• A few days ago I was listening to Christopher Hitchens, the recently deceased advocate for atheism, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. As an example of one of Christianity’s failings, Hitchens was implying the superiority of Socratic thought because it does not depend on the actual existence of Socrates. His ideas stand on their own. Jesus’ followers, on the other hand, would be devastated to discover Jesus had never existed, which Hitchens believed was the case.
• Well, for one thing, Hitchens was exactly right: everything, for us, depends on the historicity of Christ, the Cross, and the Resurrection. As Paul said, if Jesus has no real presence and power in the material world (power over death, for example, 1 Cor 15), then He is not Lord of heaven and earth and we, creatures of earth and heaven ostensibly, have no need to worship him. What really interests me, though, is that Hitchens felt he had to engage the person and ideas of Jesus at all — 2,000 years after his fabricated life and death. Why hasn’t Jesus gone away? If knowledge of Jesus is what Hitchens took it to be, Jesus ought to be completely irrelevant to any modern, if not completely forgotten. The fact that Hitchens was still talking about Jesus at the end of his life seems to me the most powerful argument against all of Hitchens’ claims.
• Let’s say Hitchens was right and concede that Jesus is not a historical figure and the events of his life, natural and supernatural, are all fabrication. All we have is a body of stories created, along with the myth of Jesus himself, by his followers. And yet, in the space of 300 years, that myth comes to dominate the Roman Empire. What are we to think? Should we assume that great numbers of people who lived around the Mediterranean were also the most remarkably naive and gullible people in history? Was there some secret power in the way the myth was communicated? Powerpoint? Remember, they weren’t being asked to believe in an attractive philosophical system (the Socratic method, for example); they were being asked to believe an obscure Jewish rabbi rose from the dead, just as he predicted he would, and thereby defeated death for all who would follow him. It would have sounded just as crazy then as it did to Hitchens.
• Hitchens argument — the argument that Christianity as presented in the Bible originated in thin air and unaccountably became the greatest religion in the world — is hard to make stick. As Lewis once said, it’s true that men are foolish, but hardly so foolish as all that. If you know where Hitchens is on record speaking to this, I’d be glad to hear it. I’m sorry for his views; I found him very likable. In the end, Hitchens reminds me (this isn’t a perfect fit) of Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” That is, he speaks so much about Jesus that he ends up attaching credibility to him rather than disbelief.
• BTW — sold my motorcycle. Thanks to all of you who prayed for my safety over the years. My last trip was through Idaho and NW Montana — all roads I’d never seen, except a brief stint on I-90 through Missoula. Fantastic. Hoping to take Lisa back to Glacier NP next summer.