A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

New “Noah” Movie attacks Christian Faith with gnostic heresies, Jewish sorcery April 7, 2014

I have little use for anything Hollywood puts on the big screen anymore.  The vast majority of it is either outward leftist agitprop or comic book pulp.  So I never had much interest in seeing this Noah movie. But I was still pretty surprised that it got a number of positive reviews from Catholic and other Christian reviewers.  I read a few of those reviews and came away feeling the reviewers were really bending over backwards to support something unsupportable. I also came away thinking…….there is something really, really wrong with this movie.

Well, a local priest shared with me over the weekend what the problem is – the movie is a veritable evangelization piece for gnostic heresies and Jewish Kaballah sorcery (black magic), packaged as entertainment. One theologian just absolutely lambasted positive Christian reviewers, including some protestant theologians, for failing to pick up on the extremely overt gnostic and kabbalist (word creation?) elements.

In brief, this movie is a very clever attempt at undermining the faith of potentially millions of viewers by performing a massive misdirect, getting people to think (and attempt to explain away) the movie as being based on the Christian Bible, when it in fact derives its source material from gnosticism and kaballist heresies. For those that don’t know, Kaballah is basically Jewish black magic, and its enjoyed quite a resurgence of late.  Gnosticism was an early and very persistent heresy of Christianity, which posited that the material (or flesh) was bad, and that the “spirit” was good.  Gnostics – who had an infinite variety – viewed the Christian God as a low-level deity that didn’t understand the spiritual world at all, and mired man in corrupting flesh out of spite.  Since the flesh doesn’t matter, gnostics and derived heresies (Manicheanism, the Cathars, new age) generally develop really wacked out sexual immoralities, in addition to having a completely, totally anti-Christian vision of theology and the nature of God.

The kabbalist and gnostic aspects of the film are apparently constant throughout and overpowering.  And the creator of this Noah film has already made a film about Kaballah, so he is steeped in these errors (even though he professes to be an atheist).  Starting with an early scene depicting Adam and Eve, things start off wrong and get worse fast.  The film shows Adam and Eve as being pure spirit initially, and the serpent is actually the goddess “Sophia” coming to bring them true spiritual wisdom.  When they listen to the serpent “(which, in gnosticism, was the right thing to do), the bad, judgmental, spiteful, hateful material “god” (our God) casts them out of the Garden and punishes them with material flesh (for a weak, lower level deity, God sure seems to have a lot of power) because Adam and Eve gained some spiritual knowledge superior to his own.

Some of the other, more egregious problems (many spoilers, but you weren’t going to see it anyways):

• the film shows “fallen angels” (that is, demons) being “saved” and allowed to ascend to Heaven or whatever for their help in wiping out humanity. These are the weird “rock people” that have so confused reviewers.
• the evil material “god” in this film does not desire any humanity to survive, he actually wants the complete destruction of all human life, including Noah and his family. Because, environmentalism.
• And, yes, the entire film screens like a masturbatory fantasy of a true die hard environmentalist zealout, where “nature” is pristine and good and man is irredeemably bad.
• There is a scene where Noah, carrying out the bad, materialist “god’s” wishes, goes to kill his grandchildren and is seen threatening them with a knife.  This scene was most disturbing to some people I met who had unfortunately seen the movie.
• Noah finally overcomes the will of the bad god by embracing the “wisdom” of the serpent, sparing his grandchildren and carrying on human life. There is a scene that makes this plain.

There are numerous other scandals and heresies, but you get the point.

As this theologian notes, the biggest scandal is that so many Christians fell for this garbage and tried to find Christian interpretations for all these weird, inexplicable elements, which were actually gnostic heresies or kaballist fantasies:

The scandal is this: of all the Christian leaders who went to great lengths to endorse this movie (for whatever reasons: “it’s a conversation starter,” “at least Hollywood is doing something on the Bible,” etc.), and all of the Christian leaders who panned it for “not following the Bible”…

Not one of them could identify a blatantly Gnostic subversion of the biblical story when it was right in front of their faces.

I believe Aronofsky did it as an experiment to make fools of us: “You are so ignorant that I can put Noah (granted, it’s Russell Crowe!) up on the big screen and portray him literally as the ‘seed of the Serpent’ and you all will watch my studio’s screening and endorse it.”

He’s having quite the laugh. And shame on everyone who bought it.

Another reviewer notes that the producer, Darren Aronofsky, seems to have made this film in an attempt to lure souls away from the Faith or to at least corrupt their understanding of it.  It is thus blasphemous and sinister.

I think we Christians are going to have to get over being liked or “relevant” to the self-anointed elites in this culture. We can and must pray and work for their conversion, but engaging in debates on their terms is at this point a lost cause.  Falling over backwards to explain away blatantly problematic films like this seems a losing proposition.  I think we need to assert our rights and the Truth Christ has revealed more boldly and stridently, and cease seeking accommodation with those whose hatred of Christianity is most visible.

Oh, but what did the USCCB think?  They gave a rather contradictory review, noting problems, but never saying outright “avoid this film at all costs.”  The reviewer also failed to pick up on the deliberately dangerous, heretical elements.  They basically say kids shouldn’t see it, but adults might find some value in it. I can’t imagine what that would be.

Finally, I have to note how gnosticism informs and undergirds the entire “new age” false religion.  Gnosticism was always a religion of self-anointed elites, the same kind of people who dominate our society today. It was also a religion that posited secret, hidden knowledge as the key to salvation. Thus, the “elect” were a tiny, self-absorbed set.  Correlations to new age should be clear, as new age encourages turning inward and finding “the god within.”  It is a scandal of massive proportions that many religious, especially female, have fallen into this literal worship of self and serve as eager acolytes to confused, spiritually-starved Catholics, especially women of a certain age. It was one such religious giving a new age “Lenten retreat” in the Dallas Diocese that sparked the creation of this blog.

I didn’t look around to see if there were problematic retreats given this year.  Perhaps there were, but our involvement in parishes with the Novus Ordo Mass is essentially over, so I haven’t had the motivation to look.

To the extent this movie might encourage some already profoundly confused Catholics who have fallen into new age practices to fall still further, it is especially dangerous.  But overall, Catholics should never willingly expose themselves to heresy.  So, stay away from this movie.  I have seen so far nothing to recommend it to the faithful Catholic.