Hitchens explains the gospel

Posted on January 30, 2010 
Filed under Resources

Earlier this month the Portland Monthly in Oregon, published the transcript of an interview with atheist Christopher Hitchens. He spoke with Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell.

One of them rejects Jesus, the other wants Jesus but without ‘all that stuff’ –

Sewell: “When you speak of ‘religion’ in your book God is Not Great it seems to me that you’re generally referring to 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 any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?”

Hitchens: “Well, only in this respect: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ – in other words, the Messiah – and that he rose again from the dead and that by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you are really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

The transcript on the website has been fairly heavily edited and leaves out an exchange immediately following the above. Sewell says she believes…  

“in the Jesus Story as story – as narrative – and Jesus as a person whose life is exemplary and that I want to follow, but I do not believe in all that stuff that I just outlined…”

Hitchens: “I simply have to tell you that every major Christian thinker and theologian has said that without the resurrection and without the forgiveness of sins, what I call the Vicarious Redemption, it’s meaningless. In fact, without that it isn’t even a nice story…”

– It’s worth hearing the 2 minute 30 second segment starting 9:14 into the audio (40MB mp3).

(h/t Matt Perkins. Photo: Wikipedia.)