Although most of Bart Ehrman’s final chapter, “Suffering: The Conclusion,” is just a rehash, he does make one last point worth examining. When I teach on suffering I remind my students that whatever else we think about suffering, we should remember that Christianity is primarily about God the Son suffering for humankind. Ehrman gives his …
Ehrman’s Problem: the Conclusion–His Book’s Title Is Misleading Read More »
In the ninth and final chapter of Ehrman’s book, God’s Problem, he says that often people write to tell him that “God is like a good parent, a heavenly father, and that he allows suffering into our lives as a way of building character or teaching us lessons about how we should live. There is, …
Ehrman’s Problem 21: Confused about Who God’s Kids Are Read More »
In my last post I pointed out that Ehrman begged the question for his major argument as to why the apocalyptic argument didn’t help us answer why God allows suffering. In this post I will address his next two arguments. I titled this post, “Everything But the Kitchen Sink,” because, frankly, his arguments appear rather …
Ehrman’s Problem 20: Everything But the Kitchen Sink Read More »
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 »
Ehrman calls the other answer to why God allows suffering found in the book of Job, “The Poetic Dialogues of Job: There Is No Answer” (172). Ehrman concludes that “God does not listen to the pleas of the innocent; he overpowers them by his almighty presence” (183). Ehrman writes that Job wanted a divine audience …
Ehrman’s Problem 17: Humility Is Absent Without Leave 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 …
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.
