JKR, JRRT, & JC

[Amy Z]

David wrote:

I think the Ainulindale, while at one level giving a 
> semi-gnostic account of creation (the world is made by angels doing 
> God's bidding - in full gnosticism IIRC the world is a creation of 
> the devil to trap human spirits in flesh), at another it IMO 
betrays 
> the essentially Christian influence on Tolkien's thought by 
> ultimately ascribing everything, good and evil, back to a single 
> creator who reserves the sovereign right to intervene directly 

<snip>

> So Christians can 'feel at home' when reading these works.

Yes, this is very true.  I'm just surprised that people who don't let 
their children trick-or-treat because Halloween has Pagan roots don't 
get up in arms about a cosmology that has such pagan overtones.  
Maybe they aren't the same people.

David wrote:

> There is no hint of a creator 
> or guiding hand in history, e.g. that Harry was 'meant' to get the 
> Philosopher's Stone - quite the reverse, in fact, with choice alone 
> being the crucial element in events.  E.g Dumbledore's explanation 
> to Harry that if Voldemort is resisted in every generation but not 
> destroyed that would be good enough will not stack up easily 
against 
> the Christian's stories of evil finally and necessarily being 
> destroyed.  It smacks of a secular outlook, IMO, when seen from a 
> theistic POV.

I agree, except to nitpick the word "secular."  As someone who 
believes the secular and sacred are all but impossible to pick apart, 
or even the same thing (depends what day you catch me on), I would 
say that this belief of Dumbledore's is highly religious.

David wrote:

> Finally, I wonder if there are problems particularly for American 
> Christians.  

Yes, I think there are, because of the particular strain of 
Christianity that has been thriving here the past few decades.  More 
on that in a bit.

David again:

> ('he who is not 
> for me is against me' - Dubya wasn't the first to say this), 

<stunned look>  He wasn't?

I wrote:

> > Christians believe that kashrut and 
> > Shabbat-observance and circumcision have been pre-empted by New 
> > Testament revelation (the logic with the latter, at least, being 
> that 
> > Paul is more authoritative than the author of Leviticus, I guess) 

David wrote:
 
> FWIW (while Christians may differ among themselves) IMO the classic 
> logic is that Jesus *is* the same authority that wrote Leviticus; 
> that Paul was making explicit what was implicit in Jesus (or even 
> applying what was explicit); that what Jesus did was not revocation 
> but revelation.

Growing up Jewish, I always thought it was a bit convenient that all 
of these new revelations meant that Christians could stay intact, go 
shopping on Saturday, and eat shrimp scampi.  ;-)

Seriously, yes, I realize that the idea is that they're the same 
authority.  <steers delicately away from one of her favorite 
subjects, authorship of the Bible, as it attracts flames like nothing 
else short of lighter fluid>  It does introduce the all-important 
notion that not every command in the Bible is to be taken literally 
and authoritatively.  I certainly see the logic of crossing out only 
those laws that later testaments specifically abrogate.*

So, does the NT abrogate that pesky OT verse about executing 
Hermione?  While Jesus didn't say anything about witches, so I 
suppose the OT verse stands, his radical mercy towards sinners (e.g. 
the woman taken in adultery) does plant the idea that his followers 
ought perhaps to focus their spiritual energy on practicing this 
mercy rather than rooting out HP fanhood.

Which is another Christian pro-HP argument I've read.  It's a 
lukewarm endorsement, to be sure, but it goes something like this:  
Yes, HP is problematic for Christians, but folks, let's focus on the 
really big problems, like _________ (fill in the blank with your 
favorite scourge:  poverty, war, homosexuality, low church 
attendance**).

I wrote:

> >Can anyone point us to an explanatory article, or explain it
> >themselves?

Terry wrote:

>Very sorry--I can't find that article I referenced earlier. 

I'm the one who should apologize--I had missed your post giving 
exactly the reference I was asking for.  Your summary was great, 
thanks.

Terry wrote:

> In LOTR only the wizards and Tom Bombadil do what we would call 
magic, and 
> Tom Bombadil is clearly not human.  He doesn't seem to have a 
Biblical 
> parallel, either--I've never figured out exactly what his function 
is.  But 
> Gandalf and Saruman are "wizards"--really Istari, sort of guardian 
angels.  
> They are not human, either, and the powers they have are not "magic 
powers", 
> but abilities that Eru created them with.  The hobbits and humans 
are even 
> sometimes uneasy about the "magic" that Gandalf does.
> 
> The point being that (according to this author) Tolkien clearly 
intended to 
> convey that magic is something humans should not have anything to 
do with 
> personally, because it was not intended for us.  

Excellent point.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  I'm sure there 
must be people who are a bit nervous about the fact that the books 
don't convey a "Gandalf, and therefore magic, is sent by God" message 
clearly enough, just the same, but I can see how the role of magic is 
much more palatable than in HP.

I think of Bombadil as a sort of Father Nature--the embodiment of 
Nature's power.  Oops, that sounds kind of Pagan again.

Terry wrote:

> Oh, I dunno..."Wizard" = "wise man"--the wise men who travelled to 
see Jesus 
> are sometimes translated as "magicians" or "mages"--same root word, 
isn't 
> it?  And doesn't "mage" mean "teacher" or "authority figure" as in 
> "magistrate"?  If you saw an angelic being who clearly had great 
knowledge, 
> mightn't you call him a wise man, or in vernacular, a wizard?

Of course!  But again, there is a very simplistic interpretation in 
some popular Christianity:  magic, wizard = witchcraft = bad.  Just 
try to tell most American fundamentalist Christians that Wicca is 
about healing, living in harmony with all things,  and praising the 
spiritual realm, and see how far you get.  Wicca =must= be bad 
because it gives a positive valuation to the 
words "magic," "witches," and "witchcraft."  The insistence by Wiccas 
that they share the basic Christian values is too often interpreted 
as one of the snares of the devil, and the possibility that what they 
practice the witchcraft condemned by the Bible is dismissed because 
of the magic ;-) words.

Clearly there are very thoughtful people distinguishing more 
carefully, some of whom come to the conclusion that LOTR is consonant 
with Christianity while HP is not.  This makes a lot more sense to me 
now, thanks.

Terry wrote:

>she evidently did not believe me when I warned her that she was 
> marrying the incarnation of evil...she claimed that that was not 
possible, 
> as she'd just divorced the incarnation of evil. :)

LOL!

A. Vulgarweed wrote:

>That is the moment of Tolkien's
> treacherous genius as well.

I just had to quote this line because it was so terrific.

A. Vulgarweed wrote:

> For
> all the magic in JKR's world, there's very little that's actually
> *supernatural*: magic is treated as just another force of nature, 
that
> obeys its own laws like gravity. We see ghosts, but no gods or 
angels or
> demons - just a whole other _ecological system_ the Muggles don't 
know
> about. Why do those with an eye to avoiding on basis of faith see 
this as
> _more_ threatening, rather than less? Is it creeping secular-
humanism? That
> would seem to directly contradict avoiding them on basis of magic,
> something secular humanists notoriously don't believe in.

Interesting point.  I think both arguments appear in Christian 
worries about HP:  that the books are too supernatural or not 
supernatural enough.  The one attacks Pagans, the other humanists.  
You can make either one stick.

To play Christian's Advocate here <g>, I think you can combine the 
two to make a sharp (from a certain Christian POV) criticism of HP:  
magic is real but belongs in the realm of the divine alone, and the 
books portray it as something a bunch of snot-nosed adolescents can 
do by mixing potions and waving wands.  The article Terry summarized 
gets at this also.  I believe the same argument has been made before 
on the main list, not necessarily about HP, but about the idea that 
magic can be good but only if it comes from God--Koinonia, are you 
there?

A. Vulgarweed wrote re: Voldemort:

>(In Tolkien's world he'd be, _at best_ something like a Nazgul.) 

LOL!

Amy Z
not Christian, not Pentacostal, but obsessed about religion and HP, 
oh my yes

*However, there is a very strong naive streak among many of the rank 
and file of American fundamentalists (less so among leaders, who 
understand and incorporate Biblical scholarship such as linguistics 
and archaeology--and of course nonexistent on this list <g>) that you 
read your NIV Bible the way you'd read, say, a nice, clearly-written 
legal contract, and whatever it says is the simple truth of what you 
should do.  No nuances of language, no weighing one verse against 
another, certainly no asking whether the laws governing the civic 
life of a nomadic tribe of three thousand years ago were ever meant 
to instruct 21st-century Americans in their religious obligations.  
Whereas IMO, language is inherently complex, culture-based, and 
impossible to pin down, so that even those whose spiritual source is 
a literal reading of the Bible =must= interpret and weigh statements.

**I know, I know, Americans are among the most church-going people in 
the world.  But it's still a major sore spot with evangelicals, who 
understandably don't consider anything less than 100% attendance 
satisfactory.