{"id":5592,"date":"2013-03-09T06:37:40","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T12:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joeljmiller\/?p=5592"},"modified":"2013-03-09T06:52:49","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T12:52:49","slug":"why-should-the-devil-have-all-the-good-theologians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joeljmiller\/2013\/03\/why-should-the-devil-have-all-the-good-theologians\/","title":{"rendered":"Why should the devil have all the good theologians?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Welcome to another episode of <em>Role Reversal Television<\/em>, in which outspoken atheist Penn Jillette explains to Catholic pundit Piers Morgan why Catholic tradition doesn\u2019t change with the times.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"600\" height=\"338\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/SsqzCDaS5uI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/SsqzCDaS5uI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Orthodox Christians don\u2019t understand hierarchical power in this way, and evangelicals would object to even more here. But the spirit of the thing is one Catholics, Orthodox, and evangelicals can appreciate: <em>The faith once delivered is not the faith that is edited and updated with the times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It reminds me of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthlymag.com\/news-and-profiles\/people-and-profiles\/articles\/christopher-hitchens\/1%20\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">an exchange<\/a> atheist Christopher Hitchens had with a Unitarian minister, who declaimed, \u201cI\u2019m a liberal Christian, and I don\u2019t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don\u2019t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example).\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To that Hitchens offered this matter-of-fact reply: \u201cI would say that if you don\u2019t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you\u2019re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.\u201d Er, <em>bingo<\/em>? I feel funny saying <em>amen<\/em> to Christopher Hitchens.<\/p>\n<p>There is a strange accommodationism at work among some Christians, and when it takes atheists like Jillette and Hitchens to correct us, it should be as clear as glass that the accommodation has gone too far. Jillette and Hitchens don\u2019t want people changing the playing field under their feet anymore than serious Christians do.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>Side note: Catholics and condoms<\/h3>\n<p>Piers Morgan\u2019s statement about a new pope condoning condoms to prevent disease seems to miss the mark in one obvious regard. Is the pope ever going to condone fornication? The church already has the answer to sexually-transmitted diseases: <em>chastity<\/em>. For a pope to permit condoms for such a reason would undermine a cardinal virtue (tempering the appetite).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to another episode of Role Reversal Television, in which outspoken atheist Penn Jillette explains to Catholic pundit Piers Morgan why Catholic tradition doesn\u2019t change with the times. Orthodox Christians don\u2019t understand hierarchical power in this way, and evangelicals would object to even more here. But the spirit of the thing is one Catholics, Orthodox, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1270,"featured_media":5177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[874,873],"class_list":["post-5592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-video","tag-christopher-hitchens","tag-penn-jillette"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why should the devil have all the good theologians?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Welcome to another episode of Role Reversal Television, in which outspoken atheist Penn Jillette explains to Catholic pundit Piers Morgan why Catholic\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joeljmiller\/2013\/03\/why-should-the-devil-have-all-the-good-theologians\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why should the devil have all the good theologians?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Welcome to another episode of Role Reversal Television, in which outspoken atheist Penn Jillette explains to Catholic pundit Piers Morgan why Catholic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joeljmiller\/2013\/03\/why-should-the-devil-have-all-the-good-theologians\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Joel J. 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