Re-enchantment vs. reality

Next month, the Christian Courier and several respected academic bodies in Toronto will collaborate in a conference titled Re-enchanting the World: Philosophy, Spirituality, Ecology and the Arts. The document that was circulated to invite potential contributors lists a wide array of relevant contemporary thinkers and a few older ones, mostly German philosophers of the turn of the 20th century.

It should be an exciting event. I am very much looking forward to it, and to the Christian Courier’s 80th anniversary celebrations that same weekend. But I am feeling a bit troubled by the idea that the world should be, or could be, re-enchanted. I’m not even sure I want that. Let me explain.

Mark’s smokescreen

Does the Bible say the world is enchanted? Don’t take just my wisdom for it, but I say no. Some psalms come to mind: 8, 19, 29 and 104 especially. But all of these end in a remarkably meditative tone, calling attention to the lowliness of man, God’s law, the blessing of peace and the limitations of our thinking about these matters. Not exactly a testimony of belief in an enchanted world, whatever that might mean.

What about the gospels? My favourite gospel is Mark, as I have written earlier. Mark has plenty of evil spirits, exorcised demons and improbable feats such as walking on water. These stories could be interpreted as evidence of Mark’s belief in an enchanted world. Except that I do not buy it. As I read Mark, all his miracles culminate into one and the same miracle, that of the resurrection. And even the resurrection comes with a question mark: women at the tomb who are afraid. Mark’s seemingly enchanted world is mostly a smokescreen meant to befuddle the sceptical and the prejudiced, and perhaps the odd Roman official too. Those were dangerous times after all, just like ours.

Xenophon & Harry Potter

Now there is this little secret about Mark, a secret that he shares with a fascinating Greek character, the philosopher and military adventurer Xenophon. Xenophon reports some very interesting things his teacher Socrates said (or didn’t say) about religion, long before Mark, and he portrays himself as assiduously sacrificing to the Greek gods. But did Xenophon believe any of the myths about those gods? I highly doubt it. So the secret is: Xenophon does not need to show his audience how clever he is, and neither does he want to. They can figure that out for themselves if they must. And the same is true for Mark, who may well have read him.

Again, I’m sure it will be a great conference, and obviously I hope that it will help people connect more deeply with the worlds of philosophy, art and faith. But if I may, I’m of the school that believes we should not just read new thinkers. The old thinkers were generally ten times smarter than they are given credit for, and it is mostly our flawed historicist hermeneutics that leads us to misinterpret them. In addition to that, I hope someone will have the guts to talk about J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the best recent account of enchantments I can think of. Apart from their focus on children and their Christian allegory, these books are steeped in an awareness of horrible realities that derives straight from Rowling’s early career at Amnesty International. And “expelliarmus” is the magic spell of love.

Mark uses his miracle stories to point towards the real force for evil in the world, which he named Satan, and to the one that is strong enough to bind Satan: Jesus the Son of God. That painful realism should meet our reality too, where love, wonder, evil and miracles come together.