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Some thoughts on Christopher Hitchens' fulfillment of Romans 1.
With all due respect to my dear friend Roger Brazier in London, it seems that if you have a British accent, you can get away with saying almost anything, no matter how ludicrous or ridiculous it is, at least if you're on this side of the pond.
Christopher Hitchens is an excellent example of this, a brilliant man in many ways. But when it comes to the issue of religion, all logic and rationality go flying out the window, and the emotion, the clear, obvious emotion of absolute detestation of Christianity, and of Jesus Christ in particular, overrides all of his logic circuits.
And though he continues to use that lovely British accent, what he ends up saying is nothing but a clear example of his absolute hatred of God. He is a living, walking example of the truth of Romans chapter 1.
Yesterday morning I had the opportunity of listening to his debate with Danish D'Souza from, I believe it was King's College in Manhattan. And as I was writing, I was listening to this exchange, and I was absolutely taken aback by the vitriol.
And I guess if you put in a British accent, it's supposed to be less offensive, but it really isn't once you really think about what is being said. The vitriol that he used. I was listening to this because last week we announced that I'll be debating Bart Ehrman on the issue of textual variation and inspiration in January of 2009 in Florida.
And to make that announcement, I had remembered hearing an exchange on the Hugh Hewitt show, when Hitchens was on, doing a debate, singing the praises of Bart Ehrman. And shortly after that, I heard Hitchens present this argument in that debate, and he didn't get any meaningful response at that point in time.
And I heard the same argument come up in this debate. And so I'd like to start off just with Hitchens venting his hatred toward God and ask the critically thinking Christian to do just one thing. Get past how well he speaks and ask yourself a question.
Does he present anything that's really meaningful? Does he show any real understanding of what the Christian faith is? Then we'll take a look at this argument that he clearly likes to use very frequently.
They're never suspended. They do operate according to a beauty, a logic, and a symmetry that we don't quite yet understand. We're getting to understand them better. Dinesh points it out rather intelligently to you.
What does Christianity say? Ah, those laws can be suspended, and in your favor, too, if you make the right prayers and propitiations and sacrifices. A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured.
The blind can see. Nonsense. It's not moral to lie to children. It's not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and to tell them that if they will only believe nonsense, they can be saved. It's immoral.
The totalitarian concept of the afterlife, the hideous idea doesn't even occur in the New Testament. Excuse me. It doesn't occur even in the violent, rape-and-genocide-filled books of the Jewish Bible.
There is no punishment of the dead. When God has destroyed your tribe and had your virgins and your children murdered in front of you and your flocks and herds scattered and so on, and you also fall down to a bronze sword, he's done with you.
The earth can close over you. That's it. You've tangled with the wrong tribe, the one he favored. Not until gentle Jesus, meek and mild, are you told, if you don't make the right propitiations, you can depart into everlasting fire.
One of the most wicked ideas ever preached and one that's ruined the lives and the peace of mind of many, many children, preached to them by vicious, child-hating old men and women in the name of this ghastly cult which we're met here to discuss tonight.
I don't need two minutes to finish with this religion, but thanks.
Now, aside from documenting for us that Christopher Hitchens hates Christianity and he hates an external moral system that is binding upon all men, he hates the idea of him being a created being, his owing his life and every breath he takes to his creator.
Aside from demonstrating that he is the very fulfillment of the truth of Romans chapter 1, exactly what kind of argument was presented to us in that section of argumentation? I saw no argument at all.
I hear a lot about Christopher Hitchens' hatred. I hear a lot about his emotions, his arbitrary morality, but I didn't see anything that I could grab hold of and say, ah, here is a meaningful objection to Christianity.
Instead, that comes in this next portion of the argument, and here, folks, I've said it many times, theology matters. The theology that you hold will determine whether you can or cannot answer this following objection.
Why is it incompatible with knowledge and science? It's for this reason. We calculate that the human species, Homo sapiens, has been around now, Carl Sagan thought, perhaps, 200 ,000 years. I would say 100 ,000.
Not more, not less. In order to believe the Christian message, you have to believe this. For those 100 ,000 years, people were born, died, usually many of them in childbirth, either the mother or the child.
Life expectancy, perhaps 20 years, 25. Died of microorganisms they didn't know existed. Genesis doesn't mention them because the people who write Genesis don't know there are microorganisms. Earthquakes would have been terrifying.
Tsunamis, volcanoes, mysterious events. War and famine superimposed on this. You can all fill out this picture for yourselves, I'm sure. That was our life for tens of thousands of years. On and on it went.
Maybe a gradual upward curve of a sort. We seem to have made some progress very painfully and with infinite suffering and labor and with our solidarity still intact. Now, here's what you have to believe.
You have to believe that heaven watched that for 98 ,000 years. And after 98 ,000 years decided 2 ,000 years, it may be time to intervene. And the best way of doing that would be to have a filthy human sacrifice in a very remote part of Palestine.
And the news of this has still not penetrated to the rest of the world and I don't think will be believed when it does and isn't believed by me and can't be believed by a thinking person. Thank you.
Now, do you see why I say theology matters? There are many people today in evangelicalism who, because of their focus upon the autonomy of man, more concerned for the free will of man than the free will of God, have in essence denied God's entire purpose in creation.
They've turned it into this situation where God is up there just sort of observing, as Hitchens said, and that would lead to a question. I mean, we can argue about the long date of man's history if we want to, but even if you just say, well, it's only 4 ,000 years, you still have many, many, many generations of God just standing back and watching from certain perspectives.
But you see, that's not a biblical perspective. You see, the Bible would affirm that from the very beginning God wrote upon the conscience of man in his very constitutive nature, his law, and that he has always had a people, and that he has been working his purpose out in this world through those people for their good from the very beginning.
He didn't sit around for 98 ,000 years and then decide to invade history only 2 ,000 years ago, no matter how blasphemously Hitchens might want to express that. But instead, he has had a purpose all along in every generation.
He has had those people that he is working with, and all of that moved toward the central part of history being the cross of Christ, not a filthy part of Palestine, but the place where God chose to enter into his own creation, demonstrate his own attributes.
The central part of history itself, we look back to that central part of history now, the cross being that focal point. He enters into human history and provides the perfect means of salvation in Jesus Christ and for all those that he joins to Jesus Christ.
And so you see, Hitchens' argument, I've heard him use it more than once now, it's his favorite. How would you respond to it? You see, apologetics flows from systematic theology, biblical theology. You don't develop arguments and then change your theology to match your arguments.
Your apologetics should flow from your theology. And if we have a truly biblical theology that recognizes the sovereignty of God in all things, then we will have the proper answers for the misrepresentations of people like Christopher Hitchens.
You see, theology really does matter. Thanks for watching.
