In late October I wrote a piece for Townhall.com on Harry Potter and Christians. I briefly discussed John Granger's response to Christians who say the Bible forbids books like Harry Potter:

John Granger, an Orthodox Christian, homeschooling father, college professor, author of Looking for God in Harry Potter, and former Potter skeptic, has put a great deal of work into researching Christian themes and symbolism in the books. For example, he draws a distinction between invocational magic, or sorcery, clearly condemned in the Bible, and incantational magic, as practiced in the books. His site, HogwartsProfessor.com, is a treasure trove of Harry Potter-related information written from a Christian perspective.

“Objections to the magic in Harry Potter…mistake the edifying use of magic in literature for actual invocational sorcery condemned by Scripture which it clearly is not,” he said. Granger even claims that Harry Potter is “Christian fiction.” According to Granger, J.K. Rowling is an Inkling, a group of British writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote Christian fiction. He argues that this “marks her as a writer in the English traditions of writing faith edifying literature, what is often called ‘baptizing the imagination’ or ‘smuggling the gospel.’”

Invocational and incantational distinctions aside, one can make a compelling case that all forms of magic are forbidden, but are Christians forbidden to read about it? I can't call myself a witch and be a Christian, but as I Christian, I can read fictional stories about witches.

Continue reading 'Magic' in Harry Potter and Narnia

"[He] sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men. He also selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was — that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.

Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

Continue reading Liar, Lord, or Lunatic

Atonement and Redemption

"Is Williams' redemption complete and sincere, or is it just a hollow promise?" Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption." - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

Non-Christians are quick to reference Christ's forgiveness of the thief on the cross as a reason to spare the lives of condemned murderers.

There was a written notice above him, which read:|sc THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!"

But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong."

Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." (Luke 23: 38-43)

The thief on the cross was killed for his crimes in accordance with Roman law, but he was pardoned spiritually according to the law of God. While his physical body was condemned, his soul was released from eternal damnation.

As usual, people unfamiliar with the Bible tend to quote, out of context, verses they once read or heard about. The text surrounding the quote is ignored or glossed over. In order for our sins to be forgiven, God requires us to atone for those sins. Salvation is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. God requires a blood sacrifice as atonement for sins. Before Christ, this was achieved by slaughtering an animal, usually an "innocent" lamb.

When Christ came, he became the sacrificial Lamb to take on the sins of those he came to save. The Old Testament ceremonial law was a sign pointing to the work of Christ. He is the "Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world," the Bible teaches.

Continue reading Atonement, Redemption, Role of Government, etc.

I stumbled upon Project Gutenberg a few years ago and considered it an ingenious idea. Project Gutenerg is a web site dedicated to providing free and royalty-free electronic books. Instead of making a trip to the library or ordering from Amazon, you can download the classics to your computer's hard drive.

The site and its creator were featured in Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

Internet giants like Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are making headlines with their rival plans to create online libraries of books. Long before those companies even existed, though, there was Project Gutenberg: an ambitious, offbeat effort to digitize classic books by typing them out by hand.

The approach made a lot of sense back in 1971, when Project Gutenberg's founder Michael Hart was a student at the University of Illinois. He enlisted an army of volunteers to help in the effort, by pulling their own dusty volumes from attic shelves and transcribing them, word for word. The electronic versions were sent to Mr. Hart, who stored them on clunky university computers. Nearly 35 years later, Project Gutenberg has put more than 17,000 so-called e-books on its Web site. It continues to add more titles each week — though most texts are now scanned rather than typed.

Excellent idea. Whatever makes it easier for people to gain access to great books is a good thing. Although Google is in the book-scanning business now, little guys like Hart are still providing a valuable and necessary service.

Related: The Death of Traditional Book Publishing

It took one fantasy flick to knock another out of the top spot.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" raked in $67.1 million in its debut weekend. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" grossed over $100 million during its weekend release and remained #1 until this weekend. The film has since earned about $244 million in North America since hitting theaters on November 18.

Interesting, if you care about that sort of thing.

I hadn't noticed Harry Potter's figurative death and resurrection scenes in Books 1-6 until I read one of John Granger's articles, probably, Harry Potter & the Alchemical Tradition in English Literature:

Harry always dies a figurative death and is saved by love in the presence of a Christological symbol. The resurrection at story’s end each year is the culmination of that year’s cycle and transformation. The cycle then closes with congratulations and explanations from the master alchemist and a return to the Dursleys for another trip through the cycle.

Alchemy is sort of a pre-chemistry idea that one could turn lead into gold by something called a philosopher's stone. As fans know, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the original name of Book 1 and still is in the UK edition.

American publisher Alfred A. Knopf didn't think American kids would read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title, so he changed it to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Of course, the word "sorcerer" is what started the Harry Potter backlash among certain Christians. The change of title led people down a completely different path than the one Rowling intended, but that's spilled milk under the bridge.

All of this is fascinating stuff, and if you want to know more, read Granger's articles on alchemy in Harry Potter.

After I read about Harry's figurative death and resurrection at the end of each book in one of Granger's articles, I saw them clearly and don't know how or why I missed them before. Travis Prinzi at Sword of Gryffindor blogs about such scenes in detail:

For years, believers in Christ have been captivated and inspired by the resurrection of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Aslan explained that it was the result of the deeper magic from before time. Lewis, of course, was not trying to portray what we might call “pagan” or “occulting” magic. He was using magic as a literary tool, communicating the power and reality of resurrection in the midst of the natural world.

J.K. Rowling has also used resurrection imagery in every one of the Harry Potter books thus far. Here is a brief summary of what we have seen:

Read the whole post.

J.K. Rowling has become such a guarded woman through the years that when she speaks publicly about her books, it's a big deal. As I'm sure is the case with most celebrities harassed by the press, Rowling has a cynical view of journalists.

The character Rita Skeeter (blood-sucking mosquito?) is probably a composite of all the bad reporters, particularly tabloid journalists, she's had to deal with over the years, especially the ones lying in wait outside her home in Scotland to catch a glimpse of her and family.

Rowling was recently interviewed on BBC radio by Stephen Fry, who provides the voice for the United Kingdom version of the Harry Potter audio books. Download the MP3 here, or you can also read the transcript at the Leaky Cauldron.

(By the way, I haven't read the transcript. Notes are based on the interview.)

Continue reading Notes on J.K. Rowling's Interview with Stephen Fry