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Thanks for the tag, @noah-cochran

I’ve been watching this thread from afar while busy with midterms and papers, so hopefully my contributions are coherent (I also hope to catch up on the other threads soon). 😛 I feel like this debate has gone beyond how we define magic and is delving more into different presuppositions about what makes fiction Christian, how Christian writers ought to portray sin/evil, and whether Christian writers can portray the supernatural. My response is more geared to those questions and less toward the original prompt. My impression from reading all the replies is that the magic question is a subset of the questions I listed above. If I end up misunderstanding someone’s argument or veering super off-topic, someone let me know! 🙂

-I’m in 100% agreement that fantasy does not need to have magic to be considered fantasy.

-However, I agree more with @taylorclogston on defining “magic”. Dictionary definitions of words are descriptive not prescriptive, meaning they describe how a word is currently used, not mandate how a word must be used for all time. If the logic is that there is an “official” definition of a word that can never change, then we should all still be speaking Old English (or Latin or something) because those are the true words and the ones we speak now are the corrupted variations, with different spellings and definitions.

We even use “magic” in different senses. We might say “Her wedding was magical”, by which we mean the wedding was nice and elegant, not that people were practicing witchcraft there. Words can have a range of meanings, indicated by context. If someone is using “magic” in a story differently than the witchcraft-specific definition, context will indicate it.

An example of this is the terminology of “evolution” in Pokémon. I know some Christians will react against the games/cartoon because they think it’s teaching Darwinian evolution. But in the context of the Pokémon world, “evolution” has its own distinct meaning and has nothing to do with Darwinism.

-I don’t agree that Christian writers can never depict the supernatural. First of all, good literature is built upon truth. We must depict the world as it actually is (by which I do NOT mean fantasy worlds cannot be created with their own world building rules; rather, a Christian worldview must underlie it). We are not materialistic or naturalistic, depicting a universe devoid of anything spiritual or supernatural.

All that to say, Christians must not promote witchcraft or depict it in a morally neutral manner. We do not condone or promote evil. But like @r-m-archer was saying, there is a difference between acknowledging evil exists and promoting it. It does not follow that we cannot acknowledge those things exist in fiction and we cannot call them out as evil. In 100 Cupboards by ND Wilson, there is a witch character who is very creepy and clearly portrayed as very, very evil. 100 Cupboards isn’t an explicitly Christian novel, but the author is a Christian, and that really shows in the book’s themes.

I recently read a book called Recovering the Lost Art of Reading by Leland Ryken and Glenda Mathes, and there were some excellent chapters on what makes literature good, true, and beautiful. Their thoughts on ethics and portraying sin in fiction was super helpful and relevant to this discussion. Highly recommend it.

-I would add some further thoughts that reading and writing Christian fantasy often calls for a lot of thoughtfulness and nuance. Tolkien didn’t just add a God figure to Middle Earth; there is a whole cosmology there that doesn’t fit in an allegory. CS Lewis used a mythology system in Till We Have Faces—but he is not promoting paganism. Christine Cohen’s The Winter King is in a similar vein. None of these authors are intending to undermine a Christian worldview but are instead using those elements to support the books’ themes.

I’ll use an example from my own WIP (which is an epic fantasy series). The people in the world have a lot of lore, including a system of gods. Answers will not truly be found on what’s up with this religious system until the end of the final book (#spoilers). I decided to include these elements of the story because it really works well with the themes I’m exploring: fate, providence, existentialism, mortality, our desire to be the rulers of our own universe, Nietzsche’s “ubermensch”, the bondage of the will, etc. I’m worried people will be like “This author isn’t a Christian and is promoting paganism!!!!” But that’s not what I’m doing. I have a very specific purpose in mind. My intention is to support the Christian worldview, not undermine it, and how I’m doing that isn’t 100% clear until the very end of the series.

All that to say, I would love to hear your thoughts on what makes fiction “Christian” and if there is any value in reading fiction that isn’t written from a Christian perspective (or is written from a Christian perspective but not explicitly so). I feel like those are the questions underlying the magic one and could be helpful to “clear the air” on this debate before I go into some of my other thoughts.

-Also, to @taylorclogston ‘s point, I recently watched a popular TV show, deciding from the trailer and some reviews beforehand what it was going to be about. But when I actually watched it, I realized my assumptions had been really off. While the show certainly didn’t have a Christian worldview, it did have a lot of thought-provoking Christian themes. I ended up enjoying it and my husband and I have discussed it off and on since.

-I think @r-m-archer is on to something about the issue with magic/witchcraft being man desiring power God has not granted to him and trying to achieve it through forbidden means.