What to Think About Magic?

Is magic always evil, or is there more to consider? A question from a student got me thinking about how Scripture and Christian tradition approach this topic. Let’s take a closer look.

I received an email this past week from Sarah Rosenburg, a member of our church and a TCS student, about the question of magic. It had come up in class whether magic was ever good. They had been reading RJ Rushdoony on the topic, and Rushdoony says it is always evil. Sarah wanted to know what I thought.

Generally speaking, "magic" is dark and sinful. The Mosaic Law clearly condemns it as an abomination: 

“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.” (Deut. 18:9–12)

This kind of occult practice should be squarely rejected by all believers.

But some of this question depends on how you define magic. For example, my brother (not a believer) would call Jesus turning water into wine magic, and if that is the case, certainly it wasn't sinful or dark! The reason I have used the term “magic” in sermons (for example, calling the resurrection "magical") is because our modern world tends to have a materialistic view of the universe which denies any supernatural powers. 

Charles Taylor has written about the process of secularization in Western Culture, and a major part of that is our loss of a sense of the spiritual unseen world around us. This has been described as a disenchantment that, as a result, has left many young people in the late modern world of our generation feeling a sense of meaninglessness and malaise. Life feels like we are part of a giant, dead machine that is just grinding along. Beauty, goodness, and truth are all lost. We long for wonder and are deeply drawn into fantasy and magic as it promises to make us feel alive again. There has been a huge rise in the occult as a result of this. Such a disenchanted view of the cosmos is clearly not biblical, and I think Christians have a responsibility to re-enchant the worldview and imagination of Western people. Using the word "magic" can be helpful for this.

This re-enchantment project was one of the chief aims of C.S. Lewis. Both his Narnia stories and his Ransom Trilogy sought to connect western people with a new vision of reality. So he used magic in his stories. Because I love Lewis, my default is to not be too hard on magic. But is that a biblical approach?

While magic could refer to anything supernatural (as my brother used the word above), it can also be defined as various dark arts or techniques that are used sinfully to manipulate the physical world for people's own gain. This is the sorcery that Deuteronomy condemns. Interestingly, C.S. Lewis saw a close parallel between magic and science. He said they were both techniques for gaining control over the powers of the natural world, the only difference being that science works and magic doesn't:

The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavor and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they are twins. They were born of the same impulse. …

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead. (The Abolition of Man, pp. 87–88)

It is noteworthy that Lewis (who seems to celebrate magic so much in his books) has a pretty negative view of it here when he is talking about our world. It is an important detail that the beloved fantasy books containing magic (Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc.) are not about real worlds. In those worlds, there is white magic and dark magic that are clearly different. In our world, too, we have supernatural powers that are both good and evil.

It can be fairly debated both ways whether “magic” is a word worth retaining for good supernatural power. I think in our cultural moment, it is. How do we do that carefully? Here are a few more distinctions that could help us:

First, Sarah Rosenburg also pointed out to me another distinction we should consider: the special powers some beings have in fantasy stories (like changing shape or flying) versus the techniques employed by witches. The special powers seem to be analogous to the “gifts” God gives us in this world (that in modern parlance are called “superpowers,” like playing music or connecting well with people socially). This could be one way of defining magic in a narrower sense that could be retained by Christians. 

Second, while Lewis sees a strong corollary between magic and science, Christians believe that science is part of how we exercise dominion over God’s creation (always for his glory). It can be a kind of dark magic where man tries to gain mastery over God’s world, making himself God. But it can also be a kind of white magic, by which we serve our neighbors and bring health and blessing to the nations. I even think that we should have more wonder at science, similar to how we do at magic. It is remarkable the powers and potential God has woven into his creation. 

Lastly, the supreme "white magic" in our world is the power of the Holy Spirit. He creates, builds, heals, convicts of sin, gives prophecies and insight into truth, causes people to be born again, and so on. He is a real supernatural power, and he works primarily through God's ordained means (the Word, the sacraments, and prayer). He is called by Jesus a “power” (Luke 24:49). But also, he can't be controlled like magic. When Simon the magician asked the Apostles, “Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit,” he was harshly condemned (Acts 8:19). 

Jesus says in John 3:8, "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." So, while we pray and long for the supernatural powers of God to work in our lives and in our world, we reject the control that magic promises. There is no technique that can control the Holy Spirit. And this really gets to the heart of why wizardry in our world is always evil: it is a desire to gain mastery over the world like God. It is our desire to be God. Every such impulse of the human heart is always evil. So, while we long for the Holy Spirit to re-enchant our deadened Western imagination, we will always do so acknowledging “power belongs to God” (Ps. 62:11).