As far as L’Engle…hm. I never thought of that line as diminishing Christ’s uniqueness. I guess I can see that, but nothing in the line seems to me to have anything directly to do with the Incarnation, and everything to do with his teachings? I don’t know. I need to think about that more, b/c now my mind is seeing both sides with equal clarity.

I need to go back and reread that passage from TDIR now. Hm.

As far as the Christ thing, I think I was actually thinking of L’Engle (and that one line is something I’ve always wanted to excise from A Wrinkle in Time, I admit–it also doesn’t seem consistent with L’Engle’s writings elsewhere about the uniqueness of Christ’s Incarnation). What it says in The Dark Is Rising is actually this:
“‘Very old them crosses are, rector,’ said Old George unexpectedly, firm and clear. ‘Made a long time before Christianity. Long before Christ.’
The rector beamed at him. ‘But not before God,’ he said simply.
The Old Ones looked at him. There was no answer that would not have offended him, so no one tried to give one. Except, after a moment, Will.”

And then Will says something about time which I quite like and which is quite consistent with the Celtic Christian view of time. What I object to isn’t Will’s response or the fact that the Dark attacks them in church–there’s nothing about the place of a church building itself that makes it less vulnerable to demonic activity–in fact, it may be all the more attractive. But, in my experience, protection comes from prayer (the prayer of those past as well as present, and possibly even future), which has been portrayed in this scene as ineffective and misguided. That’s what makes me squirm here, the condescension towards the rector (not that I haven’t met some stupid rectors in my time–and he does seem stupid, given that he doesn’t reply that Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity (not as the Incarnate Jesus) was present with God from the beginning of eternity)–but his faith itself is portrayed as futile.

I knew you’d disagree about HP! It does make me laugh, but it has yet to inspire me with wonder.

As far as that church scene in The Dark Is Rising…I admit that at first I was taken aback. How could the Dark attack them in church? But the church is a human institution, subject to human failings, and so of course it must be vulnerable. As far as Christ’s position as one way of talking about the Light, I didn’t see that as much different from L’Engle’s stance in A Wrinkle In Time, where Jesus is equated with other learned teachers in holding back the Shadow. And L’Engle *is* an explicitly Christian author.

Oh, and–beauty…a dimension totally lacking from the Harry Potter books–I don’t know if I agree with that completely. Certainly Rowling’s world doesn’t have the haunting majesty of Cooper’s, in part, I think, b/c Cooper’s is explicitly linked to a past we can claim as at once familiar and alien, but for me, Rowling’s world creates *wonder*–and that is a quality that I can never discount. (Cooper has wonder, too–all the best fantasy novelists do. But what I think attracts me to Harry Potter so much is that every book embraces and enlarges that sense of wonder, which most series can’t do for me. Even Narnia, after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, lost some of its magic for me.)