Rinse Not the Prose: Christopher Hitchens on the King James Version

Why would an ardent atheist care about translations of the Bible, and why would Christians be concerned with what an atheist would think? These are rather obvious questions, especially when the atheist is Christopher Hitchens, one of the most influential of the New Atheists.

Nevertheless, Hitchens devoted his column in the May 2011 edition of Vanity Fair to the King James Version of the Bible, which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.

As always, Hitchens is interesting and provocative. He places the history of the Authorized Version (by which the British normally refer to the King James Version) in its political context in the early years of the Stuart dynasty and rightly explains that the interest of King James ! in the project was to “bind the majesty of the King to his devout people.” He then offers anecdotal observations of the KJV text, correctly attributing its tone and tenor to the earlier work of William Tyndale, as well as to the unusually gifted committee of translation.

Hitchens is a man of letters, and as such he takes matters of language with urgent seriousness. He points to the King James Version as a crucial repository of our common civilizational knowledge. As he sees it, “A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one.” It is very hard to argue with that warning.

Hitchens is also an avowed enemy of banality, which means that he has little literary respect for modern translations that lack literary and linguistic taste and thus pander to mere popular taste. The King James Version translates 1 Corinthians 13:7 to read: “[Love] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.? But the Good News Bible translates it as: “Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.”

As Hitchens states:

This doesn’t read at all like the outcome of a struggle to discern the essential meaning of what is perhaps our most numinous word. It more resembles a smiley-face Dale Carnegie reassurance. And, as with everything else that’s designed to be instant, modern, and “accessible,” it goes out of date (and out of time) faster than Wisconsin cheddar.

He also has little use for attempts to render the text as gender-neutral. He asserts that “to suggest that Saint Paul, of all people, was gender-neutral is to re-write the history as well as to rinse out the prose.”

Along the way, Hitchens takes legitimate shots at modern marketing efforts to commercialize the Bible and see some translation or edition to virtually every niche market. Of course, as an atheist, he expresses less sympathy with the Reformation conviction that the Bible should be available to everyone in the vernacular of the language. He does offer some interesting insights into the King James Version and the larger issue of Bible translation.

His admonition that translations should not “rinse out the prose” is well stated and profoundly appropriate. Even an atheist can offer good advice on literary matters, and Hitchens is a writer of great ability.

Since the article’s publication, several observers have noted Hitchens’ comments on faulty modern translations and gender-neutral approaches. His points are well worth noting.

But the more interesting aspect of this article to note is this: Christopher Hitchens, one of the world’s most ardent and outspoken atheists, and a man in the fight for his life against cancer, is reading the Bible. This is at least the second article on the Bible that he has written of late. I note this with a sense of hope.

I know you will join me in praying that, in reading the Bible, Mr. Hitchens will find more than he might be looking for. Rinse not the prose of its message.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Christopher Hitchens, “When the King Saved God,” Vanity Fair, May 2011

Arizona Rampage: Some Explanation for the Seemingly Inexplainable

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:49 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Sean McDowell, author, Is God Just a Human Invention?

“Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.”  Mt 10:29-31

In a seemingly random act of mass murder last Saturday, a 22-year-old man with a handgun went to a U.S. Congresswoman’s community forum staged in the parking lot of a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona and started shooting people at point-blank range.  When it was all over, six people were dead including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, and the Congresswoman was left fighting for life with a bullet through her brain.

Does this sort of horrific incident challenge your faith or leave you wondering why God didn’t stop the whole thing from happening?  Did a little girl, born on another tragic day, September 11th, 2001 and full of life and dreams, really “die before her time”?  In a flurry of chaos, why were some killed, some wounded, and some not touched at all?  And what could possibly cause a person to commit this act — is it true that we all have some culpability as the newspaper headline implied: “We’re better than this”?

Sean McDowell, co-author of “Is God Just a Human Invention?” and “The Unshakable Truth” will join us to discuss these questions and how the conclusions and explanations drawn by society in the aftermath of this murderous act are far from biblical.

Thank God for the New Atheists?

Michael Dowd argues that Christians should thank God for the New Atheists. A self-styled “evangelist” for evolution, Dowd recently preached a sermon in Oklahoma City in which he called for nothing less than a rejection of biblical Christianity and the embrace of a spirituality rooted in an embrace of evolution and a rejection of the supernatural.

A few weeks ago, a reporter called me for comment after Dowd had made a similar argument on his Web site, “ThankGodforEvolution.com.” In more recent days, Dowd has responded directly to my comments. Without doubt, his argument deserves a closer look.

In his 2007 book, Thank God for Evolution, Down recounts that he, along with his wife, Connie Barlow, decided in 2002 to go on the road as “evolutionary evangelists.” As he explains, “We offer a view of our collective evolutionary journey that frees the imagination, touches the heart, and leaves people wanting more.” An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ and a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now Palmer Theological Seminary), Dowd now finds his passion in spreading his message of “the epic of evolution” or “the Great Story.”

In his book, Dowd makes clear his rejection of biblical Christianity. He rejects the notion of a personal God. To the contrary, his concept of God is more metaphorical than metaphysical. “When I say ‘God,’ I not talking about something or someone that can be believed in or not believed in,” he explains. “I’m talking about the Ultimate Wholeness of Reality, seen and unseen — the whole shebang — which is infinitely more than anything we can know, think, or imagine.”

He rejects the authority of Scripture and embraces scientific knowledge. “New truths no longer spring fully formed from the traditional founts of knowledge,” he asserts. “Rather, they are hatched and challenged in the public arena of science.This is the realm of public revelation.”

For sin, Dowd substitutes the biblical concepts of sin and forgiveness. “Let’s just say our sins and failings can be used as compost for new growth,” he offers.

Those who reject or resist the claims of naturalistic evolution hold to a “flat-earth faith.” The Bible, he insists, must give way to the “public revelation” of science.

In the book, Dowd claimed to bring science and religion together, though in the end the religion seems to be science itself.

Now, in his more recent offerings, Dowd is making waves by celebrating the rise of the “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. In his Oklahoma City message, he proclaimed his gratitude for the New Atheists, acknowledging “a huge shift” in his understanding of God.

He gushes that the New Atheists “have come to our rescue,” but that “rescue” is am escape from biblical Christianity, and even from any belief in the supernatural. In his view, the God of the Bible is neither believable nor good.

Confidence in the Bible is misplaced and dangerous, he insists: “Ancient, unchanged scriptural stories and doctrinal declarations ate inadequate guidance for meeting modern challenges.”

The word “God,” he proposes, must be continually updated in light of scientific knowledge. The God portrayed in the Bible no longer makes sense.”God is not a person,” he avers, “God is a personification of one or more deeply significant dimensions of reality.”

Furthermore, the God of the Bible is immoral, he declares. Dowd describes the God of the Bible as “brutal, cruel, vindictive, and genocidal.” But, he claims, the New Atheists have now come to rescue us from such beliefs. “Few things are more important at this time in history than for religious peoples of all backgrounds and orientations to heed what the New Atheists are saying,” he chided.

The New Atheists, with their assertive and aggressive atheism, are true prophets who are forcing modern people to “get real” as they abandon biblical Christianity. Those enlightened by the New Atheists will “get their guidance from humanity’s common creation story and teach and preach the discoveries of science as God’s word.”

When asked by a reporter if Dowd’s views amount to heresy, I responded by saying that Dowd’s proposals actually give heresy a bad name. Heresies, I explained, are efforts to redefine the Christian faith in ways that are often subtle as well as toxic. There is no subtlety to Dowd’s total rejection of theism, the supernatural, and any belief in a personal God. His embrace of anti-supernaturalism is total and energetic.

In a response, Dowd expressed sympathy for my lamentable ignorance and backwardness. “But time marches on,” he warned. “Like it or not, believe it or not, evolution happens.”

In a telling sentence, Dowd revealed his near total animus to classical Christianity: “In an ever-evolving cosmos, ‘orthodoxy’ is a recipe for either extinction or irrelvance.”

“I certainly don’t expect Dr. Mohler and others like him to let go of mythic beliefs to embrace evidential knowledge,” he explained. “But I’m betting my life that his grandchildren (and theirs) will find Christianity 2.0 more appealing and soul-nourishing than Christianity 1.0.”

“Time, of course, will tell,” he concluded.

In his message, preached to three liberal churches in Oklahoma City, Dowd told of the day in September of 2009 that he learned he had an aggressive form of cancer. “If I have only one message left to communicate to the world, what would it be?,” he wondered. His answer: “Preach the New Atheists as God’s prophets.”

I regret to learn of Michael Dowd’s cancer, but my concern for him is far more urgently focused on his malignant beliefs. In his own very effective way, Dowd clarifies the theological and biblical costs of embracing the evolutionary worldview. In describing himself as a evolutionary evangelist, he underlines the fervor of his cause and the inevitable collision between evolutionary theory and biblical Christianity. In sharing his sense that preaching the New Atheists as the prophets of God is his supreme calling, he points us to what is ultimately at stake.

We are engaged in a great battles for ideas that Christians understand to be a battle for hearts, minds, and souls. Dowd and his fellow evangelists for evolution are certain that they own the future, and that biblical Christianity will simply fade and disappear. “Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, and the worldwide web,” he asserts. His conclusion: “This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers, and camel drivers.”

Well, give Michael Dowd credit for reminding us where the rejection of biblical Christianity inevitably leads.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.

Michael Dowd, “Thank God for the New Atheists!,” A message delivered  in Oklahoma City, OK, August 1-7, 2010. Text available here. [pdf file]

Michael Dowd, “Giving Heresy a Bad Name!,” The Evolutionary Evangelist, August 8, 2010.

Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World, Plume, 2007.

For my book on the New Atheists, see Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheism, Crossway, 2008.

CONGRATULATIONS to the 2009 Summit Essay Contest Winners!

Congratulations to 19-year-old Kevin Bibelhausen of Dubuque, Iowa and 17-year-old Sally Nelson of Moores Hill, Indiana for their excellent “letters to an atheist” in the 2009 Summit Essay Contest.  Each of them will receive a half-tuition scholarship to attend a two-week student conference at Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

The assignment for the essay was to write a letter to an atheist, like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) or Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), about why evidence and reason point to the existence of God.  I think you will find them convincing and well-written.  Here are their essays.

Absolute Truth and the Glory of God by Kevin Bibelhausen

Dear Dr. Dawkins,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. I have taken the time to write to you in order to question you on your stance regarding absolute truth and the origins/workings of the universe. I am fully aware of your worldview and your belief that God is non-existent, but I ask you to consider the following arguments for His existence. In my opinion, there are two basic categories that need to be addressed in order to discuss the existence of some kind of god: absolute, knowable truth and the origin, precision, and moral standards of creation.

It is impossible to prove the nonexistence of anything. All we are able to do is to look at the evidence and come to a logical conclusion. Even if all arguments for the nonexistence of God failed, that would still not prove the impossibility of a sound argument for the nonexistence of God. Since this is true, so is the reverse. If all the arguments for the existence of God failed, that would not prove the impossibility of a sound argument for the existence of God. Therefore, it is more productive for me to outline why I believe the following to be true.

Let us begin with an accepted universal constant: gravity. Imagine I didn’t believe in a gravitational force and I jumped off the Empire State building. Would my sincere unbelief keep me from falling to the unforgiving pavement? Of course not. This illustrates why scientific knowledge cannot be a collection of subjective opinions. Rather, it is a collection of explanations about objective reality that is based on observed or predicted phenomena. In addition, the explanation must be verified repeatedly to confirm that it correctly models reality. As we become more skilled at scientific observation, our scientific knowledge changes rapidly and the new theories that are formed are either verified or falsified. You’ll notice, however, that the absolute reality that is being modeled has never changed. The scientific method assumes an absolute reality, against which, theories can be verified. It is incomprehensible that these things could come about on their own because of their complex nature and mathematical order. Therefore, such precision would require nothing less than a sovereign Creator.

However, scientists, such as yourself, subscribe to a theory that claims the universe exploded into being out of nothing. Logically, nature itself could not have been responsible for the creation of the universe because by definition of the word “nothing,” natural law, or nature, didn’t exist before the creation of the universe! Continuing along this line of thought, if creation wasn’t by a “natural” cause, then it must have been a supernatural cause. This cause must be: immaterial, timeless, powerful and space-less because these things did not exist before the creation of the universe. Furthermore, this miraculous creation exploded into being in a precise, orderly state. For instance, if Earth’s position was slightly different from its current position or its axial tilt was off, or the Earth’s rotation wasn’t twenty-four hours, we wouldn’t exist. These are just a few samples of information which I am certain you are already aware of. In fact, in your own book “A Blind Watchmaker” you admit that in a simple amoeba there is enough DNA information to fill one-thousand sets of encyclopedias. In light of this information, I am reminded of a quote from Frank Turek: “To believe that the amoeba happened by accident is like saying the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop!”

It is also imperative that I address a common issue between atheists and theists called morality. Christopher Hitchens is famous for challenging theists to name a moral action that a theist would do that an atheist could not perform. This, however, is an irrelevant question. The question is not can you do something moral but are you justified in your “moral” action. In other words, because you don’t believe in absolute truth, morality is relative. This being the case, I could walk up to you, kick you, and walk away because it would be no different than shaking your hand. So why would you choose to do anything that wasn’t in your best interest? There is an obvious flaw in the atheist’s logic because no atheist lives this way!
It is because of the inconsistency of the atheist’s worldview that I chose two categories of arguments: absolute, knowable truth and the origin, precision, and moral standards of creation. When approaching the evidence from a logical, reasonable perspective, one cannot deny that this immaterial, timeless, powerful, space-less creating force whose universe is precisely suited for human life sounds an awful lot like the God of the Bible.

Your friend,
Kevin Bibelhausen

Open Letter: Professor Dawkins by Sally Nelson

Dear Professor Dawkins,

In both your book, The God Delusion, and in television interviews, you have repeatedly argued that there is no evidence supporting religion and, in turn, God. You have accused Christianity of being a “belief without evidence” or a “blind faith” that is not based upon reason. In actuality, manifold evidence and logically sound reasoning supports faith and the existence of God.

Creation points to the existence of God. As Psalms 19:1 says, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of His hands.” The world declares the existence of God, but many reject Him. The origin of the world and of life poses a difficult question for those who deny God. The world obviously had a beginning point. There is not enough energy for stars to exist for more than a quadrillion years.

Therefore, the world cannot have been around forever. Somehow, the world had to begin. Either the world created itself or there was a creator. For the world to have created itself, it would have had to immense have power before it actually existed. The world would have had to create a complex molecule, such as DNA or RNA, with perfect functionality, before the world even existed. The concept is equivocal to the idea of throwing random parts together and producing a supercomputer. It defies all rules of logic. How could a random process create life?  Dr. Walter L. Bradly, Ph.D., who is currently serving as a Professor of Engineering at Baylor University, stated, “If we took all of the carbon in the universe, converted it into amino acids, and allowed it to chemically react at the maximum permissible rate of 1013 interactions per second for five billion years, the probability of making a single functioning protein increases to only 1/1060. For this reason, chance explanations for the origin of life have been rejected.” The second possibility, that the world had a creator, makes not only more logical sense but evidence also supports the possibility. The complex beauty and elegance of the natural world proclaims the existence of God.

Moral law points to a creator. In most societies, it is unacceptable to do certain things, such as lying, stealing, and infidelity in marriage. Even the earliest civilizations, from the Mesopotamians to the Minoans, had standards of right and wrong. How could mankind have such a foundational moral law without someone to instill that internal compass? As C.S. Lewis said, “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”  God has given us a standard of morality that transcends culture.

Darwinian supporters have responded to the argument of moral law stating that morality is a sort of Darwinian impulse, similar to sexual instinct. You and others like you have argued that mankind has a standard of morality as we have evolved into the knowledge that certain behaviors adversely affect mankind. Therefore, we feel moral instinct to avoid those behaviors. The distinction between right and wrong is not merely an instinct. If it was an instinct, it would not conflict with other desires that would benefit humankind. For example, a woman is unable to fulfill her husband’s sexual desires because of medical issues. Her husband feels the desire for sexual satisfaction and procreation outside of the boundaries of his marriage. Something inside him, though, tells him that such behavior is wrong.

This “moral instinct”, when looking through the lens of Darwinian Theory, conflicts with the impulse to procreate and further the species. Morality, if evolved to hinder behavior that could destroy the species, would not conflict with the instinct to procreate. Morality conflicts with the Darwinian instinct to advance the human species. For example, some have taken the “instinct” to further the human species to the extreme of removing humans viewed as “unfit” to live. If morality was evolved to aid the human species, there would be no moral qualms about removing “unfit” humans. We can conclude that some outer force instilled moral law in mankind. God has given us a conscience and a way to distinguish right from wrong. This is yet another arrow pointing towards God.

The impossibility of evolution, the elegance of creation, and moral law imprinted on man’s heart all point to the existence of God.  Christianity is not a blind faith. It is a faith that is based upon profound evidence and logic. As you have said many times before, truth is wonderful and uplifting and I hope you will look for it. I do realize that it is impossible to prove God to those who refuse to believe or to those who refuse to listen with an open mind.

I can’t touch God, Professor Dawkins, but I can point you to Him.

God bless,
Sally Nelson

“Imagine” A World Without Christians

Yesterday, three letters to the editor at The Colorado Springs Gazette were written claiming the three typical myths about religious belief: (1) that religion is mostly responsible for the overwhelming evil in the world, (2) that science is to be thanked for essentially all of human progress, and (3) a world without religion (as per John Lennon’s Imagine) would be better than a world with it.

My response was published in today’s Colorado Springs Gazette. I have posted it below:

In her letter to the editor, Janet Brazill reminded us of the many killed in the name of religion. While it is impossible to deny this (and Christians do not deny it), one should also keep in mind that far more blood was shed in the twentieth century at the hands of consciously atheistic governments than by all religious governments in the history of the world combined. This, of course, does not remove guilt from the religious, but the non-religious should own up to their guilt as well. Further, one should consider whether the slaughter is consistent in their belief system. The Inquisition was a Read more