DeConick A.D

108
PAUL AND GNOSTIC DOGMA
Figure 4.1 Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino) meets Metatron in Dogma (1999).
In the 1999 comic farce Dogma , screenwriter and film director Kevin
Smith sets before us the iconic tale of a nonbeliever confronted with an
experience so overwhelming that life is never the same afterward. We
travel along with Bethany, the woman who has declared both her faith
and God dead, as she takes up Metatron’s charge, which involves her in a
holy crusade. She is to travel to New Jersey and stop a couple of renegade
angels from entering a church.
Metatron explains to Bethany that the renegades, Loki and Bartleby,
have been banished from heaven for all eternity. Loki, the angel of death,
meted out God’s judgment and wrath in the old days, when God was
vengeful, but after setting the tenth plague on the Egyptians, Loki quit
his job. He was convinced by his Watcher friend, Bartleby, that killing in
God’s name was a bum deal.
After suffering thousands of years of exile in Wisconsin as God’s punishment,
Bartleby thinks that he has found a loophole in Catholic dogma that
will force God to take them back into heaven. If they cut off their wings
and enter the church as mortals, God will have to forgive their sins and
take them back. However, there are consequences to their actions. When
God admits them to heaven, God will be proven wrong and creation will
cease to exist. Bethany’s mission is to foil their plan and prevent this.
The next day, reluctantly, Bethany packs up and heads for New Jersey,
feeling that her life has been violated, that it is no longer completely hers.
Yesterday she didn’t believe God even existed. She was a rogue Catholic