In this week's New York Times Book Review, Christopher Hitchens reviews the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. After beginning his ruminations with a fairy typical reference to George Orwell, he goes on to lay his snarky atheistic template over the Potter universe. Here's a typical excerpt:
Most interesting of all, perhaps, and as noted by Orwell, “religion is also taboo.” The schoolchildren appear to know nothing of Christianity; in this latest novel Harry and even Hermione are ignorant of two well-known biblical verses encountered in a churchyard. That the main characters nonetheless have a strong moral code and a solid ethical commitment will be a mystery to some — like his holiness the pope and other clerical authorities who have denounced the series — while seeming unexceptionable to many others. As Hermione phrases it, sounding convincingly Kantian or even Russellian about something called the Resurrection Stone:
“How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of — of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist.”
For all this apparently staunch secularism, it is ontology that ultimately slackens the tension that ought to have kept these tales vivid and alive. Theologians have never been able to answer the challenge that contrasts God’s claims to simultaneous omnipotence and benevolence: whence then cometh evil? The question is the same if inverted in a Manichean form: how can Voldemort and his wicked forces have such power and yet be unable to destroy a mild-mannered and rather disorganized schoolboy?
Now, in the first place, it should be noted that it's simply not true that "theologians have never been able to answer the challenge" of theodicy. Hitchens may not like the answers, but the problem is far from unanswerable. I'll confess that I too am left cold by most of the philosophical attempts at solving the problem of evil, but that doesn't mean that a) no one has ever tried or that b) some of the attempts actually do solve the problem in a philosophically respectable (if finally inconclusive) manner.
This is the continuing problem with Hitchens' view of religion: He is simply incapable of hearing anything that disagrees with his own preconceived notions of what religion is. I know he's friends with Andrew Sullivan, but the impression I get is that Hitchens tolerates his religious friends only to the degree that they don't talk about religion. Ok, fair enough. But why Hitchens can't do us the same favor is beyond me. But then again, I continue to be perplexed as to why people keep hiring Hitchens to write for them given his obvious flaws as a writer and a thinker.
But, back to the Potter review. I certainly can't fault Hitchens for seeing the world Rowling has created as being wholly secular. God is never explicitly mentioned. No one ever prays, or even attends church (though oddly, Sirius is Harry's godfather, implying that Harry is, in fact, baptised). Yet, no one ever attends church in a C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien novel either, but these novels are deeply suffused with their authors' Christian sensibility. The same seems to be the case for Rowling, who is on record as saying that she is a Christian and does believe in God.
But in any event, the religious symbolism is there for those with eyes to see. As John Granger has noted at some length, Harry Potter's universe is suffused with Christian symbolism -- Pheonixes, Unicorns, and Stags, the names of characters, as well as the overall narrative arc of the story. After all, the great underlying theme of the Harry Potter series is the same as that of the New Testament: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
Nevertheless, the great thing about a piece of literature like Harry Potter is that it doesn't mean only one thing, but opens itself up to myriad interpretations. So, a secularist like Hitchens looks into the mirror of the novel and sees himself staring back. I do the same. But to suggest, as Hitchens does, that what we have in fact is a primer for a godless world seems to miss much of the literary weight and subtlety of the books.
But then, as has been amply demonstrated, Hitchens doesn't do subtle.
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