Christopher Hitchens Has Died, Doug Wilson Reflects
As a result of all this, we were thrown together in a number of situations. One time we shared a panel in Dallas, and I told the crowd there that if Christopher and I were not careful, we were in danger of becoming friends. During the time we spent together, he never said an unkind thing to me—except on stage, up in front of everybody. After doing this, he didn't wink at me, but he might as well have.
So we got on well with each other, because each of us knew where the other one stood. Eugene Genovese, before he became a believer, once commented on the tendency that some have to try to garner respect by giving away portions, big or small, of what they profess to believe. "If other religions offer equally valid ways to salvation and if Christianity itself may be understood solely as a code of morals and ethics, then we may as well all become Buddhists or, better, atheists. I intend no offense, but it takes one to know one. And when I read much Protestant theology and religious history today, I have the warm feeling that I am in the company of fellow unbelievers" (The Southern Front, pp. 9–10). Ironically, the branch of the faith most interested in getting the "cultured despisers" to pay us some respect is really not that effective, and this is a strategy that can frequently be found on the pointed end of its own petard. Respectability depends on not caring too much about respectability. Unbelievers can smell accommodation, and when someone like Christopher meets someone who actually believes all the articles in the Creed, including that part about Jesus coming back from the dead, it delights him. Here is someone actually willing to defend what is being attacked. Militant atheists are often exasperated with opponents whose strategy appears to be "surrender slowly."
G. K. Chesterton once pointed to the salutary effect that the great agnostics had on him—that effect being that of "arousing doubts deeper than their own." Christopher was an heir of the Enlightenment tradition, and would have felt right at home in the 18th-century salons of Paris. He wanted to carry on the grand tradition of doubting what had been inherited from Christendom, and to take great delight in doubting it. This worked well, or appeared to, for a time. But skepticism is a universal solvent, and once applied, it does not stop just because Christendom is gone. "I think, therefore I am. I think." We pulled out the stopper of faith, and the bathwater of reason appeared undisturbed for a time. But modernism slowly receded and now postmodernism is circling the drain. Our intelligentsia needs to figure out how to do more than sit in an empty tub and reminisce about the days when Voltaire knew how to keep the water hot.
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Shirley Barron
Good article, & kind to Mr. Hitchens. But Doug, do you know what a petard is? It does not have a point. It was a small artillery piece that was notoriously unreliable. Often while being packed with shot or balls, it exploded in the packer's face, and sort of blew him up. Thus the expression "hoist with his own petard", like shooting oneself in the foot (well, maybe worse). Regards.
Ray O
Strange how those who condemn Christian morality and belief still attempt to justify their moral choices as being the product of human reason. Without a Deity (irrespective of whether one believes or not) there would be no morality at all.
Nicolas T
Thank you for a very informative and interesting article. Your prayer at the end (R.I.P.) is especially touching. However, this prayer would seem to be completely conditional on your belief that: "... in this life (only), the door of repentance is always open." For later you say: "We have no indication that Christopher ever called on the Lord before he died, and if he did not, then Scripture plainly teaches that he is lost forever." Thus your prayer "may he rest in peace" is almost being offered without any hope at all. This illustrates precisely the point where we create a contradiction in our Christian teaching. The Bible does not teach that God's mercy stops at the moment of human death. It is appointed for us all to die "and then comes the judgement". The word in the text is "judgement", and indeed we shall all be judged. The mistake is that we read the word "judgement" but think the word "damnation" -- eisegesis of a very serious kind.
Steve H.
Nothing would have been more easily predicted by the departed than his message falling on the deaf ears of the faith-filled. It is psychologically impossible for one intoxicated with moral superiority to conceptualize of a larger moral argument. Religious/theistic salvation is a human invention that allows one to relieve oneself of the pain of social shame while declaring one's moral superiority in one stroke. The resultant groupthink necessarily often leads to fascist ideation and genocide. The higher moral alternative is for the individual/group to have permanent, daily access to the shame of past failings and the universal capacity for evil thus providing the frontal lobes with the widest array of tools for limiting future transgressions. Christopher Hitchens liberated some of us to go beyond the limitations of theistic morality to explore the higher capacities of conscience. The message can/will never reach those who cost us the most by remaining deaf to it.
Davod
Beautiful article. I am grieved over the death of Christopher Hitchens and, at the very same time, very encouraged by the greatness and goodness of our Savior. I pray that God's grace captured Hitch's heart at the very end, ushering him into the loving presence of our God.