Posted on 01/15/2012 2:18:32 PM PST by rhema
The death of Christopher Hitchens on December 15 was not unexpected, and that seemed only to add to the tragedy. His fight against cancer had been lived, like almost every other aspect of his colorful life, in full public view. He had told numerous interviewers that he wanted to die in an active, not a passive sense. Then again, there may never have been a truly passive moment in Christopher Hitchens’ life.
Long before he was known as one of the world’s most ardent atheists, he was known as a world-class essayist and a hard-driving public intellectual. Born in England, he had made his home in Washington, D.C. for three decades. His range of interests was almost unprecedented. He wrote books on subjects as varied as Thomas Paine and the Elgin Marbles. He was a predictable man of the Left when he began his journalistic career in Britain, and he remained a staunch defender of civil liberties throughout his life. Nevertheless, he broke with liberals in the United States and Britain when he affirmed the Bush Administration’s decision to wage war against terrorism in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He could write eloquent prose, but he could also write savagely. He was a self-described contrarian, even writing a book entitled, Letter to a Young Contrarian. In that book, he described this contrarian stance as “a disposition against arbitrary authority or witless mass opinion.” In practice, for Hitchens it seemed to mean the right to attack any idea, any place, any time, no matter who might hold it.
In 2007 he launched a full assault upon theism and belief in God. In God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Hitchens declared himself to be the implacable and determined foe of all religious belief. Along with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, he became part of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism.
Actually, his atheism had already been announced. In Letters to a Young Contrarian, published in 2001, Hitchens had written that he was “not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.” Hitchens did not want to be confused with amateur atheists or with “the generalized agnosticism of our culture.” No, he was the enemy of religious faith and any claim of belief in God.
God is Not Great became a best-seller — a manifesto of the New Atheism and its aggressive public presence. Hitchens distilled the New Atheism to its essence. He asserted that belief in God is not only without intellectual integrity, it is also morally corrupting. He blamed belief in God for everything from ethnic strife and genocide to opposition to science and a hatred of sexuality. Along with the other New Atheists, he delivered a broadside against all theistic belief and religious expression. Whereas the older atheists had soft-pedaled attacks on Jesus Christ, Hitchens rejected any effort to sentimentalize Christ. He wrote that the New Testament was no less violent than the Old Testament and he lambasted any claim of divine revelation. He argued that religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse and denied that belief in God is necessary to morality.
At the end of his life, fighting against the cancer that had robbed him of his voice even before it stilled his pen, Hitchens pointedly asked Christians not to pray for him, and then allowed that believers might pray for him — if it made them feel better. He also warned against any claims that he might have converted at the end of his struggle. “Suppose I ditch the principles I have held for a lifetime, in the hope of gaining favor at the last minute?” he wrote. “I hope and trust that no serious person would be at all impressed by such a hucksterish choice.” He told others that, if such reports did emerge, they should be attributed to the influence of drugs, and the loss of his mental faculties.
With all that in mind, how can I claim that evangelical Christians should learn from Christopher Hitchens? Well, consider these lessons:
1. Hitchens understood the power of ideas, and he never left a field of intellectual combat without giving his best.
Even as a boy, Christopher Hitchens understood that ideas matter. This conviction was only deepened as he was educated at Oxford University and then, as both journalist and public intellectual, entered the fray of public debate. He never ran from an idea, nor from the responsibility to defend and refine that idea in the combat of intellectual engagement. In his view, ideas rule the world, and he was determined to give his all to the cause of making certain that the superior ideas, in his view, triumphed over the inferior ideas. He never surrendered an idea with a shrug, though he was, on some issues, ready to change his mind, and to stand against his former intellectual allies.
2. Hitchens committed his life to the production of words, believing that the printed and spoken word can change the world.
As a writer and essayist, Hitchens is often compared to George Orwell, the subject of one of his many books. Hitchens’ literary production was, by any measure, prodigious. As some of his friends noted, he seemed to write faster than they could read. He wrote books, essays, and seemingly countless articles. He was a public speaker, a conversationalist, and a commentator. He wrote books and essays that aggravated, assaulted, aggrieved, and irritated. He could be eloquent, and he could be crude. He believed that the power of language drove the world of ideas, and that ideas require verbal expression. He was hardly ever quiet, and the force of his arguments was expanded and extended in time through his writings. Though Hitchens is now dead, his books remain in print and widely available, and will be so for years to come.
3. Hitchens was a man of passion and personal intensity, and he made friends across ideological boundaries.
He was, as Tom Wolfe might describe him, a man in full. His passions were fully in view, if sometimes too much so. He delighted in human company, and made friends around the world. He had a host of Christian friends, including many who had debated him. He was never boring, always interesting, and just about everyone who knew him seems to recall his personal warmth and conviviality. At the very least, even when he attacked Christianity, he did not cut himself off from all Christians.
4. Hitchens did not hide behind intellectual scorn and he did not fear the open exchange of ideas.
Generally, the New Atheists are known for their unwillingness to debate Christians, especially Christian apologists. Richard Dawkins, in particular, has brought disrepute upon his own intellectual confidence by his steadfast and condescending refusal to debate Christian apologists and intellectuals. The same could not be said of Hitchens, who was willing to debate evangelical Christians and to allow the debates to be publicized and published. He did not attempt to shut down debate by insulting his ideological and theological opponents.
5. Hitchens revealed the danger of cultural Christianity and exposure to tepid, lifeless, superficial Christian teaching.
In his childhood, Hitchens was exposed to the mild Christianity of his father and the Hitchens home. (Later in life, he discovered that his mother was, in fact, partly Jewish.) As a schoolboy, Hitchens received the customary dose of tame religious instruction. In God is Not Great, he wrote of Mrs. Jean Watts, “a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith,” who taught him religion at his school near Dartmoor. Even as a boy, Hitchens was not impressed by her emotivist expressions of doctrine and her answers to his questions. He wrote also of a school headmaster, who seemed, among other failings, to believe that belief in God served a mainly therapeutic function. Hitchens described himself then as “quite the insufferable little intellectual,” but the damage was done. Unlike others who, as he wrote, might have rejected belief in God because of abuse or “brutish indoctrination,” Hitchens simply developed indignant contempt for a belief system that seemed so superficial and fraudulent. An exposure to tepid, lifeless, thoughtless, and intellectually formless Christianity can be deadly.
The death of Christopher Hitchens is a tragedy. That much is affirmed by virtually all the countless individuals who knew him, or knew of him. But Christians experienced the death of Christopher Hitchens with a special sense of tragedy, for we could not think of his death merely on his terms. We have no choice but to believe that Christopher Hitchens, with all of his amazing gifts, will have to face the very God he so aggressively dismissed and denied. As for that deathbed change of heart he warned us all not to hope for — we have every reason to hope that it happened in spite of himself.
For that matter, every single believer in Christ has come to believe and be saved by grace alone — in spite of ourselves.
There are important lessons to be learned from the life and career of Christopher Hitchens, and they are lessons we must not fail to contemplate. In the final analysis, Christians have far less to fear from atheists or antitheists as we do from what Hitchens called “the generalized agnosticism of our culture.” We agree with him that the question of the existence and identity of God is nothing less than the most powerful and urgent question humanity will ever confront.
For this central reason, the death of Christopher Hitchens is an absolute tragedy. And, as is often the case with such a tragedy, we dare not miss the lessons with which we are left.
bmfl
Cordially,
Well put.
“I’m sorry. I cannot see why Dr. Mohler wasted all that time, bandwidth and virtual ink on that one particular God-hater. The loss of any eternal, never-dying soul is tragic. Once Hitchens assumed room temperature and was beyond redemption, HE was no more a tragedy than an unsaved wino who died on skid row. IMHO”
Albet Mohler us a Christian man of great intellect....I think he was implying that.....”there but by the grace of God go I.” It is his nature to be iremic and not polemic in his writings. I’m not the gentleman he is, so I cannot fault him.
Also, you should know that Dr. Mohler would certainly agree that indeed the unsaved wino is as tragic. Dr. Mohler’s blog is more or less intended for the Seminary Students he teaches and oversees. They would be interested in this individual.
Whatever, it is just his opinion, and he wasn’t “praising” the man he was trying to point out lessons to be learned. While I don’t always follow his logic, I see no reason to critisize Albert Mohler....should any think this is a somehow giving Hitchens a pass. You just don’t understand Albert Mohler’s style.
Good article. It is worthy of note that on the day Christopher Hitchens died, he became a believer in God.
Joel Osteen, anyone?
If you can't appreciate the pure beauty of the violin after hearing this, something's wrong with your ears.
Or you can get raw with these strings.
How about this gamechanger from America's Got Talent (which they SHOULD have won).
And this YT vid, dedicated to the one and only rdb2, whose eyes are growing dim.
Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.
Do it!
bookmark
Hitchens - "the very parable of the good Samaritan – who was not a Christian – suggests that morality and religion are not necessarily linked. “Morality comes from us. Religion claims to have invented it on our behalf.”
Hitchens knew very well that Samaritans were Jews who did not obey the authority of Jerusalem. They possessed the same moral code as Christ, monotheism, based upon the God of Abraham. Jesus was a Jew, who came to fulfill the law, not over turn it, as Hitchens would. The Samaritan is a fictional character in a parable related by Christ to shed light on a truth: Morality comes from obedience to God. The corollary to “thou shall have no other Gods” is that God’s mercy extends to ALL peoples, not just Jews. Christ shocked the orthodox Jewish world by demonstrating God’s mercy to non-Jews, such as a Roman Centurion, but also dying as a savior to ALL mankind, not just the Jews.
Hitchens would have us believe that the Samaritan, a fictional character, was introduced to the Apostles by Christ to illustrate the independent, innate goodness of man. Nope.
If history in the Gospels were any importance to Hitchens, (as opposed the the parables) the incident of the Samaritan woman at the well would be more of a guide about Christ’s response to the innate moral goodness of man. The woman at the well responded to the thirsty travelers, Christ and the Apostles, not just because of an immediate response to their thirst, her own personal moral act, but also to a supernatural attraction to Christ as the coming Messiah. To read this account with no appreciation for the sin of the woman, and her broken spiritual state, is to read the account as though it were listings in the phone book.
What made the ‘good’ Samaritan good, and is it in contrast with the other Samaritans?
I used the word “adolescent” as an adjective; not literally. As much as I admired Hitchens as a writer on many different subjects, his clinging to a hero-worship of Trotsky always made me roll my eyes. He should have put away that childish thing.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8,9)
God responds to our faith with his gracious gift of salvation. God has given to every man the measure of faith. It's left to him (man) to direct it towards God (repentance from dead works and faith toward God--Hebrews 6:1). God chose in eternity past to save those who believe on him. And that is the Gospel.
This is my opinion as well. I would hate to live in an echo chamber. I loved the way Hitchens felt such a strong obligation to present the other side of an argument to any group, usually paraphrasing upfront what his critics could rightly say in response. Hitchens was a master orator and writer and he has left a void in the arena of intellectual debate.Steel sharpens steel folks, and you are well advised to engage those with whom you disagree with something better than name calling or banning ideas contrary to your own.
Another example of reactions to this information is Diamond's post #44, which is what I would call blame-shifting. Even though Hitchens isn't the one that accepted millions in stolen money, somehow he is at fault for not agreeing with the philosophy that was used in justifying the money's return for the victims. Mother Teresa apparently remains blameless I assume in the eyes of the blame-shifters. An irrelevant corollary to the issue becomes center stage.
Instead of citing examples to back up your flaccid accusations, you've decided you'd rather have a semantics rodeo, which is about as interesting as watching someone tie their shoelaces.
Get back to me if you have any specific examples of dishonesty.
It would be more appropriate for you to explain how you have enough information to claim belligerently that Hitchens was “never dishonest”. I understand Diogenes was looking for such a man.
Bless your heart.
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