One of the most interesting parts of Deathly Hallows, was Harry’s and Tom’s “chat” before their final duel. Harry says that he knows magic, and has a weapon, that Tom doesn’t. Tom’s emotional retort clearly shows his lack of wisdom:

‘You think you know more magic than I do?’ he said. ‘Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?’[1]

As I have pointed out before[2], I main point of the Harry Potter books is that magical skill is not sufficient. In a analysis of the trio, John Granger points out that they could represent each of the three faculties of soul, according to the Platonic scheme.[3] He points out that

[p]art of Hermione’s brilliance is her determined dependence on her friends; she understands that her jewel intelligence is glorious in its right setting and almost inhuman on its own (remember Hermione at the beginning of Sorcerer’s Stone?).[4]

She understands what Tom does not. She understands that it matetrs not what your skills are, but what you are, what choices you make, to give a nod to Dumbledore. In “The Abolition of Man,” the last chapter/lecture in the book by the same name, C.S. Lewis points out that the interest in magic increased in the Renaissance, rather than decreasing. And he, as many others, saw the connection between technology and magic. He writes:

There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.[5]

The magic in Harry Potter is indeed scientific or technological. It is, as Robert Kvalvaag points out, “a craft that witches and wizards must conduct in a logical and reasonable way.” And he adds that it is never about “performing rituals with spirits and demons, but about using some sort of natural resource.”[6]

And this is precisely the point of these books. Let me explain a bit further, by utilizing Aristotle’s theory of knowledge. Dr. Peter Kreeft writes:

Aristotle rated technique (technical knowledge, technë, know-how) as third in the hierarchy of values, after (1) knowledge of the truth for its own sake, and (2) practical knowledge, or knowledge for living, for acting. The modern world has simply turned this hierarchy exactly upside down, as it has turned man upside down.[7]

This was also taught, maybe not will evil intent, by Francis Bacon, whose chant “Knowlwdge is power” is chillingly mirrored in Tom’s “Magic is power.” Tom’s problem is that he turns things upside down. s

Just as the serpent in the Genesis story, Tom is “crafty”[8]; he rates technique (magic) over virtue (knowlede, bravery, love.) As I pointed out in this post, the major difference between Harry and Tom is that,

[i]n Harry (and Dumbledore), we see a wizard who conforms his soul to reality, not relying on magical technique, but on knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. In [Tom] we see a wizard who tries to subdue reality to his own wishes, denying the spiritual realm and splitting up his soul to “be in control.” He is a exaggerated version of Francis Bacon’s scientist, shouting “knowledge for power” while trying to conquer nature.

And this is, I believe something we all need to be reminded of. It is not skill or ability that matters, but wisdom and love. As the great Solomon wrote: “Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding.” (Proverbs 3:13, ESV)

1. Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Adult Hardcover edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 592

2. See here and here.

3. I myself am more of a Thomist. According to Plato, the three faculties are Head, Chest and Belly; Reason, Will/Heart and passions. Thomists divide the third faculty into three; (i) the ability to sense and perceive; (ii) the instincts; and (iii) the urges. The first two we share with animals, the third we (and animals) share with plants and the like. But I do not think that this matters. After all, Rowling is not a slave to this, they are *real* characters, not just parts.

4. Granger, John, Looking for God in Harry Potter Updated second edition (SaltRiver/Tyndale, 2006), p. 98

5. Lewis, C.S., The Abolition of Man (Lewis, 1944,1947/HaperSanFransisco, 2001), p. 76-77

6. Spilde, Ingrid, “Potters plass i virkeligheten” (Forskning.no, June 11th 2004) Translated from Norwegian (July 24th 2007)

7. Kreeft, Peter, Ph.D., C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium (Ignatius, 1993), p. 22

8. Genesis 3:1, ESV. Som transaltions use the word “cunning.” I personally like “crafty” best, because it shows that the serpent tries to turn things upside down.

Gen. 2:16-17 (ESV):

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Gen. 3:1-6 (ESV):

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

In Gnostic circles, where one often turns things upside down (the Serpent is God, Cain is good, Judas did Christ’s bidding, etc.), this is often interpretated as a Promethean myth. In Wikipedia, we can read that,

Zeus in his wrath denied men the secret of fire. Prometheus felt sorry for his creations, and watched as they shivered in the cold and winter’s nights. He decided to give his most loved creation a great gift that was a “good servant and bad master”. He took fire from the hearth of the gods by stealth and brought it to men in a hollow wand of fennel, or ferule that served him instead of a staff. He brought down the fire coal and gave it to man. He then showed them how to cook and stay warm. To punish Prometheus for this hubris (and all of mankind in the process), Zeus devised “such evil for them that they shall desire death rather than life, and Prometheus shall see their misery and be powerless to succor them. That shall be his keenest pang among the torments I will heap upon him.” Zeus could not just take fire back, because a god or goddess could not take away what the other had given.

Zeus was enraged because the giving of fire began an era of enlightenment for Man, and had Prometheus carried to Mount Caucasus, where an eagle (Often mistaken as a vulture) by the name of Ethon (offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna) would pick at his liver; it would grow back each day and the eagle would eat it again.(1)

If we take this approach to the Genesis story,(2) God seems to deny Man the knowledge of good and evil. But this, I believe, is not correct. Ethical knowledge, or “practical wisdom,” is not enough in itself, and this I believe is the core of the Genesis story. As I have explained before, Aristotle rated practical knowledge/wisdom after “scientific knowledge,” epistemology — knowledge of the truth for its own sake. And this is reflected in the Bible. We read in Hebrews 5:14 that “solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” How do we train our “powers of discernment”? Through knowledge of Truth, of Christ. In Luke 10:38–42, Christ said: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (vv. 41-42)

The one necessary thing is to be close to the Lord. In the Genesis story, we see that Man tries to bypass this, having ethical knowledge (and of course deciding this for himself) without Truth, without God. Fr. Gregory Hallam (an Orthodox priest) writes:

We learn from this starting point that Adam was like a child, fully capable of growing up in obedience to his Heavenly Father and achieving immortality. We know that he ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in disobedience to God’s Word and suffered death as a result. We are not dealing here with the Promethean myth of Greek paganism in which Prometheus stole fire from the gods and paid the price for his audacity. The fruit itself was not placed in Eden with a permanent exclusion zone around it leaving humanity in state of infantile innocence. God’s intention was that Adam should grow up through obedience until he received the necessary spiritual maturity to handle such things. Like a child he had to be taught. But like many children and adults he would not be taught. He wanted to be autonomous; to be God-like without God and he thereby brought death down upon his head.

Man was born as a child, and needed to be brought up, educated. This should happen not only theoretically, but also practically. “For the things we have to learn before we can do them,” Aristotle writes, “we learn by doing them, e.g., men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so to we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.” (Nicomachean Ethics, 2:1) And we also see this in the Harry Potter books.

We meet a bunch of people with an innate ability — and ability not shared with most people.(3) These abilities are to be shaped through wisdom and knowledge. The main difference between the good and evil wizards in these books is not their ability to use the magical techniques, but what comes first — episteme or techne, wisdom through knowledge or power through technique.

These books is not about magic itself, but about making choices based on insight and wisdom. The fruit of the three of knowledge of good and evil is “solid food… for the mature,” and we need wisdom to be able to discern them from each other.

In “The River of Fire,” the keynote address delivered at the Orthodox Youth Conference sponsored in Washington, July 22-25, 1980, Alexandre Kalomiros explained that,

“The tree of knowledge itself,” says Theophilus of Antic, “was good, and its fruit was good. For it was not the tree, as some think, that had death in it, but the disobedience which had death in it; for there was nothing else in the fruit but knowledge alone, and knowledge is good when one uses it properly.” The Fathers teach us that the prohibition to taste the tree of knowledge was not absolute but temporary. Adam was a spiritual infant. Not all foods are good for infants. Some foods may even kill them although adults would find them wholesome. The tree of knowledge was planted by God for man. It was good and nourishing. But it was solid food, while Adam was able to digest only milk. (chapter IV)

Moral discernment, using your wisdom and insight in both ethical and practical situations, is a key point in Harry Potter. And it is a key point for us. I believe that Jared (a blogger) says it best:

Teaching our kids discernment is vastly more important than trying to ‘protect’ them from the world. That’s impossible, and unbiblical. If we don’t teach critical thinking, and allow students to recognize the difference between the wheat and the chaff, we’re failing our students.

God has graced us with intellect and an insatiable curiosity. Remove discernment from that equation, and you get…well, Richard Dawkins. Or Pat Robertson.

Notes:

1. There are some similaritries, because just as fire, morality, in relation to Truth, not to us, is a “good servant” and a “bad master.”

2. I do not believe that it reports actual history as we see it today. It is a myth, but a “true myth.”

3. Some claim that this is Gnostic, but gnosticism is about achieving some knowledge reserved by an elite. There is some elitist thinking in Harry Potter, especially in the evil wizards, but these books tries to combat this. As Dumbledore points out: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” (Chamber of Secrets, HP2) I see this more as a similarity to X-Men.

Cited Works:

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W.D. Ross. Kitchener: Batoche Books, 1999. February 8th 2007. http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/aristotle/Ethics.pdf

As I have already pointed out, the magic of Harry Potter is a “scientific craft,” and must therefore be treated as such. Peter Kreeft explains that

Aristotle rated technique (technical knowledge, techne, know-how) as third on the hierarchy of values, after (1) knowledge of the truth for its own sake, and (2) practical knowledge, or knowledge for living, for acting. The modern world has simply turned this hierarchy exactly upside down, as it has turned man upside down. (Kreeft 1994, p. 22)

In this post, I will explore this concept, and show what the Harry Potter books are all about.

C.S. Lewis claimed that for “the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self‐discipline, and virtue.” For the modern “scientists” or “scientific magicians,”(1) he adds, “the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.” (Lewis 1947, p. 77) I have argued that the magic in Harry Potter is a science, a craft, something to be handled with logic and reason. And the point is that as the magic is technological, so it must conform to truth and morality.

Let me explain. Aristotle points out that “scientific knowledge,” episteme, being the first on “the hierarchy of values,” should be followed by “practical wisdom,” phronesis, which should be followed by technical knowledge, techne. If a man owns a factory, and he sets reason and kowledge (of truth) — insight — first, followed by a moral backbone, he will most likely not only succeed, but also gain a good relationship to his workers. If he turns it upside down, her will most likely exploit his workers, and they will most likely revolt. The Russian 1917 October revolution did not happen because the factory owners were to kind.

Now, how does this relate to Harry Potter? In Harry (and Dumbledore), we see a wizard who conforms his soul to reality, not relying on magical technique, but on knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. In Voldemort we see a wizard who tries to subdue reality to his own wishes, denying the spiritual realm and splitting up his soul to “be in control.” He is a exaggerated version of Francis Bacon’s scientist, shouting “knowledge for power” while trying to conquer nature.(2)

So, the main point of Harry Potter is that we must choose rightly, not that we must have certain abilities. As Dumbledore points out: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” (Chamber of Secrets, HP2)

Notes:

1. In the essay “On Fairy Stories” (pdf-file), Tolkien writes that Fairy stories “may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic—but it is magic of a peculiar mood and power, at the furthest pole from the vulgar devices of the laborious, scientific, magician.” (p. 4)

2. Read the last chapter of The Abolition of Man (Lewis 1947) for more on this. It is available online.

Cited Works:

• Kreeft, Peter (1994). C.S. Lewis for the Third Millennium. San Francisco: Ignatius. ISBN: 0-89870-523-1
• Lewis, C.S. (1947). The Abolition of Man(Riddell Memorial Lectures 1943). San Francisco: HarperCollins (2001). ISBN: 0-06-065294-2