Christopher Hitchens vs Douglass Wilson – Collision, a Documentary
By Kenneth A. Pierce
Most people in evangelical churches are aware of the “New Atheism,” a particularly aggressive publishing and appearance onslaught by prominent thinkers who are also atheists: Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens. Almost three years ago, Christianity Today sponsored a series of online print debates between Hitchens and Douglas Wilson, prolific author and pastor of Christ Church (CRE), Moscow, Idaho. That series of widely-read debates led to a tour of debates in various settings from college and seminary auditoriums to pubs and CBN news.
The documentary is an effort to capture the spirit of those debates, and is especially illuminating because it spends a fair amount of time covering the informal interactions of Wilson and Hitchens, as well as their personal reflections.
The two men are fond of one another, and have a great deal of mutual respect, and this is evident throughout. Near the beginning, Hitchens says that he respects Wilson more than other religious apologists because others say that they have much in common with him as far as moral principles; the only difference is belief in God. Wilson, Hitchens says, sees the difference –what Reformed apologists would call antithesis – that the atheist and Christian are totally at odds.
Wilson does a superb job of pressing Hitchens on the inconsistencies an atheist must necessarily have. Hitchens is a contrarian moralist in the tradition of Lippman and Mencken. As Wilson notes, much of his writing and public appearances is directed at denouncing injustice and wrong. The question Wilson repeatedly asks, which Hitchens will not answer, is by what standard he calls anything wrong.
Hitchens is a refreshing cure for the mistaken idea many Christians have of atheists, namely that they must be bitter, angry and disagreeable folks. To the contrary, Hitchens appears jovial and personable. He hates Christianity, but not Christians. He freely admits the existence of transcendent truth, but is agnostic on what it is. He believes that the quest for truth is at the center of life, but finds anyone who claims to have found it to be suspect. Wilson takes him to task on that point: why would anyone search for truth if there is no hope of finding it? The point remains unanswered.
Hitchens chief objections to the Christian faith are that it is arrogant and presumptuous to presume that Christians have a corner on moral truth. Nobody, he says, needs to be told that murder and lying were wrong –these things were wrong before the Ten Commandments were written, and cultures that have never heard of the Decalogue still regard those as wrong. In the documentary, Wilson lets this point go unanswered (he may have answered in the debates). Certainly, Christians may freely grant his point: the law makes explicit what was implicit in humanity by the God-given conscience, and general revelation. The law serves as an external standard by which the conscience and actions of men may be judged. Yet, in the documentary, Hitchens’s point is not countered.
The documentary is fast-paced, and compelling. Occasionally, the use of extended musical interludes (including rap music), and the modern penchant for constantly-shifting camera angles, jarring close-ups, and changing the focus are somewhat disorienting. The documentary is produced by several people who are close to Wilson (including his son, Nathan), and though they are not unfair in how they treat Hitchens, it is Wilson who is shown cavorting with his grandchildren, and leading them in worship around the table. Those are great scenes, and they serve to flesh out the humanity of the participants, but there is little similar empathy-building done for Hitchens.
Occasionally, Wilson’s novel view of the end times and other Biblical hermeneutics, which have been so off-putting to fellow pastors and scholars in the Reformed camp, poke through. He states that the prodigal son was Israel in exile, that the anti-Christ was probably the early false teacher Cerinthus, and that Jesus returned in AD 70 to destroy the temple. Reformed Christians will recognize at least some of that as the teachings of partial preterism: that Jesus returned, in some sense, in AD 70, to inaugurate his millennial reign on the earth. Wilson is certainly entitled to his view, but this may limit the appeal of the video in settings it might otherwise be welcome.
The other thing that might limit the documentary’s appeal for use in local churches is the use of two expletives: one from the lips of Hitchens, but the most striking and emphatic one from Wilson. Interestingly, John Piper addressed this question publicly with Wilson at a recent Bethlehem Pastor’s Conference. Wilson’s defense was that he was assuming Hitchens’s world-view and language. Still, it may make churches skittish about using this with young people, and limit audiences unnecessarily. It could have been sacrificed without reducing the effect of Wilson’s arguments, if the desire was to make this documentary as useful as possible to the church.
The last important thing to note is that the documentary states that the conversations were based on the premise, “Is Christianity Good for the World?” That question is never addressed in the documentary. This is not a deficit –the basis for that argument is pragmatic, and ultimately unprovable. Instead, the debate centers on the far more important question, “Is Christianity true?” and on that point it succeeds.
The most poignant moment is the closing scene. Wilson and Hitchens are in the back of a car. They’re chatting informally. Hitchens says to Wilson that, if there were one Christian left in the world that retained his faith, he would not try to convince him of his error. He says that Dawkins looked at him incredulously when he said that. Most interestingly, he says it is not because he would retain a sparring partner, and he didn’t want the fight to be over, though that was true. He ends by saying that he really doesn’t know why he wouldn’t labor to destroy the last Christian’s faith, but that he really wouldn’t. It is a telling moment, and a fitting end to a documentary that features two worthy, friendly adversaries, and the clash of completely conflicting world views. Christians will be heartened in their faith: Christianity is necessary to make consistent sense out of the world. Not a few atheists may be troubled by the absence of a coherent explanation of the origin of transcendent morality. The intellectual children of Cornelius Van Til and Francis Schaeffer will enjoy seeing presuppositional apologetics in full flower.
Ken Pierce is the Senior Minister at Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Jackson, MS