One observationjohncwrightOctober 25 2007, 21:11:07 UTC
As usual, an excellent essay. I have only one comment: sometimes in a scene, a writer portrays, not what his own convictions are, but what matches the mood and atmosphere of the scene. For example, in the scene in Ravenclaw where Minerva answers the ultimate riddle with a paradox that being is nonbeing, this riddling wisdoms sounds, and is meant to sound, to the reader like the riddling wisdom of the Gnostic, like a Zen koan, like all the paradoxes in poems and and fairy tales were wisdom is hidden in something that seems to mean nothing. It is the kind of thing a reader sort of half expects and half recognizes as "secret wisdom" -- especially the secret wisdom wizards are supposed to possess in children's stories.
In this case, neither the reader nor the writer take it very seriously, one hopes. It is not even as profound as the wisdom in the movie version of WIZARD OF OZ, where the carney showman tells the party of adventurers that they possessed all the prizes they sought all along, deep within them (a pretty sentiment, not in keeping with Christianity, but a fair enough slogan for encouraging a self-doubting but talented child).
The scene is King's Cross may or may not have been the afterlife of the Wizarding World in Rowling: it had more the flavor (at least, so it seemed to me) of a twilight zone on a very bounds of death. It was perhaps a prophetic dream, a dream in which a ghost appears and other symbols, but not the Final Destination (and, yes, even the Final Judgment) toward which the trains run. The ghost, sure enough, is really bringing a message from The Great Beyond, but the other dream-elements may be only in the eye of the beholder, in this case, Harry.
The idea of additional incarnations and spiritual growth is also, not by coincidence, very much in the mood and flavor of the modern New Age mysticism and old fashioned Christian heresies. To me, this looks like JK Rowling fitting her work both to her own tastes (and prejudices) and to those of her expect4ed audience. Anything too Christian would repel children raised on a steady diet of modernist propaganda in film and storybook, those same usual suspects who recoil from C.S. Lewis.
What we have here is an odd combination. Mrs. Rowling says she is a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt her word; but she lives and moves and breaths in a moral atmosphere profoundly alien (and even hostile) to Christianity, the tolerant multi-culti pro-perversion atmosphere of modern Left-leaning political correctness. She is a Christian who has the faith, but not the mood or flavor of traditional Christianity, a condition she shares with many a churchman in England.
Re: One observationfpbOctober 26 2007, 19:42:35 UTC
I would not say that the "wisdom" questions are silly - unless, of course, you are willing to call Hegelism, much of Hinduism and all of Buddhism silly. The coincidentia oppositorum is an old topic of mysticism. My point is that, in this form, it is not Christian. And that goes along with my other point, that Christianity is first of all a doctrine, a set of views and beliefs. You can disagree with it without being "silly" - although, in my view and yours, you would be wrong. Incidentally, this has something to do with your extraordinary mistreatment of solitary_summer: you are too prone to believe that Christianity is self-evident and opposite viewpoints merely foolish. Beware of rudeness and bigotry.
In this case, neither the reader nor the writer take it very seriously, one hopes. It is not even as profound as the wisdom in the movie version of WIZARD OF OZ, where the carney showman tells the party of adventurers that they possessed all the prizes they sought all along, deep within them (a pretty sentiment, not in keeping with Christianity, but a fair enough slogan for encouraging a self-doubting but talented child).
The scene is King's Cross may or may not have been the afterlife of the Wizarding World in Rowling: it had more the flavor (at least, so it seemed to me) of a twilight zone on a very bounds of death. It was perhaps a prophetic dream, a dream in which a ghost appears and other symbols, but not the Final Destination (and, yes, even the Final Judgment) toward which the trains run. The ghost, sure enough, is really bringing a message from The Great Beyond, but the other dream-elements may be only in the eye of the beholder, in this case, Harry.
The idea of additional incarnations and spiritual growth is also, not by coincidence, very much in the mood and flavor of the modern New Age mysticism and old fashioned Christian heresies. To me, this looks like JK Rowling fitting her work both to her own tastes (and prejudices) and to those of her expect4ed audience. Anything too Christian would repel children raised on a steady diet of modernist propaganda in film and storybook, those same usual suspects who recoil from C.S. Lewis.
What we have here is an odd combination. Mrs. Rowling says she is a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt her word; but she lives and moves and breaths in a moral atmosphere profoundly alien (and even hostile) to Christianity, the tolerant multi-culti pro-perversion atmosphere of modern Left-leaning political correctness. She is a Christian who has the faith, but not the mood or flavor of traditional Christianity, a condition she shares with many a churchman in England.
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