Moises Pacheco - The Deep Christian Symbolism of Harry Potter 

One of the things that wasn't talked about is that HP was one of the rare cases of a book series where the public was following them as they were released. It's hard for me to think of other series where the books and movies were coming out essentially together and I think it's an important piece to why Christians changed their view on the series. The Christ metaphors were not at all obvious in the early books and the Half Blood Prince didn't come out till six years after the first movie.

Great conversation guys! With the interest in symbolism in This Little Corner, I’m surprised it has taken this long for a discussion on Harry Potter. Rowling is indeed a Christian, albeit a liberal one, and did have the whole series planned out from the beginning. Her detailed notebooks are legendary. John Granger has several books out on the series and makes a strong case that Rowling used symbolism and traditional story structure to take Harry through an alchemical process of spiritual development, which is, in effect, a literary version of Christian sanctification/justification. This literary device has a tradition in English imaginative literature and was also used by the likes of CS Lewis and Shakespeare. It’s one of the reasons readers have such an emotional connection with the series and are actually changed by it.

I hate that I mistakenly said Dumbledore when I meant Voldemort multiple times

Sam Ewing here(AKA Michigan man Sam) trying to use this account to comment and direct people towards the newish channel. Anyways, I am open to the idea of Harry Potter as better literature than the Narnia books they definitely are more proper novels in the modern sense. Aslan though is not the counterpart to Harry in the Narnia series; that would be the Pevensie children Peter in particular. Aslan, is intentionally mysterious, confusing and often absent. The drama of the Narnia series is around the Pevensie children and other characters who travel to Narnia not really Aslan.

Outstanding. This is terrific material I can use, as my son (10y) is currently hooked to the Harry Potter books.

Wow this was so interesting. Can't wait for the next one.....

1:21:33 great point- the nostalgia of the ‘magic’ before the “dark times” will be tremendous

1:17:13 this is a question, Sam, that plays itself out over a span of a lifetime. Or multiple lifetimes. A decade is insufficient to measure. And if a revival does occur during our lifetime I would wager that the seeds planted by HP will be in no small part of the source of that revival. And yet God veils his hand through the passage of great lengths of time. The wonderful mystery and humility of the Almighty

I never thought of Harry Potter series in this way. I can't say I'm convinced but it certainly has opened my thinking of how it may be interpreted. One point that Pastor Pacheco makes about Harry representing a Christian gave me the thought that Dumbledore could be the Christ figure. He mentors Harry, dies then shows up in death after Harry gives up his life. Not perfect representation but it seems to fit in their interpretations.

1:09:07 it’s a neat idea. I think there’s so much bad history it would be difficult for the reader to credulously believe they could trancend all of that. Though nothing is impossible by the power of God…

Not only can Harry Potter be viewed as a Christian allegory, but even more specifically, it can be viewed as a Unitarian allegory and prophecy for the Chalcedonian church. Throughout the series, it's progressively revealed that Harry possesses a second nature, that of Voldemort. In order for Harry to live, that second nature must be exorcised from his body. For that to occur, Harry has to willingly sacrifice that part of himself that he always thought was truly an aspect of his own person. In the same way, in order for Chacedonian Christians to survive and even thrive in the last days, the second nature of their Christ has to be willingly put to death in order to be exorcised from the collective body, and this involves the death of the tradition that they always thought was a part of the Christian faith, the trinity doctrine. Even the resurrection of Voldemort can be viewed as an allegory for the formation of the trinity. To reincanate Voldemort (paganism), it requires the bones of the father (the pantheonic structure/polythiesm), the blood of the enemy (pre-nicene Christian martyrs), and the flesh of the servant (the fall of the Roman empire) in order for Voldemort to thrive throughout the generations until, of course, the second coming of a resurrected and newly single-natured Harry Potter. No need to worry, Sam. You can always count on me to come in and sectarianize :)

Unique topic! Hey, off topic, but I was wondering if you could share where you found the extra demonstrations of Aphrahat? I’ve only found a few translated to English. Wondering if you have the rest in English?

Theological question, curious about your thoughts on this Sam: did God intend all in all since the beginning of time? Or another way of asking the question might be, is God’s intent the same as reality?

There’s a Mo but there’s also a McMo. I’m Lovin’ it

I now have to insert my obligatory plug for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which as far as I can tell is almost an order of magnitude better than the original. Considering the themes that you two found valuable in the original series, and the things that you would have liked to see, I would be interested in hearing what you are able to extract from HPMOR. I'll just copy-paste my comment from one of Paul's videos since I don't have anything to add that I didn't say there: --- Any time Harry Potter is brought up, I immediately want to recommend Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to anyone willing to listen. I first heard about it on The Stoa, when someone said it was one of the best works of fiction of all time, a claim I found dubious. My expectations going into it were through the floor. A Harry Potter fanfiction about Rationality(tm) sounded ham-fisted at best. Then I actually read it and now it's one of my favorite works of fiction. I actually read Brothers Karamazov for the first time after finishing HPMOR as a sanity check, to make sure that my assessment of quality was still working properly. I still think that Dostoyevsky is better overall, but not in every way. HPMOR is arguably more acutely potent, whereas BK is more polysemic and vitalizing (though nothing beats The Grand Inquisitor in terms of acute potency). When I think of Harry Potter, my mind now defaults to HPMOR over the original. The quality is very consistent, so just reading the first few chapters is sufficient to see if this is a work that one might enjoy. It's available for free online for those interested. (Heck, it even manages to turn Voldemort into something more interesting that a bad guy cardboard cutout while still maintaining his irredeemability. And it makes the other characters, especially Dumbledore, into even more than they already were. Worth reading for that at least.) --- The one things that I would say that HPMOR doesn't get right is "defeating death by death". Instead, it basically takes the approach that if you shine enough light into the darkness, the darkness will go away, rather than incorporating and dealing with the idea of pharmakon. But who knows, maybe there is actually an angle where HPMOR does get this aspect right and I'm just not seeing it.

25:08 “No greater love is there than this…”

Mo!!!

Man like Mo

16:35 remember embody

Now we know why Moe hasn't been working on Randos United... He's been interpreting bad children's literature...

52:34 "God doesn't sacrifice himself" Welllll, you see....