Who is my neighbor?

...I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbour.
G.K. Chesterton

"I was not born to be free..."

"I was not born to be free: 

I was born to adore and to obey."

Rummaging through things in my desk, I came across this card. On the back the source of the quotation is given as "Lewis in conversation as recounted by A.C. Harwood," one of C.S. Lewis's good friends—an Inkling. The card was sent to members in November, 1983, by The New York C.S. Lewis Society. I was then—and am now—a member, although I have never attended a meeting in person.

It seems to me that Lewis' conviction about the purpose of life complements the first question and response in the Westminster Catechism:

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Evangelicals and Seventh-day Adventists

My denomination, the Seventh Day Baptist, is often confused with the more recent, much larger and thus better known, Seventh-day Adventist. When someone asks my affiliation, if I say "Seventh Day Baptist" they often hear "Seventh-day Adventist," so I have fallen into the habit of saying that "I belong to one of the smaller Baptist denominations, the Seventh Day Baptists." That isn't always enough, either. Seventh Day Baptists differ with other Baptists only with respect to the Sabbath. Adventists are sufficiently heterodox that whether they fall within the boundaries of Evangelicalism has been — and may remain — an open question.

This morning I came across a 1988 article, originally published in the Christian Research Journal, "From Controversy to Crisis: An Updated Assessment of Seventh-day Adventism," by Kenneth R. Samples. It is an account of the relationship of Seventh-day Adventists with Evangelicalism, and the controversies within Adventism related to it, from the 1950s to the 1980s. I found it informative about Adventism and am curious about whether Adventists and ex-Adventists think it accurate.

The only reference to Seventh Day Baptists occurs in a summary of a '50s era description of the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of the significance of the Sabbath:

.... Sabbatarianism. SDA teaches that the keeping of the Seventh-day Sabbath, as a perpetual memorial to creation, is obligatory for all Christians as a mark of "true obedience" to the Lord. Unlike some extreme Adventists, however, the Adventist scholars at the conference asserted that the keeping of the Sabbath did not procure salvation, and that non-Adventist Christians who observed Sunday in good conscience were not excluded from the body of Christ.

Though Sabbath-keeping has never been the official position of historic Christianity, the evangelicals concluded that to keep, or not keep, a Sabbath was permissible within the context of Romans 14:5-6. Other Christian denominations, such as the Seventh Day Baptists, had taken this position as well. The evangelicals vigorously disagreed with the Adventists' conclusion regarding the Sabbath, but they did not see this as an issue which should divide them. .... (more)

Bible Life to the World: "From Controversy to Crisis: An Updated Assessment of Seventh-day Adventism"

Tested and refined

D.A. Carson observes that one subject contemporary choruses seldom praise God for was more commonly addressed in hymns and should not be neglected. Reflecting on Psalm 66:

.... There the psalmist begins by inviting the peoples of the world to listen in on the people of God as they praise him because “he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.” Then the psalmist directly addresses God, and mentions the context in which the Lord God preserved them: “For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance” (Psalm 66:10 -12).

This is stunning. The psalmist thanks God for testing his covenant people, for refining them under the pressure of some extraordinarily difficult circumstances and for sustaining them through that experience. This is the response of perceptive, godly faith. It is not heard on the lips of those who thank God only when they escape trial or are feeling happy. .... [more]

Numbers 24; Psalms 66-67; Isaiah 14; 1 Peter 2 – For the Love of God

He restoreth my soul

Some of the spring flowers I saw walking home from church today.

"If we confess..."

From Kevin DeYoung's post on "Why We Need Confession of Sin":

.... If your church does not regularly confess sin and receive God’s assurance of pardon you are missing an essential element of corporate worship. It’s in the weekly prayer of confession that we experience the gospel. It’s here that we find punk kids and Ph.D.’s humbled together, admitting the same human nature. It’s here we, like Pilgrim, can unload our burden at the foot of the cross.

Some of us become Christians and just go on our merry way, never thinking of sin, while others fixate on our failings and suffer from despair. One person feels no conviction of sin; the other person feels no relief from sin. Neither of these habits should mark the Christian. The Christian should often feel conviction, confess, and be cleansed.

The cleansing, mind you, is not like the expunging of a guilty record before the judge. That’s already been accomplished. This cleansing is more like the scraping of barnacles off the hull of a ship so it can move freely again. We need confession of sin before God like a child needs to own up to her mistakes before Mom and Dad, not to earn God’s love, but to rest in it and know it more fully.

1 John 1:9, then, is not just about getting saved. It’s also about living as a saved person and enjoying it.

Why We Need Confession of Sin – Kevin DeYoung

Feared by the bad, loved by the good...

Steven D. Greydanus did not enjoy Ridley Scott's new version of Robin Hood with Russell Crowe in the title role:

.... I’m sick of movies that seem obsessed with rubbing our noses in the supposed harsh reality behind our romantic illusions of nobility and courtesy — especially in our age, when the harsh reality is taken for granted, and the romance and nobility and courtesy are all but forgotten.

Here is a small example. On the eve of the siege in which he will fall prey to an archer’s arrow, King Richard, noting Robin’s courage and honesty, asks him candidly whether God will be pleased with Richard’s sacrifice. Somberly, Robin answers that by massacring innocent Muslims they have become godless men. Specifically, he recalls a Muslim woman whose last look was not one of fear or hatred, but pity. (Bad Crusades! Bad!)

Richard’s capricious response to Robin’s candor is to have him clapped in stocks. You see, Robin is brave, honest — and naïve. Betcha didn’t see that coming, huh?

Now here is another story about an archer and Richard’s death, from Wikipedia. Spotting a defender on the castle walls with a crossbow shooting at him, Richard was amused and applauded the archer — until a shaft went home. Later, the archer was captured and brought before the dying king, whose wound had become gangrenous. The archer (who said he was avenging family members killed by Richard) expected to be executed — but Richard, in a last act of mercy, pardoned him, gave him 100 shillings and sent him on his way. Isn’t that a better story than Richard clapping Robin in stocks?

Where Kingdom of Heaven made a flawed but credible effort to treat the Church with some measure of even-handedness, Robin Hood can’t be bothered. “Between the sheriff and the bishop,” Marion snaps, “it’s hard to say who is the greater curse on common English folk.” She says she’s praying for a “miracle,” namely, that the bishop (never seen) might show “Christian charity” and not rob the people of the seed corn they need for planting. At least there’s a suggestion that Christianity itself is better than its leaders. ....

In other productions, Friar Tuck often serves as a positive if not especially pious clerical type. Here Mark Addy’s Tuck is at pains to make clear that he is “not a churchy friar,” and certainly he’s given nothing “churchy” to do or say. .... [more]

Others seem worried that the film may be interpreted as having contemporary political relevance.

My primary concern is that Hollywood has once again wasted a great deal of money ruining a perfectly good story when they had the resources to do it really well. Perhaps Ridley Scott should return to science fiction where his propensity to make stuff up does less harm to either history or legend. I think I'll wait for this one on cable and, in the meantime, watch my Blu-ray of 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood in Technicolor with Errol Flynn as Robin and Claud Rains and Basil Rathbone playing the villainous parts.

Robin Hood (2010)

The History of the English Baptists

Last November I called attention to Google making available online its scan of The History of the English Baptists [1739], by Thomas Crosby. Now I am informed that Logos is doing the same for those that use their software. The Logos description:

Thomas Crosby, known for being the first English Baptist historian, took on the task of canvassing the history of the English Baptists from the sixteenth century until the mid-eighteenth century. In this 4-volume set, beginning with the Reformation, Crosby expounds on the persecution and growth of the Church. He also details aspects of the Baptist faith and eloquently responds to criticisms of the Baptist doctrine during the two hundred year span which The History of the English Baptists covers.

The timeframe spanning from Wycliffe to the reign of Queen Anne is broken up into four parts in this collection, published first in 1739, then again in 1739 and 1740. Thomas Crosby’s brother-in-law, a lesser known and unpublished Baptist historian named Mr. Stinton, assisted him in gathering materials for The History of the English Baptists.

Rich in historical detail, this set will add dimension to your Logos library. Crosby's insight and influence are a valuable addition to any church history collection.

Key Features Included

• Over 2,000 total pages of detailed Church history
• First collection ever written regarding English Baptist history
• Easily searchable in your Logos library

Upon publication the price will be $159. Pre-publication is a bargain $59. It can be ordered here.

The History of the English Baptists, by Thomas Crosby (4 vols.)

That terrible red-headed Annie

The decline of newspapers and changing technology for the delivery of information and entertainment leads to the demise of one of the longest-running comic strips in the US. From the AP, as published at World Magazine:

Tribune Media Services announced Thursday that it will cease syndication of the "Annie" strip on June 13. ....

The comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" made its newspaper debut on August 5, 1924, first written and illustrated by creator Harold Gray. The strip later was renamed simply "Annie." The spunky orphan was adopted by Daddy Warbucks and later joined by her lovable dog Sandy. ....

The classic era for the strip may have been the thirties and forties, especially the war years. Harold Gray reflected the editorial views of his paper, the Chicago Tribune: Republican, anti-union, anti-FDR and New Deal, isolationist before the war, and strongly supportive of the war effort after Pearl Harbor.

From the biography of Harold Gray at the beginning of Arf! The Life and Hard Times of Little Orphan Annie, 1935-1945:

In many ways Annie epitomized Mr. Gray's personal convictions that all Americans should act with honor, independence of thought, and industry, mind their own business and remain true to the traditional pioneering virtues.

Describing his brainchild, Gray said: "Annie is tougher than hell with a heart of gold and a fast left, who can take care of herself because she has to. She's controversial, there's no question about that. But I keep her on the side of motherhood, honesty, and decency."

Annie led a perilous life, hunting spies, sabotaging U-boats, and supporting the war effort at home. The strips below are from 1942.

WORLD Magazine | Today's News, Christian Views

Violating contempoary taboos

Of all the magazines I read either  online or the old-fashioned way, Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity is the one I come closest to reading from cover to cover. The magazine exemplifies what I have elsewhere called honest ecumenism. It draws writers from across the spectrum of Christian orthodoxy, emphasizing areas of fundamental agreement without blurring doctrinal difference. It is also just a very interesting, readable magazine. In this issue I turned immediately to articles about two subjects of particular interest to me: C.S. Lewis and Sacred Harp singing.

Sacred Harp or "shape note" singing is described in an article by Philip E. Devine in which he not only recounts the origins and nature of the music but the social environment of the "sings." The participants are diverse:

People who believe not a word of them sing ancestral texts with every sign of commitment. This may not differ much from the spirit in which many people attend church, but is remarkable nonetheless. It seems that there is a stratum of our souls that is never secular, that resonates with a world-picture that in our sophisticated moods we find hopelessly "primitive." ....

In doing this, it violates two contemporary taboos. The first is the one against dogma, in a world where relativism is all but mandatory. Though the songs admit doubt on the singers' part, the truth of the doctrines expressed is never in question. There is no place in the world of Sacred Harp for such ideas as a "life style."

The second taboo is the mention of death. At no point can someone who takes part in a shape note sing forget that he is born to die. Sometimes the recognition of this fact is plaintive, as in "Idumea." Sometime it is joyous, as in "I'm Going Home." Both of these songs were used in the movie Cold Mountain, to convey the culture of the defeated white South. As one young man put it at a singing, "Death is happy!" Yet the songs also remind us,

Death, 'tis a melancholy day
To those who have no God
When the poor soul is forced away
To seek her last abode.

In vain to heav'n she lifts her eyes
For guilt, a heavy chain
Still drags her downward from the skies
To darkness, fire, and pain.

And sometimes both death and dogma come together in a triumphant acceptance of death and a breathtaking confidence in the possibility of a happy immortality:

Why do we mourn departing friends,
Or shake at death's alarms
'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends
To call them to his arms....

Thence he arose, ascended high,
And showed our feet the way;
Up to Lord our souls shall fly,
At the great rising day.

The other article, by Donald T. Williams, defends the validity of C.S. Lewis's "trilemma." Lewis argued that what we know about Jesus doesn't permit the interpretation that he was simply a great moral teacher and exemplar, but that we must choose between "Lord, Liar or Lunatic." Williams responds to those who argue that Lewis creates a false dilemma by too severely limiting the options.

I haven't read much else in this issue of the magazine yet, but I will.

Secularism and the looming threat of theocracy

Hunter Baker, author of The End of Secularism, has made available online all of an interview he gave for an article about the rise of secularism. He first responded to "What exactly is secularism about?"

Secularism is about removing religion/consideration of God from public life. The desire to do so does not have to be invidious. Those who embrace secularism, including many Christians, often do so because they believe it is a good answer to the problem of religious difference among people in a political community. They think that if they can remove differences among people, especially religious differences, our community will grow stronger. At the same time, secularists tend to see religion as something human beings once needed, but no longer do. They think religion is irrational and extraneous to the things that really matter in life.

Baker's answer to those worried about the threat of an American theocracy:

It is not a valid concern in the United States. Our national identity, formed and shaped by both devout Christians and Enlightenment philosophers, fully embraces religious liberty and the separation of church and state. In fact, there is a powerful religious argument (well delivered by Martin Luther, by John Locke in his Letter Concerning Toleration, by the Baptists, and by others) that coerced religion is actually offensive to God and merely causes people to sin by lying about their convictions.

You hear conservative Christians complaining about the separation of church and state, but they are actually failing to voice their real concern. In fact, they object to secularization of the public square which they feel goes too far. .... Separation of church and state, properly understood, means that the two entities are institutionally separate. It doesn’t mean religious faith can’t be part of our identity as a public community or that the church has nothing to say to the state about politics.

With regard to concerns about theocracy, I think this is an area where men and women of the left have been inconsistent. They loved having liberal clergy “speak truth to power” or “speak prophetically” in the 1960’s. But when conservative pastors and priests entered the fray on the part of unborn children in the 1970’s and 1980’s, they were never given credit for “speaking truth to power”. Instead, they were accused of being theocrats, despite the fact that you can argue in good faith that they were challenging structures of power on behalf of a vulnerable population. .... (more)

Harvard Political Review, Secularism, and Me » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Choose this day...

Do you serve the rightful king or a usurper? Alan Jacobs, quoting from his contribution to an upcoming book about the works of C.S. Lewis:

...[W]hen the four Pevensies first enter Narnia as a group, their first action is to visit the house of Mr Tumnus. There they discover the house ransacked and a notice of Tumnus’s arrest that concludes with the words ‘LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!’ — to which Lucy replies, ‘She isn’t a real queen at all.’ ...

Among the first facts established about Narnia are these: it is a realm in which authority is contested, in which the present and visible Queen of This World ‘isn’t a real queen at all’ but rather a usurper, while the rightful King is frequently absent and invisible — but liable to return and assert his sovereignty. ...

In short: there is a King of Kings and Lord of Lords whose Son is the rightful ruler of this world. Indeed, through that Son all things were made, and the world will end when he ‘comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead’, though ‘his kingdom will have no end’, in the words of the Nicene Creed. Meanwhile, in these in-between times, the rulership of Earth is claimed by an Adversary, the Prince of this world. And what is asked of all Lewis’s characters is simply, as the biblical Joshua put it, to ‘choose this day’ whom they will serve.

Text Patterns: disputed sovereignty

Aaaughh!

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,

whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,

and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

(Psalm 32:1-2, ESV)

The Christian Sabbath?

“Saturday or Sunday: What is the Christian Sabbath?”, a debate between Pastor Rod Henry of the Seventh Day Baptist church in Thornton, Colorado [Next Step Christian Church] and Dr. Sam Waldron of the Midwest Center for Theological Studies will take place May 11-14, tomorrow through Friday, 6:00-7:00 pm EDT, on station WNYG, 1440, in New York. For those of us outside the area, Kevin Butler provides the following information:

Go to www.sharpens.org. After reading about the program’s participants, click on the box near the top of the page that invites you to “Click Here to Listen Live.” When you get to the radio network’s site (www.rcnam.com), you’ll see four options of radio stations. Make sure you click on the circle that says “Long Island, 1440AM.” Your computer should load the player program and you can start listening.

You will hear some Spanish if you tune in early, but Lord willing, "Iron Sharpens Iron" will be on at 6:00 p.m. Eastern. Rod Henry will be featured on Tuesday, Sam Waldron on Wednesday, and both men engaging in an informational debate on Thursday and Friday. All of the programs will take calls from listeners.

If you can’t listen to the program live on the internet, you can go to www.sharpens.org and download an MP3 recording of the programs.

Saturday or Sunday: What is the Christian Sabbath?

Freedom requires self restraint

John Adams, sounding positively Burkean, on the relationship between liberty, the American Constitution, and the necessary condition for both:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge...would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.

Via Alan Snyder at Big Government

Living out our last days

"Death comes to us all," Thomas More reminds the court that is about to condemn him, and — barring the end of time — so it does. William Doino Jr., reviewing a book by a man dying of cancer, Jeffry Hendrix's A Little Guide For Your Last Days, reminds us that "we are all, inescapably, living out our last days—even if we don’t yet know the number of them." From the review:

.... Death used to be at the forefront of man’s consciousness. Memento mori, the Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die,” was woven into our cultural fabric, as was the supernatural awareness of our dependency: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”  ....

.... Anyone who has ever lost a close relative or friend knows what the immediate days and weeks afterward are like, with feelings of intense pain, isolation, disbelief, and an acute awareness of the fragility of life. Hendrix underwent a similar experience after his diagnosis, except that in his case it was because he was losing himself and his attachments to this world. He has emerged with a renewed appreciation for the gifts he once took for granted—family, friends, faith, and (shortened) life—for even as his “outer nature is wasting away” his soul is “being renewed every day.” .... [more]

Exit Strategy | The Weekly Standard

"No one could have imagined it before he tasted it"

C.S. Lewis has been an important influence on my own thoughts about the faith. Among the many relevant subjects he addressed his ideas and imaginings of Heaven and Hell have significantly affected mine. Peter J. Schakel gives us a fine review of what Lewis had to say on the subject in an exhaustive survey: "Heaven and Hell as Idea and Image in C. S. Lewis." Early on he notes that Lewis was grateful that the beginning of his Christian life did not include belief in either:

...[E]ven when he returned to belief in a divine being, he did so without initially believing in life after death. In his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he says of his conversion to theism that it “involved as yet no belief in a future life. I now number it among my greatest mercies that I was permitted for several months, perhaps for a year, to know God and to attempt obedience without even raising that question” (chap. 15, par. 2). In Reflections on the Psalms, he expands that idea to the early Hebrews, who had no belief in a future state of any sort; only later, after the people had learned “to desire and adore God” selflessly, could the hope of Heaven and fear of Hell be revealed to them, “as corollaries of a faith already centred upon God” (chap. 4, par. 17). Lewis regards it as a mercy that he became a Christian without believing in heaven because it reassures him about his motive: he did not return to God to obtain a reward, to gain a blissful afterlife in heaven; he did it solely out a desire for God as the source of goodness and truth. Lewis had little sympathy with those who urge people to become Christians in order to avoid hell and instead attain a blissful existence after death (“too often, I am afraid, [heaven is] desired chiefly as an escape from Hell” – Reflections on the Psalms, chap. 4, par. 18).

Schakel [and Lewis] on the importance of keeping in mind a distinction:

I have borrowed the words idea and image in my title from Perelandra, chapter 10, paragraph 1, where the narrator says “What emerged from the [Un-man’s] stories [about tragic heroines] was rather an image than an idea.” I am using idea as a synonym for doctrine (the Truth about heaven and hell) and image as a synonym for picture or metaphor, the use of words to create visual images that help us at least partially to grasp that Truth. Focusing on those two terms is important because it is difficult to talk about the doctrines of heaven and hell without slipping into pictures of heaven and hell. Ask people what hell is, for example, and you may get answers like, a pit of fires that will burn forever, perhaps surrounded with devils jabbing the damned with pitchforks. These are images, not ideas, and Lewis warns us “not to confuse the doctrine itself with the imagery by which it may be conveyed” (The Problem of Pain, chap. 8, par. 9).

Lewis imagined Heaven in both The Great Divorce and The Last Battle, but Schakel quotes him as cautioning his readers:

“I beg readers to remember that this [story] is a fantasy,” not even a guess at what heaven actually will be like. When someone wrote to Lewis asking if he wanted heaven to be similar to what he described in that story, he replied, “No, I don’t wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven” (Collected Letters, vol. 3, 7 August 1956). .... (much, much more)

C. S. Lewis Blog: Heaven and Hell as Idea and Image in C. S. Lewis

"As unto the Lord"

Gene Fant calls attention to a list of "The 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors" and encourages his readers to nominate additional academics. Dr. Fant remembered from his student days that:

.... One of my professors took me to the side after class and asked, “Is it true you are a Christian?” “Yes,” I replied, uncertain of where the question was leading. “I’m surprised,” the professor continued, “since your work is very strong. That’s really interesting.”

The question bothered me, not as a point of offense (“anti-Christian bias in the academy”), but rather that the reputation many Christian students have is that they are intellectually lazy or perform shoddy work. ....

Part of the great Christian Intellectual Tradition is the playing out of the intellectually apt principles that derive from biblical revelation: the existence and knowability of truth, the ultimate meaningfulness and purpose of the universe, and so on. Another part, though, is the belief that how we apply ourselves to tasks matters as well. We are to do things with all of our might (Eccl. 9:10) as unto the Lord. The luminaries cited in the list have certainly fulfilled this principle.

An impressive list.

I liked this quotation from one of the scientists, Martin Nowak:

Science and religion are two essential components in the search for truth. Denying either is a barren approach.

There are links to sites related to each of the individuals.

The Most Brilliant Christian Professors » Evangel | A First Things Blog, The 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors

False courage

Breakpoint notes a programming decision at a citadel of sophomoric humor:

Having come under fire for being too scared to air South Park's depiction of Mohammed, Comedy Central executives have decided to man up and develop an irreverent animated series about . . . Jesus Christ.

And, at The American Culture:

.... But no, we Christians are such pushovers. We actually believe in free speech, and liberty, and letting God take care of the blasphemers himself in his own good time.

But I’m sure the show will be as respectful of the sensibilities of Christians who believe that Jesus Christ actually was God and was raised from the dead, as they are of Muslims who believe Muhammad was a “prophet.”

Joe Queenan defined the behavior thus:

The difference between real courage and false courage is that real courage necessitates taking positions in which one actually risks one's livelihood or one's health....

Gutsy move, guys, Comedy Central Does Jesus, Not Muhammed | The American Culture

Nietzsche did it better

David B. Hart, author of Atheist Delusions, has read the New Atheists so you don't have to. He laments the inadequacy of their arguments compared to those of Atheists past. From his review of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists:

.... A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

If that seems a harsh judgment, I can only say that I have arrived at it honestly. In the course of writing a book published just this last year, I dutifully acquainted myself not only with all the recent New Atheist bestsellers, but also with a whole constellation of other texts in the same line, and I did so, I believe, without prejudice. No matter how patiently I read, though, and no matter how Herculean the efforts I made at sympathy, I simply could not find many intellectually serious arguments in their pages, and I came finally to believe that their authors were not much concerned to make any.

What I did take away from the experience was a fairly good sense of the real scope and ambition of the New Atheist project. I came to realize that the whole enterprise, when purged of its hugely preponderant alloy of sanctimonious bombast, is reducible to only a handful of arguments, most of which consist in simple category mistakes or the kind of historical oversimplifications that are either demonstrably false or irrelevantly true. And arguments of that sort are easily dismissed, if one is hardy enough to go on pointing out the obvious with sufficient indefatigability.

The only points at which the New Atheists seem to invite any serious intellectual engagement are those at which they try to demonstrate that all the traditional metaphysical arguments for the reality of God fail. At least, this should be their most powerful line of critique, and no doubt would be if any of them could demonstrate a respectable understanding of those traditional metaphysical arguments, as well as an ability to refute them. Curiously enough, however, not even the trained philosophers among them seem able to do this. And this is, as far as I can tell, as much a result of indolence as of philosophical ineptitude. The insouciance with which, for instance, Daniel Dennett tends to approach such matters is so torpid as to verge on the reptilian. He scarcely bothers even to get the traditional “theistic” arguments right, and the few ripostes he ventures are often the ones most easily discredited. ....

.... The only really effective antidote to the dreariness of reading the New Atheists, it seems to me, is rereading Nietzsche. How much more immediate and troubling the force of his protest against Christianity seems when compared to theirs, even more than a century after his death. Perhaps his intellectual courage—his willingness to confront the implications of his renunciation of the Christian story of truth and the transcendent good without evasions or retreats—is rather a lot to ask of any other thinker, but it does rather make the atheist chic of today look fairly craven by comparison.

Above all, Nietzsche understood how immense the consequences of the rise of Christianity had been, and how immense the consequences of its decline would be as well, and had the intelligence to know he could not fall back on polite moral certitudes to which he no longer had any right. .... [the review at First Things]

This review seriously annoyed atheist commenters. There are over three hundred comments, many of them tending to confirm Hart's characterizations.

Article | First Things: Believe It or Not