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16 responses to “Hitchens on Hitchens – Belief on Unbelief”

1. 

   Bryan Owen

   March 18, 2010

   Thanks for letting us know about Christopher Hitchens’ Christian brother. I look forward to reading his article.

   Anyone interested in the so-called “New Atheists” and how Christians can respond really should read David Bentley Hart’s book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009). It is quite simply one of the most engrossing, insightful, inspiring, and disturbing books I’ve read in a long time. For anyone who wants to know what difference the rise of Christianity in the early centuries of the “common era” made in how and why it’s even conceivable for anybody to view individual human beings as persons of infinite value and dignity, and why the “New Atheists” who advocate for the abolition of “religion” per se and Christianity in particular are (at best) ill-informed and (at worst) off their moral rockers, and also what might be at stake as Western culture continues to lose the Christian moral vision, this book is a must read.

2. 

   fatherstephen

   March 18, 2010

   Bryan.
   It is indeed a must read. Hart has turned his considerable talents to a worthy topic.

3. 

   David B

   March 19, 2010

   My ears always perked up when my grandmother would tell me stories about her father, the minister, and her uncle (brother of her father), the atheist. One never knows how things will work out…

4. 

   reader john

   March 19, 2010

   I’ve long felt that encountering a person who embodies our faith is the greatest witness to its truth. Debates do little but expose insecurites that are masked by pride. Decades ago when I read JB Phillips’ little book, Your God is Too Small, I sensed that the vast majority of atheists had never encountered a plausible concept of God. They were often still rejecting the man with the white beard behind a cloud that they had outgrown in their youth. Funny how our mathematics and liturature courses become gradually more interesting but catechetics/theology remains too often on a grade shcoollevel and thus becomes of little value as we mature. At any rate, I’ve long seen atheists as people who are either still working out adolescent authority issues or as sincere people merely waiting to believe in a truly glorious God that is not confined by the limited descriptions and restricted vision that many Christians (some of them very popular televangelists that peddle the very opium that Marx derided us for) communicate.
   My limited experience finds that such skeptics often respond to books like Nesterov’s “Light From the East” or hesychism or apophatic theology….all of which lead to a truly numious God that evokes both awe and wonder.

5. 

   Micah

   March 19, 2010

   Thank you for link Father Stephen.

   I certainly hope (and will pray) that Hitchens the elder comes to terms with the sad events that led his loss of faith.

   One notes that the failure of modernity is that it cannot, or more precisely will not, reconcile the Christ of history with the manifest God in our midst.

   The scales, evidently, have not fallen off from all eyes. Why is this so?

   The Church Fathers speak of the existence of “three wills” but it is only the first which is salvific — the will of God. The second, the will of man is neither good nor evil in itself but the third, that of the demons, seeks our destruction (Lossky, 1957, p.129). No wonder then, the ancient Byzantine and Russian icons never depict the Resurrection itself, but rather the rising of Christ out of hell (Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Christ the Conqueror of Hell, 2002, para. 1-2).

   Christ is in our midst!

6. Two Utterly Different Men « Again and Again

   March 19, 2010

   […] March 19, 2010 by Fr. Milovan Katanic Fr. Stephen had a beautiful quote on his blog yesterday (here) which, I’ll admit, I had to read twice out of, if nothing else, sheer astonishment. The […]

7. 

   Yannis

   March 21, 2010

   That made a fun read in a number of levels. Thanks for the link.

8. 

   David Di Giacomo

   March 22, 2010

   I don’t know why, but I only get a blank page no matter how I click on the link.

9. 

   Yannis

   March 22, 2010

   try this one David:
   http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/03/how-i-found-god-and-peace-with-my-atheist-brother.html

10. 

    Mike Farley

    March 22, 2010

    Superb article, Fr. Stephen – worthy of a CS Lewis or a Sara Maitland! Thank you so much for the link…

11. 

    DebD

    March 22, 2010

    I also have not been able to get the article to come up. I’ve tried several times over the last several days. Yannis, sadly, your link didn’t work either.

12. 

    fatherstephen

    March 22, 2010

    Deb,
    Both links still work for me.

13. 

    BV

    March 24, 2010

    I think Peter Hitchens hits the nail on the head-poetry is the (primary) answer to their prose. The New Atheists are reasoning themselves to death, but reason left to itself cannot grasp the wholeness of the world. For that, we’re left with poetry.

    Which brings me to another gripe I have with the New Atheist and post-Enlightenment folks: What exactly is Reason? Can we point to the actual substance of Reason? Rather, we can only talk about Reason proximately. Assumptions lie under cold, hard science, so I think Reason as an autonomous edifice is a false hope.

    Lastly, I would quibble with those posters above who identify Hart’s book as an answer to the New Atheists. The title of the book really doesn’t reflect the content of the book-a point raised by others than me (read the Amazon reviews). But, that said, Hart’s question is one that I still think about from time to time: How long will a common Christian-type cultural moral synthesis stand when Christianity itself is removed from the culture.

    My guess is that the moral synthesis won’t last very long at all.

14. 

    fatherstephen

    March 24, 2010

    Yes, I think the moral synthesis is breaking down quickly. There are parameters that are so fixed within nature itself that certain segments of morality will be difficult to destroy. There are interesting things afoot, I think, that may make our century more interesting than we would have guessed. But I may be wrong and very bad times indeed await us. God only knows such things. It is not for me to know such things. But I wonder at the goodness of God and His mercy. The prayer of a single righteous man, almost brought salvation to Sodom and Gomorrah. May the righteous flourish and may they pray for the salvation of sinners such as us!

15. 

    David Di Giacomo

    March 25, 2010

    Right now, it would seem that the righteous are flourishing in Africa and that, more and more, it is by their prayers that we in the northern and western hemispheres will be saved from destruction. Reading about the explosion of Orthodoxy in sub-Saharan Africa in the last few decades and up to the present day is like reading the book of Acts.

    Oh, and I did read that article, the second link worked for me. Thanks Yannis!

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