book. But the authors of
the whole work on our level of reality are Mike Wieringo and Mark Waid,
themselves just as much omnipotent over this Kirby as Kirby is over the One
Above All of the Fantastic Four’s own universe. Finally, there is God, who
authors Wieringo and Waid, Himself absolutely and not relatively omnipo
tent. God is not omnipotent with regard to a specific thing or level of reality,
but over all things whatsoever.13
This encounter with Kirby the author illustrates an important point about
God. God relates to the world as an author relates to a work. Kevin Van-
hoozer helpfully explores this analogia auctoris (analogy of authorship) in
his Remythologizing Theology (Vanhoozer 2010, 304). As an author, I can
create any literary situation I can imagine. 1 am all powerful, all present, and
all knowing with respect to that world. But my power ends at the border be
tween fiction and reality. 1 cannot will my work to my own level of reality. It
exists of course as a work of fiction within the real world, but my bald mutant
headmaster is not as real as my real headmaster. J.R.R. Tolkien calls this
“sub-creation. ” In fact, this is one of the ways human beings carry the image
of God—we make because we are made as a reflection of a Maker (Tolkien
2001, passim). Each of us, derivatively and in a lower mode, recapitulates the
primary act of divine creativity that brings forth the world. My fictional world
“exists” in a limited fictional sense. I exist in a much more robust sense. But
there is a higher level of existence still.
Just as I am more real than my character, so God is more real than me. This
is not to say 1 do not exist, only that God exists in a fundamentally different
and more concrete way than I do. This is what the Christian Neoplatonist
Pseudo-Dionysius means when he writes that God cannot be said to exist
(1897a, 5.1). Our notion of existence does not apply to God any more than
Captain America’s "‘existence" applies to Jack Kirby. Cap’s “existence” in
fact depends on Kirby’s much grander existence. Likewise, my own existence
depends on God’s existence, there on a higher level than anything we know.
This is what theologians mean by the aseity of God—He is the Author who
is Himself unauthored (Vanhoozer 2010, 226).
God’s radical freedom does not infringe on human freedom. Rather, the
freedom of God and of His creatures operate on two different levels of reality,
just like Stan Lee’s plotting can’t be detected by his characters, who operate
based on a generally closed and reasonable system of cause and effect (2010,
303). Why does Uncle Ben die? Because the burglar shot him in an attempted
robbery. Why does Uncle Ben die? Because it is part of Spider-Man’s origin
story. Is God, then, invisible and undetectable in the real world? Hardly.
For just as an author might, in certain circumstances, choose to address her
characters directly, so too God can choose to address His creatures directly
(2010, 316).
Within the Marvel multiverse, the One Above All seems infinitely distant
and inaccessible to us everyday mortals. The Marvel hierarchy is external
and, ultimately, irrelevant to the lives of human beings. We are not called to
unite mystically with the One Above All through contemplation of the Liv
ing Tribunal, as in the Neoplatonist hierarchy. I may be part of Eternity, but
he’s got no part in me. Even in Plotinus, while contemplative ascent is pos
sible and encouraged, it is effectively up to the individual to accomplish it.
The One may be within me, but I must still overcome my own intellectually
enforced alienation from it.
This is in fact one of the unique aspects of a distinctly Christian form of
hierarchy: the Incarnation circumvents the intuited distance between mortals
and the One. For Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, for
example, hierarchy still serves as a means of ascent. Much like Plotinus,
“The purpose . . . of Hierarchy is the assimilation and union, as far as attain
able, with God” (1897a, 3.2). The difference here is that we mortals have a
divine guide who unreservedly gives Himself to us, sharing and leading us
ever upward. While remaining the One Above All, Jesus Christ is made for
a little while lower than the cosmic gods (angels, if we’re using the Christian
version [Heb 2:7/Ps 8:5]). As Pseudo-Dionysius exults, “the Everlasting
took a temporal duration, and He, Who is superessentially exalted above ev
ery rank throughout all nature, became within our nature, whilst retaining the
unchangeable and unconfused steadfastness of His own properties” (1897b,
1.3). Thus, Pseudo-Dionysius advises, “let Christ lead the discourse—if it
be lawful to me to say—He Who is mine,—the Inspiration of all Hierarchi
cal revelation” (1897a, 2.5, emphasis added).
Gods upon Gods 171
CONCLUSION
We began this essay by noting the ways in which Marvel’s cosmic beings
share a remarkably similar organizational scheme to the hierarchy of divini
ties in Neoplatonism. Both move from the concrete, physical, and limited
to the abstract. The cosmic gods of Neoplatonism, such as the Twelve
Olympians, correspond to Thor and his Asgardian allies. The Gnostically
adjusted demiurge who shapes the physical world finds a counterpart in
Galactus and the Celestials. The hypercosmic gods, above the created
universe, match up with the embodiments of overarching principles like
Mistress Love and Lord Order. Higher up, the World Soul is fittingly mir
rored in the Marvel character Eternity, and the divine Nous or Intelligence
in the three-faced Living Tribunal. Finally, the Neoplatonic One parallels
Marvel’s One Above All.
Next, we asked why this might be the case. We hypothesized that a series
of increasingly powerful functional divinities were gradually created to entice
and excite readers. Simultaneously, writers avoid religious insult by keeping
the “real” God tastefully off panel, for the most part. But more than this, there
is a natural instinct to elevate the universal over the particular, the law itself
over a specific instantiation of that law, and so forth. Marvel’s cosmic beings
are more powerful the more fundamental they are to the nature of being.
Finally, we used the Jack Kirby cameo from Fantastic Four #511 to dis
cuss levels of omnipotence and hierarchies of being between nested fictions
and reality. Just as the real author is more real and more powerful than a
fictional author or that author’s fictional characters, so God exists in a higher,
more robust sense than His creatures do. God always exceeds our imagina
tions; He always transcends our conceptual limitations. And so, as Christian
Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius urges us when contemplating this God above
being: excelsior!
NOTES
1. Thanks to Corey Latta and Chris Porter for reading a draft of this chapter.
2. At least, according to Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2. In the comic book canon
this is not the case.
3. Cf. his rank alongside Galactus, the Celestials, and the Stranger above.
4. The leaders of each pantheon sometimes meet in a “Council of Godheads.”
5. Thor and Hulk usually end up even, but Hulk has won at least once {Hulk: Let
the Battle Begin), and Red Hulk beat Thor handily in Hulk (2008) #5.
6. Of course, he wasn’t always who he is now; he was once a mortal named Galan
of Taa, last survivor of the previous universe.
7. In my citations of Plotinus’ Enneads, 1 will give first the chapter location and
then the page number from Elmer O’Brien’s The Essential Plotinus.
8. Ennead IV.3 1799.
9. The Marvel Universe has been created and recreated many times. Most re
cently, during Secret Wars. For an overview of each of the previous universes, see
the final issue of Ultimates, Vol. 2.
10. One notable exception is the highly blasphemous depiction of Yahweh in
Howard the Duck, Vol. 3, passim. This should not be considered canon for the rest
of the Marvel Universe.
11. The idea that heaven is some sort of stasis rather than continual fulfillment of
all holy desire is inherently problematic. Likewise, the idea that the journey is more
important than the destination would require further unpacking.
12. Kirby in fact did insert himself into various issues of the original Fantastic
Four series, and was famously refused entry (along with Stan Lee) into Reed and
Sue’s wedding: Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965).
13. It seems clear that Waid and Wieringo are more real than the characters they
write. It seems, on a certain understanding, clear that God is more real than Waid and
Wieringo. But what about the two functional fictional gods of our altered Fantastic
Four #511? Does the Jack Kirby within the frame story have in any sense more reality
than the One Above All of the story-within-a-story? This question seems intimately
related to a similar knotted problem in the philosophy of literature: the truth-value of
fictional statements.
Chapter Eleven
The Thor Movies and

the "Available" Myth
Mythic Reinvention in Marvel Movies
Andrew Tobolowsky
Not so very long ago, many scholars firmly believed that traditional narra
tives—folktales and legends and the like—had no individual authors. Instead,
they had simply emanated, in some mystical way, from a kind of collective
ethnic consciousness of ancient origins. Once they appeared, these original
stories, sometimes called “ur-narratives,” remained more or less the same
ever after, companions to the ethnic group that told them throughout all of
the group’s subsequent history, changing in some ways, but never really los
ing their shape. It was thought, therefore, that by reconstructing the original
version of surviving traditions, one could not only come to understand what
the story was really about, but the fundamental character of the group still
telling it (Oring 1986, 5-6).
In many different fields, throughout the nineteenth and much of the
twentieth century, the hunt for the ur-narrative was what scholarship was
all about. So it was that in the early nineteenth century, in Germany, the
Brothers Grimm not only sought the materials for their beloved collection of
fairy tales, but through them, clues to ’‘the poetic and spiritual character of
the Germanic people” in some very general sense (Oring 1986, 5).' Nearly a
century later, William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and other champions of
the “Celtic revival” were studying Irish folklore not only for its interest value
but, as Gregory Castle notes, in hopes of recovering the Irish “golden age,”
premised on “belief in cultural or racial essence” and toward “the general
goal of racial self-improvement” (Castle 2001, 4). And for biblical scholars,
well into the 1970s, not even the Bible was old enough. The real Israel was
the one that had told the early oral versions of the stories that survived in
biblical form.2 For most biblical scholars, throughout the twentieth century,
reconstructing pre-biblical traditions and the pre-biblical world were not just
goals of biblical studies but to some considerable degree the goals and very
173
174 Andrew Tobolowsky
detailed depictions of early tribal Israel, based on very little in the way of ac
tual evidence—beyond these hypothetically reconstructed traditions—sprung
up everywhere (Noth 1930; De Geus 1976; Gottwald 1979).
What does this have to do with Marvel movies? Well, basically, the liter
ary excavations that were going on everywhere were based on a particular
approach to the problem of how traditions are inherited over time. It would
hardly be possible, for example, to reconstruct the earliest Germanic tradi
tions out of contemporary folktales if you did not believe that there were
strong rules governing tradition inheritance so that the same basic narratives
more or less inevitably survived into the present with many details intact.
The stability of traditions over time is not only something that scholars
believed in, but to some degree still believe in, even though it was originally
based on a now outdated model of ethnic identity called “primordialism.”
This is essentially the belief that ethnic identities themselves remain almost
completely stable over great gulfs of time. As a result, it was reasonable to
think that their stories would stay the same too. Yet, we are no longer primor-
dialists (Gil-White 1999; Roosens 1989; MaleSevic 2004). We now know that
traditions change too, just as easily and just as frequently as identities (Han
dler 2002; Linnekin 1991; Theodossopoulos 2013). As a result, we need to
rethink how traditions are inherited and, more simply, how stories are retold.
Of course, as we will see, scholars have taken strides in this direction. Yet,
despite the demise of the theoretical presuppositions that formed it, the idea of
tradition as an essentially authorless text hangs on. Today, it finds expression
not in the hunt for “kernels of truth,” that centuries old preoccupation, but in
the belief that tradition inheritance is governed by certain rules. Everywhere,
we find the assumption that there are certain things that storytellers will not
do when retelling stories about the past, and from the past, constrained by
some vague, general thing called “tradition.”3 Certainly, there are things that
storytellers will try not to do, especially when retelling particularly important
traditions. This, however, is not the same thing.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe can help us think about tradition inheri
tance because it is an extraordinary modern example thereof, as well as an
expression of diverse types of interactions between storytellers and source
materials. The MCU and modem movies generally are not a perfect com
parison with the ancient world, which was different in a great many respects,
but the purpose of comparison is not always to assert identity between two
kinds of things. Instead, it can draw attention to features and questions that
we would not otherwise have noticed or asked (Smith 1982).
In this case, what we see is that the MCU draws on decades of Marvel
comics with overlapping and frequently rewritten story lines. Each protago
nist of a given Marvel movie also suggests additional source texts that the
The Thor Movies and the "Available" Myth 175
writers and directors of each might use. The Thor movies, which will be the
main topic of our discussion, draw on Norse mythology, as the Black Panther
movies draw on tropes of afro-futurism, and the Captain America movies on
various American historical and patriotic motifs. Each movie also draws on
the other movies in the universe, both those that come before it and provide it
with knots to untangle, and those that will come after which it must lead to
ward. The ways in which all these constraints shape how Marvel’s stories get
told can help us think about how all storytelling flourishes amid constraints,
at any time, and it can help us understand Marvel’s storytelling as well.
More than anything else, we will see the importance of individual creativ
ity in the telling of stories, which is more important than it might seem. The
legacy of previous generations of scholarship and its authorless texts and
transhistorically stable stories has produced an image of those who retell sto
ries as creative largely only with respect to how they retell and reformulate
the same narrative elements that have been handed down and would have
been culturally acceptable. What this misses, and what the MCU can dem
onstrate, is that what seems to be the story is itself the product of individual
apprehensions of what is acceptable, which are always present. Individual
creativity must factor into our calculations about tradition inheritance both
yesterday and today and thinking about the relationship between constraint
and imagination can help us understand the MCU as well.
TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL
Thor: Ragnarok, the most popular of the Thor movies—although in my opin

ion not the best—begins with several broad winks at the audience.4 The most
subtle of these is that when the movie begins, Loki has stolen Odin’s part.
He has taken on Odin’s appearance and is ruling Asgard. Indeed, when we
see Loki for the first time in this film, he is playing Odin watching someone
play Loki—in this case, Matt Damon—in a play about Loki’s heroic sacrifice,
until Thor puts a stop to it and reveals his brother’s trick.
Loki’s theft is a “wink” because throughout the movie it is really Thor who
has stolen Odin’s part, and not just as the leader of the Asgardians. Any list
of the most famous deeds of Odin from Norse mythology, found in two texts
called the Prose and Poetic Eddas, would surely include the fact that Odin
gave his eye for a drink from the well of Mimir in exchange for wisdom, and
that he hung himself from Yggdrasil, the world tree, for a period of nine days
for similar reasons.5 Thor: Ragnarok opens with Thor himself hanging in the
realm of the fiery Surtur and seeking information in much the same way. Later
in the movie he loses an eye, a crucial step on his path to self-knowledge: Thor
is more than his hammer, his power comes from within. And in the end, these
narrative switches herald another, even greater switch: Ultimately, to save
his people, Thor must not avoid Ragnarok, the Norse vision of the end of the
world, but instead cause it.
Here, we see the substantial dependence of Thor: Ragnarok on Norse myth
itself. Later in this chapter, we will discuss its relationship to other movies
in the MCU, another important feature in shaping its narrative. Yet not all
of this movie’s source materials are naturally suggested by the nature of the
movie itself. The very first words of Thor: Ragnarok are: “Now 1 know what
you’re thinking. Oh no! Thor’s in a cage. How did this happen?” This is, pre
sumably, Asgard-speech for the meme format that begins “*record scratch*
*freeze frame* ‘Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up
in this situation.’” When in the long arc of telling stories about Thor Odinson
would it have even been possible to combine the source texts of the Eddas,
main sources of Scandinavian myth, with an internet meme? The answer ap
pears to be: around 2016.6
Here is a textbook example of the operation of the individual imagination.
So much of Thor: Ragnarok depends on three sets of obvious source materi
als: the rest of the MCU, the Thor comics, and Norse myth itself. All of these
function in Thor: Ragnarok the way traditional materials are supposed to
function in the retelling of traditional stories, as constraints that shape what
is possible in retelling. Yet, this nod to meme culture is a pure expression of
individual imagination, and one that is very specific to the time and place
in which Thor: Ragnarok debuted. Not only would this meme reference not
have occurred to most people who were tasked with writing Thor: Ragnarok,
underscoring its highly individual character, it could not have occurred even
to the authors of the original Thor which debuted too early, in 2011. Most
likely, given the speed of internet culture, it will no longer be intelligible even
ten years from now, at least for those who were not originally in on the joke.
The transience of this moment of individual imagination should sound
a cautionary note with respect to the study of ancient traditions especially.
We rarely think of the distant past in terms of ten years, or even fifty. The
few voices that survive from so long ago are so precious because the past is
mostly silence. Narrative expressions of individual creativity are precisely
the kinds of details we will miss at this distance, and as a result, fail to make
room for in our analyses.
In this case, one question we could reasonably ask is why precisely was
this reference included in the movie? The real answer to this question, of
course, can only come from the writers themselves. We can surmise however
that it was part of a general effort to give Thor: Ragnarok more of a pop
cultural aesthetic than the previous—and in my opinion unfairly maligned—
The Thor Movies and the “Available ” Myth 177
installments of the franchise. The choice to render Thor: Ragnarok according

to a pop cultural aesthetic added another body of source materials to the store
available for innovative interpretation. Thus, what seemed to be appropriate
for the movie changed according to the authors’ understanding of the project.
MARVEL, THE ANCIENT WORLD,

AND THE "AVAILABLE MYTH"
In comparing the Marvel movies to ancient myth, we first of all have to

discuss what myth is, a task at once simple and difficult. For the most part,
myths are what most people instinctively think they are—stories about the
past that are not, strictly speaking, true. However, complications set in when
you start trying to separate myths from other kinds of false stories. Are myths
and fables the same thing? Is The Great Gatsby a myth? Usually, definitions
of myth include the idea of cultural significance, which is to say, a story
that is important to a culture as part of how that culture identifies itself (Mc
Cutcheon 2000, 199-200; Doniger 2011,3). Thus, Hercules—and Thor—are
figures of myth, and Gatsby is not. Obviously, this still leaves a lot of gray
area, but it will do for now.
Marvel movies are not myths, and it is reasonable to think that myths func
tion slightly differently than they do. It is more likely, for example, that Taika
Waititi will feel comfortable doing something that Thor’s original Marvel
authors would not have approved of than that a medieval Norse author would
feel comfortable reinventing a familiar figure of much greater importance in
his or her world than Thor has today. The problem is, any given author can
only play by the rules, if there are rules, so far as they individually under
stand them. A person might absolutely try their best to tell their story only
in the most traditional spirit but might nevertheless have a totally different
perspective on what is appropriate to that task than another person will. The
ancient equivalent of a nod to meme culture is not outside the boundaries of
the possible.
The study of myth has taken a number of strides forward in recent years,
mostly based on recognizing that tradition inheritance is indeed fluid, rather
than stable. However, scholars still broadly assume that this fluidity mainly
takes the form of making new meanings through traditional elements, rather
than introducing more significant changes. So, for example, discussions of
how myths make new meanings have often orbited around the idea of myth
as a kind of “taxonomy,” which is to say, as an ordering system similar to the
one used in the identification of plants and animals (Lincoln 1999, 150; Bal
lentine 2015, 3). Taxonomies are hierarchies, and the hierarchy of elements
in a given list can make a big difference even if only the same elements are
involved.
In my own work, 1 have called myth a “vocabulary,” which might be a
simpler way of putting the same idea (Tobolowsky 2017, 204-5). Even with
a fairly small set of words to choose from, a talented enough speaker can
convey many meanings through arrangement, emphasis, and style. So, for
example, some of the popularity of the movie Shrek stems from the fact that
it employs the familiar touchstones of fairy tales, including Prince Charm
ing and a horrible ogre, but deploys them in an innovative way, subverting
expectations. The basic idea of a vocabulary, or a taxonomy, is that there
are limits on what those who retell traditions can include but that these
are less limiting than they seem because of how much can be done within
constraints.
Here, however, we can return to the point made above about meme culture
in Thor: Ragnarok. MCU’s storytellers frequently draw from materials that
are outside of what might be considered their most obvious sources. In an
other example from the Thor franchise, this time from the first movie, Thor’s
hammer is sent to earth by Odin and embedded in a rock. By putting Thor in
a position where he can only withdraw his weapon from a stone if he proves
worthy of it, the director or screenwriters obviously channel Arthur and the
“sword in the stone.” Indeed, it is only by removing the weapon from the
stone that Thor proves himself worthy to be king, just as Arthur did—the
movie ends, or near enough, with Thor’s attempted coronation.
In terms of “vocabulary,” we can note that references like these do in
deed come from existing source materials. They are not new narratives in
an absolute sense. However, they are also not narratives that clearly belong
in the orbit of the story that employs them. They are, we might say within
the bounds of the vocabulary analogy, loan words. What interests us is what
makes them available for loan, which is that they seemed to belong together
to the storytellers involved.
The key point here is not that storytellers can do things we might not expect
them to do, which is already obvious. It is that even someone who is trying to
play by the rules, so to speak, might act in unexpected ways because of how
they understand those rules. Indeed, from the perspective of twenty-first-
century America, the original accounts of Thor and Arthur might well seem
to come from roughly the same world. They are both medieval myths from
martial cultures, and stories about them evoke similar images. Excalibur and
Mjolnir were already both magic and symbolic weapons. Yet, apprehensions
of their similarity are only possible from outside of their home cultures and
some distance away in time from their heyday. They likely would not have
seemed to be much the same at all to a Viking skald or Celtic or British bard.
The Thor Movies and the “Available ” Myth 179
In another case from the movies, though not Marvel, Wolfgang Petersen’s
Troy (2004) includes narrative elements such as the Trojan Horse, the death
of Achilles at the hands of Paris, and the escape of a very young-looking Ae
neas, carrying a made-up weapon called the “sword of Troy.” This is another
case that is unlikely to ruffle any feathers, even for tradition purists, although
in actuality neither the Trojan Horse nor the death of Achilles occur in the
Iliad. Indeed, they do not occur in any book anyone living has ever read.
Instead, they appear in later installments in what is called the “Epic Cycle,”
in the Iliou Persis (“destruction of Troy”) and the Aethiopis respectively. The
Epic Cycle is now lost to us, except for the Iliad and the Odyssey, but descrip
tions of it survive from antiquity (West 2003, 2013).
The nod to the Aeneid, however, is more complicated, and the fact that it
might not feel that way is what matters here. Why shouldn’t the story of Ae
neas’ escape from Troy to found the city of Rome fit perfectly well in a movie
that includes the fall of Troy? In reality, as a little reflection will reveal, the
Aeneid, which tells Aeneas’ story, was written in Rome in the first century
BCE, while the Iliad is likely to have been set down somewhere in Greece in
the eighth century BCE (Koiv 2003, 11). When the Iliad was written, in all
likelihood, Rome had not yet even been founded.7
It is not too much, then, to suggest that what makes the Aeneid seem avail
able as a narrative element to anyone telling the story of the Trojan War
today is not its use of the Iliad as source material—the Romans were far
from the only ones to adopt an Iliad-hased origin myth not just in the classi
cal world but well into the medieval period (Patterson 2010, 8; Tobolowsky
2017, 243)—but contemporary models of the Classical world. Since, in other
words, we have made Greece and Rome the constituent elements of what the
“Classical Mediterranean” seems to be, it makes sense that Greek and Roman
stories would seem to belong together, too. That their unity is seeming only
is the whole point—our apprehensions of what belongs together shapes what
seems available to us for retellings.
This notion of the “available myth” is one I have explored before (To
bolowsky 2017, 202, 232—46).8 The basic idea is that, granted the existence
of an author who wishes to tell a story in a traditional mode as far as possible,
we still have to construct what seems available to them for that task. Gener
ally, scholars suppose they are constrained by what is considered traditional
itself, and this is where the idea that there are hard and fast rules for tradition
inheritance comes from. What we see in Marvel movies, in Troy, and in many
other places, however, is that what seems to be traditional is not an objective,
universal quantity. It is not outside the realm of possibility that one author
telling the story of the Trojan War on the big screen might think it most ap
propriate to retell only the parts that Homer directly refers to, while another
might do what Wolfgang Petersen did. and both will understand their tasks in
precisely the same way.
The difference between thinking about myth in terms of what is “tradi
tional” and what is “available” is that what is traditional is a group choice.
What is “available” is what seems to an individual to be available. Certainly,
a person with little interest in tradition will reinvent stories as they see fit,
and many more narrative moves will be available to them than someone
who feels constrained by notions of tradition or canon. But even a person at
tempting to execute a narrative in a traditional mode will be subject to their
own construction of what is traditional which will not be universal. Instead,
constructions of the traditional depend not only on where we are, and when
we are, but also who we are.
In determining what role existing traditions play in constraining how later
stories are told, we can also consider how quickly new narrative elements
might become traditional. Above, I noted the subversive play with Norse
mythology that deepens the texture of Thor: Ragnarok in such interesting
ways. It is worth reflecting that while it seems as if the screenwriters must,
therefore, have considerable knowledge of Norse myth, this is not absolutely
necessary. Instead, it might at least hypothetically have been the authors of
the relevant Marvel comics who knew Norse myth and made their subversive
changes.
In that case—and since, from the perspective of the makers of Marvel mov
ies, the comics are as canonical as Norse myth, if not more so—the authors
of Thor: Ragnarok might include a narrative in which Thor, rather than Odin,
loses an eye for wisdom not because it is subversive but because it is canon.
After that, the movie itself would re-emphasize the status of this narrative
event and make it seem traditional for future stories. The largely oral mode of
story telling in the ancient world would make rapid changes in what seemed
to be traditional more possible, rather than less.9
Still, the larger point is that even with every intention of submitting to
it, the individual imagination can only respond to the demands of what is
authoritative insofar as these are understood, and as they are interpreted indi
vidually. Just as Thor, a visitor from Asgard, may suppose it polite to throw
a coffee mug on the floor when asking for another, or hang his hammer on
a coatrack, so might a mythographer produce a narrative that seems to them
to be perfectly traditional, even canonical, while actually being quite innova
tive. Moving on from a primordialist framework for interpreting identity and
tradition—which makes storytellers little more than empty vessels for passing
on stories—means reckoning with authors as authors, which means making
room for the individual imagination. We have not done a very good job of
this, and we need to do better.
The Thor Movies and the "Available” Myth 181
MARVEL AND MYTH, MYTH AND MARVEL
There have been fairly few efforts to investigate ancient storytelling in a way
that acknowledges the inevitable role of individual creativity. One such, by
Tomasz Mojsik, uses the fluidity of efforts to describe the Greek Muses as
an example of a kind of story that was very often told in dramatically differ
ent ways. His effort is particularly valuable because it points to the problem
we discussed at the beginning: the kinds of elements that are redolent of the
individual imagination in ancient myth—additions, subtractions, changing
names, changing episodes—have always been visible to scholars of myth.
They have, however, not usually been discussed as expressions of the imagi
nation. Instead, they are most often described by scholars as if they are simply
byproducts of shifting historical and political realities.
In the face of variant forms of myths, Mojsik observes, “correlations be
tween myth versions in works of various poets are studied, the oldest known
version (the ‘Ur-Myth’) sought and attempts are made to date it.” Once that
is done, “scholars tend to concentrate ... on linking [variations] with socio
political transformations” (Mojsik 2011, 111-12).'° In approaches of either
sort, the author has little role. Their story might be different from other ver
sions of the story, but only because it responds to events, contexts, and other
developments—not to the author’s own sense of how the story should be told.
Mojsik contributes to this discussion by pointing to the importance of
what he calls “communication contexts.” After all, “the myth was certainly
variously communicated: to children; by children; other elements must have
been of particular importance to women; still others were narrated on special
occasions, e.g. at weddings and funerals. Besides, certainly there were also
different sets of stories intended for diverse age and social groups” (Mojsik
2011, 13)." If we imagine a poetry contest, such as the one Hesiod claims
to have attended in his Works and Days (646), it is fairly unlikely that prizes
were handed out simply for getting the story just right. There must have been
many bards and they must have had their own ways of doing things.
An awareness of “communication contexts” is important for an accurate
approach to telling stories and is to some degree what we have been describ
ing all along. Telling a story in 2017 is what lets you use a meme from 2016.
Telling a story in a billion-dollar movie franchise lets you do certain things
that comic books do not. Telling a story in the particular context that the
MCU allows, so unique in contemporary culture—a multi-stage movie uni
verse—shapes what the story can be and must be in various important ways.
Yet even “communication contexts” is outward looking. Would two bards tell
the story of Jason and the Argonauts in the same way merely because both
are telling it to children? Or might each have a different approach to how to
modify it even for the same audience? It is not only the moment that calls
forth a new story, but the author’s own mind.
When it comes to exploring the complex dynamic between tradition inheri
tance and individual creativity, we could hardly do better than Thor: Ragn
arok, which is why we have made this movie a centerpiece of our discussion.
First, we have to consider all of the various constraints brought to bear on the
movie by Norse myth itself. Naturally, a rendition of the Norse apocalypse
must have some basis in the traditional event to be intelligible and, in Thor:
Ragnarok, it does. Several events from the Eddas appear in the movie, includ
ing Suit or Surtur, the giant with the fiery sword, Fenrir the wolf, and the dead
fighting in the battle (Crawford 2015, 11-16; Sturluson 1916, 16-17,78-83).
“Hei” is an important figure in the Norse Ragnarok as “Hela” is here, and it is
indeed Surtur, in the traditional story, whose fiery sword brings the last wave
of destruction, followed by new life.
Then we have the constraints that are part and parcel of being in the MCU
to consider. The movie, by virtue of its belonging in the larger narrative arc,
must begin where the previous installments left off and it does. In Avengers:
Age of Ultron, Thor has a vision of the end times courtesy of the magic of the
Scarlet Witch. He finds himself among the dead, where Heimdall tells him
he is a destroyer. As a result, he seeks out a sacred pool where he can receive
visions. There, he sees the Infinity Stones and leaves with the (accurate) im
pression that he must find the stones in order to save the world. At the end of
Age of Ultron, Thor tells Iron Man and Captain America that he must go off
on his own in order to do so. At the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok, Thor does
indeed mention that he has been seeking for the stones.
Then, the movie must also connect to the next installment in the MCU,
leading up to the final battle(s) with Thanos and again, it does. In the first
post-credits scene, Thor and the gang are finally able to relax after defeating
Hela and escaping into space. Just as they begin to settle down, however, a
titanic ship looms over them, casting theirs utterly in the shade. At the be
ginning of Infinity War, we discover this was Thanos’ ship and that Thanos
and his crew had set about their usual task of destroying half of the people
anywhere they arrive. Heimdall, with his dying strength, sends Hulk to earth
in order to warn the heroes there about what is coming their way.
Ultimately, the services Thor: Ragnarok provides to the furtherance of the
MCU master narrative are many. This is the movie that recovers the Hulk, a
key figure in Endgame, from an alien planet and puts him in a situation where
he can return to earth. It explains how Loki once again gained access to an In
finity Stone which, in the beginning of Infinity War, Thanos takes from him.
It introduces the character of Valkyrie and ultimately puts Thor in a position
where he can make contact with the Guardians of the Galaxy—even if on
The Thor Movies and the "Available ” Myth 183
a salvage mission to the shattered remnants of Thor’s ship. This is a highly

constrained movie, given all that it must do, all that it is beholden to, and all
that it does do to further the larger plot. A scholar attempting to demonstrate
the existence of rules of inheritance would certainly find quite a lot to work
with here.
And yet, at the same time, the movie turns out to be hardly constrained at
all. The contest between Thor, Loki, and Hela over Asgard has, in its main
points, very little relation to anything that proceeds or follows. Hela never
seems to pose a threat to anything beyond Asgard and even the destruction of
this planet feels small in comparison to Thanos’ upcoming atrocities. If any
thing, the credit scene that connects the movie back up to the major Thanos
arc is a narrative misstep, making the entirety of Thor’s desperate struggle to
save his people seem irrelevant. In Endgame, we discover Asgardians settled
on earth, apparently having survived Thanos’ assault and his snap, but none
of the movies directly address how this came to be in any substantial way.
The secret to understanding Thor: Ragnarok appears at the very beginning,
in Thor’s opening speech that has already proven so fruitful for us. Among
Thor’s first lines are: “1 went searching through the cosmos for some magic,
colorful Infinity Stone things... didn’t find any. That’s when I came across a
path of death and destruction which led me all the way here.” In other words,
yes, he enters through the door that has been prepared for him by previous
movies—he has come here, by and by, because he left the Avengers to seek
the Infinity Stones. Yet in the space of one sentence, and one of the first sen
tences at that, the movie swaps one quest for another and one end of the world
for another: Surtur’s crown for the Infinity Stones, and a purely Asgardian
Ragnarok for the greater threat posed by Thanos. In this way, the movie
creates the space it needs to be an expression of the individual imagination
despite its constraints.
The same dynamic is at play in the movie’s depiction of Ragnarok itself.
Yes, many nods to the original myth are present in the movie, but the rosters
of combatants are, in comparison to the original Norse myth, fuller in some
ways, less so in others. In the Norse Ragnarok, Odin is there, as are other
Norse gods like Tyr, while the Hulk, obviously, is not. Valkyries are, but
“Valkyrie” is not. “Hei” is not Odin’s daughter, but Loki’s, and Loki is on her
side, the leader of the army of the dead. Thor fights the snake who encircles
the world, and both kill each other. Odin is killed by Fenrir, who is killed by
Vidarr, a son of Odin in vengeance, while here Fenrir plays the pivotal role
in bringing the Hulk out of Bruce Banner.
Then there is the mutability of even what Ragnarok means to consider. As we
have already seen, the narrative of the movie is built around the revelation that
Thor must actually cause what he sought to forestall—even if, in the previous
movies, he thought he had to forestall something else. Ragnarok is not the only
end times that might seem like good or bad news depending on who was talk
ing—we can easily imagine someone who expects to be “saved” at the end of
the world, in an evangelical Christian context, coming to a similar conclusion.
In general, an explicit acknowledgment of the interplay between the con
straints of inheritance and the inevitability of the individual imagination is
capable of shedding quite a lot of light on such a unique phenomenon as the
Marvel Cinematic Universe, as it is on rethinking tradition inheritance in
ancient myth. Here we have a thing there has never been before, an intercon
nected, multi-stage movie universe in which many of the movies are meant
to be largely individual in character. Each owes fidelity to what has come
before and what is still to come, but at the same time the work of many hands
ensures constant creative innovation. More than that, the constant appearance
of new installments in the series means a constant expansion of “available”
traditions. In the early Captain America movies, only Captain’s shield was
made of vibranium. After Black Panther, almost anything could be, even
Ultron’s entire body. This is as handy an illustration of the concept of the
“available myth” as there could be—the ongoing process of telling stories
provides new materials for building myths while what is built may proceed
from pre-existing plans or be, in various ways, new and improved.
Of course, in more traditional societies, where, for example, stories about
Thor and the like were actually sacred, it is certainly reasonable to think there
were, and are, tighter controls on the use of what is inherited. These controls,
however, produce tendencies, not rules, because stories have authors, and au
thors are human, not neutral vessels for the transmission of traditions. When
we lose sight of the individual in storytelling, we fail to understand stories,
whether three thousand years ago or today.
NOTES
1. The Grimms particularly pioneered what is called the “generic approach,” an

effort to sieve traditional material for historical facts on the basis of the “genre” of tra
dition it was perceived to be, which offered a sliding scale of historicity. See Grimm
1882; Gomme 1908.
2. In biblical studies, see especially Gunkel 1901, 13-20; Noth 1972, 1-2; Cross
1998, 27, 50. In some ways, biblical studies was dominated and is dominated by a
search/or authors who have sometimes been identified with great specificity. The
feeling was, however, in the words of Joseph Blenkinsopp, that these may have had
their own style and concerns, but in terms of narrative facts, had “added nothing es
sential to what was already there” (Blenkinsopp 1992, 18). See the recent discussion
in Vayntrub 2019, 74-76.
The Thor Movies and the “Available” Myth 185
3. Margalit Finkelberg, for example, referring to ancient Greek genealogical

traditions, argues that “even a falsification of one’s genealogical position could
not be carried out arbitrarily, that is, without making it consistent in terms of the
universally agreed upon system” (Finkelberg 2005, 28). Ehud Ben Zvi, generally
on the cutting edge of the inheritance of traditions over time in the biblical world,
nevertheless supposes that late biblical compositions did not have to be “‘true’ in
the sense of ‘objective’ truth,” it nevertheless had to be “‘true’ in regards to ideo
logical meaningfulness and significance and be consistent with a set of core facts
about the past that were agreed upon within the community” (Ben Zvi 2011, 37).
The existence of “core facts” is what I am talking about in this essay. Irad Malkin,
another excellent scholar of ancient Greek myth, observes that “[mjyths were usu
ally not invented; they were adapted or evolved into an idea of history” (Malkin
1994, 5). John Kessler, drawing on the work of sociologist John Porter, refers to
certain “ground rules” that shape conflict between elites, which could certainly in
clude a basic agreement on the important traditions (Kessler 2006, 99). All of these
scholars are very sophisticated in their analysis of myth, so this is meant to point to
how entrenched certain ideas still are.
4. All quotations and references to the film are from Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and
Christopher L. Yost, Thor: Ragnarok, Amazon Streaming, directed by Taika Waititi
(Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studios, 2017).
5. The “well of Mimir” episode appears in “Voluspa,” the first section of the Poetic
Edda (28). In Jackson’s Crawford’s translation: “Why do you seek me, Odin? I Odin,
I know / where you hid your eye / in the shining waters / of the well of Mimir. I But
Mimir can drink every morning / from those waters I where your own eye drowns. /
Have you learned enough yet, Allfather?” (Crawford 2015,8). Odin hangs himself in a
text called “Havamal,” one of the sections of the Poetic Edda (138-39). Also from the
Crawford translation: “I know that I hung on a wind-battered tree / nine long nights, /
pierced by a spear / and given to Odin, / myself to myself, / on that tree / whose roots
grow in a place / no one has ever seen.” At the end of the escapade, he learns runes
(Crawford 2015,42—43). The Mimir episode also appears in Gylfaginning in the Prose
Edda of Snorri Sturluson (Sturluson 1916, 27).
6. According to “*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame*” 2016.
7. The Iliad does contain a reference to Aeneas surviving the war and becoming
a king, but there is no sense in it that he will have to leave the region of Troy to do
so {Iliad XX. 308).
8. See also Wendy Doniger who observes, “Myths are retold over and over again
for several reasons: because the community becomes attached to the signifiers, and
they become authoritative and historically evocative; because myths are at hand,
available, like the scraps of the bricoleur, and using them is easier than creating from
scratch” (Doniger 201 1, 87).
9. Thus, for example, biblical studies has been overdetermined by what Eva
Mroczek calls, in criticizing it, the “hegemony of the biblical,” the idea that biblical
narratives had canonical importance throughout their long history despite the fact that
they were not canonized until well after the major traditions had formed (Mroczek
2015, 2016).
10. “Still other work attempts to delineate various paths of the development of
mythographical traditions, as well as to identify the layers within the tradition and
indicate the historical context accountable for changes that transpire therein. Notice
able, however, is the absence of analyses focused on the construction of mythic plots,
in circumstances in which its individual structural elements were formed and their
place within the whole of a given version of the myth” (Mojsik 2011, 111-12).
11. Moreover “more than one poet and one performer were involved, as fes
tive occasions were also opportunities for poetic contexts, i.e. occasions involving
rivalry. Sometimes, even more than one audience were involved as well owing to
the fact that spectators within contests at festivals could be very diverse, which the
poet must always have taken into consideration ... all of this had been subject to
modifications depending on whether the poets recited their compositions locally
or delivered them during pan-Hellenic festivals in front of inhabitants of different
poleis” (Mojsik 2011, 101-3).
Chapter Twelve
Thor: Ragnarok, Postcolonial

Theology, and Life Together
Kevin Nye
Right before the final showdown in Thor: Ragnarok, Hela—the goddess of

death—reveals to Thor some purposefully concealed history about his father
Odin and Asgard, his home world: “Odin and I drowned whole civilizations
in blood and tears. . . . Where do you think all this gold came from?” Thor
realizes in this moment that Asgard’s history and its inheritance are more
complicated than he had ever understood. Ultimately, as the “end of days”
approaches, Thor realizes that the only way to save Asgard is to destroy it.
He realizes that Asgard is not a place, but a people, and to save those people
he must sacrifice something else in the process.
Thor, as played by actor Chris Hemsworth, has appeared in seven films,
beginning with 2011 ’s Thor, and continuing most recently in Avengers: End
game. Taken as a whole, Thor’s journey is one of self-discovery and an in
creasingly nuanced view of what it means to be a leader and a king. In 2011 ’s
Thor, we first meet Thor as an arrogant young prince—hungry for the throne
and craving opportunities for violence and war. When this desire leads to the
breaking of a centuries-old peace treaty, Thor is banished to earth where he
begins the classic hero’s journey. Here he learns the value of self-sacrifice,
and at the end of the film returns to Asgard with the realization that he is not
yet ready to be king, admitting, “I have much to learn. I know that now.” Ac
cording to Thor, one of the best attributes of a good king is a self-awareness
that prompts patience and peace. This lesson is further realized in 2012’s
The Avengers, in which Thor faces off against his brother Loki, who intends
to rule earth. Loki’s idea of rule is domination and forced subservience, to
which Thor responds, “Then you miss the truth of ruling, brother. A throne
would suit you ill.” Thor now understands that leadership and kingship also
require humility.
187
188 Kevin Nye
In Thor: The Dark World, Thor’s relationship to the throne becomes

strained by his love for a mortal woman, Jane Foster. While Odin and others
try to impress upon Thor that Jane’s mortality and limits can offer him noth
ing compared to ruling Asgard, the emergence of the dark elves and the loss
of loved ones teach Thor that to rule from a cold distance is to miss the true
meaning of life. Thor explains, “Father, 1 cannot be king of Asgard. I will
protect Asgard and all the realms with my last and every breath, but I cannot
do so from that chair. ... I’d rather be a good man than a great king.” The
only thing that shakes him from this resolve is the fear of “ragnarbk,” the end
of all things, which Thor first sees in a fever dream caused by the enchant
ress Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron. At the end of that film, Thor
leaves in search of the Infinity Stones, facing an impending destruction that
he thinks he can—and must—prevent.
Thus, Thor: Ragnarok, opens with Thor on his quest to stop “ragnarbk.”
Thor is told early in the movie that this fate is unavoidable, but Thor believes
in his own strength and ability to prevent it. But his confidence is shaken
when Thor learns that he has a violent, destructive sister, Hela. Within a min
ute, Thor watches his father die and quickly experiences the breadth of Hela’s
power when she destroys his most powerful weapon, the hammer Mjolnir.
Thor is quickly defeated by Hela and exiled to the planet Sakaar, while Hela
reclaims rule over Asgard and raises an army to pick up where she left off
in her desire to rule the universe. On Sakaar, Thor is forced to participate in
a gladiator-style competition under the rule of the planet’s Grandmaster. In
the process, he reunites with Hulk and his estranged brother Loki, and meets
the exiled Asgardian warrior Valkyrie, along with eccentric friends Korg and
Miek. He convinces them all to join him in an escape from the planet and
an attempt to defeat Hela. However, in the final battle, Thor comes to the
realization that Hela cannot be defeated without the destruction of Asgard
itself, from which she draws her power. Together with Loki, Thor enacts
“ragnarbk” while escaping with the remaining Asgardians as they watch the
annihilation of their planet—and Hela along with it.
These events in the film are about more than they seem on the surface. The
film elicits many questions that resonate in our world today. What are the
connections between land, peoples, and institutions? How should a people
interact with the land it inhabits? How should a people atone for its past?
These are profound questions for a blockbuster action comedy to wrestle with
thematically, yet this movie clearly offers something profound to its viewers
in response. As Mashable writer Angie Han observed after the film’s release,
Thor: Ragnarok is textually about these very questions: “Specifically, it’s
about the bloody history of colonialism, and that history’s refusal to stay bur
ied, no matter how eager we are to whitewash our sins” (Han 2017).
Thor: Ragnarok, Postcolonial Theology, and Life Together 189
Thor: Ragnarok asks us as viewers to consider our own history of violence,

our propensity to cover it up rather than confront it, what we are willing to
sacrifice and lose to repent from it, and what redemption we might find in
the process. This process is nothing less than the formation of a postcolonial
mindset. When such a process is applied to a particular history, in this case
American Christian history, it yields many provocative revelations. If Thor:
Ragnarok is about uncovering a history of sin for the purpose of moving for
ward, then Christians have the opportunity—perhaps even the obligation—to
engage it and the ideas it elicits in a meaningful way.
COLONIAL REALITIES AND POSTCOLONIAL HOPES
Right before Thor and Loki first meet Hela, Odin describes her: “The goddess
of death.... Her violent appetites grew beyond my control.” Over the course
of the film, Hela lives up to this description, ruthlessly murdering hundreds
of soldiers and citizens in her quest for domination. This greed for power and
resources, combined with a disregard for life, are the hallmarks of colonial
ism. However, before discussing colonialism and postcolonialism in Thor:
Ragnarok, it is important to define these terms.
Postcolonialism is, as the word implies, a movement that takes place in re
sponse to, or after, colonialism. Colonialism may be identified in any number
of historical periods, but is most often associated with European expansion
and colonization beginning in the early sixteenth century and continuing
well into the twentieth century—an undertaking which literally remapped the
world. According to historian and postcolonial theorist Robert J.C. Young,
“This division between the rest and the west was made fairly absolute in the
19th century by the expansion of the European empires, as a result of which
nine-tenths of the entire land surface of the globe was controlled by Euro
pean, or European-derived, powers” (Young 2003, 2-3).
But to truly understand colonialism, we must look beyond maps. As the
world was conquered by a particular people, their ideas disseminated and be
came the dominant way of thinking. These ideas included a particular way of
categorizing people that reinforced European dominance, leading to the dawn
of global racism. Young summarizes it well in his book Postcolonialism:
Colonial and imperial rule was legitimized by anthropological theories which

increasingly portrayed the peoples of the colonized world as inferior, childlike,
or feminine, incapable of looking after themselves (despite having done so
perfectly well for millennia) and requiring the paternal rule of the west for their
own best interests. The basis of such anthropological theories was the concept
of race. In simple terms, the west/non-west relation was thought of in terms of
190 Kevin Nye
whites versus the non-white races. White culture was (and remains) the basis for
ideas of legitimate government, law, economics, science, language, music, art,
literature—in a word, civilization. (Young 2003, 2-3)
During this time, European colonizers’ arrival to the Americas led to a tri
angular colonial moment that set the course for our current U.S. American
reality. The indigenous populations of America were largely decimated and/
or displaced and replaced with white European settlers. Simultaneously, the
colonization of the African continent produced a slave trade, allowing white
European settlers to develop North America using cheap, multigenerational
labor. Before and after securing its independence, the United States of
America colonized the new world by displacing those already living here, and
using the “spoils” of a colonized Africa to build wealth and a new way of life.
The end of the period of colonization in the twentieth century did not bring
about an end to its implications. Young points out that, “despite decoloniza
tion, the major world powers did not change substantially during the course
of the 20th century” (Young 2003, 3). While nearly every formerly European
colony achieved a measure of autonomy, a claim of “independence” may
be too strong, and more adequately described as a “minor move from direct
to indirect rule” or “a position not so much of independence as of being in
dependence” (Young 2003, 3). This state of “in-dependence ” remains due to
the reality that power and resources continue to be controlled by colonizing
governments. Colonialism is largely a movement of the past, but the ways
that it reshaped the world remain intact. Similarly, in the United States, while
slavery has ended, its geographic, economic, and social implications persist.
Crucial to Thor’s journey in Ragnarok is his re-education about the his
tory of Asgard. Similarly, postcolonialism has emerged in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, reorienting our understanding of the world and its
arrangement. Another postcolonial theorist, J. Daniel Elam, notes that “the
world we inhabit is impossible to understand except in relationship to the
history of imperialism and colonial rule” (Elam 2019). The world is not as it
is simply by accident, nor are many of the stories that we inherit the whole
truth. Angie Han again gets straight to the point regarding Ragnarok'. “The
story of Asgard has echoes all around our own world: the ‘free world’ built
on the subjugation and slaughter of others; the sanitization of our past and
current misdeeds; the younger generation raised on patriotic half-truths. Hela
serves as a terrifying reminder that the past has a way of catching up to the
present, no matter how desperately you’d like to erase old sins” (Han 2017).
Ragnarok reminds us repeatedly of the power of telling stories in particular
ways. In an early comedic scene, Loki, disguised as Odin, reenacts his own
life in a dramatic play for all of Asgard, exaggerating and fabricating his
heroism. Later, on Sakaar, Thor endures a comical attempt at brainwashing

when a disembodied voice tells him that Sakaar “is the collection point for
all lost and unloved things, like you. But here on Sakaar, you are significant.
You are valuable. Here, you are loved,” all while Thor sits strapped to a chair
with a device in his neck that prevents his resistance. We also learn later
that the Grandmaster prefers the term “prisoners with jobs” to “slaves.” The
power of words, performances, and histories to shape imagination is a major
theme of the film—and of postcolonialism. Such performances shape our
imaginations even today, in the celebration of particular holidays that misrep
resent the past, like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day, and in dramatizations
that portray the founding of the United States without telling the stories of
the First Nations people or the brutality of slavery. Elam recognizes the way
postcolonialism’s truth-telling changes everything about the way we read his
tory: “Postcolonial theory has influenced the way we read texts, the way we
understand national and transnational histories, and the way we understand
the political implications of our own knowledge as scholars” (Elam 2019).
Postcolonialism encounters opposition, of course, because it challenges
the established order of things and distributions of power. As Young writes,
“It disturbs the order of the world. It threatens privilege and power. It refuses
to acknowledge the superiority of western cultures. Its radical agenda is to
demand equality and well-being for all human beings on this earth” (Young
2003, 7). Postcolonialism not only expands our imagination about the world
but also threatens the advantageous position of those who have benefitted
from its hierarchy.
Postcolonialism must be addressed by all those wielding power and
privilege in the world. As we will come to see, Christianity in the West, and
specifically in America, has been indelibly marked by colonialism in ways
inconsistent with its theological roots. And so postcolonialism emerges as a
necessary theological movement, because just as people and places have been
colonized and remade through colonialism, so have theology and religious
practices been scarred by a remade world. Willie James Jennings of Yale
Divinity School and his work on colonialism and the Christian imagination
is particularly useful in this endeavor. His thorough and provocative work,
documenting the through-line of colonialism in American Church History
and its implications on present theology and practice, help us to see past the
false stories and structures to the truth. Additionally, his hope and anticipa
tion of a world remade enable us to imagine and live into a world that prac
tices a Christianity aimed toward shared life and intimacy.
Those interested in Christianity’s role in shaping the world (for better or
worse) can view Thor: Ragnarok as a meditation on Jennings’ work regarding
racism and American postcolonial theology. Thor’s revelation that “Asgard is
192 Kevin Nye
not a place, it’s a people” allows for the survival of Asgard without the blight
of Hela—but at a high cost. Thor and the Asgardians sail off into a future with
no place to call home, but finally free of Hela and her seemingly indestructible
power. Jennings writes, as if in response, “A Christian doctrine of creation is
first a doctrine of place and people, of divine love and divine touch, of human
presence and embrace and of divine and human interaction” (Jennings 2010,
248). Thor: Ragnarok is an invitation to explore generational sins like colo
nialism and racism, as well as what it will take to overcome them. It is a call
to repentance that invites us to look first at our concealed history, and then to
present institutions and practices that keep us in seemingly inescapable cycles
of destruction. This is the hard and imperative work of postcolonial theology,
explored through a comic book movie about a Norse god. Trivial as that idea
may sound, as the world yearns for justice and equity, we may find these more
readily in a blockbuster that successfully earned $850 million than in a philoso
phy lecture or a sermon.
COLONIALISM AND THE CHRISTIAN IMAGINATION
In Ragnarok, when Hela first enters the throne room of Asgard, she gazes in
disgust upon frescos on the ceiling depicting the benevolent rule of Asgard
over the nine realms. Hela quickly rips these paintings down, revealing other
images beneath, which depict the truth: that Odin and Hela ruled—and domi
nated—through violence and war. The truth of Asgard’s history is revealed
to all, which is a painful but necessary step toward understanding what is at
stake and what has to happen.
Willie James Jennings has written a rigorous study of the theological
history of colonialism and its implications on the Christian world in his
seminal work, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of
Race. In it, he re-narrates the story of colonial expansion into the Americas
through the firsthand accounts of colonizers, the colonized, and the African
slave—all key players in the history of how America was formed in terms
of land, but also in terms of imagination. His work lends insight into post
colonial thought from a Christian perspective and touches on many of the
themes Thor: Ragnarok explores—how history, land, and people all might
reconcile with a horrific past.
Like Young, Jennings recognizes that colonialism and the formation of
race are intertwined, but goes a step further to highlight what he refers to as
a “theological beginning” of race and racism (Jennings 2010, 289). Colonial
ism and racial formation did not happen outside the imagination of Christi
anity, but grew as a deformity within Christian theology. In fact, Jennings
demonstrates that Christian theologies became so aligned with the colonial

mindset that Christians today can hardly imagine another way.
The colonial moment, what Jennings describes as a “perfect storm” of
world changes, found Christians encountering a new world that was vulner
able to them and their ambitions. Christian theology was similarly vulnerable
to distortion by economic opportunity and misguided ideas of white superi
ority to the extent that, as the world was remade and remapped, it was often
done so in the name of God. Into this encounter, Europeans brought with
them the colonialist mentality described above, merged with the Christian
ideals of evangelism and election. This merging into the “perfect storm” of
colonialism meant that European Christians began to imagine themselves as
chosen people, empowered to impose themselves (their religion, traditions,
and culture) upon the new world (Jennings 2010, 60).
Technological advantages afforded these European Christians the ability to
control and dominate, making the idea of election a self-fulfilling prophecy—
they could dominate the people of the new world, and so they did, and there
fore it must be as God intended (Jennings 2010, 254). This misuse of power is
reminiscent of what differentiates Thor from Hela: Thor’s journey is about relin
quishing power, whereas Hela uses her power to destroy and consume. Christi
anity’s imagination of power is often shaped more like Hela’s than like Thor’s.
Thus, the Christian imagination had two dangerous deformities: white
supremacy and disembodied spiritualism. Put another way, American Chris
tianity was infiltrated by the idea that its very mission and destiny were to
establish its theology among all peoples and places while remaining intrinsi
cally and racially superior to them, and thus not needing to become one with
them (Jennings 2010, 166). While Christian theology spread to new areas
during colonization, it was a particular Christianity that “deploys divine
presence without concomitant real presence and real relationship” (Jennings
2010, 167). A Christianity without physical intimacy and togetherness is a
Christianity that falls short of the story of scripture: a story in which God
repeatedly joins the story and destiny of a particular people in a particular
place; sharing space and touching bodies.
Because racism allowed colonizers to create a new hierarchy of humans,
and those humans now occupied a shared space, Christianity became a more
spiritual, less embodied religion by necessity. Far from Thor’s revelation that
Asgard is not a place, but a people, the Christian imagination catastrophi
cally damaged its ability to remain centered on God’s love for humankind.
Jennings highlights this through the life and writings of Olaudah Equiano, a
slave who managed to attain freedom, education, and even monetary success,
but whose imagination and future were consistently limited by the colonial
mindset. Equiano was himself a Christian, but his theology was constrained
194 Kevin Nye
by the world in which he lived. Because of his life experiences, he had to

somehow make sense of the religion that had saved his soul yet had once also
enslaved his body, and all the while continued to evaluate his worth based on
race. Christianity’s offer of communion with God and the church could never
be fully accessed by Equiano, because he “was forced to try to imagine Chris
tian community in the face of its deepest social ruptures. This Christian faith
imagined and sought belonging but was repeatedly thrown back by the domi
nant racial calculus to a theological isolationism in which God’s providential
care had to substitute for communal care. ... In Equiano’s case, visions of
providential care had to be stretched to distortion, stretched to cover absurdity
after absurdity” (Jennings 2010, 183). Jennings’ point is simple but profound:
in order to reconcile the displacement and enslavement of particular peoples,
Christian theology had to move away from the physical, embodied vision of
the Gospel, and replace it with a more spiritual, metaphorical reading, al
lowing one to be “spiritually” close to God while perpetuating absurd physi
cal atrocities against neighbor. Both for the enslavers and the enslaved, the
Christian imagination had to morph into one that could permit and even bless
this disparity. This theological shift would ultimately prove to have profound
implications on the intimacy and connectedness central to Christian life.
Race plays an implicit rather than explicit role in the colonial imagina
tion of Thor: Ragnarok. To discuss colonial America in the past or present
without acknowledging the role of race is impossible—and dangerous. After
all, the film is about the danger of covering up past sins, and racism has been
described by political theologian Jim Wallis as “America’s Original Sin”
( Wallis 2017). What the film does, however, is shift the focus more toward
the roles of place and space. Colonialism is by definition about the occupation
of new space and the displacement—literal and cultural—of the people who
lived there previously. One of the reasons it takes Thor so long to imagine
Asgard as a people rather than a place is because people and places are deeply
connected—culturally, physically, and spiritually. To that point, Jennings is
convinced that displacement is a theological act as well, one that led colonial
Christians to abandon the importance of land to God and to theology. In fact,
he argues that the emergence of racial categorization only makes sense in
the loss of place. “Without place as the articulator of identity, human skin
was asked to fly solo and speak for itself’ (Jennings 2010, 64). As European
settlers colonized the new world, displacing those who already occupied it
while filling it with a subjugated people already colonized and displaced from
Africa, a theology that valued land and place had to give way to something
more distorted. Thus, any attempts to address race and racism that fail to ad
dress displacement and the importance of place to culture and identity will
fall short.
The beginning of the end of all things for Thor is the realization of old
truths—forgotten, buried, but nonetheless dangerous. Like Thor, it is easy for
us to be blindsided by a history that has been overlooked and under-taught.
However, armed with a deeper sense of truth and a desire to see a new future,
we can engage the present with clarity and understand the moment we find
ourselves in. It is impossible to reckon with our present reality and its im
plications if we are unable or unwilling to recognize the truth about how the
world was changed—both what was at stake, and what was lost.
THE PAST IS OUR PRESENT
It is not enough for Thor and Asgard to simply learn about Hela’s past. They
also must figure out how to stop her, the key to which lies in understanding
what gives her power and sustains her life in the present. Similarly, it is not
enough to understand colonialism as a past event; we must also reckon with
the ways it currently limits the Christian imagination, and what practices and
institutions sustain it. In Thor: Ragnarok, the revelation of the past is fol
lowed closely by an exile, wherein Thor is offered the opportunity to remain
hopeful while also experiencing his own displacement and enslavement.
The film doesn’t necessarily spell out the source of Thor’s hope; perhaps
it is a naive heroism or simply the desire for revenge. But Thor never stops
believing that Asgard still has hope, as bad as things are. Similarly, Jennings
has hope despite the present state of the Christian imagination. Jennings
calls this current reality “the remade world,” a world purposefully shaped
and designed by those in power over time to benefit some at the expense of
others (Jennings 2010, 287). This is a judgment, of course, but it also offers
hope. If the world was made to be this way, it can perhaps be unmade. But
the first step to unmaking a remade world is to recognize the ways in which
that world affects our imaginations. Jennings reminds us, “Before we theolo
gians can interpret the depths of the divine action of reconciliation we must
first articulate the profound deformities of Christian intimacy and identity in
modernity” (Jennings 2010, 10). We ought to be careful not to jump to cheap,
superficial reconciliation, to “doing better” in a way that falls short of rec
ognizing the deformed external and internal structures that hold this remade
world together. This would be akin to what Odin does in banishing Hela; it
is a temporary solution that not only delays the needed resolution but also
increases the danger for those to come.
Perhaps the most glaring failure in the present is a lack of faithful aware
ness and teaching of the past. Like the literal coverings in the palace of As
gard that mask a shameful past, retellings of American Church history often
196 Kevin Nye
gloss over or minimize colonialism’s significance. Jennings notes that both

church history and general theological education “live in conceptual worlds
that have not in any substantive way reckoned with the ramifications of co
lonialism for Christian identity or the identity of theology” (Jennings 2010,
291). Theologian James Cone, as he often does, puts it more bluntly:
Because white theologians live in a world that is racist, the oppression of black
people does not occupy an important item on their theological agenda ... be
cause white theologians are well fed and speak for a people who control the
means of production, the problem of hunger is not a theological issue for them.
That is why they spend more time debating the relation between the Jesus of
history and the Christ of faith than probing the depths of Jesus’ command to
feed the poor. (Cone 1997, 47^18)
But if we are willing to take this history and its ramifications seriously, Jen
nings beckons us to see two key areas where the Christian imagination is
found wanting: intimacy and sense of place.
The planet of Sakaar illustrates the fascinating dichotomy that can occur
between different peoples occupying the same spaces in terms of intimacy.
Sakaar is little more than a trash dump, catching exiles and lost things,
where many live in squalor and others, like the Grandmaster, live in luxury
over them. The planet’s social framework is maintained through a system of
violence in which everyone participates, the “Contest of Champions.” The
Grandmaster tells a story of acceptance and love, but it is actually violence
that is celebrated in the streets, even by those experiencing it. Thor’s expe
rience of this violence as a displaced and exiled individual enables him to
eventually realize the source of Hela’s power.
Similarly, the remaking of the world in colonialism left Christianity with
a “diseased social imagination” (Jennings 2010, 9). Bad colonial theology
fused with prosperity and perceived blessing made it nearly impossible for
authentic intimacy between different peoples to be possible within the Chris
tian imagination. Jennings calls it a “poverty of desire”: if colonial Christians
insist that particular people are intellectually inferior, and therefore in need
of assimilation, how can those two peoples ever truly experience authentic
belonging and relationship? “This problem has fundamentally to do with a
world formed and continuing to be formed to undermine the possibilities of
Christians living together, loving together, and desiring each other” (Jennings
2010, 202). As modern Christians more and more experience disconnec
tion and isolation rather than authentic belonging with one another, it is no
surprise that religious expression has become a consumer enterprise—seg
regated and individualized. This is the only Christian imagination that can
possibly form on a national level in light of all the distortions and absurdities
with which colonialism infected it. It is also a Christianity that is very easy to
participate in without questioning it, like the people of Sakaar who celebrate
the regime that oppresses them and kills others.
This loss of intimacy has implications beyond simply how we perceive
one another. Jennings continues, “Colonialist new identity meant unrelenting
assimilation and the enfolding of lives and cultural practices inside processes
of commodification” (Jennings 2010, 292). In other words, the willingness
to belong to one another and experience mutual submission under God lost
the battle to greed. Under colonialism, the worth of different peoples became
calculable in terms of how resources were plundered and redistributed to
those with power. This is the most powerful of all revelations in Thor: Ragn
arok. Whereas the previous films invite the viewer to bask in the splendor
of Asgard, with all its gold and wealth and power, this film undermines that
splendor with the revelation from Hela: “Odin and I drowned whole civiliza
tions in blood and tears. Where do you think all this gold came from?” In the
present, we are therefore unlikely to be willing to come together across lines
of race or class with humility; not only because it is hard to imagine we are
all truly equal, but also because we are afraid of what it might cost us to actu
ally make that true. For Thor and for Asgard, it cost them all that gold and
more—the very planet sustained by their prosperity.
Here the film again lacks the specificity of our current condition, in which
space is shared by both the colonizers and the colonized. But in addition
to helping us understand the significance of place to identity and wealth, it
can offer us a jumping-off point into a conversation about place and race in
America today. A cruel irony of literal and cultural displacement is that when
colonized peoples are stripped of their spaces and the identities built on them,
they are often re-placed into spaces that are then racialized. In the same way
colonialism “re-mapped” the world and left it that way in perpetuity, cities
and neighborhoods in America were mapped for racist purposes, and they
largely remain segregated today. As Richard Rothstein argues in The Color
of Law, this intentional segregation has happened throughout American his
tory, but was particularly precise and consequential in the early twentieth
century, when private prejudice was supported by thinly veiled public policy
(Rothstein 2017, xii).
As a result, the disparities created by racial remapping in wealth, educa
tion, investment, and other resources leave many of those maps looking the
same today as when they were made that way on purpose nearly a hundred
years ago. These disparities reinforce and perpetuate on a generational scale
the wealth and education gap between people of color and whites, and the
hierarchies that these realities create. While the Fair Housing Act was passed
in 1968, it has done little to undo the damage done prior to its passing. A
198 Kevin Nye
recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that “over the past 30
years the average wealth of white families has grown by 84%—1.2 times the
rate of growth for the Latino population and three times the rate of growth for
the black population. If that continues, the next three decades would see the
average wealth of white households increase by over $18,000 per year, while
Latino and Black households would see their respective wealth increase by
only $2,250 and $750 per year” (Holland 2016). Because place and land are
rendered as property which increases in value and is passed down through
generations, there remains a direct link from colonialism’s seizure of land,
twentieth-century segregation of that land, and the racial wealth disparities
of today.
Painting an honest, if dispiriting, picture of the modern imagination and its
practice is a necessary step in the journey of postcolonial Christian work. It
is no small decision for Thor, Valkyrie, and Loki to return to Asgard and face
Hela, knowing the extent of her power but not yet knowing what it might take
to defeat her. Thor knows that “The longer Hela’s on Asgard the more pow
erful she grows.” In the same way, the longer we leave alone the legacy of
colonialism and intergenerational wealth disparities, the more powerful and
insurmountable they seem. But the courage to fight back comes from a place
of hope and responsibility. Particularly, Thor understands that his responsibil
ity is to the people of Asgard. “This isn’t about the crown,” Thor says firmly,
“This is about the people.” Thor learns, as we may hope to, that intimacy with
people, more than systems and traditions, is what beckons us forward.
RECLAIMED IMAGINATION
To defeat Hela, Thor must complete the lesson he has gradually been learning
throughout his film appearances: that leadership, in his case kingship, is about
valuing the people who make up a community more than the inherited insti
tutions and traditions that the people inhabit. For Thor, this is encompassed
in the realization that “Asgard isn’t a place, it’s a people.” This revelation
comes at a cost, however. Thor must be willing to destroy the planet and all
of its riches, institutions, and meaning, from which Hela draws her power.
“Ragnardk," the end of all things, is in actuality only the end of old ways and
old things. Despite an immense loss, it opens up a new future without Hela
and Asgard’s destructive ties to the past.
But to get to this point of decision, Thor and his allies have to fight. Be
cause Thor: Ragnarok is a superhero action movie, even though the stakes are
philosophical, their struggle is represented in a literal fight, full of CGI spec
tacle and memorable moments. There is for us, though, no rainbow bridge on
which we can wage a battle for the soul of the Christian imagination. Instead,
this “battle” must be waged on multiple fronts upon which the Christian
imagination can be confronted and reclaimed, many of them theological but
with practical implications. Additionally, the sacrifice that Thor makes to
destroy Asgard can be emulated in many ways that demonstrate the need for
sacrifice and loss to accompany redemption.
One site of Christian struggle is in the use of scripture. To imagine the fu
ture of the Christian imagination beyond colonialism necessitates a fresh look
at the Bible, which offers a richer story than dominance and displacement.
The collective Christian imagination has the ability—indeed, the duty—to
understand itself beyond the colonial moment following the destruction of
the institutions and practices of colonialism. Some may be tempted to think
that to destroy colonial Christianity means that no Christianity will be left.
Like Valkyrie, the exiled warrior who knows the truth but cannot bear it,
it is tempting to abandon lost institutions altogether—including the people
entangled in them. However, Jennings suggests with hope that “Christian life
is indeed a way forward for the world” and that the Gospel itself contains the
very way out of the colonial deformities of imagination (Jennings 2010,294).
If we refuse the colonial lie that people and places are not connected, then
what is true about people and place from a Christian perspective? A respon
sible biblical theology of land suggests that people and land are indeed con
nected, but only through God. In the Old Testament, whether in Abraham’s
search for a home, the Exodus journey to the promised land, or the exile to
Babylon, “God stood always ‘in the way’ as it were, between Israel and the
desire for land, reordering its identity first in relation to the divine word and
then to the land” (Jennings 2010, 212). Additionally, in the New Testament,
Jesus disappoints expectations that he will reclaim the land from Roman rule,
and instead understands Israel’s salvation differently. This is disorienting to
an American (and Christian!) sense of ownership of land and property, which
stems from colonialism. Instead, a robust Christian theology always under
stands “the God of Israel as the creator who ‘owns’ all land and therefore
claimed all peoples” (Jennings 2010, 213). In practice, this means that Chris
tians act in different ways regarding land and space. Jennings considers this
“a crucial point of discipleship. Where we live determines in great measure
how we live” (Jennings 2010, 287). Where Christians live, and how they live
there, ought to be as much a Christian consideration in a postcolonial imagi
nation as how one prays.
Christians ought to enter and live in new spaces with intimacy and humil
ity, two other great theological losses of colonialism. The Christian posture
in this way is perhaps best characterized by a God who washes the dirty feet
of the disciples. This is a physical act, the job of a lowly servant, to touch and
200 Kevin Nye
be touched by calloused, dirt-stained feet—all performed by the Son of God.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus made a habit of touching and being touched
by people in encounters that were always transformative. There are a few
stories in which Jesus heals without touch, which suggests that perhaps while
it was within his ability, it was not his preferred method of transformation.
Jesus tells his disciples to go and do likewise, a command that, like many
texts that involve intimacy and physicality, has been rendered inert by colo
nialism’s propensity toward isolation and disembodiment.
Intimacy and community are thus strategies valued within a postcolonial
imagination. These concerns, for Jennings, are “the desired telos of the
Christian gospel” (Jennings 2010, 214). Additionally, Jennings has written
an excellent commentary on Acts that is especially attuned to postcolonial
concerns. For Jennings, beginning with the Pentecost event in Acts 2, this
early story of Christianity spreading without dominating is instructive for
how the Church should understand its role among peoples—he calls it “the
epicenter of revolution,” a specific “revolution of the intimate” (Jennings
2017, 27). These stories can serve as archetypes for Christians interacting
in the world—not dominating or condescending, but being humbled as “a
community broken open by the sheer act of God” (Jennings 2017, 27). The
Gospel demands that Christians be willing to move, change, and adapt for the
sake of joining—the opposite of colonialism.
If the Christian imagination enters new spaces to interact humbly with new
peoples, theology and church history will necessarily be shaped and changed
by new voices that were historically ignored or relegated to smaller, separate
areas of study. In this way, the Christian imagination widens to see more of
a universal vision, to see more of God. Cone writes, “The only way people
can enhance their vision of the universal is to break out of their cultural and
political boxes and encounter another reality” (Cone 1997, 49). Theology,
wherever it is practiced, must be broken open to the diverse expressions of
faith and practice in God’s vast world. This is exemplified in the trajectory
the Book of Acts takes, toward the baptism of an Ethiopian eunuch, to the
inclusion of Gentiles in the church. In Ragnarok, when Thor forms “The Re
vengers” to escape from Sakaar and return to Asgard to fight Hela, a similar
inclusiveness among surprising peoples takes place. The team is composed
of a disgraced Asgardian (Loki), an exiled one (Valkyrie), but also characters
like Hulk, Korg, and Miek who have no real tie to Asgard, but who under
stand themselves nonetheless joined together in the larger story of freedom
and redemption.
In the remade world, there are many obstacles to what God in scripture
imagines as intimate life together, including separation, inequity, and fear. As
Jennings says, “We are in need of a vision of the journey of faith imagined
as the joining of peoples now separated by violence, poverty, or race” (Jen

nings 2010, 286). The word “joining” is crucial, because it implies a neces
sary act or series of acts, rather than a mere posture or change in thought. In
fact, Jennings continues, “This joining also involves entering into the lives
of peoples to build actual life together, lives enfolded and kinship networks
established through the worship of and service to the God of Israel in Jesus
Christ” (Jennings 2010, 287). Just as the formation of “The Revengers”
includes different creatures with diverse histories and trajectories, so a new
Christian imagination sees all people as members of a divine community, to
shape and be shaped by one another in relationships exemplifying sacrifice
and vulnerability.
The “way forward for the world” that Jennings believes Christianity offers
is most distinctly characterized as “a compelling invitation to life together”
(Jennings 2010, 294). However, it also entails sacrifice. As Young notes
that postcolonialism “threatens privilege and power,” so Thor learns that it
involves losing and destroying “all this gold.” Is the Christian response, then,
to destroy property and wealth in a destructive act of response? Thor: Ragn
arok falls short of demonstrating how Asgard might reconcile itself to the
universal implications of its imperial rule. Postcolonial Christians, however,
share space with the victims of colonialism, and perhaps have an opportunity
to build rather than destroy.
As the Christian imagination endeavors to respond to the legacy of colo
nialism, it may find itself drawn to biblical concepts like Jubilee, wherein
every fifty years debts were forgiven, resources redistributed, and people re
leased from bondage. In “The Biblical Case for Black Reparations,” Ulysses
Burley III and Nathan Robinson connect the concept of Jubilee to the modem
one of black reparations—the idea that actual money might be redistributed
to black communities and black people to repair and reverse generational in
equity and close the racial wealth gap outlined above (Burley 111 and Roberts
2016). Whatever the details of the strategy, it is clear that a Christian imagi
nation that has severed its ties to the colonial inheritance would emulate the
self-giving sacrifice of Christ. James Cone beautifully describes Jesus as “the
Liberator of the oppressed from social oppression and to political struggle,
wherein the poor recognize that their fight against poverty and injustice is
not only consistent with the gospel but is the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Cone
1997, 74-75). Reparations are one potential way that white Christians might
consider sacrificing their colonial inheritance in order to remake the world,
given that it was made to intentionally limit the access to and accumulation
of wealth for black Americans.
In the same way that Thor and Asgard have to relinquish their understand
ing of Asgard as a place, so Christians must relinquish the colonial mindset
202 Kevin Nye
regarding space and place. Only then can Christians develop new social,
racial, and economic views, looking toward a Christian imagination freed
from colonialism. More than that, Christians must understand that the Gospel
beckons its followers toward intimacy and joining in all spaces. Thor and the
Asgardians learn that such a revelation comes at a high cost, but the reward
is a future with hope. In chapter 29 of the Book of Jeremiah, God calls the
exiled people to “seek the welfare of the city ... for in its welfare you will
find your welfare” before famously assuring them, “For surely I know the
plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:7, 11, NRSV).
CONCLUSION
The complexities of race, place, and intimacy should not be understated. No

one work of theology, nor one theologian, nor film or filmmaker can capture
or reconcile thousands of years of collective history. But there are recogniz
able differences between the way things are and the way we imagine they
could or should be. As a pastor of mine once said, the greatest Christian task
is to look at ourselves and our world, then look to Christ, and confess the
difference. That confession, though, is not a disembodied hope, nor a passive
shrug regarding how those differences came about, or what it might cost to
rectify them.
Christian hope and postcolonialism both consider seriously the state of the
world and how it came to be, but also believe that it does not have to remain
this way. As Young describes the work of postcolonialism as “turning the
world upside-down,” a renowned Christian text by Richard Kray bill in 1978
also describes the Kingdom of God as “The Upside-Down Kingdom.” James
Cone, too, reminds us that the work of turning the world upside-down on
behalf of the oppressed is a deeply biblical and Gospel-driven work:
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and of Peter, James, and John is not
an eternal idea, and neither is the divine an absolute ethical principle to whom
people ought to appeal for knowledge of the Good. Rather, Yahweh is known
and worshiped as the One who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who raised Jesus
from the dead. God is the political God, the Protector of the poor and the Estab-
lisher of the right for those who are oppressed. To know God is to experience
the acts of God in the concrete affairs and relationships of people, liberating the
weak and the helpless from pain and humiliation. For theologians to speak of
this God, they too must become interested in politics and economics, recogniz
ing that there is no truth about Yahweh unless it is the truth of freedom as that
event is revealed in the oppressed people’s struggle for justice in this world.
(Cone 1997, 57)
A movie like Thor: Ragnarok compels us to be caught up in its story, offer

ing a deep reflection on humanity. We are invited along as it grapples with
notions of our shared life in the real world, and it offers perspective on a way
forward. Perhaps unintentionally, it also welcomes reflection by Christians
who find themselves called by God to deeply love and participate in the re
deeming of the world, despite feeling powerless in the face of inequity and
injustice. Like Thor and “The Revengers,” we may find ourselves compelled
to reckon with the sins of the past and the ways we, knowingly and unknow
ingly, sustain them, ignore them, or draw power from them to hurt others.
As Ragnarok draws to a close, with Hela defeated, the people of Asgard
look to Thor and ask an anxious but hopeful question: “Where to?” I believe,
like Jennings, that Christianity can not only be distinguished from and rec
onciled with our history of colonialism, but that Christ’s actions and teach
ings offer a roadmap out of that past and toward the ultimate answer to the
existential question, “Where to?” A liberated Christian imagination offers an
invitation to a truly remade world: the Kingdom of God, a new kingdom of
peoples captivated by Christ’s teachings, practicing humble intimacy with all
peoples in all places, under the unifying rule of the God of the Oppressed. It
is this Christian hope that compels us to intimate life together, characterized
by radical sacrifice and immense joy.
Chapter Fourteen
Modern Re-Enchantment
and Dr. Strange
Pentecostal Analogies, the Spirit of
the Multiverse, and the Play on
Time and Eternity
Andrew D. Thrasher
Can science answer all the questions of the cosmos? Many may assume,
whether explicitly or implicitly, that science can and will reveal all truth. By
its location within the historical paradigms of the modern scientific disen
chantment from a pre-modern enchanted worldview, Dr. Strange presents to
us the limits of science and a cultural reflection of modern re-enchantment.1
The character of Dr. Strange reflects a playful and imaginative process of
combining both the modem disenchantment from religion and the progress
of science with the late-modern process of re-enchantment. Dr. Strange de
velops an imaginative portrayal of late-modern spirituality that re-enchants
modernity by playing with notions of time, eternity, science, and nihilism.
Dr. Strange “plays” with late-modern conceptions of spirituality by creating
new imaginative forms of conceiving and imagining reality. This chapter
argues that the play of modem re-enchantment in Dr. Strange also highlights
theological analogies by leaning on the thought of Augustine and the work of
Pentecostal scholars James K. A. Smith and Wolfgang Vondey.
Analyzing the mystical and spiritual nature of the multiverse in Dr.
Strange develops a late-modern spirituality open to the experience of tran
scendence as an imaginative portrayal of theological re-enchantment. When
viewed in light of Tone Svetelj’s synopsis of Charles Taylor’s analysis and
diagnosis of modernity, Dr. Strange embodies not a naive belief in tran
scendence characteristic of pre-modern religiosity but rather a re-enchant
ment of modern sensibilities (Svetelj 2012, 394-424). In turn Dr. Strange
represents residual effects of the modem ideal of progress in medicine and
reason that re-enchants the modern via the mystical arts. By creating a
Pentecostal analogy on the notion of “spirit” and “play” in the mystic arts,
and a modern mechanistic view of science and instrumental reason that pro
gresses via the supernatural as an example of modern re-enchantment, I will
221
222 Andrew D. Thrasher
argue that Dr. Strange embodies the cultural reflection of the resurgence
of spirituality that leaps beyond the modern bounds of science and reason
to reflect a late-modern spirituality that yet remains paradoxically modern.
The final section of this chapter addresses the relationship between time
and eternity and compares and contrasts Kaecilius’ nihilistic understanding of
Dormammu and the Dark Dimension with Augustine’s notion of time as par
ticipating in the fullness of eternity. If Dr. Strange offers an example of our
late-modern imaginary—how we conceive, perceive, and imagine ourselves,
society, and culture through the various stories and myths that shape who we
are and what we believe about ourselves—it demonstrates through Kaecilius
a nihilistic embrace of eternal nothingness beyond time as a source of libera
tion from time. But underlying it is a logic of nihilism reflected in late-mod-
em culture that realizes that as we embrace a nothingness beyond time, we
are embracing our own negation. The embrace of eternal nothingness implies
the negation of time and meaning as it is consumed by Dormammu and the
Dark Dimension. Contra Kaecilius, an Augustinian perspective on time and
eternity shows how time participates in eternity in such a way that affirms
time’s meaning and significance because it participates in God.
DR. STRANGE AS SECULAR HUMANIST
At the heart of modernity is the efficient role of instrumental reason guided

by a mechanistic conception of the cosmos and governed by the scientific
method in uncovering, re-ordering, and controlling the natural world. Mo
dernity is marked by a certain naturalism, a certain understanding of the role
of reason, and a certain methodology that uncovers the laws of the natural
world in a way that progressively improves human life, society, and culture.
If what marks modernity is the instrumental role of scientific reason, it is
undergirded by a progressive view of nature and a positive view of human
dignity. The modem progressive view of nature sees the world as ordered by
natural mechanistic laws that are teleologically ordered to a certain end. This
end goal (telos) is achieved by the use of instrumental reason in producing
the means to the desired ends. Tied to the natural world, humans must act
according to the use of instrumental reason in such a way that protects and
respects human dignity as inherently ordered to human flourishing. Between
a progressive view of the natural world and a positive appraisal of human
dignity is the goal for bettering the conditions for human life.
This describes what Charles Taylor calls the “secular/exclusive human
ist,” one of the four options in which moderns may find themselves (Taylor
2007, 636 37).2 The mark of the secular humanist is someone who is au
Modern Re-Enchantment and Dr. Strange 223
tonomous and buffered against the supernatural, creating a buffer between

him/herself and the supernatural in such a way that a boundary is estab
lished and ruled by natural laws and the efficiency of scientific instrumental
reason. Thus, Charles Taylor’s buffered self of the secular humanist not
only sees himself as invulnerable from the supernatural world’s ability to
affect him, becoming the master of himself, but the buffered invulnerable
self is also buffered to the natural world as an autonomous agent concerned
with human flourishing (Taylor 1989, 143-76; Taylor 2007, 159-211,
303-9; Taylor 2011, 220; Smith 2014, 64). Thus modernity understands it
self as fundamentally natural, and creates an unbridgeable dualism between
the natural and the supernatural. This naturalism, devoid of its relation or
interaction with the supernatural, reduces its self-understanding to the realm
of the natural world, governed by scientific rationality and instrumental
reason in efficiently uncovering the laws of the natural world for the bet
terment of humanity.
Dr. Strange personifies this modem sensibility of the secular humanist,
who buffers himself from the effects of the supernatural and reduces his
conception of the world and its possibilities to pure naturalism. Dr. Strange’s
naturalism is one that not only discounts the supernatural, but reduces the
natural to the physical functions of the mind and body. For Dr. Strange, the
Hippocratic Oath represents his naturalism: to save human life with the help
of medicine, science, and reason.
But while the medical knowledge and skill of Dr. Stephen Strange symbol
izes the heights of secular humanism, his ego and pride reflects the lowest
of secular humanism. Dr. Strange’s ego and showy pride not only lead to
his downfall through a tragic accident where he loses the use of his hands
through severe nerve damage, but ultimately also to his redemption. At the
limits of medicine and science, Dr. Strange comes to the brink of despair,
cynicism, and lost hope. But when Dr. Strange is exposed to the mystic
arts, the strangeness of manipulating time, space, mind, and reality, a gap is
filled, and he must re-orient his understanding of reality. No longer is reality
reduced to the physical and natural, but Dr. Strange begins the strange and
fascinating exploration into the supernatural nature of the multiverse. Under
lying this multiverse is an enchanted naturalism that represents theological
analogies with Pentecostalism.
PENTECOSTAL ANALOGIES
Pentecostalism offers a helpful analogy for understanding Dr. Strange and the
idea of modern re-enchantment. Dr. Strange offers an imaginative portrayal
of Pentecostalism’s notion of an enchanted naturalism as developed by James

K. A. Smith, while also developing a Pentecostal/scientific concept of “spirit”
developed by Wolfgang Vondey. Thus the mark of modem re-enchantment
in Dr. Strange is characterized by two forms of Pentecostalism where the
natural world is seen as inherently enchanted by the supernatural and where
there is a certain scientific spirit to the cosmos that orders the natural world to
its completion in the supernatural. The following unpacks the telos (end goal)
of nature, James K. A. Smith’s understanding of an enchanted naturalism,
and Wolfgang Vondey’s analysis of the “spirit” in Isaac Newton and Albert
Einstein. After these analyses, the “spirit” of the multiverse is examined as an
understanding of the supernatural in Dr. Strange.
Enchanted Naturalism: Pentecostal Analogy #1

The modern conception of nature is one that eschews the possibility of the su
pernatural’s interaction and intervention with the natural world. In the science
vs. theology debate, James K. A. Smith offers a distinctive Pentecostal on
tological vision which sees science and theology as not only compatible, but
one in which the supernatural constantly charges the natural world in what he
calls an enchanted naturalism. Smith highlights that for most moderns the no
tion of the supernatural intervening into the natural word is impossible insofar
as it defies the laws of nature (Smith 2010, 89-99). Within this mechanistic
view of the universe a deistic divine clockmaker establishes ordered natural
laws that govern the natural order of the cosmos.
Within the modern deistic view of the universe, the natural world has in
herent and intrinsic laws that govern the possibilities within the natural world,
and anything that defies or suspends them is, quite bluntly, not possible. In
this sense, the modern conception of nature not only disdains the possibility
of the supernatural interacting in the natural world, but views the supernatu
ral as irrelevant to the natural world and unreachable. But, as Smith argues,
if the natural world is always already enchanted, participating in the super
natural because the supernatural is implicit within nature, then the interface
between the natural and the supernatural is not at odds. Rather the natural
world is constantly marked by the presence of the spirit of the supernatural.
By denying the autonomy of nature and seeing it as participating in the super
natural, Smith argues that a Pentecostal enchanted naturalism views nature as
“primed” for the spirit of the supernatural (Smith 2010. 99-103).
Dr. Strange holds similar views of nature. Dr. Strange originally saw
nature as autonomous and governed by science and reason. However, after
his exposure to the mystic arts, he adopted a view of nature as being shaped
and charged by the spirit of the multiverse. There is also the sense that the
natural world finds its progressive completion in the supernatural. There is a
paradox in Dr. Strange: the modern progressive view of nature as governed

by mechanistic natural laws is combined with an enchanted naturalism where
nature is infused with the spirit of the multiverse. An enchanted naturalism
implies that the natural world is not all there is. Rather the natural world is
already charged by the supernatural in such a way that the natural world is
deepened by the supernatural where the "mind expands, the spirit elevates,
and the body heals” through its participation in the spirit of the multiverse
through the mystic arts.
The Spirit of Science: Pentecostal Analogy #2

A second Pentecostal analogy builds on the work of Wolfgang Vondey and
connects the intersection between enchanted naturalism and a spirit of nature.
Vondey’s work on understanding the potential intersection of modem physics
and Pentecostal practice leads him to engagement with Newton and Einstein
where he unpacks their modem notions of “spirit”—Einstein’s and Newton’s
understanding of “spirit” highlights panentheistic views of a rational spirit
or principle ordering the cosmos. For Newton, this “spirit” is distinctively
mechanistic and a universal principle and cohesive force that serves a me
diatorial role between time and space, ordering it as an intermediate agent in
ordering creation to God (Vondey 2010b, 82). For Einstein, the role of the
spirit adapts to twentieth-century scientific knowledge, where this spirit is the
universal principle rationally ordering the universe, ordering the symmetry
of the space-time continuum (Vondey 2010b, 83). According to Vondey, for
these two physicists, the concept of spirit offers implications for understand
ing the physical universe (Vondey 2010b, 84). In this sense, the modem de
velopment of physics in Newton and Einstein provides tangible implications
in which the natural world is ordered by spirit in a way that is understandable
and linked to the supernatural.
The notion of the spirit translates into Dr. Strange in such a way that not
only is the natural world enchanted or “en-spirited” but that there is a rational
principle ordering it to its completion in the spiritual dimensions of the multi
verse. In Dr. Strange not only do the mystic arts allow one to manipulate the
natural world, but they do so in a way that allows one to reshape the natural
world through tapping into the spirit of the multiverse. By both understanding
the spirit of the multiverse and tapping into its power, Dr. Strange re-enchants
the natural world supematurally, shaping it toward its progressive completion.
Modern Re-Enchantment: Mystic Arts and the Telos of Nature

In Dr. Strange, the sense of modernity is one bound by progressive scien
tific and medicinal advancement through the use of instrumental efficient
reason and scientific rationality. Surprisingly, Dr. Strange, even when he is

confronted with the supernatural, remains quite modem in his understanding
of the natural world as mechanistically ordered. Between the pre-modem
teleological understanding of the cosmos as finding its completion in Christ
and the modem mechanistic conception of the cosmos as no longer bound to
a cosmic teleology that finds its completion in the supernatural, we find Dr.
Strange somewhere between the two in the conception of medicine as poten
tially finding its actual telos through the supernatural. Within the comics, Dr.
Strange sees the natural world and especially medicine as progressive. Dr.
Strange sees the supernatural as the progressive end of medicine and science
where they will eventually find their completion and actualization in a uni
versal cure (Vaughan 2007).
In Dr. Strange, the natural world finds its completion via the supernatural
in the spirit of the multiverse and the mystic arts. In Dr. Strange, the poten
tial of medicine, science, and reason may be actualized via the supernatu
ral. In the comic Dr. Strange: The Oath, Wong is diagnosed with terminal
cancer and Dr. Strange seeks to find a universal cure in the multiverse. The
comic describes the universal cure progressively in such a way to state that
medicine, even without the supernatural, will find a universal cure through
scientific and medicinal research (Vaughan 2007). But while the supernatu
ral charges the natural world, it also actualizes the natural world’s potential
in progressively completing it. The modern progressive view of nature in
Dr. Strange implies that though nature is enchanted, the telos of nature will
be naturally completed in its own time through scientific development: the
universal cure Dr. Strange finds in the multiverse implies that the telos of
medicine will come about naturally through the progressive development of
scientific and medicinal research. While the supernatural seems unnecessary
or irrelevant in this context, for Dr. Strange medicine has a progressive telos
it will naturally achieve. But the reality of finding a universal cure in the
multiverse implies that the supernatural has already actualized the natural
ends of medicine. The supernatural and mystic arts are a way of actualizing
the natural world’s progressive potential.
DR. STRANGE AND THE SPIRIT OF THE MULTIVERSE
The following describes a “theology of the multiverse” by articulating four

central theological or spiritual themes that mark the conception of the cos
mos in Dr. Strange. These four themes are: a) the spirit of the multiverse;
b) the mirror dimension; c) the natural law or space-time continuum; and d)
Dormammu and the Dark Dimension. Undergirding these four themes is the
preceding analysis of modern re-enchantment and Pentecostal analogies. As

such, an enchanted naturalism and the telos and spirit of nature is assumed
and further developed below in the context of Dr. Strange.
The Spirit of the Multiverse

Contra our understanding of reality, the Marvel Universe depicts the cosmos
not as a wmverse, but rather as a multiverse. Within this conception of the
cosmos not only are there multiple dimensions to reality, implying layers to
understanding the complexity of reality, but also multiple dimensions of real
ity. An enchanted naturalism thus becomes more complex in the schema of a
multiverse. That is, not only is the natural world en-spirited by a supernatural
dimension, but there are multiple supernatural dimensions and layers to our
understanding of the spirit of the multiverse.
The spirit of the multiverse, then, is not only multiple in its possibilities
of ordering the natural world, but the spiritual dimensions in and to this
multiverse can affect the natural world in ways that bend and re-shape time,
space, and reality. Within this framework the mystic arts tap into the spiritual
dimensions of the multiverse to bend time or space, allowing, for instance, the
sorcerers with their sling-rings to move across vast reaches of space. These
sorcerers are also tasked to guard and protect the space-time continuum from
the darker forces within the multiverse. This is where the mirror dimension
comes in, a dimension that reflects the natural world without distorting it.
The Mirror Dimension

Described above, the multiverse implies the multiple dimensions of the cos
mos, and how these multiple dimensions may be manipulated and tapped
into. The mystic arts provide not only the training in how to manipulate the
spirit of the multiverse but provide pathways in which one is able to alter the
natural world. Within the Marvel Universe one gets the sense that the multi
verse is inhabited by spiritual realities that are far greater and more powerful
than one can imagine, but there is also the sense in which the multiverse is
something that reflects or mirrors the natural world as we conceive it. It is
within this mirror dimension that one is able to manipulate space, time, shape,
and form in such a way that one can create an alternate reality that mirrors the
physical world of our own universe, while also allowing that world to bend
without distorting the natural law of the space-time continuum.
But the mirror dimension is also a space where one can tap more strongly
into the powers and spirits of the multiverse. When Dr. Strange and Mordo
enter into the mirror dimension and are pursued by Kaecilius and his followers,
Mordo comments that they are stronger there, being able to tap into the pow
ers of the Dark Dimension. Thus, the mirror dimension is a place where the
strength of the spirit of the multiverse allows one the ability to alter time, space,
form, shape, and reality. In a sense, while the mirror dimension is without the
natural world, it mirrors it in such a way that the natural world is reflected in
and can be manipulated by tapping into the mystic arts and the spiritual dimen
sions of the multiverse.
"Playing" with Natural Law

In Dr. Strange, the sorcerers are called the guardians of the natural law. When
Dr. Strange first uses the Eye of Agamoto to restore the ripped pages that tell
how to connect with Dormammu, and he begins to conduct the spell, Wong
and others come in and stop him from fulfilling the ritual, commenting that he
was breaking the natural law of the space-time continuum. When he becomes
the sorcerer supreme, Dr. Strange is called to guard the natural world from
the evil powers of the multiverse that seek to destroy the natural world. In
“playing” with the natural law by using the Eye of Agamoto, Dr. Strange not
only has the ability to distort or alter reality, but he also has the power to save
the world from Dormammu by binding him to time.
The space-time continuum or the natural law, as I understand it, is linear
and ordered by the laws of the cosmos in such a way that there is a sort of
naturalness to time and space that should not be distorted. Through their abil
ity to conduct the mystic arts, however, the sorcerers are able to bend and
distort time and space and the mirror dimension is the proper place in which
this is allowed to be done. The Eye of Agamoto provides a proper means of
bending natural law. While the Infinity Stones embody the elemental laws of
the cosmos, they also empower the wielder to alter the element those stones
embody. As the Eye of Agamoto holds the time stone, Dr. Strange has the
ability to alter or “play” with time, to bind eternal timelessness to time in such
a way that the “play” of time allows Dr. Strange to save the natural world
from its subversion into the timeless death and decay of the Dark Dimension.
Dormammu and the Dark Dimension

Governing the Dark Dimension of void and timelessness is the world de
stroyer Dormammu. Dormammu is a being of infinite power and craves
the destruction of all worlds—earth most of all. Guarding earth from its
destruction by Dormammu are the sorcerers of the mystic arts who guard the
sanctums in Hong Kong, London, and New York from destruction. If these
sanctums are destroyed, Dormammu will be able to consume this world into
the destruction, death, and decay of the Dark Dimension. The Dark Dimen
sion is a void beyond time where death and decay mark all that dwells within
it. Kaecilius sees this Dark Dimension as the ultimate end of the natural
world, in that time kills everything, and he argues that one must embrace the
inevitable void of time. Dr. Strange and the Ancient One, however, see that
this embrace of “eternal life is not paradise but torment.” For Kaecilius the
Dark Dimension implies the return of the many into the one beyond time,
the consumption of the natural world by an eternity of death and decay, an
embrace of the void beyond time as life everlasting in the void of destruction
and timelessness.
DORMAMMU AND AUGUSTINE:

PERSPECTIVES ON TIME AND ETERNITY
This final section compares and contrasts two notions of time and eternity in
Dr. Strange and Augustine. The following contrasts the notion of eternity as
void vs. fullness, and the embrace of nihilism vs. participation. It does so by
challenging the seemingly late-modern nihilism of Kaecilius’ understanding
of eternity as the void of time with an Augustinian perspective that sees time
as participating in the timefulness of eternity. In a sense, is time voided into
the nothingness of the Dark Dimension or is time affirmed to dwell and par
ticipate in the eternity of God? Thus below I discuss time and eternity as void
vs. fullness to argue against the nihilism of Kaecilius and for an Augustinian
perspective on participating in the timefulness of God’s eternity.
The Eternal as Void

Kaecilius’ embrace of the Dark Dimension reflects what could be called the
dark reflection of the logic of nihilism. Conor Cunningham’s analysis of
the logic of nihilism ties it to the emphasis on non-being in such a way that
nothing is affirmed as something because nothing always is, and so late-
modern nihilism is merely the realization of creation as nothing. The logic
of nihilism entails the voiding of something as nothing, and in the search
of affirming nothing as something, we realize that nothing is still nothing
and we end in the logical embrace of this nothingness (Cunningham 2002).
Kaecilius’ embrace of the Dark Dimension is grounded in his nihilistic
understanding that time kills everything, and in a sense he is entirely cor
rect. Death is inevitable and time is the law that leads to death. To embrace
death is to embrace the nothingness and void of our existence regardless of
the life that we live.
In understanding Kaecilius’ nihilism we must understand that he conceives

of the Dark Dimension not as a place of void to which the dead go but rather
as a place of eternal life beyond time. However, the Dark Dimension is not a
place of eternal life, but rather a place of eternal death and torment under the
rule of Dormammu. If time and death are the enemy, however, according to
Kaecilius one must embrace them for there is a sense of liberation in accept
ing the truth that nothingness is the true character of the natural world. On the
opposite end of the spectrum lies an Augustinian perspective on eternity and
timefulness that revalues life and the natural world.
Augustine on Time and Eternity

Contrary to Kaecilius, Augustine offers an affirmation of time in its partici
pation in the timefulness of eternity. Augustine’s notion of God involves an
ontological distinction between God and creation in which God eternally
exists prior to creation and time (Augustine 1991, 281). For Augustine, to be
created means to be marked by time, in contrast to God who, being uncreated,
is not bound by time. The doctrine of God’s simplicity or aseity is helpful in
understanding how the uncreated creator both affirms time eternally and ex
ists timelessly in eternity while also allowing time its own fullness in its par
ticipation in eternity. At the heart of the Christian notion of time and creation
is the sense that at all moments of time, God is present. In the Augustinian
perspective time participates in God’s timelessness insofar as every moment
of time is encompassed by the presence of God’s eternity. Augustine asks of
God’s eternity: “that in the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present;
whereas no time is all at once present: and that all time past, is driven on by
time to come, and all to come followeth upon the past; and all past and to
come, is created, and flows out of that which is ever present?” (Augustine
1991,285).
By understanding time in terms of past, present, and future, Augustine’s
refining of the concept of time is one wherein the past always leads into the
present moment, and the future is anticipated in the present moment in such a
way that time is always distended into the present. The past is remembered in
the present and the future is anticipated by the present. According to Neville
the notion of time’s flow “is the actualizing of possibilities and the putting
into the past of that actuality” (Neville 1993, 103). In turn, Neville discusses
the link between eternal togetherness and temporal togetherness. Temporal
togetherness describes the connection between the present moment passing
into the past and anticipating the future. Temporal togetherness finds in the
present moment a movement forward and backward. The present moves
backward into the past, while the forward movement of time anticipates
the future. Eternal togetherness implies the infinite possibilities of a future

based on present moments and past conditions. Eternal togetherness implies
the movement of the past through present into the future, just as future pos
sibilities are based on present and past conditions. For Neville, temporal
togetherness participates in eternal togetherness because the present moment
anticipates the possibility of the future’s actuality. In this sense, eternal to
getherness is “the condition for and inclusive of all changes involved in tem
poral togetherness. Eternity is the condition for and inclusive of time’s flow”
(Neville 1993, 112). Hence, Neville states:
Time’s flow requires actualizing something that is thus transformed from future
possibility to past actuality. Time’s flow changes the structure of the future and
the content of the past. Time does not flow at a time but through time, through
dates that successively are future, present, and past. Time’s flow requires the
death of the now and the birth of new possibilities. Time does not flow within
time but within eternity. (Neville 1993, 119)
From time’s participation in the eternal, all that is within time is present to
and in eternity. In this notion of eternity, God is present to all time, implying
that in his aseity (simplicity) God experiences eternally all moments of time
in such a way that time is given life in and through its participation in eternity.
Dr. Strange and the Play on Time and Eternity

Augustine’s account of time and eternity provides an analogy to Dormammu
and the Dark Dimension. Both Dormammu and Augustine’s God are beyond
time. But Augustine’s God and Dormammu differ in their affirmation or ne
gation of time. Whereas for Augustine, God’s eternity encompasses time in
the sense that God’s eternity is always present, Dormammu’s eternity denies
time in the sense that a timeless eternity encompasses the negation or voiding
of time.
At the end of the film, Dr. Strange has quite a strange idea. If Dormammu
is beyond time, what would happen if he was bound to time'i Dr. Strange en
ters the Dark Dimension and confronts Dormammu, binding Dormammu to
an infinite loop of time until he concedes. Since Dormammu kills Dr. Strange
every time he appears in this loop, Dr. Strange embraces the possibility of
an eternity of repeatedly dying. Dormammu’s frustration is apparent in the
film. Never has he experienced time before, and now he is bound in an infi
nite loop to the same experience eternally until he concedes to Dr. Strange’s
bargain to save the earth from its consumption into the Dark Dimension. By
bending the natural law and “playing” with time, Dr. Strange not only saves
the world from its consumption by Dormammu into the Dark Dimension, but
he also experiences the possibility of an eternity of dying. What heroism and

sacrifice.
Through this action, Dr. Strange binds Dormammu to the experience of
time. Dormammu despairs as he realizes his eternity is now bound in time.
The theological notion of play is linked in Dr. Strange to the quest for actual
izing the potential of time in its binding nature to Dormammu and the Dark
Dimension. Dormammu, whose intention is to consume all worlds into his
timeless and eternal void, must then bargain with Dr. Strange for the salvation
of the earth because he could not escape time until he was unbound.
The openness of the multiverse implies the playful interface of time and
eternity in such a way that articulates the notion of “play as the connectivity
of order, dynamics and indeterminacy, represents the capacity for something
new, the creative possibilities of new beginnings, and surprising shifts to dif
ferent levels of flourishing” (Wariboko 2012, 164). This notion of play im
plies that in a multiverse, there are multiple possibilities and spiritual dimen
sions where the natural world is not all there is. Rather the natural world is
one reality within the multiverse and an enchanted naturalism implicates the
openness of the natural world to the multiverse. The possibility of dynamic
interplays and interpenetrations in the multiverse implies an infinity of po
tential possibilities and multiple supernatural dimensions that may transform
the natural world and the space-time continuum. These potentials are thus
actualized by the spiritual dimensions of the multiverse in such a way that
Dr. Strange’s play on time not only altered the natural law and space-time
continuum but saved humanity from being consumed by the Dark Dimension.
CONCLUSION
Dr. Strange reflects an interesting play on both the notions of time and eter
nity, and an enchanted naturalism marked by the spirit of the multiverse. If
the natural world is charged with the spirit of the multiverse, not only do we
get echoes of Pentecostal analogies that reflect the en-spirited nature of the
multiverse, but in the context of time, we also receive an Augustinian analogy
that affirms time in the experience of eternity contrasted with Dormammu
and the Dark Dimension. At the heart of Dr. Strange is a modern re-enchant
ment that reflects analogously the limits and telos of modem science, and
yet reflects the heart of late modern nihilism in its embrace of the possibility
of eternal nothingness. In this way, Christian theology not only analogously
plays with the theology of Dr. Strange, but it offers answers that counter the
theology of Dr. Strange.
Characteristic of fantasy, Dr. Strange is a reflection of our cultural

imaginary—the cultural narratives and imagined ways of understanding
ourselves and existing within our world—and it also "plays” with the spirit
of our world, reshaping how we imagine our world in ways that create new
imaginative possibilities for our world. It is in the context of "play” that Dr.
Strange “takes on a central position” of “creative spontaneity and randomness
that make possible novelty and surprise. Here, theology is not the dramatic
performance of a script in which we find ourselves inevitably involved but a
voluntary, and not always determinative, activity that is meaningful within its
own imaginative freedom” (Suurmond 1992, 249-50).
Within this context, the power of the imagination in Dr. Strange to alter
our theological and cultural imaginaries represents a new way of stretching
how we conceive of the natural world, time, and eternity in a way that re-en-
chants the modern conceptions of nature and the supernatural. The imagined
world of Dr. Strange has the ability to alter and transform our reality by chal
lenging traditional and scientific notions and thereby open us to new ways
of imagining our world. Thus the notion of play and the imagination in Dr.
Strange implies a theological re-scription of our cultural imaginary in ways
that re-enchant our late modem scientific sensibilities with an alternate imagi
nary—that of our cultural fantastic/virtual imagination—in ways that not only
ground our imaginaries theologically, but also re-enchants theologically the
imagination found within Dr. Strange (Vondey 2010a, 46; Vondey 2018).
NOTES
1. For citing the film throughout the chapter, cf Scott Derrickson, Dr. Strange.
DVD. Directed by Scott Derrickson (Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studies Motion
Pictures, 2016).
2. The other three options according to Taylor are: a) the Neo-nietzschean; b) the
expressive individualists; and c) the theistic believer.
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Index
Abraham, 3, 13, 15, 104, 148, 199, 202 Ant-Man and the Wasp, 79
Abraham, Kochurani, 33-34, 36 apocalypse, 42, 45, 50, 51, 52. See also
abuse, 33; domestic, 28; emotional, 30 Ragnarok
Acts, 22, 200 apocalyptic, 56, 58, 67, 152
Adam, 23 Aquinas, 8, 131
addiction, 25, 28, 30 Arab. See Palenstinian
Adventures of Captain Marvel, 71 Arabian Knight, 210-211, 212, 218
Aeneid, 179 Arendt, Hannah, 7
Agent Venom, 126 Aristotle, 131
alcoholism, 31 Armor Wars, 45
Allah, 70 Armstrong, Karen, 16
Amaya, Erik, 28 Asgard, 175, 176, 180, 183, 187, 188,
Amazing Fantasy, 119n 1 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197,
The Amazing Spider-Man (comic), 4, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203
103, 105, 106, 110, 111, 112, 113, Asgardians, 20, 159, 171, 175, 183, 192,
114, 115, 116, 119n2, 124, 125, 126 202
The Amazing-Spider-Man Presents: Astonishing Tales, 219
Anti-Venom, 126 Atlas Comics, 1
Ancient One, 229 Augustine, 8, 131, 132, 165, 221,222,
Anderson, Brent, 56 229, 230, 231, 232
Andolsen, Barbara, 34 Auschwitz, 7
Anselm of Canterbury, 19, 20, 35 The Avengers, 10, 41, 43, 44, 45, 49,
Antichrist, 58, 70n8 51,52, 66, 77, 78, 80, 108, 117, 118,
antihero, 3, 26, 27, 28, 121, 123, 125; 126, 183
definition, 27 The Avengers (comic), 4, 41, 42, 43, 44,
anti-Muslim, 65 45,46, 47, 49,51,52
anti-semitism, 55, 217 The Avengers (film), 11, 12,41,78, 187
Anti-Venom, 123, 126, 137 Avengers: Age of Ultron, 9, 23, 78, 80,
anti-villain, 3, 121 182, 188
255
256 Index
Avengers: Endgame, 10, 13, 76, 77, 78, Cardenas, Elena, 142, 144, 146, 150,
182, 183, 187 155
Avengers: Infinity War, 9, 10, 20, 71, Carnage, 115
73, 77, 78, 79, 121, 182 Castle, Frank, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152,
Avengers World, 42, 44, 49, 51 153
Castle, Gregory, 173
Bady, Aaron, 31 Catholicism, 67, 125, 139, 140-141,
Batal, 208 142, 143, 145, 148, 153; catechism,
Batman, 11,71 141, 145, 147. See also Murdock,
Battleworld, 42, 124 Matt
Beast (aka Hank McCoy), 46-47, 52nl Celestials, 127, 157, 159, 161, 171
Becker, Amy Julie, 81 Chaos, 159, 162-163
Berry, Wendell, 75, 78 Chardin, Teilhard de, 20
Beyonders, 50 Christ. See Jesus
The Bible, 59, 60, 65, 69, 82, 104, 154, Christensen, Terry, 7
173, 199; absolutist view, 60 Christian Identity, 59
Black Bolt, 46, 52nl Christianity, 2, 3, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17,
Black Order, 72 18, 19, 21, 22, 32, 34, 56, 57, 60, 62,
Black Panther, 46, 51, 52nl, 53n4, 76, 73, 74, 75, 81, 82, 92, 123, 132, 142,
80, 116, 168, 175, 184 152, 167, 170, 189, 191, 194, 195,
Black Widow, 41, 47, 49. See also 200-202, 213; and colonialism, 191—
Natasha Romanoff 93, 196-199, 201, 203; evangelical,
Bland, Archie, 27 184, 217; and the human condition,
Boa, Kenneth, 131 123, 128-129; millenarian, 218;
Brock, Edward, 123, 124, 125, 126, and racism, 74. See also ethics;
127, 130, 132, 134, 134, 136, 137. imagination
See also Venom christology, 2, 34, 52n2, 77, 217; Christ
Brolin, Josh, 78 figure, 25, 76, 77, 78, 79, 118, 217;
Buber, Martin, 93, 94 womanist, 35-36, 39
Buddhism, 9, 139 Civil War, 205
Burley 111, Ulysses, 201 Claremont, Chris, 56, 61, 65
Bushmaster, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, Cloak and Dagger, 209
94-95, 96, 97, 99 Collins, John J., 60, 69
colonialism, 20, 73, 80, 188-192,
Cain and Abel, 46, 48 195-202
Campbell, Joseph, 7 Colossians, 136
capitalism, 21, 80 Cone, James, 196, 200, 201, 202
Captain America, 9, 12, 13, 23, 25, 27, Contest of Champions, 210, 211, 212
30, 41, 42, 44-49, 51, 52, 77, 78, Cooper, Carlie, 108
170, 175, 182, 184 1 Corinthians, 17, 104
Captain America: Civil War, 17, 23, 46 2 Corinthians, 104, 122, 137
Captain America: Winter Soldier, 80 Cottonmouth, 88. 89
Captain Marvel, 116 creation, 14, 18, 21, 43, 44, 58, 59, 62,
Captain Universe, 51 75, 94, 129, 130, 131, 192, 229, 230;
Index 257
creator deities, 157, 160, 161, 162; Dr. Strange (film), 5, 78, 79, 221, 222,
Neoplatonist, 157, 161, 164, 165. See 223, 225-29, 232, 233
also Enuma Elish; God; mythology; Dr. Strange: The Oath, 226
Rosenzweig, Franz dualism, 58, 61, 64, 223
cross. See Jesus; sacrifice Ducasse, Malcolm, 28, 29, 30, 32
cultural studies, 73, 74 Dust (aka Sooraya Qadir), 67, 68, 69,
Cunningham, Conor, 229 70
Cyclops, 60
Eagleton, Terry, 16, 18, 74, 75, 81
Damon, Matt, 175 Ebony Maw, 10, 20, 73, 78
Daredevil, 119, 144, 155. See also Ecclesiastes, 60
Murdock, Matt Edwards, John, 132
Daredevil (comic), 148 Ego, 157
Daredevil (Netflix), 5, 96, 119, 139- Einstein, Albert, 224, 225
156; Catholicism, 5 Elam, J. Daniel, 190, 191
Dark, David, 71 Elektra, 145, 146, 148, 151, 152, 154
The Dark Knight, 71 Elixer (aka Joshua Foley), 68
Darwin, Charles, 20-21, 59 Ellis, Warren, 160
David, 104; star of, 210, 217 Elvey, Anne, 75
Dawn, Marva, 104 Enuma Elish, 14
Deadpool, 168 Eon, 159
Death (character), 161, 163 Ephesians, 137
deconstruction, 15, 25; of patriarchy, Equiano, Olaudah, 193-94
26 Erickson, Milliard, 129, 131, 134
The Defenders (Netflix), 151 eschatology, 67, 82, 184, 217
dehumanization, 59, 62, 69 The Eternals, 160
demiurge, 157, 158, 160, 162, 171 Eternity, 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164-
Detweiler, Craig, 79 65, 170, 171
Deuteronomy, 56 ethics, 3, 5, 35,37, 38,71, 73,77,
Devereaux, Shaadi, 33 78, 109, 129, 131; Christian, 36;
Dillard, Mariah, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, evolutionary, 22; feminist, 36; virtue,
95, 96, 97, 98, 100n9 121, 123, 134. See also morality;
Dillard, Tilda, 88-89, 90, 95 virtue
diversity, 82. See also Jessica Jones; Evans, C. Stephen, 122
Marvel Universe Eve, 8, 23
Doctor Octopus (aka Otto Octavius), evil, 7, 9, 36, 38, 56, 57, 62, 63, 67,
106-116, 119n2, 126 77, 126, 127, 134, 144, 209,210;
Dormammu, 79, 222, 226, 228, 231, definition of, 8, 129; fight against,
232 108, 109, 145, 147; forces of, 35,
double-danger. See Kierkegaard, Soren 39; identification of, 10, 121,209;
Douglas, Kelly Brown, 34-36 material world, 161; problem of,
Dr. Doom, 42, 50, 168 137nl; religion, 58, 59, 67
Dr. Strange, 10, 52nl, 74, 75, 77, 78, Excalibur, 210
79, 221, 223, 224, 226-29, 231, 232 Ezekiel, 60
258 Index
faith, 65, 69, 85, 104, 122, 133, 140, existence, 170; image of, 147, 169;
142, 155,200 judgment, 142; kingdom of, 119,
Fantastic Four, 168, 169 133, 202, 203; law, 152; power, 105,
Fantastic Four (comic), 157, 165, 166, 115, 139, 157, 158
168, 169, 171 God Loves. Man Kills (GLMK), 55, 56,
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver 61,63,65,69, 70
Surfer, 157 Golden Age of Comics, 25, 27, 30
Farley, Margaret, 33 Goliath, 214
Father Lantom, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, Good Samaritan, 155
145, 147, 150, 151, 156 grace, 19
feminist theology. See theology Grandmaster, 191, 196
Fingeroth, Danny, 107 Green Goblin (aka Norman Osborn),
Fisk, Wilson, 108, 141, 142, 143, 144, 109, 111, 115, 121
145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, Guardians of the Galaxy, 126, 182
153, 154, 155, 156 Guardians of the Galaxy (comic), 126
forgiveness, 142, 215, 216 Guardians of the Galaxy (film), 78
Foster, Jane, 188 Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (film),
Frye, Northrop, 152 171n2
Fury, Nick, 80 guilt, 144, 145, 148
Guthrie, Jay. See Icarus
Galactus, 157, 159, 161, 162, 163, 171
Galatians, 130, 137 Halevi, Judah, 98
Gamora, 9, 12, 13, 79 Han, Angie, 188, 190
Garden of Eden, 62, 67, 68 Hanna, Scott, 61
Geisler, Norman, 129 Hate (character), 159, 162, 163
Genesis, 8, 14, 21, 44, 48, 58, 59, 62, 66 Hauerwas, Stanley, 22
genocide, 10, 20, 56, 58, 60, 61, 66, 72, Hawkeye, 41, 47, 77
74, 124, 207, 212 heaven, 59, 68, 72, 81, 83, 172nl 1
Getz, Gene A., 74 Hebrews, 2, 48, 170
Ghost, 79 Heimdall, 182
Gilders, William, 15 Hela, 182, 183, 187, 188, 189, 192, 193,
Girard, Rene, 4, 11, 17, 18, 22,50,51, 195, 197, 198, 200, 203
53n2; mimetic theory, 41,42, 43, 44, hell, 59, 68
46-49, 52 Hemsworth, Chris, 187
Gnostic, 158, 161, 171 Henrichs, Albert, 159
God, 5, 13, 15, 16, 19, 22,57,58,61, Hercules, 159, 177
62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 81, 85, 87, hero’s journey, 7, 9, 12, 23, 187
96, 97, 104, 105, 129, 131, 132, Hesiod, 181
134, 141, 142, 148, 151, 156, 161, Hickman, Jonathan, 4, 41,42, 44, 46,
165, 166, 167, 193, 194, 197, 199, 47, 50, 51,52, 53n3
200-203, 222, 225; aseity, 230-31; Holocaust, 7, 58, 215, 217
benevolent, 155, 193; Creator, 14, Homer, 159, 160, 179
15, 18, 59, 75,77,91,92, 132, 145, Hosea, 63
171, 199, 230; Divine Author, 158, House of M, 66
169, 170; eternality, 229, 230, 231; Howard the Duck, 172n 10
Index 259
Hulk, 42,47, 171 n5, 182, 183, 188, 200, Jameson, J. Jonah, 121
207, 208, 214, 217 Jennings, Willie James, 191, 192, 193,
Human Torch, 114 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201,
Hydra, 219 203
Jeremiah. 131, 202
lamblichus, 158, 159 Jessica Jones (Netflix), 4, 25-40;
Icarus (aka Jay Guthrie), 65-66, 67, 68 diversity, 32-33
The Iliad, 179 Jester, 107
Illuminati, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 52 Jesus, 17, 25, 36,61,73, 110, 132,
imagination, 14, 175, 176, 180, 181, 137, 147, 199, 201,226; death/
183, 184, 191, 192, 199, 233; cross, 15-16, 19, 34, 35, 50, 66,
Christian, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196, 104, 105, 115, 166, 201; healer,
199, 200, 201,202, 203 74, 201; imitation of, 36, 39, 133;
imperialism, 8, 75, 139, 190, 201 incarnation, 18, 19, 115, 170;
Incredible Hulk (comic), 205, 207, 208, power, 104, 132, 136; resurrection,
211,214,219 16, 18, 19, 202; return, 81, 82, 83,
Infinity (character), 159, 163 218; sacrifice, 19, 34; teachings, 77,
Infinity (comic), 41, 52 81, 122, 135, 136, 196, 200, 203;
Infinity Gauntlet, 71, 77, 164, 165-166 temptation, 8, 35
Infinity Gauntlet (comic), 162, 164 Jewett, Robert. 77
The Infinity Saga, 4, 9, 12, 13, 18, 23 Jewish: identity, 92-93, 98, 211; law,
Infinity Stones, 71, 73, 78, 182, 183, 93-94; prayer, 208, 215; suffering,
188, 228. See also mind stone; soul 213, 215, 216, 217
stone; time stone Job, 151, 215
Infinity War (comic), 164 1 John, 129
Infinity War: Quasar, 162 John, Gospel of, 16, 64, 122, 133
Iron Man, 17, 18, 31, 41, 42, 44-50, 52, Jones, Alisa, 26, 29, 30, 32, 37, 38, 39
77, 78, 79, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, Jones, Jessica, 25-39; as antihero, 31
182, 210, 211. See also Tony Stark Judaism, 2, 3, 9, 60, 93, 100—101 nl 5,
Iron Man (film), 78 167
Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties Juergensmeyer, Mark, 57, 58, 59, 67
of War, 46
Isaac, 13, 15,202 Kaecilius, 222, 227, 229-230
Isaiah, 15, 60, 93, 129 kenosis, 4, 16, 17, 20, 21,23, 105
Islam, 3, 9, 67, 69, 70nl2, 167, 218 Kierkegaard, Soren, 4, 121, 122;
Israel, 5, 173-74, 199, 202, 206, 207, double-danger, 4, 121, 122, 123, 132,
210,211,213,215-216,217,218 133, 136, 137, 137n3
Israeli, 205, 206, 208, 212, 214, 219 Kilgrave, 25, 26, 27, 30, 32, 38, 40n3
Israelites, 8, 15, 16, 18, 57 Killmonger, 76
Kimball, Charles, 58, 59, 62, 67, 68
The Jackal, 112 Kirby, Jack, 157, 158, 165, 167, 168.
Jacob, 202 169, 170, 171, 172nl2
James, 82, 131, 134, 136 Klyntar, 123, 126, 128, 136, 137, 138n3
James, Edward, 80 Knull, 127, 128, 136
Jameson, Jay, 113 Kordey, Igor, 61
260 Index
Korg, 188, 200 Marvel Knights: Spider-Man, 126

Kraybill, Richard. 202 Marvel Studios, 119
Kree, 45, 52, 124 Marvel Super-Heroes, 207, 213, 214
Kreeft. Peter, 105 Marvel Universe, 3, 27, 40nl, 52,
Kyle, Craig, 65 205, 219, 227; cross-genre, 2,
4; diversity, 3, 32-33; divinity,
Lady Deathstrike, 61 hierarchies of, 5, 157-160, 163;
Lawrence, John Shelton, 77 flexibility of, 2; open canon, 1;
Leeds, Ned, 117, 118 theological reflection, 2
Lee, Stan, 170, 172nl2 Marx, Karl, 72, 74
L’Engle, Madeline, 151 Marx, Steven, 152
Leviticus, 60 Marxism, 73, 74, 75, 82
Lewis, C. S„ 7, 53n2, 132, 138n8, 151 Massacre, 109
Li, Martin. See Mr. Negative materialism, 72, 73, 74, 75, 82. See also
liberation, 33, 67, 74, 230 New Materialism
Lindsey, Hal, 217, 218 Matthew, Gospel of, 17, 134, 136
Living Tribunal, 157, 158, 159, 164, Maximoff, Wanda, 12. See Scarlet
165, 166, 170, 171 Witch
Loki, 116, 175, 182, 183, 187, 188, 189, McDougal, Joy, 130
190, 198, 200 McDowell, John, 8
love, 13, 15, 34, 70, 92, 166, 196, 203, MCU. See Marvel Cinematic Universe
215 Meinecke, Friedrich, 92, 1 OOnl 5
Love (character), 159, 162, 163, 171 mental illness, 25, 38, 39
Lucas. James, 89-90, 96, 100n9 Mephisto, 166
Luke Cage, 85, 87, 88, 89-90, 96, 97, Messiah. See Christology
99, 100n9 Miek, 188, 200
Luke Cage (Netflix), 4, 85, 86, 88, 94, Milbank, John, 7
97, 99, 100n5 mimesis. See Girard, Rene
Luke, Gospel of, 16, 104, 135 Mind Stone, 12
Mojsik, Tomasz, 181
MacArthur, John, 73 Moltmann, Jurgen, 105, 115
Macintosh, Paul “Anansi,” 87, 88 morality, 39, 122, 123, 125, 128, 129,
magic, 87, 178, 182, 211, 227, 228 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138n9,
Magneto, 56, 58, 60, 63, 206 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 150,
Malthus, Thomas, 21-22 153, 155, 156; ambiguity, 209;
Mama Mabel, 86, 88-89 decision-making, 29, 37; duty, 30,
Mandela, Nelson, 216 38; limits, 143, 145, 150; subjective,
Mantlo, Bill, 208, 209, 210-11, 213-14, 143; uncertainty, 32
215,216,218 Morbius, 121
Marconi, Anna Maria, 109, 112 Mordo, Baron, 227-28
Marianna, Vanessa, 146, 154, 155 Morgan, Silas, 72, 73, 74, 82
Markus, Christopher, 79 Morrison, Grant, 168
Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), 2, Moses, 16, 25
14,71,76, 78,79, 80,81, 174, 176, Mourner’s Kaddish, 208, 215
178, 181, 182, 184 Mr. Negative (aka Martin Li), 126
Index 261
multiverse, 42, 50, 157, 158, 159, 161, The Odyssey, 179
164, 165, 166, 168, 170, 221,223, One Above All, 157, 158, 159, 164,
224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 232 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171
Murdock, Jack, 140, 149 Operation: Galactic Storm, 45
Murdock, Matt, 5, 139-156; Catholic Order (character), 159, 162, 163
faith, 5, 140, 144, 145, 146, 148, Ordway, Holly, 128
149, 150, 152, 154, \56. See also Origen, 35
Daredevil original sin, 8, 17, 22, 48
myth of redemptive violence. See Oropeza, B. J., 115
violence Osborn, Norman. See Green Goblin
mythology, 7, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53n2,
179, 180, 222; comics as, 2, 44; Page, Karen, 142, 144, 148, 152
concealing function, 42, 43, 44, Palestinian, 5, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210,
50; creation, 14, 44; definition, 211, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218,
177; Greek, 159, 160, 179, 181, 219
185n3; gods of, 3, 11,43; individual panentheism, 225
creativity, 181; inheritance, 5, 174, Parker, Ben, 112, 116, 170
177, 184; medieval, 178; Norse, Parker, May, 107, 108. 166
175, 176, 180, 182, 183, 185n5; Parker, Peter. See Spider-Man
reinvention, 5; vocabulary/taxonomy, patriarchalism, 8, 26, 33-34, 36, 37, 38,
177, 178 39, 75
Paul (apostle), 16, 17, 133, 134
Namor, 42, 46, 51, 52nl Pentecostalism, 221, 223, 224, 225, 227,
naturalism, 222, 223, 224, 225, 227, 232 232
Nebula, 13, 72 I Peter, 134, 138n9
Nelson, Foggy, 144, 146, 148, 152 Philippians, 16, 132, 135, 136
Neoplatonism, 5, 157-158, 159, 160, 161, Plato, 131, 133, 158, 159, 160, 161
163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171 Platonism, 157, 163, 166
Neville, Robert Cummings, 230-31 Plotinus, 157, 158, 163, 166, 170
New Avengers, 4, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, Poindexter, Benjamin, 146, 149, 150,
50, 52 152, 153, 154
New Materialism, 74, 75. See also Pojman, Louis, 135
materialism Pope Nicholas V, 20
Newton, Isaac, 224, 225 Pope Urban II, 19
New' Warriors, 208 population control, 21-22, 75, 78, 81
New X-Men, 55, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70 postcolonialism, 190, 199, 200, 201,
Niebuhr, H. Richard, 74 202; definition, 189. See also
Nightcrawler, 60, 67, 69, 70 theology
nihilism, 17, 221, 222, 229-230, 232 Potter, Melvin. 148
Nimrod, 66, 67, 68, 70n8 Potts, Pepper, 18
Noah, 15 Price, Lee, 127
pride, 129, 130
Octavius, Otto. See Doctor Octopus primordialism, 174, 180
Odin, 159, 175, 178, 180, 183, 187, 188, Proclus, 158, 161
189, 190, 192, 195, 197 Protestant Reformation, 20
262 Index
Pryde, Kitty, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65; Rothstein, Richard, 197
Jewish, 69 Russo brothers, 18
Psalms, 2, 65, 100n6, 170 Russo, Joe, 9, 77
Pseudo-Dionysius, 165, 169, 170, 171 Ruth Bat Seraph. See Sabra
The Punisher, 27. See also Castle, Frank
Purcell, Lynnie, 28 Sabra, 5, 205-219
sacrifice, 4, 13, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 34,
Qadir, Sooraya. See Dust 39, 43,50,51,79, 116, 118, 122,
Quill, Peter, 12, 13 199, 201, 203; Hebrew rituals, 15;
and heroism, 23, 115, 175; human,
racism, 8, 30, 35, 55, 73-74, 83, 189, 14; idolatrous, 15; and patriarchy,
191-194, 196, 197, 218 32, 33, 37; self-sacrifice, 4, 11, 16,
Ragnarok, 176, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 17, 18, 22, 23, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38,
198 39, 64, 65,66, 122, 137, 187,219;
Raimi, Sam, 11 preemptive, 12; utilitarian, 10, 11,
Reader, John, 74 18; victim, 43, 44, 50; violence, 14,
reconciliation, 5, 195, 205-206, 213, 19, 41,43, 44; Western ideology,
216, 217, 218, 219 20. See also Jesus; substitutionary
redemption, 18, 34, 35, 64, 65, 77, atonement
79, 82, 96, 109, 130, 137, 140, Sahad, 207, 208,214,217
145, 147, 148, 152, 156, 189, 199, Sakaar, 188, 191, 196, 197, 200
203, 216, 218, 223; and suffering, Sallust, 159, 161
213, 214, 215, 216. See also Jesus; salvation, 20, 32, 35, 62, 76, 77, 122,
Rosenzweig, Franz; sacrifice 133, 134, 139, 147, 184, 232
Red Goblin, 115 sanctification, 137
Regent, 112, 115, 116 Satan (devil), 8, 35, 57, 59, 62, 65, 66,
Reilly, Ben, 112, 113, 115, 116 67, 68, 70n8, 161
resurrection, 81 Saunders, Ben, 115-116
Revelation, 60, 61, 62, 63, 104 Scarlet Witch, 66, 72, 182, 188. See
Reynolds, Richard, 80, 114 also Maximoff, Wanda
Richards, David Adams, 148 Schwartz, Regina M., 57, 58, 62, 67
Richards, Reed, 42, 44, 46, 47, 52nl, 168 science, 5, 10, 20, 50, 87, 232, 233;
Robertson, Pat, 65 limits of, 221, 223; and rationalism,
Robinson, Nathan, 201 21, 77, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226; and
Romanoff, Natasha, 18 the supernatural, 5
Romanowski, William, 76 Scorpion (aka Mac Gargan), 126
Romans, 129, 134, 136 Screwball, 107
Rosenberg, Melissa, 31,33 Secret Invasion, 205
Rosenstock, Eugen, 92 Secret Wars, 41, 42, 53n3, 124, 163
Rosenzweig, Franz, 4, 85, 86, 92, secular humanism, 222, 223
93,94, 98, 99, 100n8, lOOnll, Selengut, Charles, 69, 70
100-Win 15, 100nl6; on creation, The Sensational Spider-Man, 165, 166
85, 90-92, 93, 94, 95, 99; on sexual assault. See violence
redemption, 85, 92, 100n5, 1 OOnl 0; Shadowcat. See Pryde, Kitty
on revelation, 85, 91-92, 93, 99 Shi’ar, 45, 52
Index 263
S.H.I.E.L.D., 112, 212 Stokes, Mariah. See Dillard, Mariah

Shinto, 139 Storm, 210
Shocker, 117 Stranger, 159
Shriver, Donald, 216-17 Strange Tales, 163
Shusaku, Endo, 139 Stryker, Marcy, 57
Silver Sable, 111 Stryker, William, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59,
sin, 8, 20, 35, 39, 57, 62, 63, 73, 85, 60-70
128-129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 137, substitutionary atonement, 13
138n8, 139, 141, 145, 190, 203; Summers, Scott. See Cyclops
racism, 192, 194 Superhero Registration Act, 45
Sin-Eater, 124 The Superior Spider-Man, 4, 103, 106,
Sister Maggie, 140, 149, 150, 151, 153, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 126
156 Superior Venom, 126
Skrulls, 52 Superman, 11, 25, 27, 76
slavery, 20, 87, 190-94 supernatural, 223, 224, 226
Slott, Dan, 4, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, Supreme Intelligence, 45
109, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117 Svetelj, Tone, 221
Smith, James K. A., 221, 224 Sykes, Shawnee M. Daniels, 37
Smith, Kevin, 148 symbiote, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128,
Smith, Travis, 3 130, 133, 135, 136, 137
socialism 72, 80
Sorensen, Sue, 150 Talmud, 93
Soul Stone, 12, 13, 14, 79 Taylor, Barry, 79
Spider-Man, 4, 11, 103, 105-119, Taylor, Charles, 221, 222, 223
122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 135, T’Challa, 42. See also Black Panther
136, 138n9, 166, 170; Friendly terrorism, 206, 207, 208, 214, 218, 219
Neighborhood, 110, 111, 114, 115, Thanos, 4, 9-10, 12-13, 20, 22, 23,
116, 117, 119, 121; “Parker luck,” 71-76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 121,
114-115; power and responsibility, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 166, 182,
4, 103, 105-113, 115, 116, 119, 183; as Christ-figure, 77
119nl, 125; relatability, 103, 119 Thanos Annual, 159
Spider-Man (film), 11 Thanos: The Infinity Finale, 165
Spider-Man: Homecoming, 4, 103, theology, 43, 65, 72, 81, 83, 92, 129,
116-117 194, 196, 199, 200, 202, 215, 217,
Spider-Woman, 47, 49 224, 232, 233; of creation, 85; and
spirituality, 221, 222 culture, 74; feminist, 4, 26, 32, 33,
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 33 34,36,37,38, 39; identity, 121;
Stark, Howard, 46 material, 72, 73, 75, 82; orthodox, 8;
Stark, Tony, 12, 17, 18, 23, 80. See also of the past, 4, 85, 94, 96, 100n5; of
Iron Man peace, 216; postcolonial, 5, 191, 192,
Stewart, Rebecca, 27 193, 196; reconciliation, 216, 218;
Stick, 148, 152 Trinitarian, 34; of weakness, 4, 103,
Stingray, 45 105, 119, 122; womanist, 4, 26, 32,
Stokes, Buggy, 86 33,35,36,37,38
Stokes, Cornell. See Cottonmouth Thing, 168
264 Index
Thompson, Flash, 118, 126, 127, 136 Venom: Lethal Protector, 124, 125
Thor, 5,41,77, 116, 128; as a god, Venom: Sinner Takes All, 132
157, 158, 159, 160, 167, 171, 171n5, Venom: Space Knight, 124, 126
176, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 184, Venom Super Special, 124
187-195, 198-203 villain, 38, 72, 80, 112, 121, 208, 215;
Thor: The Dark World, 188 institution, 209; mind-control, 26;
Thor (film), 176, 178, 187 misunderstood, 79; proactive, 107,
Thor: God of Thunder, 128 111, 113; protagonist, 9; social
Thor: Ragnarok, 5, 175, 176, 177, 178, justice, 76
180, 182, 183, 187-192, 194, 195, violence, 4, 17, 22, 26, 38, 39, 47,
197, 198,200, 201,203 49, 52, 57, 58, 63, 67, 72, 75, 76,
Tillich, Paul, 74 77, 78, 83, 86, 87, 94, 99, 130,
Timely Comics, 1 141, 145, 147, 148, 149, 187,
time stone, 228 189, 192, 196, 201,205,214; and
1 Timothy, 129 Christianity, 81; escalation and
Tolkien, J. R. R„ 158, 169 cycle, 11, 12, 41, 43, 48, 51, 52,
Toomes, Adrian. See The Vulture 78, 79, 88; inclination toward,
transcendence, 221 140, 143, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156;
trolley dilemma, 10-11, 12 in mimetic theory, 41, 42, 43, 48,
Tully, Armand, 142 49, 51; misogynistic, 31, 36, 38;
Tutu, Desmond, 216 myth of redemptive, 9, 11, 12, 19,
21, 76, 77, 78, 79, 89; preemptive,
Ultimates, 167 8; religious, 4, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62,
Ultimate Universe, 49, 52 65, 67, 68, 69, 70; sexual, 25, 26,
Ultron, 23, 80, 184 33, 37, 39, 40n2; utilitarian, 12;
Union Jack, 211 victims, 39, 142, 206. See also
Urich, Ben, 144 sacrifice
utilitarianism, 4, 10, 11, 12, 21, 38, 108, virtue, 48, 122, 131, 132, 135, 136;
109, 115, 121. See also violence Aristotelian, 34; feminine, 34, 36.
utopia, 80, 81, 82 See also ethics; morality
Vision, 12, 17
Valkyrie, 182, 183, 188, 198, 199, 200 Vondey, Wolfgang, 221, 224, 225
Vanhoozer, Kevin, 158, 169 Vormir, 13, 18
vengeance, 11, 42, 43, 48, 49, 51, 87, The Vulture (aka Adrian Toomes), 117,
94, 132, 135, 145, 153, 164, 183, 118
195,208,216,217
Venom, 4, 123-129, 132, 133, 134, 136, Wagner, Kurt. See Nightcrawler
137. See also Agent Venom; Anti- Waid, Mark, 169
Venom; Brock, Edward; Superior- Waititi, Taika, 177
Venom Wakanda, 76, 80
Venom, 126, 127, 128, 137n3 Walker, Trish, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 37,
Venom: Dark Origin, 124 39
Venom: First Host, 124 Wallflower (aka Laurie Collins), 68
Venom: The Hunger, 125 Wallis, Jim, 194
Index 265
war, 22, 58, 65, 66, 68, 83, 134, 187, womanist theology. See theology
192; Arab-Israeli, 205,211,213; Wonder Woman, 25
holy war, 58, 60; Vietnam, 213 Wong, 226, 228
Warlock, Adam, 164 Wright, N. T., 81
Warlock and the Infinity Watch, 164
War Machine, 49 X2: X-Men United, 56
Watanabe, Yuri, 108 X-23, 70
Watchers, 160, 166 Xavier, Charles, 56, 57, 60, 67, 70n5,
Watchmen, 71 205, 207, 209, 210, 212
Watson, Mary Jane, 11, 113 X-Men, 4, 55, 56, 60, 61, 64, 66, 69, 70,
weakness, 16,21, 109, 110, 114,116, 122, 206, 209, 210, 212
117, 217; power and, 103, 104, 105, X-Men (comic), 205, 206, 207, 208,
113, 115, 118, 119 209, 210, 212
Web of Spider-Man, 124 X-Treme X-Men (GLMK2), 55, 61, 63,
Web of Venom: Ve'Nam, 138n3 65,70
Wieringo, Mike, 169
Williams, Delores, 34—36 Yoder, John Howard, 77
Willmington, Harold, 129 Yost, Christopher, 65
Windstorm, 207, 213, 214, 215 Young, Robert J. C., 189, 190, 191, 192,
Wink, Walter, 8-9, 11, 14, 77 201, 202
The Wisdom of Solomon, 63
Wolverine, 137n3, 206 Zeus, 159
About the Contributors
Matthew Brake is the series editor for Lexington’s Theology and Pop
Culture series. He has master’s degrees in interdisciplinary studies and phi
losophy from George Mason University. He also has a Master of Divinity
from Regent University. He has published numerous articles in the series
Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception, Resources. He has chapters in
Deadpool and Philosophy, Wonder Woman and Philosophy, and Mr. Robot
and Philosophy. He also co-edits a series for Claremont Press on Religions
and Comics with A. David Lewis.
Dan W. Clanton, Jr. (PhD) is an associate professor of religious studies at

Doane University in Crete, Nebraska. A researcher of aesthetic interpreta
tions of biblical literature and the intersection between religion and (popular)
culture, he has edited or co-edited The End Will Be Graphic: Apocalyptic in
Comic Books and Graphic Novels', Understanding Religion and Popular Cul
ture', and is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Ameri
can Popular Culture. Since 2017, he is the program chair of the Society of
Biblical Literature’s National Bible and Popular Culture Section. He enjoys
spending time with his family, collecting jazz and classical music on vinyl,
reading comics, and watching far too much television.
Daniel D. Clark is an associate professor of English at Cedarville University

where he teaches courses about the graphic novel, contemporaiy world lit
erature, and film. Before teaching at Cedarville, he lived in Okinawa, Japan,
where he taught various courses for the Okinawa Prefectural Language Center,
the Okinawa Prefectural Nursing School, and the University of Maryland on
U.S. military installations. Clark has published several articles on graphic
novels and manga for Salem Press and the International Journal of Comic Art.
267
268 About the Contributors
Austin M. Freeman has a PhD in systematic theology from Trinity Evan

gelical Divinity School. He publishes on the theology of fantasy literature,
including American comics and J.R.R Tolkien. He is primarily a DC fan but
likes being ecumenical. He teaches Greco-Roman, medieval, and British lit
erature at a classical school in Dallas, Texas, where he resides with his wife
Mandi and their dog Henry.
Amanda Furiasse received her PhD in religion and graduate certificate in

museum studies from Florida State University and currently teaches courses
at Florida A&M University. Her research is aimed at understanding how sub
jugated communities can use art and ritual practice to redress violence and
trauma with a specific focus on the ritual practices of Jewish communities
from the Global South. She is currently working on a digital museum and ar
chive preserving material evidence of women’s ritual practices in historically
underrepresented communities.
Kristen Leigh Mitchell received her MDiv from Union Theological Semi
nary in New York City in 2014 with a concentration in theology and the arts.
She holds a BA in communication studies from University of North Carolina
at Greensboro, and is currently working toward a second bachelor’s degree in
music. Kristen is a freelance scholar, writer, spiritual director, and indie-folk
singer songwriter (www.kristenleighmusic.com) currently based in the NC
Piedmont region. In her spare time, she enjoys playing video games, practic
ing traditional longbow archery, and discussing nerd culture and theology
with her husband Joe.
Levi Morrow is a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University, where he wrote his
MA thesis on the afterlife of Franz Rosenzweig’s early twentieth-century-
German Jewish theology in the writings of the twenty-first-century Religious
Zionist Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Shagar), examining Shagar's turn
to Rosenzweig as an alternative to Religious Zionist theological doctrine, the
rather Hegelian nature of which made Rosenzweig a fitting alternative. Levi
has also done extensive work translating Shagar and other Religious Zionist
authors for English-speaking audiences. Born in the United States, he now
lives in Israel with his wife and two daughters.
Kevin Nye (MDiv) works in homeless services and advocacy in Los Angeles.
A graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary, Kevin also writes on the inter
sections of theology, justice and equity, and pop culture, for various outlets
including Reel Spirituality and his own blog. Kevin is formerly a licensed
minister in the Church of the Nazarene, and continues to write and work for
the love of the Church and the sake of God’s world.
About the Contributors 269
Taylor J. Ott is a PhD candidate at Fordham University in theological and

social ethics. Her doctoral work is on the role of conflict (or more often, the
lack thereof) in Catholic social thought, and engages intersectional femi
nist ethics as a resource for thinking through the presence of conflict in the
process of social transformation. She holds a master’s in theology from St.
John’s University in Queens and a bachelor’s in psychology from Michigan
State University.
Tim Posada is the chair ofjournalism and new media at Saddleback College.
His writings have appeared in The Journal ofPopular Culture and edited vol
umes on digital fandom, hysteria in horror, race and gender in science fiction,
and transmedia storytelling. He is currently working on a book for Lexington/
Fortress on depictions of the body, soul, and spirit in popular culture. He
holds a PhD in cultural studies from Claremont Graduate University, writing
his dissertation on the emerging language of superhero media. He is also the
film critic for the Beverly Press.
Jeremy E. Scarbrough holds a PhD in music (emphasis in philosophy), an

MA in Christian apologetics, an MA in theological Studies, a Master of Mu
sic Education, and a BA in music. He has taught music and philosophy at the
high school and undergraduate levels. He also founded the Ole Miss chapter
of Ratio Christi, where he taught Christian apologetics. Dr. Scarbrough cur
rently resides in Tampa, Florida, with his wife and two children. He serves
as instructor of philosophy, specializing in moral philosophy, for Pasco-Her
nando State College. His research emphasizes interdisciplinary connections
between philosophy, theology, pop culture worldviews, and the arts.
Gregory Stevenson is professor of New Testament at Rochester University

in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He has a PhD from Emory University and an
MDiv from Harding School of Theology. He is the author of A Slaughtered
Lamb: Revelation and the Apocalyptic Response to Evil and Suffering, Tele
vised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Power and Place:
Temple and Identity in the Book of Revelation. He has also published numer
ous articles and essays on both biblical studies and the intersection of religion
and popular culture.
Andrew D. Thrasher is a post-graduate researcher at the University of Bir

mingham, U.K., and adjunct professor of religious studies at George Mason
University and Tidewater Community College. He holds a post-graduate
Master of Theology (ThM) from Regent University (2017) and a Master of
Arts from George Mason University (2014). He is a contributor to Theology
and Game of Thrones, Theology and Black Panther, and a festschrift, Raimon
270 About the Contributors
Panikkar: A Companion to His Life and Thought. He has a background in

comparative theology and philosophical theology and is currently researching
post-secular theology for his doctorate.
Andrew Tobolowsky is an assistant professor at the College of William and

Mary in the religious studies department. His work focuses on the Bible,
Greek mythology, myth generally, and history. He is the author of Sons of
Jacob and the Sons of Herakles, published by Mohr Siebeck in 2017, and a
number of articles dealing with mythic and historical phenomena from the
Ancient Near East to the Mediterranean world.
RELIGION • POPULAR CULTURE
Series: Theology and Pop Culture
Series Editor: Matthew Brake
“Not too many books on superheroes do justice to the Marvel Universe of characters and stories
from a biblical-theological vantage point—this study is a refreshing exception. The contributors
dive deeply into the heroes and their myths without attempting to impose theological elements
that are not already latently there. This collection of studies brings to light spiritual, religious,
and moral truths implicit, and sometimes explicit, in superhero films and graphic novels, and it
engages both relevant and up-to-date sources. This book is worthy of recommendation for courses
focusing on film, heroes, theology, or popular culture.”
—B. J. OROPEZA, editor of The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture
“Gregory Stevenson has gathered a generically and methodologically wide-ranging assortment of

essays for this collection. It will undoubtedly be of great interest to scholars and students working
at the nexus of pop culture and theology."
—BEN SAUNDERS, author of Do The Gods Wear Capes?
“Assemble, true believers, and behold! Theology and the Marvel Universe reveals what Uatu the
Watcher has long witnessed: Superhero stories are wholesome entertainments capable of inspiring
reflection even upon the essence of the divine and our relationship with it. This good book offers
confirmation and testimony that Marvel comics, movies, and television series are sources worthy
of scholarly attention and enthusiastic affection.” —TRAVIS SMITH, Concordia University
In Theology and the Marvel Universe, fourteen contributors examine theological themes and ideas
in the comic books, television shows, and films that make up the grand narrative of the Marvel
Universe. Engaging in dialogue with theological thinkers such as Willie James Jennings, Franz
Rosenzweig, S0ren Kierkegaard, Rene Girard, Kelly Brown Douglas, and many others, the chapters
explore a wide variety of topics, including violence, sacrifice, colonialism, Israeli-Palestinian rela
tions, virtue ethics, character formation, identity formation, and mythic reinvention. This book
demonstrates that the stories of Thor, Daredevil, Sabra, Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Thanos, Luke
Cage, and others engage not just our imagination, but our theological imagination as well.
CONTRIBUTORS
Matthew Brake, Dan W. Clanton Jr., Daniel D. Clark, Austin M. Freeman, Amanda Furiasse, Kristen
Leigh Mitchell, Levi Morrow, Kevin Nye, Taylor J. Ott, Tim Posada, Jeremy E. Scarbrough, Gregory
Stevenson, Andrew D. Thrasher, Andrew Tobolowsky
GREGORY STEVENSON is professor of New Testament at Rochester University.
LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC ISBN 1?a-l-17a7-DblS-b
OHII IIImIIIII
800-462-6420 • www.rowman.com
Cover images © josearba/iStock/Getty Images Plus

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THEOLOGY AND THE

Titles in the Series

Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

Edited by Gregory Stevenson

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street. London SEI 1 4AB

Copyright © 2020 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954122

1 What Did It Cost? Sacrifice and Kenosis in The Infinity Saga 7

There is a grand metanarrative composed by multiple authors spread out

Second, much is often made of the comparison between the superheroes

for theological analysis by representing various approaches and perspectives.

What Did It Cost? Sacrifice and

control the switch to a trolley that is hurtling uncontrollably down a track

"A SOUL FOR A SOUL": SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCE

by the Roman government after being accused of sedition by a belligerent

Jesus’ crucifixion thus radically transforms the concept of “sacrifice” from a

"WHY DOES SOMEONE ALWAYS

Christ’s incarnation and resurrection established a radical posture toward

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce

that scarcity was a situation ordained by God to teach virtuous, self-sacrific­

"I Was Never the Hero that

While the classic superheroes of comics’ golden age—for instance, Super­

Jessica Jones an image of personhood that integrates relationality and survival

JESSICA JONES ... THE HERO?

she wants to be an all-out hero. In a flashback sequence, we see Jessica save

WOMANIST AND FEMINIST

Just as Jessica Jones offers a reflection of women’s navigation of a patriar­

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRIST, A DIFFERENT

An analysis of Jessica Jones through a lens that is informed by feminist

Mythology, Mimesis, and Apocalypse

captured on Mars. Captain America is sent back to earth in shame, but we

MYTH, TRAGEDY, AND SACRIFICIAL VICTIMS

For religion to work and for mimetic violence to be circumvented, a theo­

THE COMPLICATED FRIENDSHIP OF

men and their respective super-teams, Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties

Reed Richards: It’s just, you’re not that smart.

As Steve is left alone in the room looking at this hologram, he proceeds to

HEROISM, MIMETIC CONFLICT, AND VENGEANCE

Ultimately, human beings desire “being” or completeness, and they think

ESCALATING TOWARD THE APOCALYPSE

New Avengers #1 begins with a startling revelation: the universe is accelerat­

Freed of sacrificial constraints, the human mind invented science, technology

MYTH, CONFLICT, AND FINAL BATTLES

Hickman’s Avengers run ends with apocalyptic levels of violence. In order

"Because You Exist"

M. Schwartz examines in her work.' She probes the violence inherent in

To complement this biological and Scriptural rationale, Stryker continues and

that he is the Antichrist—the supposed friend of mankind, who will lead us

attitude, as he quotes Genesis 1:1, 27 and 2:7 to establish what he considers

Stryker is engaging in several different arguments here. He is, firstly, creat­

of these new wrinkles is the presence of Paul, who serves as a mirror-image

quote sacred texts to complicate his dualistic worldview. By showing us this

strayed, an X-Man caused me to doubt my role in this war.... She convinced

1. See Schwartz, 157-58, for specific mention of Deut. 17:2-5.

The Gospel According to Thanos

CURSED WITH MATERIALITY

In part, Thanos is a caricature of socialism as a villain blinded by his own

that scarcity was a situation ordained by God to teach virtuous, self-sacrific

While the classic superheroes of comics’ golden age—for instance, Super

Just as Jessica Jones offers a reflection of women’s navigation of a patriar

For religion to work and for mimetic violence to be circumvented, a theo

New Avengers #1 begins with a startling revelation: the universe is accelerat

Stryker is engaging in several different arguments here. He is, firstly, creat

a subjective being attempting to objectively solve problems without all pos

In Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, Richard Reynolds claims su

sures, my most personal possessions, things inherited, not borrowed! By own

understanding of responsibility adapt to these new challenges? Almost im

eradicating mutants. Her participation in Operation Zero Tolerance’s perse

Jews’ role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and trying to imagine a frame

meet antithesis—rejection by the very people one wishes to save (Kierkeg

Brock desperately needed the emotional stability and camaraderie of long

Following the tradition of Plato, Augustine understood this struggle on a sig

Virtue requires a moral sensitivity and an awareness regarding what is mor

Though Murdock identifies as a Catholic and is influenced by Catholic teach