The Aristophrenium

Love seeks to perfect the object of its love

Mathew — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:50:15 +0000

Some time ago I was working through CS Lewis’s classic, The Problem of Pain. In it there is one line that I lifted out of its pages and plugged into my Twitter timeline – and shortly after that there started some dialogue with a fellow (we’ll call him Pete) who believed that the statement I offered was contradictory and he subsequently mocked it as such.

Well, either this Pete is a very intelligent man and CS Lewis was an idiotic fool or, quite probably, the quote I tweeted was most likely misunderstood.

Speaking on the necessity of God’s love for us and of the characteristic of God’s love for us, I echoed Lewis’s sentiment and tweeted:

[It is because God] already loves us [that] He must labour to make us lovable.

Moments after I shared this on Twitter, I received this reply from Pete: “lol contradiction is faith”.

When I inquired as to how the statement was contradictory, Pete wrote back that “If you’re lovable, you don’t need to be made lovable. You already are”.

Now that might sound reasonable, but I believe it misses the point entirely, let alone misreads what was actually tweeted (which was that God’s love for us compels him to make us even more lovable). Lewis was not stating that God already saw us as lovable. In an effort to correct Pete and to point this out, I tweeted: “Love seeks to perfect the object of its love”.

What did I mean by this? Parents know this all too well. When your child is born you love your child not for anything that your child has done, nor even for how adorable your child may be. I should think that you love your child simply because you choose to love your child – the word “lovable” doesn’t really come into it at this point. When your child wakes crying at 1am in the morning, then again at 2.30am, and yet again an hour later, as a parent, the word “lovable” isn’t the exact word that enters your head. But as a parent you do attend to your child out of the love you have for him / her – again, not for anything your child has done to deserve it.

Where I believe Pete erred is that he equated the term “lovable” to be a prerequisite in order to love. In other words, on his view, you cannot love someone unless that someone has a quality that you find lovable. Another problem in defining the term “lovable” in this fashion is that the definition is purely arbitrary – what I find lovable might well be unlovable to you.

God does not see us as “lovable” in this sense at all. In fact, God has some pretty strong words for how He does view us: He hates the sinner; we are far from being lovable (Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Leviticus 20:23).

Paradoxically, God loves us immensely (John 3:16, John 15:13). He cannot love us for what we are – rebellious, wanton, unruly, sinful – for God is holy and his holiness will not tolerate what is impure. So what does Lewis’s statement, it “[is because God already] loves us [that] He must labour to make us lovable” then actually mean?

Part of the implication of Lewis’s statement is that discipline is involved in the act of love. It has to be: without discipline, love is not love at all. Without discipline, love morphs into an act of, as Lewis says elsewhere in The Problem of Pain, a Benevolent Grandfather who’s sole intent is to please his grandchildren; this type of love leaves unruly behaviour unchecked; and unruly behaviour left unchecked leads to the development of selfish and self-centred adults.

God’s love for us is far removed from that of the Benevolent Grandfather’s; God’s love is richer and purer. God’s holy love entails discipline. As the writer of Hebrews writes:

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he [God] disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:7-11, emphasis mine.)

So this is what Lewis means when he says that it is out of God’s love for us – his desire to see us develop into an upright and holy people – that God must work at making us lovable, more perfect, more like his son Jesus. This is why I responded to Pete that Love seeks to perfect the object of its love, to desire the very best – God requires that we be perfect for he is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Yet the only way we can be perfect is for God to work on us to become so and it is out of his love for us that he “labours” to achieve this (Heb 12:5-8).

God so loved us that he sacrificed his only son, Jesus Christ, so that through Jesus’ cleansing blood we become perfect in his eyes and, as a result, become truly, purely, lovable through and through.

Windows Live Writer issue with WordPress

Ryft — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 04:51:24 +0000

It took a couple of days of searching—mostly due to struggling with how to formulate the right search string, putting my Google-fu to the test—but I finally discovered the solution for WordPress stripping the angle brackets ‘<’ and ‘>’ from incoming code published remotely using Windows Live Writer. So when I publish this:

Wit is educated insolence.

What ends up getting published is this:

pWit is educated insolence./p

It seems that the problem is produced by a bug in the version of the LibXML2 software library that our site is running, which mangles XML-RPC requests when parsing XML. If you are running anything less than PHP version 5.2.9+ with LibXML2 version 2.7.3+ then you are likely to experience this problem. (Obviously this sort of stuff is way over my head, so you can see why I struggled with my searches.) I talked to the technical support staff with our web hosting company but they were either unable or unwilling (I could not interpret which) to update the version of PHP and LibXML2 that we are running. But surely there had to be some kind of fix available.

And there is! Thanks to Joseph Scott and JoeWare.net the solution is very simple. Scott wrote a WordPress plugin that magically fixes the problem. From the Plugins menu at your WordPress dashboard, click Add New and search for LibXML2 Fix. Or you can click on the following link to download the plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/libxml2-fix/

Many thanks to WordPress Answers, Joseph Scott, and JoeWare.net!

“WordPress and Windows Live Writer,” WordPress Answers (14 Sep 2011).
“WordPress sites working incorrectly with Windows Live Writer (WLW),” JoeWare.net (21 Oct 2011).

A response to John Hileman

Ryft — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:28:00 +0000

(The following is my response to @JohnHileman who sent me a message on Twitter earlier this evening.)

Thank you for raising those questions to me on Twitter and directing me to your article (Hileman, 2011). You asked me two questions; first, whether or not I believe in miracles, and second, what I think of your story about faith.

Do I believe in miracles? The short answer is yes. However, I do not really look at miracles in the way they are most commonly supposed, as violations of nature by an act of God. On the one hand, I tend toward a view that is most succinctly captured by Augustine who said, “Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known to us in nature,” such that the term ‘miracle’ is sort of shorthand for our ignorance of how God accomplished some extraordinary thing he did. On the other hand, I tend toward a view of the Creator and the cosmos that the Israelites of the ancient Near East held, in that everything is an act of God. As noted by John Walton, Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, there was no concept of a ‘natural’ versus ‘supernatural’ dichotomy in their world view. That is a relatively modern invention. God revealed to them—and to us through them—that everything is a product of him acting. “Every plant that grew, every baby born, every drop of rain and every climatic disaster was an act of God,” Walton observed. “There were no ‘miracles’ (in the sense of events deviating from that which was ‘natural’), there were only signs of [God’s] activity (sometimes favorable, sometimes not). The idea that deity got things running then just stood back or engaged himself elsewhere (deism) would have been laughable in the ancient world because it was not even conceivable. As suggested by Richard Bube, if God were to unplug himself in that way from the cosmos, we and everything else in the cosmos would simply cease to exist. … The categories of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ had no meaning to them, let alone any interest” (2009, pp. 20-21). The universe would not exist but for the providential sustaining power of this covenant God. All of creation exists by him, through him, and for him; by his word all things were created and have their being; all things are held together in him. This is the biblical world view to which I am committed.

What do I think of your story of faith? Well it is edifying, first of all, and I thank you for sharing it. Although there were fewer players involved, I experienced something that was not too unlike your story. My wife and I along with our newborn daughter had gone for a long drive away from civilization; we were looking to enjoy a warm Sunday afternoon at a lake someone had told us about. At the end of the day, as we started to make our way back toward civilization our car got stuck, and quite badly. It was just the three of us, in the middle of nowhere and very alone as the afternoon was creeping toward evening. This was a few years before the ubiquity of cell phones, and it would have taken several hours of walking before reaching any signs of civilization. There was nothing we could do but pray, and we certainly did. About 30 minutes later a tow truck showed up. In the middle of nowhere. On a single-lane dirt road in the woods. Several miles from anything. A tow truck. Did I mention that our car was badly stuck? How perfect is a tow truck? Later that night after our daughter was asleep in her crib, my wife and I grabbed the telephone book to find the number for the towing company whose name was on the side of the truck. We wanted to get the name of the gentleman so we could send him some kind of thank you gift. There was no listing for a towing company by that name. We called a couple of listed numbers and were told they had never heard of a company by that name. It was a mystery. I am not suggesting that he was an angel who specially appeared from God in answer our prayer, but to my wife and I that man certainly was an angel, even if metaphorically. I have no idea who he was, where he was from, or what he was doing with a tow truck in the middle of nowhere, just what we needed and at just the right time, but I do give God all the glory for that answer to our prayer.

Is there a plausible and perfectly ‘natural’ explanation for our experience? Maybe. I have a very good imagination and can think of any number of perfectly ‘natural’ explanations for a tow truck being in the woods miles away from civilization as evening was drawing near. Perhaps he worked for a local towing company and had recently purchased this tow truck from another town and was just taking it for a drive to check it out. Who knows. But as I indicated earlier, I reject the notion that miracles are violations of nature by an act of God. At the most profound end of the spectrum, miracles are events which contradict what we know about nature—and when it comes to nature we have more ignorance than knowledge, a fact which our scientific pursuits keep humbling us with. We have no idea how Jesus walked on water, for example, but we cannot on that basis conclude that it therefore violated the laws of nature. Maybe there is a scientific explanation for how he did that, which we have yet to discover. We have such a long, long way to go before we truly understand the laws of nature. As I said, ‘miracle’ in this sense is shorthand for our ignorance of how God accomplished some extraordinary thing he did. He is a covenant God of promise: he will not violate the laws of nature (cf. Jeremiah 33:25-26, “But I, the LORD, make the following promise: I have made a covenant governing the coming of day and night. I have established the fixed laws governing heaven and earth. Just as surely as I have done this, so surely will I never reject the descendants of Jacob. Nor will I ever refuse to choose one of my servant David’s descendants to rule over the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”).

But as I also indicated earlier, everything is an act of God. As such I glorify him for the entire experience—for our getting stuck, for the tow truck appearing, for the lessons of faith that we learned, for however it edifies those I share the story with and so forth. And the same should apply to the story that you shared. You are a writer so you also have a very good imagination and could probably think of any number of perfectly ‘natural’ explanations that would account for the various elements in the story. But even supposing one of those explanations being the case, would that mean that it was not an act of God in answer to your wife’s prayer? According to the biblical world view to which I am committed, it certainly was an act of God in answer to her prayer; as such I would say her attitude (and yours) and what she said to your daughter was right and entirely consistent with what God reveals about himself and his creation. Like I said to you over Twitter earlier, “I think you and your wife glorified God for his providential care.” I appreciate your story, particularly the way it made me reflect upon my own similar experience and motivated me to thank him all over again.

References:

John Hileman, “Is it really God?” John Michael Hileman [blog] (2011, August 2).

John Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2009).

Aristostats for 2011

Ryft — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:14:00 +0000

I have noticed that there are some in the blogosphere who are looking back over the last year and reporting on various stats generated by their blogs, such as Josiah Concept Ministries and others. They talk about page view totals for the year, which pages were the most popular, who their top referrers were, the most popular browsers used to view their site and so forth. So I thought I would likewise take a look back over the last year and see what some of our totals were. The following information was pulled from the data collected by the company that hosts the Aristophrenium.

Total number of page views for 2011 were in excess of 201,200, which actually topped our 2010 total of 197,700.

For those who prefer visit counts, last year’s total pushed upwards of 65,400, beating the previous year’s total of 48,900.

And the amount of bandwidth we have used over the last two years is 22.3 GB.

The most active month surprisingly was December (24,131 page views).

The most popular operating systems are not a surprise: Windows (74%), Macintosh (16%), and Linux (7%), with the remaining three percent comprised of Other (which I suspect are things like smartphones and mobile devices).

And the top web browsers used are likewise not much of a surprise: Explorer (29%), Firefox (28%), Chrome (21%), Safari (16%), Opera (3%), and Other (3%).

And the top five most viewed articles for 2011 were:

Adam Morgan, “We don’t hate sin so we don’t understand what happened to the Canaanites.”
Luis Dizon, “The Trinity in the Torah.”
Adam Morgan, “Do homosexuals have equal rights?”
Mathew Hamilton, “Abortion images: Ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s just ignorance (or worse).”
David Smart, “Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011).”

And finally, the top ten referrers for 2011 were:

Review of the White/Kunde Incarnation Debate

Fisher — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 07:41:43 +0000

I don’t often make reviews of debates, but when I do, it’s usually when I hear a debate that was exceptionally good and is worth commenting on. Perhaps one of the best debates I’ve heard this year was the one between Dr. James White and Abdullah Kunde on the doctrine of the incarnation. The debate took place in Australia back in September 17 of this year. The video of the debate can be viewed below:

There is quite a bit that could be said regarding both debaters, the arguments they present and their overall style. It is quite refreshing to see that both of them are very cordial towards one another. Christian-Muslim debates have a tendency to become quite heated, which generally results in a lot of mudslinging. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen with Kunde, who is a lot more courteous than most other Muslim apologists. I have yet to see any debate involving Kunde (whether his opponent is James White, Samuel Green or any other Christian apologist) degenerate into ad-hominems and rude comments. He understands Christian theology a lot better than a lot of other Muslims (as demonstrated by the way he uses Christian terminology), and does sincerely try to understand what the other side is trying to say, rather than just trying to talk past them. It is also very interesting how he uses the Qur’an when making his arguments, as this shows that he is attempting to be consistent with his own worldview in making his critiques of the Christian doctrine.

Likewise, Dr. White has done an outstanding job of presenting the Christian doctrine of the incarnation in a way that is clear and understandable to both Christians and Muslims, yet at the same time does not water down the doctrine or omit any important details. It would be very helpful for both sides to pay close attention to his opening statement, in order to better know what Christians believe and why we believe it. From an Evangelical standpoint, it is very refreshing to see Dr. White stay true to the reformation principle of Sola Scriptura by making sure that his approach is firmly grounded in scripture. It is particularly helpful when he quotes the Old Testament prophecies (eg. Isaiah 9:6) in that regard, as it demonstrates that the doctrine of the incarnation can be traced back to the Hebrew scriptures, and was not spun out of whole cloth by the early Christian Church.

That being said, there are a few things that could be said about Abdullah’s attempts at critiquing the Incarnation. While I strongly appreciate his earnest attempts to properly understand Christian theology, there are still a few things that he missed (although to be fair, the average Christian would probably miss them as well). For example, when he asks whether this or that action is performed by Christ’s human nature or His divine nature, he misses the fact that actions are performed by persons, not natures. This is true even of ordinary human beings; it would certainly be odd if I were to tell you that my human nature is typing this article, or that my human nature is listening to the White/Kunde debate.

In addition, there are points where he seems to think that Jesus has always had a human nature, when in fact it is only the divine nature which has eternally existed. After all, the whole point of the incarnation is that He took on a human nature at a point in time (although as Dr. White has pointed out, this human nature is eternal in the sense that Christ possesses it in eternity future, albeit in a glorified form).

Finally, it is telling that Kunde makes little effort to interact with the biblical evidence for the incarnation (especially the aforementioned Old Testament prophecies). It would be interesting to know what he thinks of these passages. Does he think that the passages are in error, or that they have been misinterpreted? I do think that it is important for Muslims to have some kind of explanation for these passages. If they are in error, then the question arises: Where did this erroneous viewpoint come from and how was it able to supplant the truth? More importantly, how does a Muslim square this with the Qur’an’s affirmations regarding the previous scriptures? (Yes, I know this is a completely different debate topic, but it does always inevitably come up whenever there are discussions of Biblical teachings in contrast with Qur’anic teachings) On the other hand, one could argue that the passages in question aren’t necessarily in error, but have merely been misinterpreted. However, as Dr. White has already provided some pretty solid exegeses of the key scripture texts on the Incarnation, anybody who would want to claim that he and other Christians are twisting the meaning of these texts have to provide some pretty solid counter-exegeses.

At the risk of sounding biased, I would have to say that the victor in this debate is Dr. White. However, it must be admitted that this was not a landslide victory, as Abdullah Kunde made a valiant effort to vindicate the Islamic viewpoint over and against the Christian viewpoint, and would most likely have succeeded if he had faced a less experienced Christian opponent. Kudos to him for providing an intelligent critique of the Christian position, and I do hope that other Muslims learn from him and avoid the faulty arguments of the previous generation of Muslim apologists.

Postscript: Sam Shamoun has also provided his own critiques of Abdullah Kunde’s arguments, which he has posted on Answering Islam. For reference purposes, I am posting links to them here.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep

Ryft — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 20:30:00 +0000

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Christmas Bells,” The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1893).

I heard the bells on Christmas Day;
their old, familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet
the words repeat
of peace on earth, good will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
the belfries of all Christendom
had rolled along
the unbroken song
of peace on earth, good will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
the world revolved from night to day.
A voice, a chime,
a chant sublime
of peace on earth, good will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
the cannon thundered in the South;
and with the sound
the carols drowned,
of peace on earth, good will to men.

It was as if an earthquake rent
the hearth-stones of a continent,
and made forlorn
the households born
of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head;
”There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“for hate is strong,
and mocks the song
of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep!
The wrong shall fail,
The right prevail,
with peace on earth, good will to men!”

MercyMe, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” track 10, The Christmas Sessions [CD] (INO Records, 2005).

Video uploaded to YouTube by ryanturner70 on 31 July 2010.

Who said I am supposed to convince you?

Ryft — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:35:25 +0000

A little over three weeks ago I published an article addressing 1 Peter 3:15 and how, when it comes to apologetics or defending the biblical world view, we are to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts when meeting that task (Smart, 2011); that is the very point which the passage begins with, after all.

Today I received a comment on that article by Jeremy Styron of the Our Daily Train blog. No, I do not know who that is either, nor am I familiar with that blog at all. But that is neither relevant nor important vis-a-vis addressing his comment, which was brief so I shall quote it in full here, and then I want to address it (Styron, 2011):

The third paragraph here (beginning with “And we certainly ought to be ready”) is a garbled mess of question begging and wishful thinking. Explaining the “hope” you possess in Christ isn’t good enough, since Muslims aren’t going to convince me of their hope in Allah either. And you admitted it here that Christ is your reason for hope. So you actually should provide a reason for why he’s your reason for hope. And good luck with that. Outside of your own desire for it to be true, there is scant evidence that Christ existed at all, much less that he was anything other than a peasant roaming the countryside. There is not a single contemporary source that confirms his existence. Base your hope on a guy for which there is no evidence outside of the Bible all you want.

There are two essential points here that I wish to address.

First, he suggests that I am guilty of begging the question, a charge he connects to the very existence of Jesus. However, his existence was not the question so this charge is utter nonsense. It is both common and reasonable to assume certain things for the sake of argument; one is guilty of begging the question only if one’s argument assumes the very thing to be proved. The existence of Jesus was not the point at issue or the thing to be proved; the point at issue was the role he plays in the hope we possess, which does not make sense apart from his existence so we obviously assume his existence for the sake of that argument. The question of whether or not Jesus ever existed is an important and relevant but nevertheless separate question. Assuming the existence of Jesus does not per se (by itself) explain the hope we possess, which simply underscores that his mere existence is not the question.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, he said that our explaining the hope we possess in the faithfulness of Jesus Christ is “not good enough.” Good enough for what? For convincing him, apparently: “Muslims are not going to convince me of their hope in Allah, either.” And thus Styron makes the all too common mistake of supposing that the Christian’s task is to convince unbelievers. This, of course, is not the Christian’s task at all, which Styron would know if he bothered to understand the biblical world view he presumes to argue against. It is rather like hearing a young-earth creationist say, “Evolutionists are not going to convince me that we evolved from monkeys.” If one is going to argue against a position, one should properly understand it first. It is not our task as Christian’s to convince Styron; that is the Holy Spirit’s task (see regeneration). Our task is to spread the message of the gospel everywhere, making disciples in all the nations of the earth, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded us. As Peter notes, part of that task involves always being ready, with Christ set apart as Lord in our hearts, to give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope we possess. One plants the seed of the word, another waters it, but it is God who makes it grow (Deu 30:6; Eze 11:19; 36:26-27; John 3:27; 6:63-65; 10:25; Act 11:18; 13:48; 16:14; 18:27; 1 Cor 2:4–5; 3:6–7; Eph 2:8-10; Php 1:29; 1 Thes 1:4–6; 2 Tim 2:25-26; Jas 1:18; 1 Pet 1:3; 2 Pet 1:1).

References:

David Smart, “The context is setting apart Christ as Lord,” Aristophrenium [blog] (2011, November 24).

Jeremy Styron, comment on Smart, 2011. (2011, December 23).

12 Reasons for Christmas

Ryft — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:38:00 +0000

John Piper, “12 Reasons for Christmas,” Desiring God (1991, December 9).

“For this I was born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).
“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8; cf. Hebrews 2:14-15).
“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17).
“The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
“God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:5).
“For God so loved the world that whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:16).
“God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9).
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
“Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against . . . that the thoughts of many may be revealed” (Luke 2:34f).
“He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).
“Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarches, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:7-8; cf. John 12:27f).

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Ryft — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 04:35:00 +0000

It might seem a little odd that a Christian apologetics web site should pay respect to the passing of a militant atheist who was so fervently opposed to the Christian religion, but in all honesty I rather enjoyed the contributions he made to the culture of dialogue between Christians and atheists. He was inarguably a man possessed of considerable rhetorical skill and sardonic wit who managed to articulate his antipathy for religious convictions with an eloquence that was engaging and thought-provoking. Despite the fact that his arguments were sophomoric and did not present any cogent challenge to biblical Christianity, he nevertheless forced believers to think critically and do their homework regarding the points on which he attempted to hang his arguments, and in my books that is always a good thing for it produces a more informed believer. And in the forge of his blazing vitriol, combined as it was with the likes of Richard Dawkins and the other “four horsemen” of neo-atheism, my own apologetic was tempered and refined to contend with a new breed of antitheism.

Say what you will about his venomous language but one can hardly dispute that the man was a gifted writer, “the vocation of his life, one in which he excelled,” pastor and theologian Douglas Wilson admitted (2011, para. 2). Hitchens himself confessed that writing was not just his living and livelihood but his very life; after having received some injection to relieve the pain in his hands and fingers, a side effect of which is a numbness in the extremities, he greatly feared losing the ability to write. “I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking,” he confessed toward the end of what would be his last essay (2011, para. 20). In spite of the stark antithesis between the convictions and values of Hitchens and myself that is one thing that we both shared in common, a passionate and consuming need to write and an abiding appreciation for its capacity to serve as a conduit for shaping not only our own thoughts but also the thinking of others. Although he used his craft as a rhetorician and author to distill and augment his enmity with God—and maybe that is one sense in which we can take Tom Gilson’s comment that Hitchens’ rhetorical effectiveness “was in many ways his undoing” (2011, para. 4)—there is little room for doubt that he was powerfully eloquent and captivated his readers, both admirers and critics alike. He may have been convincing only to the already convinced but to just about anyone he was eminently readable, engaging, and entertaining.

Nobody of course knows what will be his ultimate fate other than the fact that, like everyone else, he will stand before the judgment throne of God. It is unfortunate that he cultivated such an atheistic celebrity because it practically cemented his obdurate rebellion against God and repentance. So worried was Hitchens about the potential for reports of a deathbed confession that he crafted in advance a narrative to combat that sort of thing. As he told his friend Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in an interview (Goldberg, 2010; video clip 2:56–3:26):

Now might be the time to say, I guess, that in the event of anyone reading or hearing a rumor of any such thing [as a deathbed confession] being made it would not have been made by me. The entity making such a remark might be a raving, terrified person whose cancer has spread to the brain. I can’t guarantee that such an entity wouldn’t make such a ridiculous remark. But no one recognizable as myself … could possibly say something so silly.

As Wilson observed, it was almost as if Hitchens was “afraid of letting down the infidel team,” so to speak (para. 10), as if to express a sort of concern that his antitheistic legacy might be robbed of its credibility should he quite inexplicably turn to Christ in repentance and faith at the end. If you hear something like that coming out of my mouth, he said, then it was not me saying it. He wanted people to know that if he confessed faith, then the Christopher Hitchens we all knew “should be counted as already dead,” Wilson said (ibid.). What Wilson found most interesting was that the advance narrative Hitchens prepared, while yet manifestly in his right mind, did not involve someone claiming to have heard him cry out to God and thus misrepresenting yet another unbeliever (as had been done with Charles Darwin, for example), but rather involved Hitchens himself uttering such a thing. Was Hitchens thus implying that it was conceivable to him that he might (and thus he had to discredit it ahead of time)? I have to agree with Wilson: it is interesting that Hitchens framed the advance narrative in the way that he did.

But I bring this up because of something that I found particularly interesting beyond what Wilson observed: the biblical truth inadvertently lurking within the narrative that Hitchens crafted. If he should turn to Christ in repentance and faith at the end, then we should understand that it was not him saying it, that the Hitchens we all knew would never do or say any such thing, that in the face of such a statement he should be counted as already dead. And that is precisely what would be the case, for that is the very nature of what happens for anyone who turns to Christ in genuine repentance and faith. It is a new creation that emerges from regeneration, that is, being born again of the word of Christ and power of the Spirit; the old person is gone, having given his life up to God for Christ’s sake: “For through the law I died to the law so that I may live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:19-20). It is true that if Hitchens had turned to Christ in repentance and faith it would not have been the Hitchens we all knew who had done such a thing; indeed that Hitchens would be counted as already dead if he went from loving sin and hating God to loving God and hating sin, because those who are “in Adam” are morally and spiritually incapable of such a thing. And the one who believes in Christ will live even if he dies (John 11:25). The unintended irony of his advance narrative is that it was entirely consistent with a pronouncement of saving faith he was trying to distance himself from.

We do not know if he turned to Christ; there is no reason to suppose he did and plenty of reasons to think he did not. And that is a sad and sober thing, for on the day that he stands before the throne of God he would have nothing to which he can appeal but the 62 years he lived from April 13, 1949, until December 15, 2011, a life during which he heard the light of the gospel in many ways and from many people but preferred the darkness of life apart from Christ, the Son of God he defiantly reviled. That is not by any means something to celebrate and I want nothing to do with the Westboro Baptist type of people who would disgrace themselves and bring shame to the name of Christ by doing so. It is something that we should reflect upon soberly as we include his wife, family, and particularly his brother in our prayers.

As for me, I am going to miss him.

The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is, in every individual, something which is inexpressibly peculiar to him alone, and is therefore absolutely and irretrievably lost.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

(See Peter Hitchens, “In Memoriam: My courageous brother Christopher, 1949-2011,” Daily Mail Online [2011, December 16]).

(See also Larry Alex Taunton, “My Take: An evangelical remembers his friend Hitchens,” CNN Belief Blog (2011, December 16). This is a powerfully evocative piece and well worth the read. It gives you a peek at a side of Hitchens that few got to see.

There are others in the Christian apologetics community who have commented on his passing. Please take the time to read their reflections on this event:

Douglas Wilson (Christianity Today).
Tom Gilson (Thinking Christian).
James White (Alpha & Omega Ministries) (video)
Carson Weitnauer (Reasons for God).
Jay Wile (Proslogion).
Mark McGee (Faith and Self Defense).
Rob Lundberg (The Real Issue).
Frank Turek (Cross Examined).

References:

Tom Gilson, “On the passing of Christopher Hitchens,” Thinking Christian [blog] (2011, December 16).

Jeffrey Goldberg, “Hitchens talks to Goldblog about cancer and God,” The Atlantic (2010, August 6). See also Goldberg, “On the possibility of Christopher Hitchens finding Jesus” (2011, December 13).

Christopher Hitchens, “Trial of the Will,” Vanity Fair (2012, January).

Douglas Wilson, “Christopher Hitchens Has Died, Doug Wilson Reflects,” Christianity Today (2011, December 16).

Did the Umayyads change the Qur’an?

Fisher — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:58:41 +0000

HT: Dr. James White

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