Christopher Hitchens Gets it Exactly Right

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During a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, noted atheist Christopher Hitchens laid down some seriously good theology. Most people recognize Hitchens as the author of the bestselling book God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. Since the book’s publication in 2007, Hitchens has toured the country debating a series of religious leaders, including some well-known evangelical thinkers. In Portland he was interviewed by Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell. The entire transcript of the interview has been posted online. The following exchange took place near the start of the interview:

Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the 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 and 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.

Sewell wanted no part of that discussion so her next words are, “Let me go someplace else.”

This little snippet demonstrates an important point about religious “God-talk.” You can call yourself anything you like, but if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins and then rose from the dead, you are not “in any meaningful sense” a Christian. 

Talk about nailing it.

In one of the delicious ironies of our time, an outspoken atheist grasps the central tenet of Christianity better than many Christians do. What you believe about Jesus Christ really does make a difference.

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February 1, 2010, 4:18 PM Patrick Sullivan says:
British / Australian . Retired Pastor. Hospital Chaplain. Creator and Webmaster of www.jesuschristonly.com	You are so right Ray when you say “What you believe about Jesus Christ really does make a difference”. You words Ray, echo what was told to me as a young man setting out in the faith . “Pat in your Christian life you will meet many and varied people with all sorts of ideas about this and that, the acid test is this What do they think about Jesus?”. This advice has stood me in very good stead, and saved me wasting my time with a whole lot of error. Pat
February 11, 2010, 3:42 PM butch88 says:
	What Hitchens said makes alot of sense, he sure did nailed it, it also got me to thinking.Am I really a christian, or just by name?
April 30, 2010, 8:31 AM Terry Lovell says:
	If I were at all inclined to attempt to prove to professional atheists such as Christopher Hitchens the reality of Jesus Christ, I would not do so by pitching the power of supernatural belief against that of man’s mere intellect. The two are quite incompatible: the existence within the self of the former, by its very nature, cannot be rationalised, while the latter, due to the limitations of its understanding, can never be satisfied with any answer that cannot be proven. Nor would I exhort the atheist to pore over the Bible, study theology or Christology, spend time in the meditative solitude of the nearest monastery, or, indeed lastly, spend any time at all with bread-and-milk non-Christians such as Marilyn Sewell, who, as she sat so obsequiously at his footstool, was clearly no match for Hitchens. Rather, I would introduce him to people I have had the immense privilege of knowing since I became a follower of Jesus 25 years ago: former drunks, drug addicts, homosexuals, hard-case villains, prison convicts, the abandoned and abused, the broken and down-and-out bums, whose lives, based on the irrefutable evidence of their own testimonies, have been transformed to a degree that is utterly beyond the ken of atheists, agnostics and non-believers at large. The experience of each one, all of whom were once dismissed as human rubble wrought by the inevitable consequences of this loveless world until the numinous love of Jesus Christ touched their lives, cannot mockingly be cast aside by the cynical pragmatism of atheism. Each would say that only the supernatural love of Jesus Christ was able to achieve what no man’s hand was able to. Hitchens’ intellect, or that of any atheist, can gainsay the evidence of their changed lives. I might add another example of a Christ- transformed life: that of a British tabloid hack whose Sunday scandal sheet made the National Enquirer look like The Wall Street Journal. He began his career as a messenger boy in London’s Fleet Stree, became northern news editor, and, after ‘discovering’ the irresistibility of Jesus Christ at the age of 41, had to choose three years later between following Him or publisher Robert Maxwell, the notorious newspaper tycoon, who, in November 1991, drowned in uncertain circumstances while on board his luxury yacht. That hack was me. My life changed from destroying lives through tabloid sensationalism to trying to save them through the grace of Jesus Christ. Let Hitchens dare to tell me that God does not exist. The point I wish to make is that, in my view, there is little to be achieved by attempting to debate with atheists the validity of God’s existence on the subjective basis of faith alone. It is most convincingly done on the evidence of those who can personally testify to the way in which the power of Christ turned their lives around. Professional atheists such as Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris are smart and astute; they have done their homework; know more about the Bible than many Christians; and they know how to manipulate a media interested only in surface-scratching headlines, beloved of the liberal, humanist media in particular. (The average Christian, conversely, does little to equip himself with the academic and factual firepower necessary to take on the average atheist and the fallacies of a faith that insists that God does not exist.) A standard reply of atheists to followers of Jesus who have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and which has led to an inexplicable and fundamental shift in their belief and spiritual values, is that the poor souls are simply self-deluded. But this claim simply won’t do. As they have chosen to do so down the centuries, Christians more than ever are today �“ in their thousands - continuing to sacrifice their lives, principally in Islamist countries, rather than disown the Lord Jesus Christ. Would Hitchens dismiss this as “suicide by self-delusion”? Such love speaks of a power beyond the comprehension of the most intellectual and academic of atheists, of an agape love brutally nailed to the cross for the salvation of man, who spat upon it and reviled it, and which atheists, agnostics and liberal humanists willfully continue to do to this day. There will come a day when Hitchens and his friends will come face to face with the God they so loudly scorn and deny. Unlike Sewell, He will ask questions to which they will have no answers, and their most profound contention will be exposed as no more than the reasoning of wayward children.