Published December 23, 2024
Nick Kristof wants Jesus dead.
The New York Times columnist has released another Christmas interview, this time with Princeton professor Elaine Pagels. The headlines, along with the online reaction, focused on Pagels’ denial of the virgin birth.
As the critics noted, Pagels’ criticism of the Biblical story was weak and it is gross that the New York Times in general, and Kristof in particular, like to take shots at Christianity around Christmastime. And the virgin birth is an essential Christian doctrine. Without it, the claim that Jesus was God made flesh collapses, and the chasm between divine and human remains.
Neither Kristof nor Pagels seem perturbed by this. In Pagels’ words, “as I see it, ‘believing all that stuff’ is not the point. The Christian message, as I experienced it, was transformational. It encouraged me to treat other people well and opened up a world of imagination and wonder.” But despite her assertion, the point of this sort of liberal theology is that it is not transformational—it is just a bit of moral exhortation, self-help, and aesthetic experience that can be added on to an already comfortable life.
There is no comfort in this de-divinized Jesus for those who really need it. Sure, New York Times columnists and Princeton professors can reduce the gospel to “the language of stories and poetry” that teaches us to live a bit better—they already are living well by worldly standards. But this is just an emotional prosperity gospel for those who are already materially prosperous—a Christianity that teaches you to live your best life now.
Christianity without the Incarnation has no justice for the oppressed and abused, no comfort for the sorrowing and suffering, no hope for the hopeless, and no forgiveness for sinners. The Gospel becomes nothing but philosophy and moral inspiration, which are well enough in their place. But we already have plenty of them; we don’t really need Jesus just to provide a bit more.
Of course, theological liberals might insist that, like it or not, supernatural claims about Jesus are just myths, and that it is better to take the small comforts of moral inspiration we can glean from an only human Jesus than to place our faith in a myth of Jesus as a divine redeemer.
But Kristof and Pagels did not make this argument. Rather, they reject the more difficult teachings of Christianity simply because they are difficult. As Pagels put it, “When some Christians said to me that non-Christians are going to hell, I left their church. That made no sense to me.”
Pagels allowed the fear of Hell to lead her to deny the possibility of Heaven. She responded to the teaching that not all are saved by declaring that none are saved, because there is no savior. Some doctrines are hard, and that of damnation is among them. But their very hardness gives people something to cling to, to stand on, to build on, in a way that the softness of Pagels and her interviewer cannot.
Theodicy poses difficult problems, which have been most compellingly expressed through the character of Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. The best answer, Dostoyevsky suggests, is found in the divine participation in human suffering. We may still struggle with that answer, but the likes of Pagels and Kristof have no answer at all; they have nothing to offer to the tortured children and bereft parents Ivan described.
The poor, the tormented, and the sinful do not need an aesthetic or intellectual appreciation for the inspiring myths of Christianity. They need justice. They need restoration. They need forgiveness. And an attenuated gospel cannot give them that. Of course, skeptics may say that orthodox Christianity cannot deliver these either, but it is another thing entirely to prefer the attenuated gospel to the orthodox, as Kristof seems to.
Kristof has, as he notes, been doing these Yuletide interviews for years now. And despite obviously being haunted by Christianity, he will not surrender to Christ. I used to think this was because Kristof will not give up the sexual revolution, and that is clearly part of it.
But pride is the root of the problem. It is not just that accepting Christianity would require Kristof to change some of his political and cultural views, but that it would require him to radically change his view of himself. Instead of comfortable self-satisfaction, he would have to admit his innate sinfulness and desperate need of a savior. Kristof will happily have Jesus as a teacher, even as an inspiration. He will not bend the knee to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
And so Kristof and Pagels want a Christmas that is under control—a Christmas that adds a little more glow to lives of worldly comfort and success, but which has no hope for the lost and suffering. A Christmas that is human—all too human—without the transformative theophany of the Incarnation. They want a Jesus who was conceived through fornication or rape, rather than by the power of the Holy Spirit. They want a Jesus who was not crucified for our sake, but died dreadfully and meaninglessly with no redemptive purpose. And who remains dead.
The only other option is to fall on one’s knees in confession and worship before Jesus, the incarnate God in the manger, the crucified Savior, the risen and living Lord of All, who is seated at the right hand of the Father and will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
Nathanael Blake, Ph.D. is a Fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His research interests include American political theory, Christian political thought, and the intersection of natural law and philosophical hermeneutics. His published scholarship has included work on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Alasdair MacIntyre, Russell Kirk and J.R.R. Tolkien.
