Christian Forgiveness and Snape (was Would Harry forgiving )

[lupinlore]

No: HPFGUIDX 164125

> Alla:
>
> Oh, I think I got the problem, maybe. I do not understand how one
> excludes another. I mean, if Snape is evil or less than good, yes,
> the story is about Harry being right about Snape's nature, but who
> says that story is **only** about Harry being right about Snape
> nature?


The question of Snape's "nature" figures very strongly into the whole
forgiveness angle in any number of ways.  I think in many ways it
turns on a couple of questions: 1) is this a story about forgiveness,
and 2) is this a story with distinct Christian overtones to that
forgiveness?

Forgiveness means many things to many people, I guess, but if this
story does have overtones of Christian forgiveness then we start
narrowing things down quite a bit.  A lot of the problem with various
Snape theories is that they fly in the face of Christian forgiveness
by essentially mounting a case for the defence:  i.e. arguing that
Snape really isn't in the wrong.

Now, if Snape isn't in the wrong it's hard to say that this is a
story about forgiveness -- rather that it's a story about truth.  And
certainly at that point anything specifically Christian in the theme
disappears.  Recognizing that one has been wrong and correcting one's
attitudes is a story that could be told from the standpoint of Roman
Stoicism, Aristotelian ethics, or ancient Egyptian paganism.  There
is nothing specifically Christian about it.

So, if Snape isn't in the wrong any forgiveness offered him would be
1) possibly not foregiveness at all, but simply recognition of an
existing set of circumstances, which is something else entirely, and
2) not specifically Christian in any way.  If Snape IS in some major
sense in the wrong (pick your theory as to how), and IS in some major
sense still carrying a major load of guilt (in the sense of an
objective stain rather than anything he might feel), then the
Christian themes reappear.  Indeed, the more clearly in the wrong
Snape is, and the more deeply stained and unredeemed, then the more
powerful the themes are.

<Shrug.>  I don't know.  But there seems to be a consensus that we
will be seeing strong reflections of JKR's Christianity in the
finale -- and she herself has seemed to say as much -- and if that is
so, then the more guilty the Snapey-poo, the more clear the religion.


Lupinlore, who doesn't see Snapey-poo, in his "true nature," so much
as a black sheep as a black dung beetle with a bat fixation