On the Desiring God blog today N. D. Wilson was kind enough to address some of the comments on a recent post here (obviously I’m kidding – his post is unrelated to the comments here – but his post does address the issues being discussed).
Wilson has this to say about magic:
Bible-believing Christians frequently have a deep mistrust of fiction. In particular, they have a deep mistrust of, ahem, magic. This is impossible for me to understand, partly because I was weaned on C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, but more profoundly because I was marinated in Scripture at a very young age (by my parents). And Scripture is full of . . . stories. More than that, Scripture is full of the miraculous and the amazing. “Throw water on the altar,” Elijah says. “Fire will still fall from Heaven.” A famous shepherd boy takes down an infamous six-fingered giant. Don’t let the long-haired man near a jawbone. Collect the animals and build a boat. Whatever you do, don’t listen to that serpent.
Bible pop-quiz: Did Pharaoh’s magicians really turn staffs into snakes? (Hint: yes.)
Christians serve the Man who walked on water. We serve the Man who could not be kept in the belly of the great fish, the Man who shattered the grave, and all alone, ripped the city gates off a place called Death.
Read the whole thing.
God’s works of wonder are not magic.
David,
That all depends on how you define “magic.” Is it manipulating nature in some kind of spooky or eerie way, or is it supernatural power that subverts the natural order? If the latter, then magic can be bad (necromancers and sorcerers) and good (Jesus, Elijah, Paul, etc.)
I don’t know why it is so scary to think we live in a world much more like that of Narnia than that of Voltaire and Descartes.
Here N.D. Wilson and his dad Doug discuss this very issue:
http://www.canonwired.com/ask-doug/magic-in-literature-2/