Which Christianity?

It was a historic night for King's--our fledgling college hosted a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens on the topic, "Is Christianity the problem?" Overall, I feel nothing but elation for the outcome. The debaters (both social critics and columnists) displayed poise, wit, and an incredible command of history, while King's created a forum in which to present itself to New York as a serious voice for cultural change. Let's do it every week.

However, I definitely have some reservations about the course the debate took. It seems that the topic question divides somewhat neatly in two, namely, "Which Christianity?" and then, "Is that Christianity bad for the world?" The debaters spent most of their time camped in the second question, with Hitchens asserting that Christianity (or its "parodies," i.e. Islam) had proven itself primarily as an agent of oppression and degradation, and D'Souza countering (mostly convincingly, in my mind) that Christianity had in fact created an unprecedented culture, one rooted in love and self-sacrifice. Yet, this aspect of the debate seems, in reality, least controversial--I think everyone in the audience would have agreed that Church history consists of a muddle of light and dark, of beautiful ideals (or at least ethical precepts), imperfectly lived out.

However, much less clarity emerged on the issue of the fundamental nature of Christianity. Hitchens had no real complaints about Christian ethics; he merely asserted that they were not original to Christianity, that pure reason or common sense could supply mankind with the Golden Rule, and the like. Conversely, Hitchens displayed a bitter, even vitriolic distaste for Christian theology (or what I might characterize more broadly as the "Christian worldview"), which he characterized as a creation-hating, sado-masochistic system catering to snivelling, grovelling, irrational bullies who use their dated, corrupt, contrived book to oppress others, even as they fawn and abase themselves before a God who at best could be a petty tyrant, and at worst is nothing at all. To Hitchens, Christian theology is ultimately centered in the gruesome, arbitrary, and unjust human sacrifice of the Cross, and cannot mount any more powerful moral exhortation than "Turn, or burn!" To Hitchens, the greatest argument for the evil of the "good news" is that it has duped billions of people into embracing a worldview that is at its heart irrational, inhuman, and anti-life (in the sense that it ultimately negates all material existence with apocalyptic judgment).

When Hitchens described in his disbelief in such a system, his hatred of it, I wanted to leap from my seat and give a shout of affirmation. Unfortunately for Hitchens, with all his rancor and wit, he was (in my view) emphatically not describing the gospel of Jesus. Still more unfortunate, D'Souza never clearly articulated an alternative to Hitchens' portrayal. I have outlined my understanding of the Kingdom more fully elsewhere on this blog site (see especially "Jesus," "Dreaming Reality," "Choices," and "Capitalism and the Kingdom"), so I won't delve into the details here. However, one of Hitchens' points makes me especially nervous, because I don't think mainstream evangelicalism has articulated an appropriate response to it. He castigates the church for its dualism, for its patient resignation to endure material existence, in the hopes of some better, spiritual existence after death. He despises this attitude; so do I. Here's a basic fact about the narrative of the Bible--Genesis begins with the creation of the earth; Revelation ends with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth. The Bible does not end in some heavenly realm, but on earth. The gospel does not negate creation; it restores it. Hitchens needs to get his facts straight, and D'Souza should have helped him.

I think that Hitchen's characterization of Christianity creates an irresolvable tension, which he failed to address. If, as he asserts, Jesus' teachings on the nature of God, humanity, and creation at large are fundamentally corrupt and malicious, inhuman and irrational, how on earth could Jesus have produced an ethical system of such resounding beauty? How could a sado-masochistic worldview produce the Sermon on the Mount? To alleivate this tension, it seems that Hitchens must deny at least one of three things: his description of the Christian worldview, the historical validity of Jesus' teachings (i.e. Jesus never actually said those things), or the moral value of the teachings themselves. He lives by the teachings, so the third option is out; he clearly knows very little about historical criticism of the Bible, so I won't even bother to challenge him there; thus, all that remains to him is to acknowledge his inadequate understanding of the gospel itself.