DEUS EX MACHINA

Hitler and Riefenstahl

The Latin phrase deus ex machina comes to English usage from Horace's Ars Poetica, where he instructs poets that they must never resort to a god from the machine to solve their plots. He refers to the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a crane was used to lower actors playing gods onto the stage. The machine referred to in the phrase could be either the crane employed in the task, a calque from the Greek "god from the machine" (ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός, apò mēkhanḗs theós), or the riser that brought a god up from a trap door. The idea is that the device of said god is entirely artificial or conceived by man. (description from Wikipedia)
In the image above, Leni Riefenstahl stands next to Adolph Hitler. She obtained both fame and infamy with her production of Triumph of the Will, a propaganda documentary of the rise of Hitler to power in Germany during the 1930s. She opens the film with a German airplane aloft in the sky. Camera shots from the windows show them gliding amongst the billowed clouds. A view which few people would have experienced in the early 30s. The plane then descends, lands and out steps Hitler in Deus ex Machina fashion as if just descending from Valhalla. Appearing as ready to rescue the Germanic peoples from their convoluted plight.
In our reading from the Life of Meaning this week Orthodox Rabbi Irving Greenberg confronts the horrific reality of infants being burned to death in the Holocaust and how could a God allow such?
As Jacob wrestling with the angel, the rabbi comes to let go of a God or Messiah that resembles the Deus ex Machina conception and looks for a God who grieves with us as well. A God that we are in partnership.
What does this mean to being in Covenant with God?
What does Greenberg have to say about the line between faith and doubt?
What is a moloch? Why do we so often seem to confuse them with Messiahs?
What type of Messiah does Greenberg wish for us?

Walter Morton for Terra Incognita