Now we turn to Ehrman’s fuller critique of the apocalyptic solution. He writes, “For apocalypticists, cosmic forces of evil were loose in the world, and these evil forces were aligned against the righteous people of God, bringing pain and misery down upon their heads, making them suffer because they sided with God. But this state …
Ehrman entitled what he considers the last of the Bible’s explanations for suffering, “God has the Last Word: Jewish Christian Apocalypticism.” The apocalyptic answer, in short, is that at the Judgment God will resolve all the injustice that is in the world. Let’s start with Ehrman’s preliminary objection that the Biblical authors said that the …
Ehrman’s Problem 18: Confused About Jesus’ Coming “Soon” Read More »
I mentioned previously that most apologists argue that the reason God allows evil is that it is a greater good for God to allow evil than to create a world where evil is impossible. For God to create a world with significantly free beings, He must allow these free beings to use their free will …
Beginning on his first page of his chapter on “The Mystery of the Greater Good,” Ehrman relates his disappointment with God (125-126): If (IF!) there is a God, he is not the kind of being that I believed in as an evangelical: a personal deity who has ultimate power over this world and intervenes in …
Ehrman’s Problem 14: He Misunderstood God’s Promises Read More »
For more than forty years Christians have appealed to what is called the “bibliographical test” as a means of establishing the New Testament’s (NT) transmissional accuracy. The bibliographical test examines the overall number of extant manuscripts (sometimes abbreviated to MSS or MS for the singular) and the difference between the date of the original writing, …
Chapter five of Bart Ehrman’s book, God’s Problem, is entitled “The Mystery of the Greater Good: Redemptive Suffering.” In it Ehrman writes, “Sometimes, for some biblical authors, suffering has a positive aspect to it. Sometimes God brings good out of evil, a good that would not have been possible if the evil had not existed. …
Ehrman’s Problem 13—Spanking the Strawman… again Read More »
Next we come to one of the weirdest aspects of Ehrman’s problem project. Ehrman grouses (121-122): I don’t know if you’ve read any of the writings of the modern theodicists, but they are something to behold: precise, philosophically nuanced, deeply thought out, filled with esoteric terminology and finely reasoned explanations for why suffering does not …
Ehrman’s Problem 12: Our Answer too “Finely Reasoned” Read More »
Ehrman begins his fourth chapter, “The Consequences of Sin,” by detailing horrific things humans do to each other. Then he asks “How can human beings… treat other human beings in this way?” (96). Indeed, much suffering is the result of people hurting each other.
You’ve probably heard the story about the blind men and the elephant. The story is supposed to help us understand that we can’t ever really know truth about God. Here’s the poem by John Godfrey Saxe: It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of …
This is my last post on Ehrman’s errors regarding his understanding of the classical view of suffering—that God punishes people for their sins. Here I will focus on what he calls “unfortunate historical realities.” Ehrman complains that the “predictions of future success and happiness” promised Israel if they obeyed “never did come to fulfillment” (89). …
