Does Noah avoid mentioning God?
This is the silliest controversy around the film.
God is a constant presence in Noah. Noah’s visions of the flood and the ark, the gathering of the animals, the flood itself and the rainbow are all from God. God’s existence is taken for granted by everyone, even the villain.
The sole issue, if you can call it that, is that characters in Noah generally speak, not of “God,” but of “the Creator.” It’s hard to imagine anyone considering this controversial or problematic, but for some reason the claim that “God is never mentioned” in the film refuses to die — even though the Creator actually is referred to as “God” at least once, when Ham tells Tubal-cain, “My father says there can be no king; the Creator is God.”
Why call God “the Creator”? For several reasons. A slightly less familiar term helps create a sense of a bygone era, a cultural world remote from our own. When Christians (and Jews) hear “God,” they can hardly help thinking of the Lord who called Abraham and chose Israel, who delivered his people from Egypt, and so on. Noah’s God hasn’t done any of those things. Using a less familiar term for him helps us appreciate this. It also helps nonbelievers watching the film to prescind from their own views and enter the worldview of the characters.
Calling God “the Creator” emphasizes God’s identity as the maker of all things, an especially noteworthy emphasis so close to the time of creation. It highlights that God is not just a big boss in the sky, but the One on whom all that is depends for its existence.
Finally, my friend Peter Chattaway reminds us (in a blog post on this very question) that, in Jewish piety, not only is the divine Name never spoken — with circumlocutions like “the Lord” or even “The Name” (Adonai, HaShem) used instead — the very word “God” is sometimes written “G-d” out of respect. Noah’s general avoidance of “God” can thus be seen as convergent with Jewish piety (particularly given Aronofsky’s Jewish background).
