Marxist takes on atheist heavy-weights

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | September 15, 2009

Terry Eagleton, literary critic and self-professed Marxist, admits he's an unusual apologist for orthodox Christianity. "Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?" he asks. This book is his plunge into the "God debate." Eagleton dresses down two of New Atheism's most outspoken and virulent representatives, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, matching them for intellectual prowess and wit.

Eagleton argues that Hitchens and Dawkins (Eagleton calls them "Ditchkins") are intellectually dishonest ideologues who won't admit that their own commitments to liberalism, reason, science and progress are matters of faith. Ditchkins argue since there is no scientific proof of God's existence, "no religious belief, anywhere or any time, is worthy of any respect whatsoever."

Eagleton says this is a basic philosophical error, mistaking two different kinds of knowledge. "Science and theology are for the most part not talking about the same kinds of things," says Eagleton.

Eagleton agrees with Ditchkins that the Christian church has been (and often still is) "oily, sanctimonious, brutally oppressive and vilely bigoted." He won't sugar-coat Christian history, but he's wise enough to discern a difference between scriptural faith (Christianity) and ideological Christian faith (Christendom.) Ditchkins soundly criticize Christendom and then assume they have struck a death-blow to faith. Nonsense, says Eagleton; for such bright men, they're either being dishonest or stupid.

There is no non-faith, says Eagleton. The Enlightenment liberalism that Hitchens particularly has allied himself to fundamentally depends on faith. Hitchens is quick to point out the atrocities of Christendom but remains "astonishingly tight-lipped about the cock-ups and catastrophes" of science and liberalism. Eagleton calls Hitchens' book "a fine illustration of how atheistic fundamentalists are in some ways the inverted mirror image of Christian ones."

When Eagleton describes scriptural Christianity, his prose rings like bells: "only through a tragic process of loss, nothingness and self-dispossession can humanity come into its own," he writes. "If you don't love, you're dead, and if you do, they'll kill you….[Death] is the place where the ultimate meaning of Jesus's self-giving is revealed."

Eagleton shows that Christianity is truly revolutionary. It is a kingdom of love for the least of these. "The morality Jesus preaches is reckless, extravagant, improvident, over-the-top," he says, adding that "the good news that we are loved simply for what we are is bound to come as an intolerable affront." The truth of the gospel is a genuine threat to the powerful, which, if we're reading Eagleton closely, includes us.

Reason, Faith, and Revolution is a challenging, feisty contribution to the current public debate about God and religion. It is poetic, wise and clear. Eagleton proves he is more than a literary critic; he's also an exceptional preacher.