The Nines- A Quick Theological Overview

The Doc offered a review of the 2007 Ryan Reynolds’ film The Nines several months ago and mentioned briefly that I should watch it and comment on the theology found within it. What follows is my thoughts on the theological notions that are employed by the filmmakers.
Let me say at the outside that, while I have some knowledge in both philosophy of religion and contemporary theology, neither are my primary area of education (that would be Old Testament, for those of you keeping score at home). SPOILER ALERT: Everything that follows will allude to the “mystery” of this film so, if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.

Part of what makes this film difficult is that it establishes that Ryan Reynolds character is not God (or a god), but a divine being. Since he’s given the name Gabriel in his last iteration, we can assume that he is some sort of angelic creature. In the Bible, Gabriel is actually only mentioned a couple of times, but he/she has an expanded role in a number of extra-canonical works and is important in Jewish and Islamic traditions, so it’s possible that some of these roles see Gabriel as a helper in the creation process, but I’m not aware of any. I say that Ryan’s identification as Gabriel is difficult because the theology that The Nines deals with all relates to God and not to angels.

That said, the film is drawing on a number of theological notions, some of them unrelated to each other. One of the most important has to do with a school of thought called Process Theology. This type of theology, still fashionable in the U.S., but largely out of vogue in Europe, is based on the philosophical writings of a guy named Whitehead. What they basically believe is that the universe and God are both always in process with each other. God is not all-powerful in the usual since of the word, but interacts with creation and is affected by creation (God can change in this understanding, although his basic nature does not change). This plays out in this film in the following way: One of Whitehead’s notions is that “eternal life” only occurs in that we are caught up in the memory of God, or we live on in God’s memories of our existence. In the film they ask Reynolds not to forget about them or they will cease to exist. Process thought is also seen in this film in that Reynolds is affected by the world around him and his decisions are based partially on the wishes and hopes of humans in the film.

A second theological notion seen in this film is the idea that we all only exist in the mind of God. This is at the edge of my knowledge, but the basic notion is a simple one: that all that we call reality is a projection of God’s mind and, if he ceased to conceive of it, it would cease to exist. Again, this is alluded to in the area I mentioned above in which Ryan considers whether or not he’s forgotten about some of the world’s he created and, in so doing, murdered all their inhabitants.
A third notion in this film is the notion that we are living in the “Best of all possible worlds.” This idea is an attempt to understand how this world can contain so much pain yet be created by a God that people consider to be “good”, loving, all-powerful and all-knowing. There have been a number of versions and additions to this basic line of thinking, but the most most widely held, as I understand it, is as follows: That a world with freedom of choice, even choice in moral issues, is inherently better than a world in which there are no such choices. If moral agents are given freedom of choice, some of them will choose to do wrong or cause pain. However, if God intercedes every time this happens to stop the pain, there really is no true freedom of choice, or at least not the freedom to make choices that have any consequences. Therefore the world that we live in is (potentially) the best of all possible worlds and is inherently better than a world that is devoid of both pain and freedom of choice. I’ve always felt like this argument actually only proves that it’s possible that a good, loving, all-powerful and all-knowing God could create a world containing so much pain, but to say that it’s the best of all possible worlds continues to be a faith statement. Since we don’t know all possible worlds, we have to assume that God does and decided on this one.

I’m fairly certain that there are a number of other issues that are alluded to or brought up in this film, but these are the ones that I caught and remember after my initial viewing. In the end the film really seems to be interested in sprinting through these issues and taking them as far as is easy and convenient, without really truly exploring what any of them actually mean for human existence of God.