[1] His desire to understand the original words of the Bible led him to the study of ancient languages and also textual criticism. So if you were to remove that it would certainly cause some reverberations in the web of belief but it wouldn’t collapse in the way it would if you removed one of these central beliefs. And he equips you to share your faith more clearly and genuinely in this world of pain and fear. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, by Bart D. Ehrman. I’m dedicating an entire chapter to Bart Ehrman and his best-selling book God’s Problem, because, as a self-described “former evangelical Christian,” Ehrman personifies the potential consequences evangelical churches face when they fail to address the problem of evil and suffering. It is unfortunate that when Christians so focus on things like the rapture and tribulation that that becomes almost central to their web of beliefs. Why would I turn away from the only one who can comfort me, the only one who has planned eternal life for me, the only one who suffered immeasurably, beyond any of us, so that one day I need suffer no longer?”. Bart Ehrman’s case appears persuasive because of what he leaves out. I did not go easily. The Gospels don’t need to be chronologically accurate in order to be inerrant.” Or “Paul didn’t teach that Christ is coming again in his own lifetime even if he be-lieved it. Instead of forcing the Scripture through the rigid ideas of fundamentalist inerrancy, Ehrman should have adopted a more nuanced position — like the one codified in the Chicago statement. The web doesn’t collapse. Therein, if you care for the less fortunate, lies another reason to believe in God – not a a reason to disbelieve (in my opinion). [11] ABC7, WLS-TV, Chicago, April 7, 1998, news report; Through the Flames book description. "Scholars differ significantly in their estimates—some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! Ehrman decries God for not doing enough to diminish suffering, then concludes we shouldn’t hesitate to spend our money on ourselves. It is not a brittle doctrine. I became very serious about my faith and. So please eavesdrop as I call him out for that in another Q & A. The problem of evil and suffering is not God’s problem. Ehrman states unproven premises reflecting his bias, then draws logical conclusions based on his faulty premises. Once we call some parts of the Bible false, on what basis do we judge other parts true? And I said, “Wait a minute. These strands of the web represent different doctrines or affirmations that we as Christians believe. Ehrman became a fundamentalist Christian as a teenager. Just because a belief is modern doesn’t make it true. Doesn’t Ehrman (who is a credible scholar with good credentials and a good job) leave us with the impression that there could be 400,000 mistakes in the New Testament… more mistakes than it has words? Even less so would be a corollary of inspiration which is inerrancy. That his Christianity could withstand neither academic questioning of Scripture nor the realization that this world teems with terrible evil and suffering suggests that he had never embraced a deeply rooted biblical worldview in the first place. Please understand that I am not saying that either Ehrman or all fundamentalists are King-James-Onliests… but I need to establish a scale. [15]. If you gave up the inspiration of Scripture, that would be theologically very significant but it wouldn’t cause you to become a non-Christian. Our biographies were so similar up to that point. That wouldn’t show that God doesn’t exist. And I also read the Got Questions article on bibliolatry. [14]. I think that that is just a catastrophic misprioritizing of Christian doctrine. Chapter 11 of If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil. You see, the more you take your stand on inerrancy towards the right — towards the brittle end — the more you defend unnecessary ground. 21-year-old arrested in Nashville nurse slaying: Police. Does Ehrman place himself under the same condemnation he places God? Yet, forty times Ecclesiastes directly speaks of the God that Ehrman says doesn’t exist. This isn’t part of the teaching of Scripture.” You see what I mean? Notice the word “prefer.” This reflects the modern inclination to choose a worldview as you might vote for a candidate on American Idol. Less central would be doctrines like the doctrine of original sin, for example. It wouldn’t show that Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead or that he didn’t die for your sins. The system still holds together. He gives us opportunity to enjoy food and work (2:24; 3:13; 5:18–20; 9:7). He gives us wisdom, knowledge, and happiness (2:26), and wealth, possessions, and honor (5:19; 6:2). Where does the Bible speak of God torturing people or killing people without justification? I have interviewed numbers of people who take comfort in knowing that this life is the closest they will ever come to Hell. By looking at Ehrman and his book, we can further explore the issue—but with a personal dimension, because we’ll see its impact on the life of a real person. Or does it make clear that Ehrman has taken passages out of context to support his unbelief? [6] In this summary, I am indebted to Roy B. Zuck’s excellent article, “God and Man. God providentially controls the sun’s rising and setting, the movements of wind, the flowing of rivers, and the evaporation of water (1:5–7). But there is a difference between taking a firm stand and a brittle stand… and too many believers confound brittleness for strength. I asked Scott and Janet, “What would you say to those who reject the Christian faith because they say no plan of God—nothing at all—could possibly be worth the suffering of your children, and your suffering over all these years?”, “Eternity is a long time,” Janet replied. Answer: Greetings friend. Why did Ehrman’s faith crumble? Why did Bart Ehrman really leave Christianity? It wouldn’t show that Jesus Christ didn’t rise from the dead or that he didn’t die for your sins. In the lives of many more scholars, I think often what happens is they begin to discover nuances, for example, in the way that I’ve described – “Wait a minute. Resisting the urge to ask how life can be a gift if it has no Giver, I quote Ehrman’s final sentences of God’s Problem: What we have in the here and now is all that there is. It is not true that biblical inerrancy is a doctrine that lies at the core of your beliefs so that if you gave it up it doesn’t mean that you would give up belief in God, in the deity of Christ, in his death on the cross for your sins, even in the inspiration of Scripture. However, we’re here to serve everyone without cost, so please don’t feel obligated to give unless the Lord leads. Instead of forcing the Scripture through the rigid ideas of fundamentalist inerrancy Ehrman should have adopted a more nuanced position like the one codified in the Chicago statement. Do you see the inconsistency here? Someone wanted me to talk with him. But what if they knew something he doesn’t? He avoids the bombastic approach that some atheist—and some Christian—authors display. It didn’t have to happen. Misquoting Jesus put Ehrman on the New York Times best-selling list, and he has followed up his success with other works. Trump's future: Tons of cash and ways to spend it I’m convinced that many Christians, younger and older, have faiths very similar to that which Ehrman abandoned—on the verge of being persuaded to jettison their weak faiths by college professors utilizing Ehrman’s kinds of arguments. God’s Problem documents how a “former Christian” denied his faith because he couldn’t reconcile evil and suffering with God’s goodness. He seems to want the reader to suppose that disbelieving Scripture did not contribute to his loss of faith. An Evangelical Engagement with Contemporary Questions (Baker Publishing Group, 2014). Years later, in his conversion to Christ, he turned away from atheism, even though doing so was particularly difficult in the academic culture of Oxford, where Bible-believing professors could be subjected to condescension and ridicule. — how could he flee all that over trivia?… I mean… that would be an absurd action for a truly saved person. The whole house of cards just began to tumble for him. It is quite telling of Ehrman’s slide. To his credit, Ehrman acknowledges he’s lived “the good life” and has avoided great suffering. Note the significant difference between Lewis and Ehrman. But there are lots of Christians who don’t believe in biblical inerrancy, and yet they are still Christians. We do not know for sure because, despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all. So, since pixels do not cost anything, let me share that discussion from Reasonable Faith’s Defenders class. Apparently for Ehrman this was just like the light dawning. The beneficent gods of the reader’s ancestors—which, if understood better, might not seem so beneficent after all—did not make moral demands as far as he knows. But life also brings good things.... And so we should enjoy life to the fullest, as much as we can, as long as we can. Ehrman would benefit from spending more time talking with people whose faith increased in the midst of horrific suffering. For instance, it states that inerrancy exists in the autographa (the original documents) rather than in any translation, the use of round numbers is not an error… things like that. What isn’t debatable is that he once was part of the evangelical subculture. Privacy Policy. Of course, as most of you know, I have not called myself a Christian publicly for a very long time, twenty years or… I attended seminary at Yale, worked in churches for a time, then went into public school teaching. It is a subject which can stir up both triumphant apologism and vehement condemnation. The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee – Bart D. Ehrman Posted on 15/11/2020 15/11/2020 by Speesh in Biblical History , Christianity , History , Jesus , … If he did, he would have been too tough to shatter as does a brittle block of granite under a single hammer blow. Our children’s suffering was brief, and they have the eternal joy of being with God. From where does evil come? Christianity doesn’t depend on the inspiration of the Bible. Were they all primitive and stupid? He was then on this slide that eventually led him into agnosticism. He pushes the problem of evil and so forth. I wonder why this is hitting such a nerve? But isn’t it remarkable that from Sudan to China to Cambodia to El Salvador, faith in God grows deepest in places where evil and suffering have been greatest? We should enjoy good food and drink. Dr Bart Ehrman - Great Controversies in Christianity from The Not Old - Better Show on Podchaser, aired Wednesday, 4th September 2019. So, if someone defeated that particular position, the defender would crumble in a heap… but not because God’s word was defeated. [6]. An unskilled truck driver who obtained his license through bribery allowed a large object to drop onto a Milwaukee freeway in front of the Willises’ van. While Ehrman finds it troubling that the Bible approaches the issue in different ways, I find it reassuring. But how could it do otherwise?
But I like him more now! 589 (January–March 1991): 50–5 1. Student: Why has inerrancy and infallibility been such an obstacle to people such as Bart Ehrman for affirming the Gospel? But scholars do not pitch to the book-buying public in the same way they do to their peers… because… well… there wouldn’t be much book-buying going on. Just as Christians elevate the testimonies of former atheists who have come to Christ, so atheists elevate Ehrman. Ehrman summarizes, often accurately, the biblical teaching. This isn’t a problem; this is how thought progresses. Ehrman ignores the richness of the biblical teaching about Heaven and the New Earth. This is a sensible and robust stand on inerrancy. Thank you. He then went off to Moody Bible Institute and then he went to Wheaton College – the same school I went to – and studied under Gerald Hawthorne. The depth of our pain is indescribable. [2]. To help you judge his discussion on Christian ethics, a conservative, but thorough review of Christian ethics can be found in Christian Ethics:Options and Issues, by Norman L. Geisler. We should eat out and order unhealthy desserts, and we should cook steaks on the grill and drink Bordeaux.... We should drive nice cars and have nice homes. But with his change in focus to a popular audience came the change in scholastic discipline… and vindictiveness towards God began to show… but especially where he characterized the New Testament as plausibly having a fraction of a million errors. I repudiate that. As we will see in chapter 28, the biblical teaching of Heaven and the New Earth was not some after-the-fact development by disappointed Christians. Bart Ehrman lost what faith he had because of the sort of unspeakable tragedies that have happened not to him, but to people like Scott and Janet Willis. He can be pleased (2:26; 7:26) and angered (5:2–6). Lewis, by contrast, had come to his atheism as an adult, having seen the horrors of the trenches in World War I, and rejected the trappings of Christianity he’d seen as a child and adolescent. THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World By Bart D. Ehrman 335 pp. Rather, he promises that at the judgment he will give us a review. God has not asked us to give him a performance review so that he may do a better job the next time he creates a universe or devises a redemptive plan. It concludes with an emphatic message that cuts through the apparent meaninglessness and uncertainties of life, right to the heart of our existence: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. chose to go off to a fundamentalist Bible college—Moody Bible Institute in Chicago—where I began training for ministry. But I think we understand that we can never fully separate the product from the producer (or the analysis from the analyst) when using thousands of words to convey conclusions… although I am not trying to build Ehrman a hiding place here. In fact, they are amateurs at that…. It wouldn’t have much impact. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, a master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, shows how a religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate day laborers in a remote part of the empire became the official religion of Rome, converting some thirty million people in just four centuries. He decided it was not God’s inerrant revelation but “a very human book with all the marks of having come from human hands: Discrepancies, contradictions, errors, and different perspectives.” Nonetheless, he writes, I continued to be a Christian—a completely committed Christian—for many years after I left the evangelical fold. ", Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Bart D. Ehrman, HarperCollins, 2005. Bart Ehrman on why everything you’ve been told about heaven and hell is wrong Best known for his popular books debunking the central assumptions of Christian Scriptures, the … “I used to believe … While I will criticize Ehrman, I should clarify that sometimes I find him likable. He knows what will be worth it in the end. Christians like me who affirm that the New Testament texts are an important part of our cumulative case for Christ must address the Ehrman phenomenon irrespective of where we stand on the Ehrman conclusions, so here are some of my thoughts. But Bart Ehrman’s book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, offers another theory. At the end of our two-hour conversation, Scott Willis said, “I have a stronger view of God’s sovereignty than ever before.”, Scott and Janet did not say that the accident itself strengthened their view of God’s sovereignty. In doing so, Ehrman makes the important point that it is difficult for historians to say what Constantine converted from. But did you notice the waffling… that bit about computers and counting… and how he never lifts the veil on what a variant might be. On a university campus, how much courage does it take to roll your eyes at and caricature evangelical Christianity? Ecclesiastes says, “Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Ehrman portrays himself as a courageous figure, when in fact he has moved from an academically unpopular viewpoint to a popular one. He simply doesn’t believe them. So, unless these experts are multiply-credentialed to include philosophy, they have no special qualifications to understand what their data analyses and postulations mean metaphysically. I am particularly happy to field this question today; this is an area of special interest to me. So, although the cause was not especially bibliolatry, Craig suspects that Ehrman was putting the wrong kind of pressures in the wrong kind of places when it comes to biblical inerrancy — and I heartily agree. The actual growth rate of Christianity was not as staggering as it may first appear. [6] Although that is affirmed by Catholics and Protestants, in Defenders Series 2 we saw that Eastern Orthodox Churches don’t affirm the doctrine of original sin, and yet they are still Christians. At this point, I must beg the indulgence of my editors, my questioner and my broader audience who have sympathy with fundamentalism. While Western atheists turn from belief in God because a tsunami in another part of the world caused great suffering, many brokenhearted survivors of that same tsunami found faith in God. This position understands inerrancy to reside in a certain edition of the English Bible. He took Greek from the same professor that taught me Greek. While reading Ehrman’s book, I interviewed Scott and Janet Willis. The title of your question asks about thoughts on and refutations of the arguments of Bart D Ehrman,but the question in total seems to be broader than this. You are telling me you are an atheist because there are some discrepancies in these Old Testament documents? But just because we don’t have an answer to suffering does not mean that we cannot have a response to it. I am told by an editor at Oxford University Press that he is the best-selling religious author with Oxford University Press. “It will be worth it. Instead, he would have been like the archer’s bow — absorbing the stress — and using it to fire at the heart of truth. The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs, according to Bart Ehrman, author of Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. I am honestly confused by this type of people who claim to find "errors" in the Bible. Now, this is not in itself a problem; people should stand firmly for what they believe. Eventually, though, I felt compelled to leave Christianity altogether. These people do not deny their suffering; they affirm it. Because the caste system and fatalism of Hinduism give them no answers. But why did some who lived through the Holocaust come to a radically different conclusion? One favorable reviewer of Ehrman’s book comments, “I much prefer the beneficent gods of my ancestors, who don’t cause suffering, who don’t pluck people out of existence according to some mysterious plan, who don’t send natural disasters to plague us, a world where cause and effect hold sway, where rivers rise because of natural causes, where twisters are the result of meteorological conditions, not because God ordains them.” [10]. “I learned about Him. Some of these doctrines are more central to the web of belief. Ehrman never mentions that while people living in relative comfort reject faith in God due to the problem of evil, those subjected to the worst evil and suffering often turn to God. My question is, people like Bart Ehrman who claim to have been Christians and "strong believers in the Bible" and later eventually became agnostic or atheist or another religion, do these type of people commit "bibliolatry" in the sense of viewing the Bible's perfection based on human fallible reasoning rather than based on the belief of God's di-vine preservation of Scripture? What are some of these central doctrines that are at the core of the Christian web of beliefs? If a person indeed “has” Jesus Christ in any real sense of the term — in salvation, fellowship, the word, etc. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (12:13–14). That’s what the author of Ecclesiastes thinks, and I agree. Ehrman refers to his earlier book, Misquoting Jesus, to say his belief in the Bible’s truthfulness diminished the more he studied it. So I would say that the doctrine of inspiration is some place out here [pointing to a diagram on the whiteboard] and the doctrine of inerrancy is even a little more peripheral. The author Bart D. Ehrman, professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, argues and, in my opinion, demonstrates that early Christianity was anything but a monolithic religion and that the beliefs that eventually came to be called orthodox No single reason gives a sufficient explanation, but different threads of biblical insight, woven together, form a durable fabric. This is one of the great paradoxes of suffering. I think that the doctrine of inspiration lies somewhere out a ways from the center. He sure does — and boy… he sure sells some books! By 380, it had reached majority status. When we limit our perspective to the horizons of this world, life is indeed meaningless. During his graduate studies, however, he became convinced that there are contradictions and discrepancies in the biblical manuscripts that could not be harmonized or reconciled. To see why, let’s look more closely at Ehrman’s quote, because there is a critical issue hidden within it that he did not reveal — one that supports the New Testament’s veracity rather than fights it. I would have pulled my hair out if people were mean to him.
Your are truly inspiring…. We and their grandparents have suffered since. And what are we doing to help youthful genuine Christians go deeper in exploring Scripture, learning sound theology, and developing a truly Christian world-view, not a superficial one? I just now – fifteen minutes ago – came to realize with the most crystal clarity I have ever had why I cannot call myself a Christian. To explain why this is a problem, let me establish a gradient by using the image of a slide-bar. Bart Ehrman’s new book, written before the pandemic, may offer the perfect antidote for settling the question of what comes after. Knowing a few Bible stories proves insufficient when facing an issue of the magnitude of evil and suffering. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith. “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come.... Then man goes to his eternal home... and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (12:1, 5, 7). He argues that a good God would never withhold relief that was in his power to give, then comes to a revealing conclusion: I think we should work hard to make the world—the one we live in—the most pleasing place it can be for ourselves.... We should make money and spend money. The intention of the present article is to offer an overview of several key… Survivor Stories is a powerful hour of interviews with Jews who survived the concentration camps and came to faith in Christ. After hearing Ehrman’s case, someone says, “You’ve lost your faith because of my suffering? No one else seems to have this reaction, but OK. This is why I am glad that you subscribe to a more reasonable version of inerrancy — one that includes supernatural preservation of the Scripture. [10] Hrafnkell Haraldsson, “Another Ehrman Slam Dunk,” Amazon.com Customer Review, June 20, 2008. The more the better. We have well over five-thousand of these, as your question noted… but you noted this as a problem. Imagine eavesdropping on a conversation between Ehrman and the very people whose suffering he uses as an argument for disbelieving in God. I find the book’s subtitle ironic: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. [16] I’ve compiled an annotated bibliography of many of the books I have most appreciated in my research on evil and suffering. Finally top Bible scholar "Professor Bart D. Ehrman" leaves Christianity. If it seems unfair to ask, remember that I am merely applying the standard he expects God to live up to: using all of one’s resources to relieve suffering. Bart D. Ehrman has written or edited thirty books, including five New York Times bestsellers: How Jesus Became God, Misquoting Jesus, God’s Problem, Jesus Interrupted and Forged.Ehrman is the James A.
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