Adjustment Bureau Theology

The classic questions of God’s plans and human free will take center stage in The Adjustment Bureau, a movie now in theaters starring Matt Damon. The conclusion leans heavily toward an open theist view of how God and creatures interact in light of a yet-to-be-settled future.

Storyline

The Adjustment Bureau centers on politician David Norris (Matt Damon) who accidentally stumbles into agents (angels) making mental adjustments to various humans in Damon’s office. All humans but Norris are frozen, depicting the stopping of time so the adjustment can be made to change the future.

Norris flees the scene, but the agents (angels) catch him. They warn him not to tell anyone what he has witnessed. The penalty for divulging that angels intervene to change the course of history is the erasure of Norris’s brain.

But we have a problem. Norris has fallen in love with a dancer named Elise (Emily Blunt) whom he accidentally met just before giving a speech. Elise gave Norris her phone number. The angels, however, burn the number to prevent them from reuniting. Under direction from the bureau Chief (God?), the angels tell Norris that the future has been planned so that the two cannot be together.

Will Norris go after his love and spoil their potentially productive – and apparently predetermined – futures? Of course, viewers know that he will try!

Angels and God

Throughout the movie, issues of fate, chance, free will, and divine plans play prominently. Given my own interests in these areas, I was engrossed.

I instantly noted problems in the storyline for the kind of open and relational theology I find most helpful. For instance, if the agents are angels whom God asks to do projects, I wondered why an omnipresent and almighty God would need such intermediaries. Why doesn’t an omnipresent and almighty God do all this work alone? This, of course, is a classic question for any theology of angels.

Through most of the movie, I wondered how chance could play such a large role. If there are plans that have been laid and angels who carry them out, what role is there for accidents and chance? And yet the angels consistently admitted the occurrence of chance events. This question plagued me while watching the move – until the final scenes.

Movie writers offer as a possible explanation the classic compatibilist position for free will and divine action. That is, the angel tells Norris that although he thinks he chooses freely, the Chief is ultimately calling all the shots. In other words, the compatibilist position says God is in total control, even though we think we have some control. (This is not an open theist view.)

We quickly find out in the film, however, that compatibilism doesn’t represent the true nature of things.  Of course, I was happy the writers rejected this problematic solution to divine control and human “free will”. If God is in control, God is ultimately culpable for all evil events – even those we might (erroneously) think free humans caused.

The age-old problem of evil raises its head in the movie. At one point, an angel gives an explanation (which later turns out to be wrong) for why in the course of human history humans have sometimes possessed freedom and other times not.  In response, Norris makes a comment about how things aren’t so good today – despite apparent total angelic and divine control.

At another point in the film, an angel admits that things don’t always seem to be planned by the Chief to work out well. But he says something like, “We must trust the Chief. We can only see part of the plan. We don’t get the full picture.” This classic response to the problem of evil has never satisfied me. But I do agree that we can’t know all things. And I admit that mystery must play some role in answering the problem of evil.

Open Theology

The conclusion of the movie fits nicely with some core themes of open theism. For this reason alone, I recommend seeing the movie. Because of choices made by Norris and Elise, God opens up a new future of possibilities. Their free choice changes God’s script for their future. The angels are given new directives in light of creaturely free will.

There were several other aspects of the movie that I thought also promoted a general open theist perspective.

For instance, the writers depict the angels as having different motivations and emotional responses. Those angels thinking the future was fixed because the Chief had already settled it were virtual automatons. Their motivation was pure obedience. They acted joyless. They did their job without thinking much about the goodness or lack thereof of the Chief.

The angel who helped Norris and Elise fight for a future together, however, was more emotional. Viewers immediately like this angel, because he was sympathetic to the possibility of their romantic love being established. He imagined a better future, and this angel schemed with Norris about how to bring about that better future. Because the future was open, he sought a way that was both obedient to the general will of the Chief but also respected and relied up on the free choices of humans.

I also loved the little “playbooks” the angels used. Although master plans were set aside in a library, each angel carried a little playbook on the job. The book’s pages offer various diagrams and patterns, suggesting various possible routes that individual histories might take.

The ingenious part of the playbooks was the way they depicted time. Pulsing images moved across the grid of diagrams, with possible moments of significance not yet concrete. The actions of the humans determined whether these possible nodes of significance would be realized.

In my own work, I’ve used various diagrams to depict the ongoing nature of time as essential for considering free will. I wish I had something like these notebooks to use as illustrations!

I also like the idea in the movie that our choices have “ripple effects” on others. In an interrelated world, what one creatures does influences what others can do. At its best, Open theology affirms the mutual influence our choices have not only on God but on others and on our own future possibilities.

Conclusion

There is so much more to this movie than what I’ve described here. And this description comes after my seeing Adjustment Bureau one time. I plan to see it several more.

I’m sure that not everyone will like the conclusion of this movie. But for open theists, this flick comes as close as any in describing God’s flexible plans and creaturely freedom.

No movie can do full justice to all of my views of God, of course. I mean, how does a filmmaker depict an omnipresent being!?! But The Adjustment Bureau goes a long way toward sorting out the complex issues of love, freedom, God, and the future.