fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Religion: Christopher Hitchens’ Undiscovered Country

How could Christ have died for our sins, when supposedly he also did not die at all? Did the Jews not know that murder and adultery were wrong before they received the Ten Commandments, and if they did know, why was this such a wonderful gift? On a more somber note, how can the “argument […]

How could Christ have died for our sins, when supposedly he also did not die at all? Did the Jews not know that murder and adultery were wrong before they received the Ten Commandments, and if they did know, why was this such a wonderful gift? On a more somber note, how can the “argument from design” (that only some kind of “intelligence” could have designed anything as perfect as a human being) be reconciled with the religious practice of female genital mutilation, which posits that women, at least, as nature creates them, are not so perfect after all? Whether sallies like these give pause to the believer is a question I can’t answer. ~Michael Kinsley

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;     
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,     
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will                                    And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Michael Kinsley can often be interesting (or is that “interesting!”?), but here his credulity undoes him.  No, these points give believers no pause, because they are not serious points.  They are the sorts of points one expects to hear from Jodie Foster’s character in Contact or a fifth grader who thinks he has discovered–for the first time ever–that there are differences between the different Gospels.  It’s a good thing we have folks like Hitchens to pick up on the loose threads, since no Christian has ever thought about any of this, but has gone about in mindless “god-worship.”  Personally, I prefer the phrase “god-worship” to religion, since it makes it very clear what cannot be included as religion.

Are these questions from Hitchens’ book, as related by Kinsley, actually at all interesting?  Are they even accurate statements about the beliefs he purports to destroy in a solvent of Hitchensian ridicule?  Well, no and no.  Leave it to an atheist to not understand the purpose of the covenant, which was not primarily ethical lesson-giving (rather obviously, murder was considered a grave sin from the time of Cain, but why worry yourself over details after having thrown back a few too many drinks?).  The covenant, represented in the giving of the Law, was the establishment of what was to be an eternal bond between God and His People.  The Law was the limit or the boundary set for those who would distinguish themselves as the chosen of God.  That is one point of the Law and the giving of the Law.  The keeping of the Law involves not murdering and not committing adultery, but the far more significant and prioritised Commandments concern the worship of the One God, reverence for His Holy Name and the rejection of idols.  Obviously, the Israelites did need to be told about these things, because they had either never known them or had forgotten them during the sojourn in Egypt.  Try to keep up, Hitchens.

Christ, of course, did die in His humanity, and the reality of His death is a point that the Gospels go to some lengths to insist upon.  Again, it is the paradox of the God-become-man dying that formed one of the great difficulties of Christian theology, but it was not some blind spot that Christians have never noticed.  Christians have come to account for it by stressing that it was in the flesh that Christ suffered and died, but it was nonetheless the Word’s own flesh that suffered and died.  Paradoxically, it can be said by traditional Christians that God died upon the Cross, but it will be said at the same time that God qua God is impassible and immortal.  It’s a complicated idea, and no doubt it causes trouble for Hitchens, but one thing it isn’t is some unaccounted for contradiction.  Hitchens’ objection isn’t new or clever or interesting; it is a sort of inverted Docetism, where he denies the reality of the Incarnation by attacking the divinity of Christ rather than the reality of the flesh.  Are African and Muslim practitioners of female gential mutilation paid-up members of the Discovery Institute?  That would be interesting if it were true, but we all know it isn’t.  When female-genital mutilators begin citing the “argument from design,” then we can start heeding something that Hitchens says.  

Why not argue against real adversaries rather than strawmen?  Why not take on the main challenge, rather than kick around the easy targets of Mormonism and Islam, as he does in the other excerpts available at Slate?  Could it be that the bold and flamboyant Hitchens cannot hack it against real opposition?

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here