The New Athiesm, Pt 2
March 17th, 2008 by JohnO
They even have chairs in religious departments now. Bart Ehrman (who we have quoted on here a fair amount) has released a new book “God’s Problem”. And one of the first reviews that have come out can be found here. Again, as in the first case of “the new athiesm”, nothing here is actually new at all. It is the oldest play in the book getting run again, the presence of suffering in the world.
Many of the attempts against God or the Scriptures come down to two things: (1) misrepresenting, or incredibly simplifying the situation, and (2) not willing to encounter dialogue with others who also study the subject.
Of course in this case he willfully neglects to engage in any statements made by people of faith about what they think and how they are able to maintain their faith. In my case, the existence of suffering in many ways adds to and exalts my faith in God - and I’m sure it is that way for others as well. We long for the day of vindication and restoration for the whole earth.
He performs the first mistake as well, by simplifying the situation incredibly. As Witherington points out:
In one sense of course, Bart Ehrman’s views are understandable. If you are raised to believe that a good sovereign God before the beginning of time pre-determined all things that have happen in this world, then indeed you have a severe problem of logic when it comes to both sin and suffering, both misery and mayhem
Ehrman was raised, and in fact a minister, in that very same situation. In our lives as people of faith we have to be very responsible as to how we treat the Scriptures, and how we talk about God in the world. We have to represent God well so that others are not tripped up. Life is complex, history is complex, and the restoration of the world is also a complex thing to understand and think about. Of course we live in a hard time for “complex”. Everything is being simplified, dumbed down, and sound-byte’ed. No one actually seems to have a true and meaningful conversation about issues anymore. We have to be the people that do that.
Well said, Johnny. Ehrman is such a tragedy. He does excellent scholarship when it comes to the issue of Christ is and even gets kingdom exactly right in his books, but then he spends the majority of his time trying to disprove the reliability of the New Testament. And now this…the gold ol’ problem of evil. What is a New Testament scholar doing writing a book about the problem of evil? Does that seem a little odd to you? This is a problem that Old Testament scholars work with (i.e. Job) and philosophers love to tackle. Ehrman is on a campaign. He wants to unconverted strong Bible believing people so that they end up in his camp of agnosticism. It was the problem of evil that killed his faith and now he wants to present the problem of evil in such a way that it will kill other’s faith as well. What a waste of time for a NT scholar. The title to his book says it all “God’s Problem: How the Bible fails to answer our most important question–why we suffer.” Bart, the Bible doesn’t fail here. It is loaded with scriptures that speak about the solution to the problem of evil. It’s called the day of the LORD, the kingdom of God, the age to come, when God judges the wicked, rewards the righteous, and his will is done on earth (finally) as in heaven. (oh yeah, B. Ehrman thinks Jesus is a failed prophet so from where he sits this grand picture of the future is not really happening…so sad).