Talk:Christian views on magic

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This article was nominated for deletion on 5 December 2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Archives

2002 to 2006

Contents 1 POV Check 2 Multiple Translations of the Bible Verses 3 Requested move 4 Terminology Problem 5 Some sources for development of the article 6 Christian mysticism 7 Archive 8 This article should be rewritten with a open mind

[edit] POV Check

I would really appreciate any comments regarding the neutrality of this article. I have made a lot of changes to it since the POV-check tag was added, but my knowledge of the subject is limited, and there aren't a lot of acedemic resources on the Internet on the subject (lots of propoganda though :-)). And, I did not write much of its content, and don't know where the information came from. I have cut out the things that to me were clearly biased. But, I it would be very helpful to have other's perspectives as to what neutrality issues remain, besides the fact that it needs quite a few more sources. There are also many things on the subject the article does not cover, which in and of itself could be a neutrality issue. Nimrand 18:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I should have thought of this earlier, but this article could perhaps be greatly improved by renaming it Christian views on magic. As it currently stands this article is hampered by multiple widely-varying and poorly specified definitions of "witchcraft", which is a much more complex concept than "magic". Witchcraft could be an earth-based pagan religion; it could be a pact with diabolical forces; it may or may not involve the practice of magic; its practitioners may or may not exist purely in the realms of fantasy! This article would be more interesting and useful if it took a wider look at magic, and discussed witchcraft from within that context. "Witchcraft" is such a loaded and difficult term, most academic historians tend to avoid it wherever possible, instead talking about "sorcerers", "magicians" etc!

Also, there's lots of interesting ground to cover regarding magic within Christianity: the difference between "miracle" and "magic", what/when magic is diabolical, and so on. These are topics that the article is currently heading towards, but can't really be discussed because these practices are not normally termed "witchcraft" when practiced within a Christian faith, even by those who disapprove. I think a name change would make the article more interesting and easier to understand. The specifics of the term "witchcraft" are better dealt with in Witchcraft and Witch-hunt. Fuzzypeg☻ 05:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense. We might have to completely reorganize the article, but I think its the right move.Nimrand 18:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple Translations of the Bible Verses

As I explained in my edit comment, having 20 or so translations of the same verse adds nothing to this article; particularly since most of them are almost identical. Two or three at the very most would be sufficient. A more useful use of that space would be a well-cited discussion regarding the translation issues surrounding that verse.Nimrand 14:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I also want to point out that the focus on the bible verses and imposing of a particular POV based on those verses (rather than providing well-cited information regarding the topic of the article) that nearly got this article deleted a few months back.Nimrand 18:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

I propose renaming this article Christian views on magic.

Most of this article is relevant to Christian views on magic, rather than witchcraft in any narrow sense. The one section that focuses particularly on the phenomenon of "witchcraft", as it was termed during the witch-trial period, is largely lifted from the Witch-hunt article, and better dealt with there.

As I expressed earlier on this talk page, the term witchcraft is immediately problematic, since it has so many quite distinct definitions for different people; any discussion of witchcraft will have difficulty being anything more than a discussion of what different groups think the word means (which we already have in the Witchcraft article). We had a small section regarding this problem in this article, but I removed it because it was quite incorrect, based on a misunderstanding of the cited source. I couldn't figure out how to salvage anything from it.

Where this gets really interesting though, is when we start considering what Christian views on magic are. "Witchcraft" certainly comes into this discussion, but we will be at less pains to present that term as it is understood by all different parties; we also get to touch on the interesting subject of what separates certain rituals of Christianity from magic, what the difference is between miracle and magic, etc. It just seems that this name change would allow much freer discussion without constantly stumbling over terminology and trying to avoid passing the boundaries of the term "witch", a term that has many narrow definitions but few broad ones. Fuzzypeg☻ 22:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we will have to eventually reorganize much of the article due to the renaming, but I believe it will be for the best.Nimrand 02:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article needs to be renamed, but am less than enthusiastic about the choice of the word magic. I would suspect that most people probably associate the word magic with stage magic and suspect that using that term may simply create another sort of problem with the title. Perhaps sorcery or conjuring or something along those lines might be more accurate? Labyrinth13 20:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

How about Christian views on magic and the occult? And even if most people (other than anyone who has ever had experience with a fantasy novel or RPG) think of magic as rabbit-out-of-a-hat sleight of hand, there are some Christian denominations that oppose that too -- I can't remember which ones, but I do remember being pamphletted back in university. --SigPig |^{SEND - OVER} 21:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This is getting more and more problematic, isn't it? I mean, the word occult is a bit loaded and can mean different things to different people. It really is beginning to appear to me that since the subject of this entry is covered already in other Wikipedia entries (as noted by Fuzzypeg above), that it might just be a candidate for merging elsewhere or even deletion? Just a thought. Labyrinth13 21:47, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

If it were to be merged, the most appropriate place would be Magic and religion. I don't share your concerns about the term "magic", since in the context of Christianity or religion it seems fairly clear what it's referring to. But regardless, a merge may be appropriate, as long as we don't mind making that article a bit top-heavy in its Christianity section... Fuzzypeg☻ 00:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Disagree with move: This article currently talks about witchcraft. Christian views on magic could be a notable article, but it would have entirely different content than this article.--Kevinkor2 01:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with move: I still think the move is appropriate. Firstly, I doubt the term will cause confusion, particularly since there already Wikipedia articles that use the term "Magic" broadly. Also, I have to disagree with Kevinkor2. The whole point is that the current title forces the article to stay within the topic of the amorphously defined term "Witchcraft". Changing the name to "Magic", which includes "witchcraft", will allow a much broader and comprehensive treatment of the topic.Nimrand 03:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with move On further consideration and reading the other comments here, changing to magic seems to be the better choice. Using the term witchcraft can too easily be misconstrued as being biased toward certain religious beliefs or taking an anti-Wicca or anti-Pagan stance (adherents of those religions often practice what they call witchcrat). Using the word magic seems less loaded and confusing. Labyrinth13 13:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology Problem

Fuzzypeg, what part of the text did I misunderstand or misrepresent? Here is some of the text that can be found in from the article I cited:

"Many Wiccans believe that their religion goes back to pre-Christian times in North-Western Europe, and that the witch hunts that culminated in the Great Witch Hunt of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constituted a persecution of their religion, a Christian attempt to eradicate their religion and culture. They identify themselves with those who died in the Great Witch Hunt in much the same way as Christians identify themselves with the martyrs who died in the persecutions of Decius, Diocletian or Stalin; or as Jews identify themselves with those who were killed in the Nazi Holocaust. This view is derived mainly from Margaret Murray's book The witch cult in Western Europe (cited by Hutton above). Murray, an Egyptologist, asserted that there was a witch cult that represented a pre-Christian religion in Europe; that Christianity was accepted only by the upper classes in society, and that the witch cult continued underground until it was violently eradicated in the Great Witch Hunt. Between the 1930s and the 1960s Murray wrote the article on "witchcraft" in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and so long after her views had been rejected by specialists in the field, they were accepted by non-specialists.3 As Hutton (1991:335) notes:

By assuming that witchcraft and paganism were formerly the same phenomenon, they (Wiccans) are mixing two utterly different archaic concepts and placing themselves in a certain amount of difficulty. The advantage of the label "witch" is that it has all the exciting connotations of a figure who flouts the conventions of normal society and is possessed of powers unavailable to it, at once feared and persecuted. It is a marvellous rallying-point for a counter-culture, and also one of the few images of independent female power in early modern European civilization. The disadvantage is that by identifying themselves with a very old stereotype of menace, derived from the pre-Christian world itself, modern pagans have drawn upon themselves a great deal of unnecessary suspicion, vituperation and victimization which they are perpetually struggling to assuage."

Nimrand 01:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The section I removed claimed that modern religious witchcraft "combines elements of both paganism and witchcraft, two things which were entirely separate at the time the Bible was written." "Paganism" is a slightly unfortunate choice of words in the cited article, being highly interpretable (much like the term "witchcraft"); in this historical sense we can probably assume it means either "non-Abrahamic religion" or "non-Roman" religion. So, apparently, religion and witchcraft were entirely separate in biblical times.

But what the cited article actually says is that "religion" and "witchcraft" are not synonyms, not that they have no relationship. For comparison, try the statement "farming and ploughing were entirely separate in biblical times" — clearly false. Farming is not ploughing and ploughing is not farming; also, farming may not (and often does not) involve ploughing; but the two are not "separate". The Missionalia article is saying that modern witches tend to treat witchcraft and paganism as synonyms, that the old paganism of Europe was witchcraft and modern witchcraft is merely a survival of this old religion. (I note that this old theory of Murray's is no longer a common view amongst witches...)

I'd like to try to explain a little further why this statement stuck out like a sore thumb to me:

Both history and modern anthropology gives us many examples demonstrating that while religion may not involve sorcery, sorcery is almost invariably built on religious world-views, to the extent that for magical practitioners, the religion and the sorcery are so deeply intertwined they are virtually indistinguishable. "Biblical times" is not mentioned in the cited article, but one would expect things to be roughly the same then as in any other pre-scientific, pre-industrial society. A few scholars like Hutton (cited in the Missionalia article) have claimed that historically there was no European witchcraft (note: not than that the old witchcraft was distinct from Paganism); however he and his ilk are minority voices in the field, and the growing consensus (Eva Pocs, Gustav Henningsen, Bengt Angkarloo, E. William Monter, Carlo Ginzburg, etc) is that remarkably widespread witchcraft beliefs conforming to the "witchcraft" stereotypes existed across Europe, and that they originated in old beliefs regarding relationships between the living and the dead, humans, gods and spirits, etc. They did not originate in the hysteria, torture and leading questions of the witch trials, although they were partly shaped by them. The beliefs are not generally described as "belief systems" rather than "religion" or "paganism" in the scholarly works, since the latter terms have their own specific colourings, but it would clearly be misleading to say that "paganism and witchcraft" or "religion and witchcraft" were entirely separate in ancient times.

Another quibble with what was written: The wording that appeared in the removed section of this article implied (in mildly patronising terms) that suggesting a connection between "paganism" and witchcraft was a modern "complication", presumably by Wiccans and other modern witches who arbitrarily decided to recast the term "witchcraft" to suit their own needs. As I've tried to show above, this is not a new "complication", and despite the popularity of Hutton's books, the jury is still out on whether modern witchcraft is a complete invention or whether it inherits from the older witchcraft and cunning-folk traditions throughout Europe. Fuzzypeg☻ 03:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hutton did not say that there was no European witchcraft (at least not as far as I can recall -- it's some time since I've read his books). If I recall correctly, what he did say was that the "witchcraft" of the Great European Witchhunt was not the survival of an old religion, as Margaret Murray had claimed. I think he acknowledged that witchcraft was found earlier in Europe, and quotes Fox to that effect.

SteveH 08:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I've simplified my representation of Hutton for the above comment. As I have understood his work he treated the term "witchcraft" as referring to a fairly strictly Murrayist model of a witch cult; large scale organisation or at least continuity of beliefs and practices across large areas; a single pagan religion organised into groups (perhaps of 13). For any magical practice that doesn't fit into this rather rigid model he is at pains to use other terms, such as calling English sorcerers "cunning-folk", and even Italian stregheria he translates as "cunning-craft" (the normal translation is "witchcraft"). He does talk about pagan religion a little more freely, although he doesn't define what he means by "paganism". I believe he allows that there were a few remote areas of Europe where pagan religions still persisted in a small degree by the Early Modern Age (the start of the great "witch trial" period), but he claims that in most of Europe these beliefs were long extinct, and that not a single person accused of witchcraft during the period of the trials was a practitioner of a pagan religion. By that he is claiming that these were ordinary Christians who, perhaps because they were socially marginalised, suffered some psychiatric complaint, or for any number of reasons, became targets of the witchcraft hysteria.

In other words, Hutton is saying that at least by the time of the witch trials there was no "witchcraft" that contributed to the witch craze; but he uses the term "witchcraft" so gingerly that (if I recall correctly) he doesn't apply it to any historical group before the 20th century.

The other point of view I mention (Pocs, Henningsen, et al.) is that there were indeed widespread and remarkably consistent beliefs relating to magic, out-of-body travel, the spirits of the dead, cursing and blessing, shape-changing, controlling fertility, etc throughout Europe before and during the witch-trials period, that these beliefs were of pre-Christian origin, and that these beliefs were instrumental in helping give shape to the diabolised sabbath stereotype of the trials. These researchers don't actually state these people were "pagans", and the word "witch" is also used carefully, since these two terms have inexact definitions and carry a lot of baggage with them, but the picture painted is still pretty clear... Fuzzypeg☻ 22:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some sources for development of the article

I'm just recording some hopeful looking sources here so I or anyone else can sift them for good info. More may come later.

• Pagan-Christian Conflict over Miracle in the Second Century by Harold Remus
• Magic, Miracles and the Gospel by L. Michael White
• Henry Maguire (ed.) (1995) Byzantine Magic: Introduction; 1. "Fathers of the Church and the Evil Eye" by Matthew W. Dickie; 2. "The Archaeological Context of Magic in the Early Byzantine Period" by James Russel; 3. "Magic and the Christian Image" by Henry Maguire; 4. "Holy and Unholy Miracle Workers" by Alexander Kazhdan; 5. "Reactions of Two Byzantine Intellectuals to the Theory and Practice of Magic: Michael Psellos and Michael Italikos" by John Duffy; 6. "Balsamon on Magic: From Roman Secular Law to Byzantine Canon Law" by Marie Theres Fögen; 7. "A Contribution to the Study of Palaeologan Magic" by Richard P. H. Greenfield; 8. "Magic in Slavia Orthodoxa: The Written Tradition" by Robert Mathiesen; Abbreviations; Index.

Fuzzypeg☻ 00:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• The Healing of the Hemorrhaging Woman: Miracle or Magic? by Donald Howard Bromley

Fuzzypeg☻ 00:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Should a Christian Do Magic? An interesting analysis of stage magic by "Gospel magicians" who preach with the aid of sleight of hand and ventriloquism! Fuzzypeg☻ 02:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Christian mysticism

I would like to hear opinions about the part of the article that refers to Paul and John as mystics. The article on mysticism states that mysticism is "the pursuit of achieving communion or ... conscious awareness of ... God through direct experience." To my knowledge the orthodox view is that God initiated the visions that Paul and John had. If anything, God was in pursuit of them. I think identifying Paul and John as mystics implies that they were seeking truth on their own accord and not relying on God.

Further, the mysticism article states, "The purpose of mystical practices is to achieve that oneness in experience, to transcend limited identity and re-identify with the all that is." Nowhere have I heard that Paul and John were trying to achieve oneness with God or that they considered themselves anything other than reliant on God. Paul even referred to himself as a "bondservant."

In my opinion, Paul and John do not fit the definition of "mystics," and this portion of the article should be removed.

[edit] Archive

I've gone ahead and moved all the old discussions (pre-2007) into an archive. A few replies from 2007 got mixed in, but all topics created from Jan 2007 to now are still on this page. If anyone wants to continue a discussion from the archive, please start a new topic here. Do not edit the archive itself! -- Kesh 02:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This article should be rewritten with a open mind

After reading this article I conclude that it was written a christian who believes in magic. This article is heaviely biased and even more unprofessional than my grammar. It should be deleted or completely deleted, it does not contain any useful information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.129.112.3 (talk) 23:28, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

That's extremely vague, and also incorrect that it "does not contain any useful information." Do you have specific issues with the article we can work on? -- Kesh 23:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this article sometimes refers to christians as inmune to magic because jesus defeated evil, I dont think jesus ever defeated magic, if you can add sources to the claims maybe the information will be useful, because this article says Christians this christians that... it's written like propaganda. It's not written with a neutral sense in mind. Also, you should note that magic does not exist... it's the truth, or at least say that it has never been proven to exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.129.112.3 (talk) 21:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. It does not say "jesus defeated the devil" or anything close to that. Yes, magic doesn't exist. That doesn't mean some Christians stop believing in it. This article is about those beliefs. -- Kesh 23:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the first paragraph of the introduction says something along that lines. It does need a citation, but I do remember reading/hearing about early Christians believing they were immune to magic, so I think it may be accurate. In any case, this article is about Christian's beliefs about magic. I don't think it implies that magic actually exists, which would be POV to assert (as would implying that it doesn't exist). However, since someone has complained about it, we may want to clarify it in this regard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nimrand (talk • contribs) 03:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)