I have long suspected that Christopher Hitchens’s enraged atheism is the reaction of a man all too conscious of being chased by Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven.” But having just attended a discussion between Hitchens and Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete at New York’s Pierre Hotel, I think his case is even more interesting than that. In the course of the discussion, Hitchens claimed not to be a reductionist; he said mankind cannot do without the “numinous” and (I think this was his other phrase) the “transcendent.” (He located this in, for example, Verdi’s “Requiem.”) Now the numinous and the transcendent are exactly what we believers mean by God. Hitchens says what he doesn’t believe in is the “supernatural” — but that’s merely a quibble about words. If you use the word “nature” — as so many people do — as interchangeable with “what is” or “being,” then God is not “super-natural” at all, because — as Aquinas, chiefly, reminds us — God is the pure act of Being itself, Ipsum Esse Subsistens.

Many times during the debate, Hitchens ranted (it’s not too strong a word; I was there) against religions. And just as often, Msgr. Albacete responded, “I couldn’t agree with you more.” What did Msgr. Albacete mean by that? He didn’t really spell it out in any detail, so let me try: Hitchens is upset at the moral and intellectual failings of the various religions, but he doesn’t realize that God is not really implicated in those failings. He is offended by the inadequacy of our attempts to outline God’s will — and especially at the lameness of the metaphors we use to describe Him.

Finally, and ironically, what Hitchens is is not an atheist at all, but a Puritan — and I have good news for him: When he meets the real God, he will not be disappointed. He will not feel “oppressed” by a celestial “Big Brother;” he will find the one in whom we cannot rest “until we rest in thee” (to quote another famous person who converted). And he’ll finally have mercy on believers — we were, after all, doing our best.