Part IV: Man

• Satan has vowed to avenge himself against God by destroying God’s Creation, and though he might be delighted to destroy any aspect of Creation, he particularly delights in corrupting man. “Your adversary the devil,” Peter said, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him” (I Pet. 5:8-9a). Peter was writing to Jewish Christians (“elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”) and probably pagan converts as well, but the situation he explains is not unique to them. “Resist him, firm in your faith,” he continues, “knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (5:9) and, arguably, throughout time as well, as the ancient conflict resounds through the centuries and ultimately to the edge of Doom.

• If in an allegorical sense Batman represents Christ and the Joker represents Satan, who, then, represents Man? Though the citizens of Gotham City display biblically accurate portrayals of Man, humankind is primarily represented in The Dark Knight through Harvey Dent, the newly elected district attorney in Gotham City. The story of Harvey Dent is best approached chronologically. When we first meet Dent, he is giving a news conference which references his desire to bring the criminal element of the city under control. He then retires to a meeting with Lt. Gordon in which the audience learns that Gordon, unlike Dent, knows the identity of the Batman. As time passes, mob violence continues to spiral in the city, and though the audience knows full well the level of Evil the Batman is fighting, the citizens think he fights only “against flesh and blood,” which in their mind amounts to a more limited evil, what we typically call crime. The citizens express their dismay that the Batman is not producing the results they desire as fast as they would like and, worse, that the level of violence has been ratcheted up. This aspect of Man’s character is summed up well in the complaint of Habakkuk:
• O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?
• Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save?
• Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong?
• Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.
• So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.
• For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted (1:2-8).

• Upset and fearful, the citizens put pressure on Dent to expose the Batman, on whom they wish to place blame; the theater audience, however, knows that the real reason for the increase in violence has been the introduction of the Joker into the equation. Though Dent does not know the identity of the Batman, he has come to trust him, primarily by learning to trust his girlfriend, Rachel, and fellow city employee, Lt. Gordon, both of whom vouch for the sincerity of the Batman.

• Thus, at a news conference organized to call for the Batman to reveal himself and answer to the citizens for what they perceive as his limitations, Dent, martyr-like, says to the crowd and the television camera, “I am the Batman.” He allows himself to be handcuffed and led off in much the same way that Paul willingly submitted to imprisonment in the cause of Christ.

• Though it would not be correct to say that Paul ever claimed, “I am the Christ,” there is evidence that he accepted imprisonment in Christ’s name. This story is recorded in Acts 16, where Luke writes that Paul and Silas were once jailed for driving a demon out of a girl by calling upon the name of Jesus. The power of Jesus being incorrectly attributed to Paul and Silas, the two were arrested and imprisoned. They accepted their confinement without complaint, even remaining in jail voluntarily when they could have escaped after an earthquake brought the jail walls down around them (Acts 16:25-28). Thus, like Paul and Silas, Dent accepts the misplaced condemnation of the citizens and is led off willingly to jail.

• Secondly, Harvey Dent can be said to represent what people of the Middle Ages called Everyman in that, like all human beings, Dent has a fallen nature, which gives him the propensity to sin and the ability to turn against God. In short, Dent is capable of both good and evil, a capacity which can be traced back to the Garden where the Man and the Woman were told by the Deceiver to go ahead and eat the forbidden fruit. “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). The idea that Man has two faces (good and evil) is clearly stated in the movie. Early in the movie, we find that Dent, in his role as “Gotham City’s white knight,” often “makes his own luck” by flipping a coin to see which choice he should make. We eventually learn that his coin has two heads (two faces, if you will).

• In his role as the white knight, both of the faces represent Dent’s goodness. The coin does not have a side that might be called “tails.” But later in the movie, as a result of the explosion caused by the Joker, one of the faces of the coin becomes so scratched up that it is clearly different from the side of the coin that represents “heads.” The change in the coin parallels the physical and spiritual change in Harvey Dent, a change which emerges from the most horrific event of the film.

• Here is how it plays out: Set free from arrest through the agency of the Batman, Dent is driven off supposedly to meet Rachel. However, we later learn that the Joker has arranged for both Dent and Rachel to be driven off by officers whom he has corrupted into his service. The two are isolated from each other and tied to barrels of oil which will ignite upon the Joker’s signal. They manage by means of cell phone to communicate with each other at which time the audience learns that only one of them will be saved. Naturally assuming that Batman will come to the rescue of Rachel (a modern-day damsel in distress), Dent decides to take his fate into his own hands. Attempting to escape, Dent tips his chair over, spilling a barrel of oil as well. As the oil leaks out, Dent’s body and face become completely soaked. Therefore, when Batman does arrive to save him, an explosion is triggered, and the left side of Dent’s face, now soaked in gasoline, burns almost completely away. As he lies in the hospital, he reminds Lt. Gordon that the officers in the precinct used to call him by the nickname Harvey Two-Face. At this point in time, he most certainly is “two-faced.” So what does it mean, Scripturally speaking, to be a Harvey Two-Face? The two faces of man are expressed in Scripture as the image of God and the image of “the man of dust” (1 Cor. 15:49). At the moment of humankind’s Creation, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). In this way, humans have at least a reflection of glory, specifically the glory of the Creator who spoke them into existence. But after the fall, Man received the curse of Adam, the man of dust: “[F]or you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 1:19b).

• These, then, are the two faces of Harvey Dent—one of God, one of Adam. These are the two faces of Everyman. In his fallen state, Man, try as he might, is not able to rid himself of Satan’s grip. He is saved only by the grace of God. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul wrote. “And this is not your own doing: it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). Still, Harvey tries to set things aright himself—first, in the warehouse where he tries to outwit the Joker by escaping, later in the hospital where he buys into the world-view of the Joker.

• It is worth noticing before moving on that it is the Satan-figure, not the Christ-figure, who offers a sort of salvation by works. In his move against the mob, he has brought two mobsters to their knees. He breaks a pool cue in half. Cajoling them to join his team, he says he only has an opening for one of them. “So we’re gonna have try-outs,” he says, throwing each of them one part of the cue. Though the camera cuts away, we assume that the two fought to the death of one of them. This helps us understand why God avoids a works-based plan for salvation. Not only boasting, but mayhem could result—an outcome more suited for Satan and his gang of thugs.

• The other scene in which Harvey tries to take things into his own hands is the hospital scene, which is actually set up quite early in the movie when Harvey says, “You either die young, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”—prophetic words indeed as Dent himself becomes the villain after he is visited in the hospital by the Joker. In that hospital scene, the Joker turns Dent by persuading him that the people he serves are not worthy of his sacrifice. “They need you now,” he observes, “but when they don’t, they’ll kick you out. These ‘civilized’ people will eat each other. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”

• And so Dent accepts the Joker’s dog-eat-dog interpretation of the world and sets out to exact vengeance on Lt. Gordon, whom he blames for Rachel’s death. But let us not forget the major premise of any argument involving Satan: he is a liar and the father of lies. Thus we see that the dog-eat-dog interpretation of Man is not completely borne out in the movie. The condemned prisoners in one ferry do not pull the trigger on the uncondemned in the other ferry. Likewise, the uncondemned do not pull the trigger on the condemned. In an unexpected act of restraint, both disappoint the Joker, calling up the reflected glory of God in whose image they were created. However, unlike the passengers on the ferries, Harvey has bought the lie. In his effort to exact revenge on Lt. Gordon, whom he blames for the death of Rachel and for his own disfigurement, he kills five people, including himself. He is a dog who eats dogs: Detective Wuertz, Maroni’s driver, Maroni (in the accident that results from the death of the driver), another “cop” (perhaps Ramirez?), and himself (though I hasten to add that many speculate Two-Face will rise anew in a subsequent movie). He is, in the end, unable to effect his plan, for he has decided to depend on himself, not on a higher authority. As Paul might explain it, he has not crucified his “old self” (Romans 6:6); he decides to go it alone—and, of course, does not succeed.

• Though Harvey Dent is the primary representative of Man in the story, other characters reveal behavior typical of the human race. One common feature of everyday life is that, if they think about him at all, people tend to minimize the power of Satan. Many do not even consider Satan as a player in the events of their lives. This sentiment was expressed in the movie The Usual Suspects in this famous line: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.” We see this idea played out in The Dark Knight in the character of the mob boss, Salvatore Maroni, or “Sali,” as he is called in the movie. Realizing that some of his gangsters have become alarmed at the Joker’s activity, Maroni minimizes the threat posed by the Joker, telling his men, “He’s a nobody.”

• However, as the movie progresses, even the mob boss comes to realize that the success of the police in capturing the Joker is more important to him than his own conflicts with the police. Thus it is that he is willing to tell Lt. Gordon where the Joker and his men are holed up. What causes a mobster like Sali to regard the police as an ally for a change? Normally this switch in alliance is effected by a life crisis of some kind. In literature and film, the antagonist has some kind of encounter with the protagonist, in which the protagonist is shown convincingly to be superior. A playground bully, for example, is sometimes forced to back down when a “regular kid,” so to speak, finally gets the courage to stand up to him, perhaps just by sticking up for someone verbally, perhaps by a tussle in the playground after school. The result is that the bully backs down and no longer poses a threat. In the movie, Sal Maroni represents this playground bully.

• In one key scene, Maroni is engaged in a confrontation with the Batman on an overhang one or two storeys above ground. To prove his point, Batman lets go of Maroni, who then tumbles to the street, his fall broken by an awning. Batman’s one rule is that he will not kill anyone, and certainly he would have realized that a drop of but one storey with an awning, to boot, would not cause death. Some reviewers have wondered why it is that the protagonist (Batman) would be guilty of such an attack, but the Batman’s decision to drop Sali is not at all surprising if one recalls that the God of wrath who is depicted in the Old Testament is still a God of wrath in the New Testament. It is easy for those who know what Jesus did on the Cross to forget that God’s nature as a God of wrath has not changed toward the unbeliever. In Psalm 110, the psalmist says, “He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses” (v. 6a). From Jeremiah we learn that the Lord, angered at King Zedekiah and his followers, intoned, “I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a reproach, a byword, a taunt, and a curse in all the places where I shall drive them. And I will send sword, famine, and pestilence upon them, until they shall be utterly destroyed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers” (24:9-10). God is not a candidate for political office who kisses babies and glad-hands potential voters. He is a jealous God, full of wrath for those who devote themselves to Satan. And Batman’s attack on Sali is best understood in this way.

• Christian author and editor Matt Kauffman may have missed the point in his commentary on the movie when, after discussing the evil acts of the Joker, he added, “And then there's Batman himself, who crosses ever more ethical lines in his drive to stop the Joker. He won't kill, but he’ll do almost anything else to achieve his goals. He throws a mobster off a ledge, purposely breaking his legs.” If the character called Batman in the movie is just a man in a souped-up costume, then, yes, it would be logical to conclude that the protagonist had placed himself in a morally precarious position. However, if one views the Batman as a symbol of the Christ, a more likely interpretation of this scene would grow out of 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says that God caused Jesus “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” [emphasis mine].

• It is important to note here that I do not argue that the man Bruce Wayne can take on anyone else’s sin. I merely argue that, viewing the movie allegorically, we see that this scene echoes Paul’s explanation of what Jesus became for our sake. This perception is underscored by Bruce Wayne’s earlier statement, “I’ve seen what I have to become to defeat the Joker, and I can’t do that.” Does the statement, “I can’t do that” negate the symbolism of Bruce Wayne as the Christ-figure? No, because even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane cried out to God to “remove this cup from me” (Mark 36:6).

• Though some may turn to the Tarot cards and others to the Tao to find the answers to life’s greatest mysteries, a true understanding, one which accounts for all loose ends, is found in Scripture. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” the skeptic asks. Can something so weighed down with centuries of saccharine treatments teach us anything about pure evil, let alone crush it? The answer, it turns out, is yes. It is in the writings of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Paul, Peter, and John—as well as in the direct teachings of Jesus—that the conflict portrayed in The Dark Knight is best understood. It is the age-old conflict between God and Satan that informs the movie and helps us to see that the red-costumed devil of the Saturday morning cartoons is not the force of evil in the cosmos. To understand that level of evil, we must view Christopher and John Nolan’s perception of evil as they wrote it and actor Heath Ledger portrayed it in The Dark Knight—unresponsive to reason, unfocused, unrelenting, and unconquerable by mere human strength.

• Whether the Nolans intended to make a clear exposition of the gospel message in this film or not, they did so. After all, as C. S. Lewis says, a teaching that is the truest of true things in the universe will show up in all philosophies. The New Age authors may try to account for an isolated feature here and there, but to understand what is going on in this movie, one must turn to the Bible. In 152 minutes of film, those who now look through the glass darkly will be able to see the truth about good and evil that blazes from Scripture.