Okay, can I admit that I have an utter fascination with Christopher Hitchens? While I grieve for the state of his soul, I admire his intellect and his ability to cut to the heart of an issue. Perhaps it’s because he’s an intellectual ninja who is, unlike of most public intellectuals, honest and straightforward.
I mention this because I ran across a recent interview with him by a Unitarian minister in Oregon (h-tip to Matt Friedeman). When the interviewer says, “I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example),” Hitchens produces, completely off the cuff, an incredible defense of the necessity for Christians to believe in the resurrection. The best line, perhaps, is when he taunts her: “If all Christians were like you, I wouldn’t have to write the book.” Ouch!
Clearly Hitchens knows his Sun Tzu: “If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles” (from The Art of War). I wish all of my fellow believers understood the scale of the stakes the way that Hitchens does.
The interview is here.
January 28th, 2010 | 1:28 pm | #1
Hitchens is right. It’s all or nothing. That’s why the impact of the New Atheists is less of a threat to orthodox Christianity than it is to religious modernists such as Unitarians who share Hitchens’ naturalistic view of truth but want to have their cake and eat it too. They are the people who are most effectively brutalized by his arguments, and that is why they have reacted with so much of their own anti-New Atheist literature.
January 28th, 2010 | 1:58 pm | #2
Amazing. An unabashed God-denier agrees the apostle Paul while so-called God-followers devote their lives disagreeing with the apostle Paul.
Now that I think about it, Hitchens has a whole lot in common with Paul. Hitchens tries to intellectually murder Christians (and sometimes succeeds), while Paul tried to physically murder them. And sometimes succeeded.
God saved Paul for His glory. He can do the same for Hitchens. I pray it may yet happen.
January 28th, 2010 | 2:39 pm | #3
One of the amusing things about Rev. Sewell’s brand of “faith” is that it apparently makes her unable to tell when she’s being contradicted or challenged by Hitchens. Perhaps because she can’t believe in contradictions. He says she’s wasting her time, he says she’s in no meaningful sense a Christian, he says she only claims to be a person of faith so that she can receive cultural applause, and she just eats it all up!
January 28th, 2010 | 2:51 pm | #4
I am dumbfounded that this woman can call herself a woman of faith and a Christian when she does not believe in the Resurrection or that Christ died for our sins. But the sadly many people who call themselves believers, hold many of the same views that this woman holds.
I really cannot understand why people would spend their time going to a church that doesn’t preach the truth of Christ. If you don’t believe in the hard truths of Christianity, you may as well sit at home on a Sunday and read New-Age books–because this woman seems to be preaching something in the realm of New Age.
And the fact that she claims that Hitchens is religious in the same way that she is also shows her utter misunderstanding of the Christian faith.
January 28th, 2010 | 3:17 pm | #5
Hitchens seemed to have it down pretty well:
Sewell: “The religion you cite in your book is a generally fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”
Hitchens: “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
January 28th, 2010 | 3:43 pm | #6
Struck by the same exchange Jugulum quoted.
Love Sewell’s response to Hitchens’ statement: “Let me go someplace else.”
I laughed out loud…
January 28th, 2010 | 4:16 pm | #7
I think the most unloving thing we can do is to leave anyone who spouts the liberal mainline Protestant party-line on Christianity with the impression that they are Christians. They are not. Their faith is not the Christian faith.
The mealy-mouthed among us need to man up and read Rom. 16 for some guidance on what to do with such false teachers.
It’s a shame that an atheist is the most honest one in this situation.
January 28th, 2010 | 4:36 pm | #8
I saw part of a Hitchens documentary where he does something similar with Rowan Williams. Despite my internet handle, I’m Anglican, not Orthodox. It’s people like Williams who make being Anglican difficult. I’m always hoping for unity, perhaps even full communion one day with Orthodoxy, but I don’t see it happening as long as the liberals are in control.
As a clarification, I belong to the Anglican Church in north America(ACNA), a denomination that is at present time finding its way. There is an ongoing dialogue with the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), but many Orthodox folks take a dim view of the dialogue. We’ll see.
January 28th, 2010 | 5:05 pm | #9
Hitchens reveals something very important that classical Christians and atheists have in common: the belief in absolutes.
Atheists, of course, are quite certain that either there is absolutely no god, or there is absolutely no sound evidence in his favor. Christians, of course, hold to the other position.
Which is why it isn’t surprising to me to see Hitchens respond in such a way to a UU minister. There is this necessary mealy-mouthed relativism, this “I can do my own thing and believe my own thing and still claim to be a Christian,” that Hitchens can’t take. Either you are, or are not, a Christian. Just like you are, or are not, an atheist. Fence sitters need not apply.
Hitch will always be one of my favorite atheists (along with the great blogger Allahpundit) for his razor wit and boundless intellectual fervor. And heck, you never know, there may come a day when this absolutist changes his tune and enters the faith. I’m certain that his Christian brother, the talented and equally intellectual Peter Hitchens, is praying for Christopher’s soul.
January 28th, 2010 | 6:12 pm | #10
I echo the praise for Christopher Hitchens’s clarity. He is also my favorite athiest, and, amidst a lot of hyperbole, he does make some truthful claims about faith.
He shares with us his Divinity, which he describes as a transcendent/numinous experience. In place of Faith, he cherishes Reason. His evangelists are Plato and other philosophers. The paradigmatic figure for him is Socrates, not Jesus. He presents what seems to be a true and reasonable worldview.
To arrive at this worldview, he eats of the Tree of Knowledge. The fruit of that tree enters the human mind and offers apparent clarity. It offers a true understanding of the ways of nature. It is filled with insights, awe, and wonder. And yet, when the one who eats from the Tree of Knowledge dies, all is finished for him. There is nothing left.
I, a son of Adam, have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. I embrace many of the insights given me by Reason. I treasure transcendent/numinous experiences. I know that in this worldview, I will die. And with death, there could well be nothingness for me.
Yet, I have faith.
Faith is irrational. It does not make logical sense. The Tree of Knowledge gives a very coherent worldview devoid of God. (I am impressed with those who specialize in apologetics, because I think they strive valiantly to justify God to man, but I fear their struggle is fruitless.)
Faith, the Christian faith, is essentially irrational. God has a son?!?! God dies?!?! Jesus is resurrected?!?! Salvation is given those who believe?!?! None of this makes logical sense in the ways of the logical world.
What makes Faith so special, so remarkable, so extraordinary, is that one must acknowledge how its central propositions seem absurd in the eye of reason, and one must then look beyond rational explanations and EMBRACE CHRIST.
He is the only way to transcend this world of the Tree of Knowledge. He is the only way to salvation.
Hitchens is completely right, as far as he goes in this world. And he is completely clueless at how to take the next step.
January 28th, 2010 | 10:32 pm | #11
JM, faith is irrational??
Not the faith that God presents in Scripture.
January 28th, 2010 | 10:58 pm | #12
Four years ago I would have agreed with everything that Hitchens says here, and I would have despised the “person of faith” and by extension all of Christianity, because that’s what I thought it was all about. Faith for faith’s sake? The Resurrection as metaphor? Blech. No thank you, I’ll take my honest despair.
And now I’m a Christian – because I became convinced through reason that God exists, and through evidence that Jesus rose from the dead (and through experience of Him as I honestly pursued the question of “Is Christianity true?”). I think that if you are an intellectually honest atheist, willing to truly consider the evidence and the arguments, you’re far closer to Christ than those who go for a wishy-washy, feel-good “faith” with no meaningful content whatsoever. My experience was that if you look for the Truth, you’ll find it – and find that the Truth actually is the Person of Christ; I pray that Hitchens will continue to pursue Truth and also come by it to Him.
January 29th, 2010 | 12:39 am | #13
I wish this interview and article had been available years ago when I was at Princeton Seminary. I would have loved to use his line regarding Tillich’s concept of God in my final paper for the “Theology of Paul Tillich” class taught by Mark Taylor. :)
Historically, the class was interesting (in so far as you learn about someone whose thought has been influential – despite how bad such thought is). But, at least theologically speaking, that class was a complete waste of time.
January 30th, 2010 | 12:51 am | #14
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by thatjeremyguy, James McAdams. James McAdams said: #Evangel – Christopher Hitchens in Defense (sort of) of the Resurrection http://ow.ly/1nK281 – I agree. The interview is fascinating too. [...]
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