Jonathan Edwards and Harry Potter

Josh Moody, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Newhaven, CT, has read a fair bit of Jonathan Edwards. He’s associate fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, and the author of The God-Centered Life: Insights from Jonathan Edwards for Today. He’s also read all of the Harry Potter books, and he’s convinced that Jonathan Edwards would have as well, were he alive today.

Moody offers some insight on how we should think about the Potter phenomenon by pointing us to Jonathan Edwards’ interaction with the popular Enlightenment thought of his day.

Edwards was acutely aware of the cultural movements of his time. He said in “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival” that he made it his practice to take light from wherever it came. . . .

It’s hard to imagine that Edwards would have remained ignorant about what has become such a powerful phenomenon of our time. He immersed himself in the cutting-edge Enlightenment thinking of his age, and his book list and letters reveal a breadth of reading anything but narrow. No doubt Edwards would have mined the Harry Potter series for insights into the predominant spiritual atmosphere in which we live.

Edwards neither ignored nor capitulated to the Enlightenment’s materialistic/mechanistic view of life and the universe. Instead he “re-formed” the Enlightenment on specifically biblical terms and constructed intellectual bridges to cultural attitudes, along which the orthodox gospel could more readily transverse.

. . .

Edwards would have seen that the essential question of spirituality—What happens when I die?—is a great vacuum that culture is looking to fill. . . .

. . .

I believe Edwards would also look from Potter to us and say, “Who’s going to tell a more compelling story that sheds true gospel light on the transcendent?”

Read the whole article at Christianity Today.

I’m presently totally in the dark. Have you read and/or watched Potter? Do you plan to?

HT: Justin Taylor

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