path: root/literature/letter-from-minerva-to-father.rst

Letter from Minerva McGonagall to her father, Reverend Robert McGonagall
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:date: 2022-09-06T16:54:29
:status: draft
:category: literature
:tags: review, harryPotter, blogComment
 
(from the conversation on `the HPfanfiction subreddit post`_ with
some questions from other readers of the thread).

While reading “`When the Roses Bloom Again`_” by
TheBlack'sResurgence I have been again hit by the nonsense of the
Biblical verse “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus
22:17). I don’t want to bother you with details (tiny part of it
is in “`Thou Shalt Not Suffer`_” by TheWizardsHarry), but a good
biblical argument can be made that this verse in the Hebrew
original doesn’t mean what the English (and almost any other)
translation seems to indicate it means (hint: what do we know
about the magical terminology of the Ancient Israel 1500 BC?
Nothing, absolutely nothing), meaning it is not universal
renunciation of all magical activity (and this is Harry Potter
related post, so let us not deal with the question whether magic
is real or not).

I still hope to see in the course of the story a letter written
by (quite scholarly and intellectual, and trained by him in the
Biblical exegesis) Minerva McGonagall to her father explaining,
that he really doesn’t have to live with a bad conscience from
protecting his sinful anti-Christian or anti-God daughter.

.. _`the HPfanfiction subreddit post`:
   https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/x58xm2/letter_from_minerva_mcgonagall_to_her_father/

.. _`When the Roses Bloom Again`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13954844

.. _`Thou Shalt Not Suffer`:
   https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5176787

The second group is Leviticus 19:26, 20:27, and Deuteronomy
18:10-11. All of them have the same problem IMHO: using highly
technical terminology we know absolutely nothing about (and on
the top of that half of the words are *hapax legomenon*, words
found only once in the whole Bible).

    There are examples in the Bible of actual witches IIRC,
    Saul(?) goes to one and asks her to summon the spirit of
    Samuel. We also know from other descriptions vaguely the kind
    of things they do, commune with the dead and curse people.

    Of course, if you’re writing a HP story you kinda have to
    assume Christianity is false (or at least WILDLY
    misunderstood), so it’s description of a witch shouldn’t need
    to line up with HP-verse anyway

Yes, and I am not saying that any magic is perfectly OK (it is
obvious that Necromancy and most of the divination are not), but
that negative doesn’t apply either: most of magic which would be
OK under the UK laws (by mostly for the other reasons than it
being magic … murder, enslavement, etc.) would be OK for actual
true wizards and witches of the HP world.

I am quite forcefully saying that most of Muggle occult (i.e.,
when Muggles try to make magic without being given the gift of
magic) is quite definitively NOT OK. I guess, Biblically one of
the most suspicious things in the whole HP series is Mr Filch’s
Kwikspell.

And to witch-hunts: I am a Protestant, so I am quite able to
distinguish between the church doing something wrong (have you
ever read the book “Biblical Foundation of Slavery” from 1810 or
so? I did) and what is actual Biblical teaching on the matter.
That is what were talking about here.

I think witch-hunts were completely wrong for many reasons (and
which were mostly driven by non-holy reasons … see any Muggle
history book on the topic), but it doesn't have to mean that the
Church or the Christianity would be against Hermione Granger
personally.

----

    I (also Protestant) agree completely. My point is that in the
    Harry Potter world, Christianity as we know it cannot be true
    (at least it would be VERY difficult to mesh the two in any
    way that’s even slightly philosophically consistent). So,
    when I’m writing/reading Harry Potter fanfic, I have my
    characters operate on the nearest moral system I could come
    up with that has at least an incline of reason behind it.
    🤷🏻‍♂️

I really do not understand. Why?

I don’t think you tell me that your faith depends on Jesus’
changing water in wine is the sign of his Divinity. And yes,
wizards and witches can be probably do more than His
contemporaries, but heck, we can do more than them.

So, what’s the problem?

----

    My first objection would be that, while Christ’s miracles were
    not the foundation for his divinity, they were supposed to be
    proof of it (John 10:37-38, 20:30-31). If there was whole
    societies going around doing what Jesus did (and according to HP
    they were doing that kind of thing then because it’s pre-secrecy)
    then they’re not really proof of anything.

Couple of comments on your verses, each one of them would deserve
full-size treatise though:

1. John 10:37f … I truly don’t believe that “works of my Father”
   have to mean miracles here (and if NLT translates it so, it is
   one more reason why not use that translation … sometimes they
   are really inserting something which isn’t there). Second,
   I don’t think that this is primarily about the Jesus’
   divinity. I mean, I am a Trinitarian, I do believe in the
   teaching of first ecumenical councils and all that good stuff,
   but I see something much more important there. “The Father is
   in Me, and I am in the Father” really doesn’t feel to me here
   as an evidentiary proof of the Jesus’ divinity, but it seems
   to me talking much more about the deep father/son relationship
   between Father and Jesus, which is in my opinion one of the
   most important themes in gospels (and especially in the Gospel
   of Saint John), and which is the relationship which we should
   try to emulate in our life as our path to holiness.

2. John 20:30f … obviously this verse means that whole gospel is
   using something to prove something else. The question is what
   these somethings are. The goal of the gospel is in my opinion
   something more than just accepting the divinity of Jesus. The
   goal of a gospel is in my opinion our conversion, accepting
   Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, accepting his sacrifice on The
   Cross as healing of our sin, etc. etc. (I could continue for
   a long time). To this end one doesn’t get however just by
   reading a book (fill-in complete missiology and theory of
   evangelization). Any book could serve only as “a sign”. “Sign”
   (σημεῖα (sēmeia), Strong's G4592) is defined as “neuter of
   a presumed derivative of the base of semaino; an indication,
   especially ceremonially or supernaturally”. It seems to me
   that a sign here is really just a sign: something like
   a traffic sign telling to a driver “Slow down! Put down your
   foot from the gas pedal! There is something really important
   going on here, which you should really not miss.” Miracles are
   for me only one type of such signs, and not even the most
   important ones. I am acutely aware that many of those healings
   or releases from demonization could be probably explained by
   the current medicine as some kind of natural disease, that
   quality of scientific reporting in the first century AD
   certainly doesn’t satisfy our current requirements, and that
   the transfer of the information from the first century to us
   doesn’t help either. If some of these miracles could be
   explained by the science, my attitude towards Jesus would not
   change at all. And the same goes for the real magic. If some
   of these miracles could be explained by magic, my attitude
   towards Jesus would not change either. Miracles are just signs
   which should turn our focus to Jesus and who he is. Besides,
   for me much more persuasive sign than healing of the possessed
   in Gerase is Jesus sitting next to the adulterous woman
   telling her and saying “Go and sin no more” or “[…] you have
   had five husbands, and the man you are living with[as] now is
   not your husband”. That’s for me like the stop sign: “Get out
   of the car and don’t do anything else until you discover who
   this guy is”.

    Witches and Wizards are in direct violation of God’s decree in
    Genesis 6:3.

Next you mention Genesis 6:3. “Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit
shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall
be 120 years.’” WHAT? I don’t get it.

   I think it’s very clear in the Bible that any power that can
   manipulate realty like magic does is either the Holy Spirit,
   or demonic.

That isn’t correct even in our Muggle world. There are many
natural powers that can manipulate reality, like any powers at
all, and they are just that, natural powers. We are changing
reality every day, every second, and most of the time there is
nothing super-Spiritual or demonic about it. It is just our
ordinary life. You want to limit those powers to ones “that are
like magic”, but that is a bad, circular, definition. Magic is
whatever is magical, and vice versa.

What I think is needed is to redefine “miracle” and “supernatural
event”. I think these terms are unfortunate, because they seem to
suggest that they are somehow breaking the God given natural
order of things. I don’t think they do. They are just working
outside of what we understand. I think the foundation of any
Christian epistemology must be that sum of everything we know
(both as individuals and as total of humanity) is always less
than the God’s creation. So, all those “supernatural events” are
actually natural, except they are outside of our knowledge.

So, yes there are powers outside of human (any human) control,
which can be driven by the Holy Spirit or evil. However, the
hypothetical Harry Potter-type magic could be very much neither
of these: it is just natural gift which is given just to some
small group of humans, like the perfect pitch. Somebody just got
it, somebody didn’t, but it doesn’t have to mean anything
spiritually.

----

    As far as I know, the exact meaning of witchcraft is specified if
    you read through various parts of the bible. Off the top of my
    head, anyone who communicates with the dead, uses any mystical
    means to find information, and anyone who unnaturally changes
    a person's perception or emotional state is performing
    witchcraft. So the killing curse would be murder, but not
    witchcraft. The cheering charm would be witchcraft.

Chapter and verse, please?

    I had a look and I cannot for the life of me find the source
    I read originally that explained it, so I'm going to assume
    I'm remembering incorrectly.

    Instead, I looked it up again and compared the source words
    used in the original languages, which in the Old Testament
    mostly came down to necromancers (people who spoke with the
    dead) and diviners (people who used magic to obtain
    information either current or future.)

    In the New Testament there is also an instance of the word
    that the modern 'pharmacist' comes from is used, but the
    context is different there where it means to condemn drugging
    and/or poisoning people rather than just making all
    potioneers out to be witches.

    A large problem, as I understand it, is that the ancient
    Hebrews simply used the word witch because 'everyone knows
    what is meant by it' and everyone then did, but these days we
    don't understand the context, so we have to try looking at
    other sources to build a better point of view. That leads to
    reading sources from nearby peoples like the Babylonians and
    such. While this gives a vague idea of it all, it's not
    really a precise way of assigning a definite definition to
    a word. TL;DR I couldn't find my original source and was
    probably remembering wrong, witchcraft will basically only
    include divination, legillimency, and necromancy.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say. Whether magic actually
exists or not is immaterial for this, but there was certainly
a community of people who were dealing with activities described
in those verses (be they true magicals, or Muggle magicians doing
just some show, or doing something completely else, like dealing
with herbal remedies), and they had their own jargon. Bible was
most likely written and transferred to us mostly by people
outside of this community (just pure probability: number of
practitioners of the art divided by number of population) and so
it was probably transferred poorly. And then we got to actually
translating from Hebrew to current languages (including the
modern Hebrew) and there the situation was certainly much worse.

I am not saying that Bible as such is unreliable or it is not
possible understand it. Mostly its message is quite clear, but
there are parts where we really need to tread lightly. We may
never understand correctly what was really going on in these
verses, we may never know what was actually The Noe’s Arch made
from (“Gopher wood” is a true Hapax legomenon), and others;
fortunately at least with these I can live pretty well.