Christopher Hitchens, a lion of atheism, passed away at 62 on Thursday after a struggle with esophageal cancer. It is hard to miss the story. Depending on who you are, you might see Hitchens as brilliant, bully, or both. For many Christians, Hitchens was a messenger of the devil and guardian of disbelief; for atheists, Hitchens was a powerhouse defender of freethought.
For me, I saw Hitchens as an atheist Martin Luther. I'm certain both my Lutheran and atheist friends will have words with me over this, but let me say that Luther helps me to understand Hitchens.
The two have a lot in common, though for different reasons. I could drum up superficial similarities. Both men were raised in homes where providing a good education required serious belt tightening. Both were hard drinkers (Luther purportedly had a giant mug with markers on it indicating how much he could drink in one breath). Both men were outraged at injustice; for Hitchens this was typified in his opposition to the Vietnam War while for Luther it was the manipulation of peasants through the practice of indulgences. Both were accused of being in league with Satan.
There are also the antitypical similarities. Hitchens rejected faith as irrational, and Luther argued strongly for faith alone (sola fides), as the embracing of life in the mystery of Christ.
And one might note that both wrote against religion.
For Luther, human nature poisons everything. Freedom from the superstitions and abuses of the church could be found in Scripture. Church councils and extravagant interpretations of the Bible were tools for oppression that prevented freedom in Christ. Christ's grace met our human frailties where they were, as Luther understood it, but the church turned that into an industry for the promotion of power. For Luther, the Pope was not above the law of God.
For Hitchens, religion---and by association, the church---poisons everything. Religion, as he saw it, is destructive and contrary to reason, being "wish thinking." It is used by "those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority." In speaking of Pope Benedict, he had strong words on his culpability in the sex abuse scandal, saying, "The Pope is not above the law."
But what strikes me most about the two is the passion. Both men are supernovas of their movements and impossible to ignore. For both, passion could be expressed in the beauty and mastery of language, crafted to stop anyone in his or her steps and capable of enraging even the most apathetic. Both were insightful with dangerous intellects.
Both were also painful to experience. Their intellectual incisors were sharp and ready to tear at the flesh of superficiality. Neither man could be tamed.
Among the many blames to be laid at Luther's feet is his brashness. Luther was not above cold "tell it like it is-ness." The Pope was nothing short of an antichrist. The church was in league with the devil. His language was strong and sometimes harsh, but always to the point. Then there are the woodcuts Luther commissioned, depicting the devil birthing the Pope and monkeys defecating on his head. No one was above criticism and ridicule.
Again, Luther was not tame, but he might have been necessary.
Enter Hitchens. Like Luther, his passion was sometimes construed as being a bully or as a fundamentalist for the other side. His words were often strong and no punches were pulled. Many Protestant Christians overlook Luther's harsh words because he speaks for them, but then use harsh words as a license to ignore Hitchens. This strikes me as short sighted.
Hitchens (like Luther before him) forced everyone, including Christians, to be better people. Mess up and he called you on it. One couldn't afford to be an apologist hack around him. You either stepped up or got out of the way.
I never met Hitchens, though I wish I had. I've always had an appreciation for his passion. Maybe that is a dangerous thing to say in my religious community. But in my opinion, though Hitchens was not always an easy medicine to take, he was necessary to our health.
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Writer Christopher Hitchens Dies At 62 : NPR
Author Christopher Hitchens dies - News - Books - The Independent
That is both a wise article and a brave one.
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Glenn Greenwald seems to be the only person who has the courage to write this about Saint Hitch:
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_figure_deaths/singleton/
Excerpt:
In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else.
So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’
No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”
Time.
Will we be reading Hitchens's writings ten years from now? Twenty years from now? Fifty years from now? One hundred years from now? Well...we'll see.
Or, rather, we won't see. The ones who are going to determine whether Christopher Hitchens is a writer of "great books" instead of merely timely ones will be left to others long after we have left this world.
With regard to indulgences, Luther's main concern was that they obscured the true nature of salvation. Not that he approved of the church fleecing the public, but it was the spiritual consequences more than the economic consequences that bothered him. With regard to social justice, he believed that a Christian had a responsibility to be obedient to earthly authority, and that spiritual freedom did not imply political and economic freedom. And this was a failure of imagination, because once you have empowered the individual conscience in spiritual matters, the genie has left the bottle, so to speak, and it is only a matter of time before the individual will demand that his conscience be empowered in political and economic matters.
Hitchens was far better educated from so many standpoints, and had far more experience of life even on the extremes in the countries of top terrorists. I'd say Hitchens had far more wit, too. He made it easier for people to talk frankly and in public that they were atheists and gave a voice and arguments far more elegant and tough. He did for me. Last night at a party I went to, more people talked about their atheism or agnosticism and what Hitchens did.
However, Martin Luther due to the historic time of the failing of the RCC and political-religious persecutions and mass poverty, as well as the new cheap high quality printing technology, Martin Luther caused dramatic change to happen. Hitchens spoke of Thomas Paine having the same because of who he was and what he said as a non-elite, but highly educated artison class man who spoke like Hitchens with honesty and the best words possible. Thomas Paine was the catalyst of the American Revolution and his Common Sense-Rights of Man-and Age of Reason broke dams of history and let a new way through. Hitchens certainly identified with much of what Paine was. I hope we have the time and historic context for that which Hitchens and people like him that their words make change. Perhaps not so much, but certainly the people I know are now talking far more and with greater reasoned depth and passion.
For one thing, this kind of weird idea that Luther was some kind of liberating Moses figure, leading the soon to be Protestants from there Catholic slave masters is pretty much false. Luther's 95 Theses was basically meant to inspire theological debate between scholars, not to start a different church. There's nothing really inflammatory in the Theses, just a sort of call for the Catholic Church to clean up its act. He had legitimate grievances but at the end of the day where does he get his authority to start his own church?
As for Hitchens, he was an eloquent guy but his points are also a little rough around the edges, such as completely dismissing everything religion has ever done for society and that religion actually might have something important to say.
Now you may disagree with me, but that is the opinion I hold and is in line with what Hitchens and many other atheists hold. Disagree with us all you want, I'd welcome it. But just because you disagree with our views does not mean they are at "an infantile stage".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYaQpRZJl18
You don't think he was an intellectual? I challenge you to find anyone who is more versed on as many subjects or as knowledgeable as Hitch.
This writer may think atheists are better people for following this guy....but as for the Christians....JESUS CHRIST is our benchmark. After all...NO atheist ever allowed himself to die on a cross for the sins of humanity.
Luke.23 - [34] Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
"JESUS CHRIST is our benchmark. After all...NO atheist ever allowed himself to die on a cross for the sins of humanity"
Proof? Oh, right. You have none. As Hitch said, that which is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Or, as I like to point out, the null hypothesis must be held until there is clear evidence to the contrary.
As Hitchens pointed out, neither did Jesus. You can serve someone else's sentence or repay their debt; but there's nothing you can do that transfers their responsibility elsewhere.
Well, maybe you should become aware of him. He has a number of books and columns. You should perhaps read some of them, including God is Not Great. You may disagree with some of what he says, but Hitchens is eloquent and insightful, so you would probably find it an enjoyable and educational read.
As for what no atheist did, Jesus didn't die for the sins of humanity either. Jesus, if he existed, was just a preacher of some sort who was an otherwise ordinary man and was turned into an elaborate myth. He died for challenging the Roman authority, not for anyone's sins.