Monthly Archives: February 2010
The Absurdity of Liberal Theology
One of the most endearing features of atheist Christopher Hitchens is his intolerance of intellectual posturing. Do you believe Jesus was God incarnate and raised from the dead for sinners? Fine. Hitchens will respect your position and argue with you in honest debate. But claim to be a Christian and doubt the essence of the faith and Hitchens will sniff out your inconsistencies, find them, and slap you in the head with them. Like he did recently with Unitarian Marilyn Sewell. You’ve probably seen this, but if not, this is from a recent interview. And if you have seen this, it’s worth reliving again:
Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?
Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.
Sewell: Let me go someplace else. …
… like the nearest cave.
Nietzsche’s Pity
If I had a list of favorite books from 2009 … the more posts I begin with this phrase the closer I come to completing the list. But really, if I had a list of favorite books for 2009 Graham Cole’s God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom would be my choice for the coveted BOY award. But the runner-up bouquet would fall on the neck of N. D. Wilson for his Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl. And here is what I believe to be the finest excerpt from the whole darned thing (pages 124-125):
Nietzsche published The Anti-Christ in 1888. Along with many other things, he had this to say about pity: ‘Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect.’
One year later Nietzsche entered into madness. True or false, the story is that he was overcome by the sight of a horse being whipped. Unhinged by pity. He wouldn’t die until 1900. For a decade he was kept alive and maintained through his insanity, strokes, and incapacitating illness. At the age of fifty-five, partially paralyzed, unable to speak or walk, he discovered what life waited for him beyond the grave.
Nietzsche lashed out at his Maker with his tongue, the only notable muscle he had—his greatest gift. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
There was little that Nietzsche loathed more than the heritage of his Lutheran father.
I have never been irritated by Nietzsche, never annoyed. At his most blasphemous, at his most riotously hateful and pompous, I have only ever been able to laugh. But even then, there is something bittersweet about the laughter. I know his story. I know how his bluff was called, how he was broken.
Again from The Anti-Christ: ‘The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.’ Spake the paralytic. The man fed with a spoon by those who loved him.
‘What is more harmful than any vice—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity….’
And yet, because I see the world through my eyes and not his, I have sympathy for Nietzsche himself. Bodies and minds are not all that can be botched in a man. Souls can be hollow, twisted, thrashing, more bitter than pi**.
The Psalms
From John Piper’s sermon, “Songs that Shape the Heart and Mind” (5/25/08):
“The Psalms, more intentionally than any other book of the Bible, is designed to carry, express, and shape our emotions, to give vent to them—all of them, and shape them, to reign them in, and to free them up, to explode them, and to kill them when they should be killed. It is an amazing gift to the Church. … The Psalms are songs and poems, and songs and poems exist because something more should happen to us than doctrinal refinement.”
The Life of Heresy
From Religio Medici written by Sir Thomas Browne (Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields, 1862), pages 15-16:
“…for indeed heresies perish not with their authors, but like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present; but revolution of time and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For as though there was metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them.”
HT: T-Bomb
On Reading
Today my friend Stephen Altrogge interviews yours truly on the topic of reading. You can read the interview here. Thanks for the opportunity, Stephen!
For a broader look at books and reading see my interviews with Josh Sowin (3/26/07) and Guy Davies (2/6/09). While we’re on the subject, here are some links to a short series of posts I wrote last year:
Tip 2: Read with a Pen in Hand [later revised, expanded, and posted on JT's blog here]
