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May 10, 2007
The Great Debate

Atheist Mother Theresa-hater Christopher Hitchens debates Christian theologian Doug Wilson at the Christianity Today Website:

part 1

part 2

I actually think Hitch won the first round (form-wise, not content-wise of course), Wilson's response is pretty sloppy except for this section:

What you are doing is saying that Christianity must be judged not only on the basis of those who believe the gospel in truth and live accordingly but also on the basis of those baptized Christians who cannot listen to the Sermon on the Mount without a horse laugh and a life to match. You are saying that those who excel in the course and those who flunk out of it are all the same. This seems to me to be a curious way of proceeding.

You conclude by objecting to the sovereignty of God, saying that the idea makes the whole world into a ghastly totalitarian state, where believers say that God (and who does He think He is?) runs everything. I would urge you to set aside for a moment the theology of the thing and try to summon up some gratitude for those who built our institutions of liberty. Many of them were actually inspired by the idea that since God is exhaustively sovereign, and because man is a sinner, it follows that all earthly power must be limited and bounded. The idea of checks and balances came from a worldview that you dismiss as inherently totalitarian. Why did those societies where this kind of theology predominated produce, as a direct result, our institutions of civil liberty?

Wilson takes the second round, though.

Posted by Papa-Lu at May 10, 2007 4:21 PM
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