Answering Ehrman Series, Wk 5, “Ehrman’s Root Problem”

  Christmas is right around the corner and there’s a song called “Christmas Shoes” that debuted in the year 2000. I’m glad it’s played very sparingly during the Christmas season because it is a heart wrenching song. If you have never heard of it, then you’ve been living under a rock for the past twenty five years. 

The song is sung from a man’s perceptive as he stands in line to get his Christmas gifts. In front of the man is a little boy who is anxiously holding a pair of shoes. The man describes the boy as dirt from head to toe. The boy tells the man that he is buying the shoes for his mom because there’s not much time before she goes and meets Jesus and he wants her to look beautiful for when she passes. 

As he counts out his pennies, the boy ends up not having enough money to pay for the  shoes and the song grabs you to have the man pay for the dang shoes! He does and he sings this little bridge:

I knew I'd caught a glimpse of Heaven's love

As he thanked me and ran out

I knew that God had sent that little boy

To remind me what Christmas is all about

In the song, sorrow and joy are mixed together. It’s a hard song to listen to because it challenges you not to have your heartbroken. 

And it’s this idea of sorrow and joy which brings us back to our series where we’re looking at several issues that the New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, has with the orthodox Christian belief that we can trust the Bible as the word of God. Over the past four weeks we have looked at four issues that go along with Ehrman’s rejection of this central doctrine to the Christian faith.

In week one, we tackled the first question of whether Jesus was even a historical person. We looked at the evidence from an atheist historian and saw how Jesus is a well attested to person that Ehrman agrees lived. Jesus’ historicity is important because the Christian faith is not a belief in the teachings of a person who may or may not have lived. No, it’s a living trust in the God who descended to earth, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life alongside his creation, allowed that creation to crucify him, then bodily resurrected, offering eternal life to whoever would place their trust in him. If Jesus wasn’t historical real, then the Christian faith is false from the get-go. But since he is, we then began to look at the collection of documents, known as the New Testament, to see if we can trust what it says about him.

In week two we began looking at the evidence for the New Testament. Dividing our approach between the external and the internal evidence. From looking at the external evidence we saw how the documents that make up the New Testament can be traced to the time of the people who were said to have written them. And compared to other well attested to ancient documents, the New Testament is earlier in surviving copies, to the original times they were written. After looking at the external evidences, we could concluded that what we have as our New Testament did indeed come from the time of Jesus’ eyewitnesses. 

Then in week three we looked at the internal evidences. We looked at the supposed errors that scholars like Ehrman point to, seeing how there are roughly 6,600 root errors to consider. 99% of those were grammatical or not very significant, and out of those, the 1%, did not change Christian teaching. What we concluded was that the New Testament is the word of God, inerrant in that it is trustworthy and authoritative, and infallible in that it communicates God’s purpose of pointing us to his salvation.

Finally last week we addressed the question, what about the other books that didn’t make the cut. We first looked at the criteria that the early Church used in its process of receiving and recognizing what was inspired works. Then we looked at three categories of where these works fell into. The first was Heretical, which were those that didn’t match any of the criteria, and went going against well established teaching. Reasonably Rejected was the second category, where there were books that were not necessarily heretical, but they over emphasized minute issues of the Church, and they were obviously written well after the time periods they said they were covering. Finally, there were those documents that are of Good Use which the early Church read, didn’t find authoritative, but can still be of use to us today to understand the world of the New Testament. 

However, through all of this, we have to understand that none of this is actually why Ehrman rejects the orthodox Christian faith. No, everything we covered in the last four weeks are Ehrman’s scholarly attempts to undermine other people’s faith, because of a deeper issue he has with God.

In Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman shares the real reason he left the Christian faith, “There came a time when I left the faith. This was not because of what I learned through the historical criticism, but because I could no longer reconcile my faith in God with the state of the world that I saw all around me …. There is so much senseless pain and misery in the world that I came to find it impossible to believe that there is a good and loving God who is in control, despite my knowing all of the standard rejoinders that people give …. In my case, historical criticism led me to question my faith. Not just its superficial aspects but its very heart. Yet it was the problem of suffering, not a historical approach to the Bible, that led me to agnosticism.” 

And there it is. The issues we have covered over the last four weeks, the issues that Ehrman says local churches do not talk about, are not the issues that Ehrman points to as breaking his faith. Though these were issues that soften his faith, it was the problem of suffering that truly broke Ehrman. 

And that’s understandable. The issue of, why does God allow evil, is one of the most difficult issues of this world. Why is there death? Why is there pain? Why do children suffer? Why do animals suffer? If God is good, then why is there evil? If God is all powerful, why doesn’t he stop it? 

There is a deep theological and philosophical conversation about this very question that in one sermon we’re not going to be able to answer. So for this final sermon, I’m going to give you two parts of the problem and how I deal with the problem of evil.

First, there’s the theoretical problem of evil. Philosophers such as David Hume, an eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, and others like him have proposed a philosophical framework for the argument as follows:

If there is a wholly good and all-powerful God, then there should be no evil or suffering. However, there is evil and suffering therefore there is no wholly good and all-powerful God. Even if there were such a being as God he is either not wholly good, or he is not all-powerful.

Over the course of theological and philosophical debates four stances have been taken by theists in response to this issue: 1) The first stance is that, evil is necessary as a counter point to good. This means that good cannot exist without there being evil. The emblem of the Yin and Yang capture this belief. 2) The second stance is that evil is necessary as to bring about good. This sees evil, not as a counterpart to good, but a means about which God brings good to his creation. Think of the passages of Scripture that speak of suffering bringing about character, such as Romans 5:3, where Paul writes, “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.” 3) The third stance is that the universe is better with at least some evil, than it would be without it. From this stance one can make the argument that you can only see the stars when the light isn’t shining. Or you only know what courage is when faced with something to fear. 4) The final stance is that evil comes from human will. It isn’t that God created evil, but that human beings create evil out of their own will to do so. 

Out of the four stances, I hold to the last. First, I do this because I do not see in the Scriptures a good God who is vexed by evil. Evil is not an equal to the God of the Bible, so it cannot be the first. Secondly, though I do see the God of the Bible bringing good out of evil, it doesn’t answer the issue of what is the root cause of evil. If this were the case, then God wouldn’t be good for he created evil, and Scripture rejects this, as God only works in goodness. The third stance is similar to the second and I believe it holds some weight in helping us understand why we live in the universe we do and not a perfect one, but again it doesn’t get to the root of evil, and again the blame ends with God. Finally, it is the will of God’s creatures where the Scriptures rest the problem of evil. It is from our actions that evil and suffering sprout. The Bible calls this root sin, and spends the course of its pages to show how God works through our evil to bring about his good.

This is the theoretical problem of evil. We can discuss it, we can argue it, but the reality is, when suffering comes to our door, these might give us a foundation from where to work from, but they can be empty words. 

We see this in the life of Job. When suffering came to Job’s door, the theoretical broke upon the concrete pain he was feeling. His friends proceeded to give him the theoretical answers, but his concrete pain and their glib responses were not what he needed to hear. 

Its the case of Job that brings us to the practical question of evil, and this is where the idea of suffering really comes to a head. Does it matter where evil comes from, God or humans,  when a mother has a miscarriage? Does it matter when a family member dies in a car crash by a drunk driver? Does it matter when a tsunami hits a beach and hundreds, if not thousands of people, die in its wake? The question of, Why God, comes in moments like this and wrecks us. If God is good why did he allow the miscarriage to happen? If God is all-powerful, why did he not stop that man from drinking? If God is all-knowing, why didn’t he foresee where people were and redirect the wave?

The practical issue of suffering is what the Bible deals with most directly. It doesn’t give glib reasons as to answer all the hard questions, rather it rests in verses like Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Or Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Or Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35-36, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’” 

The Bible doesn’t answer all the theoretical questions nor answers all the why’s of why why evil and suffering occurs. Job, through forty-two chapters never found out why he suffered. However, the Bible does seek to answer the practical question of suffering, which is to love people in their pain as we love Jesus who suffered for us. God calls his people to sit and cry with those who are hurting. We are to have compassion and carry the burdens of each other.

Here’s the reality, there’s suffering in the world, the Bible doesn’t shy away from it, but rather shows it for all its horridness. Those like Ehrman look at differing and say, because there’s suffering there is no God. But remove God from the equation and you’re still stuck with the problem. There’s still suffering. 

Yet if the God of the Bible is true that means suffering was not brought about by him, but by his creatures. It is us who have caused the suffering of the world through our actions. And there is such a deep spiritual connection between our actions and things like future generations and natural evils, that the evil we cause through sin can bring suffering to those we’ll never even know. Yet, what we also see from the God of the Bible is his actions to minimize the effects of sin, and who has put in place a plan to end all evil and suffering. 

Ehrman looks at the God of the Bible and says, there’s suffering so he doesn’t exist. I look at suffering and reply, because it exists I trust there is a God.

Today, we haven’t answered the question of evil, we simply addressed it, but my trust in God’s inerrant and infallible word directs me to trust a God who cares for the suffering of his creation, and I hold to this great teaching from the Book of Hebrews, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (v.4:15).” God has met us in our suffering through the person of Jesus, and desires to be there for us. Let us therefore draw close to him to find his peace in the suffering.

My challenge for you this week is to take the various stances I gave to you and wrestle with the problem of evil. Bring these stances to the pages of Scriptures and see which one best is answered by the God who spoke this universe into being.

Let us be a people who grows in our trust in the Lord, and when evil assails us or those around, we run closer to him in it. Amen.

Answering Ehrman Series, Wk 4, “There’s Reason for Rejection”

  Remember going to the video rental store, like Blakcbuster, or Hollywood Video? In my home town, had a little local shop that was a combination video rental and comic book store. It was on my way home from school, and I’d stop in just to see the latest comic book or movie release.

In those stores, they had all the videos separated by genre. They had family movies, action flicks, horror, and whatever other genres there were. The guy who owned the place was always moving movies around, as new ones came in, or people would pick up one up and move it to the wrong section. I mean, you can’t have Star Wars next to A Fist Full of Dollars. And you shouldn’t have Halloween next to the Lion King. Genres help us automatically understand what to expect from books, albums, or movies. My dad once told me that he went to see Blazing Saddles in the movie theater because he was expecting a cowboy movie in the vain of John Wayne; boy was he surprised. 

But its this idea of understanding the genre of something to see if it fits what we’re looking for, that brings us back to our fall apologetics series, where we’re seeking to answer some of the issues that Bart Ehrman has with the orthodox belief in the trusting the Bible as God’s inspired word. 

We’ve done this by first showing how Jesus is a historical person, because if Jesus wasn’t historical, then anything about him would be false. If he wasn’t a real life person, then the Christian faith is false, because it rests on a physical death and resurrection. But since we can show that Jesus is historical, we can look at the writings about him and see if they are accurate in their portray.

Then we began looking at the New Testament documents to see if we can trust them to be what was originally written by those who claimed to have seen Jesus. We did this by first looking at the external evidences. When looking at the manuscript data and comparing it to other significant historical manuscripts, we saw how much closer to the original sources the New Testament is to other affirmed documents. This gives us a good basis on which to trust that those who are said to have written the New Testament actually did.

Finally last week, we looked at some of the internal evidences as to why we can trust the New Testament to be accurate. We covered the supposed errors and found that even the 1% of errors that are theological, do not change primary Christian doctrines. Then we looked at some supposed discrepancies and contradictions. We came to an understating that there are discrepancies in that each writer gives us a fuller picture of events, but there are no contradictions. This led us to understanding that God’s word is inerrant in that it is trustworthy and authoritative, and that it is infallible in the purpose of communicating the way to salvation. 

However, Ehrman has two more issues, and the one we’re coving to today is about why certain books were included and others were not. Ehrman writes in Jesus, Interrupted, “If God inspired certain books in the decades after Jesus died, how do I know that the later church fathers chose the right books to be included in the Bible … There were some who accepted the Gospel of Peter and some who rejected the Gospel of John … Some Christians rejected the three Pastoral Epistles … others accepted the Epistle of Barnabas … If God was making sure that his church would have the inspired books of Scripture … why were there such heated debates and disagreements …?”

The issue Ehrman brings up here is that of canonicity. Why do we have the 66 books of the Bible we do and were there others that should have been included?

First, to clarify, when were talking about the canon of Scripture, what we’re referring to is, “… the term … most closely associated with the collection of books that the church has recognized as the written Word of God … Although the various Christian traditions are not in full agreement … at the very least all agree that the sixty-six books of the Protestant Bible are canonical and therefore authoritative."

When we’re talking about the canon of Scripture, we’re talking about those books that are considered authoritative to Christian faith. Not books that are helpful, or interesting, but authoritative to what it means to be Christian, as opposed to any other belief system. 

The process of canonizing the books of the Bible, wasn’t done by the Church as if their purpose was to pick what best suited them and make that the standard. As BB. Warfield states, “The Canon of the New Testament was completed when the last authoritative book was given to any church by the apostles, and that was when John wrote the apocalypse, about A.D. 98.”

Before we start looking at books that were not included in the canon of Scripture, we need to understand the criteria that the early Church used. First, the document had to be written by an Apostle or someone closely associated with them. That means there had to be a strong agreement that those whose names were associated with the writing, actually wrote it. This was done through attestations by disciples of those who were the writers. We see this most notably with Papias a disciple of the John the Apostle who points to which writers wrote which books early in the second century. We’ve already shown that the New Testament manuscripts were written during the lifetimes of the Apostles and so have a strong case for them to have written their works.

The second criteria, was that the writing had to be consistent with already revealed Scripture. In other words, it couldn’t contradict the Old Testament, nor couldn’t contradict clear teachings of Jesus. As an example, if it was established that Jesus was resurrected physically, which First Corinthians 15:3-5, one of the oldest hymns of the faith reveals, then anything that disagrees with that is not considered correct. 

The last criteria, is that it has to be agreed upon my the majority of the Church. One individual, or even one congregation cannot put forth a document, that none of the congregations have ever seen nor heard of. The Church as a whole has to agree. Ehrman states that there were heated disagreements, yet every tradition and denomination that holds to the orthodox faith, agrees that at least these 66 books are authoritative. In fact the issues that Ehrman’s describing come on when talked about the extra-biblical books.

So what does this look like historically? Going back to our timeline. We have already seen that by 180AD, we have the Moratoria Canon, which has at least 22 of the 27 books we now consider canon. Another major canon list is by Athanasius in 367AD, and the Council of Hippo in 397AD. This last council is where Church historians consider the canon to be finalized. So, the documents which could be included in the Bible, must come prior to this date. As any later and we know for a fact that they could not have been written by eyewitnesses. 

So what about the writings prior to this?

Personally, I place them into three categories: The first category is heretical. By this I mean, those books that fail, not just at not being written during the lifetime of the eye witnesses, but also fully contradict established Scripture. These would be your Gnostic writings of the one to three hundreds AD. The list includes, but is not limited to: The Gospel of Egyptians, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, the Sophia of Jesus Christ, the Pistis Sophia, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocryphon of John, the Second Treatise of the Great Sett, the Hypostasis of Archons, and the Tripartite Tractate. These present a non-Jewish Jesus. He’s presented more as a Greek philosopher and not as a Jewish Rabbi. In other words, heretical texts change the very person of Jesus, so that he is no longer accurate in a historical sense of a Jewish Rabbi and in his Jewish teachings.

The second category are those writings that are interesting, but they’re reasonably rejected. What I mean by this is that they are not out right heresy, but they’re not consistent in theology. Two that fit into this category are The Acts of Thecla and Third Corinthians. Thecla is a story of a woman who supposedly met Paul and became a believer. However, there are a lot of inconsistencies in theology, examples being that she baptized herself, something the early Church didn’t do, and the idea of virginity was overtly important. Then the historical timing is off. Not only was it written too late, but the author is unknown. On the other hand, Third Corinthians, if a part of the Acts of Paul, which is a later collection of works, was written by Tertullian. Tertullian was a theologian who wrote as an homage to Paul. But it is still too late to be included as an eyewitness.

The final category is Good for Christian use. By this I mean that, though they were not written by an eyewitness to Jesus, they are still insightful for Christian belief. Three of these would be the Epistle of Barnabas, which was written between 70-135AD, and was connected to the Barnabas of Acts by Clement of Alexandria; though that is its only attestation. It was rejected as being a part of canon because it focused more on explaining Jewish theology than on the redemption of Jesus. But it’s still useful to understanding the Jewish world of the first century. Then there is the Didache, which was written between 70-110AD. This work was said to be from the teachings of the twelve, however it would be better understood as an early Church handbook on how to conduct Church practices; such as: baptism and the Lord’s supper. Finally, there is the Shepherd of Hermas, which was written around 155AD, by an unknown author. It’s a story of a Christian freed slave and how he implements Christian teachings into life. It’s a good story to show how Christian ethics works in the world, but it’s light on the theology of Jesus. 

And here’s the problem with Ehrman’s issue of why we have the canon we do. Ehrman complains that the manuscripts we have are not the originals, yet we can trace the linage of the New Testament back to the time period in which they are said to have been written. In addition to this, the New Testament speaks of things in ways that first century Jewish people would. The language and customs are rooted in the first century. We have fragments from within twenty-five years of the death of the last apostle. We have overlapping canon lists and attestations of what the early Church considered authoritative. The Church did not see themselves as creating canon, but receiving it from God.

If these other documents were included, Ehrman would rightfully point out that they were too late to be eyewitness accounts. That the second to fourth century works were not Jewish in customs or language, which means that they presented a non-historical Jesus. Yet, because Ehrman simply wants to dilute people’s trust in the canon of Scripture, he points to writings that he himself agrees would not be acceptable. On Bart Ehrman’s official website, one of his article contributors, Keith Long, writes this, “The New Testament canon selection committee opted to go with a historical understanding of Jesus’ life, a theological understanding of his death, and a physical understanding of his resurrection …. Another factor may be the dating of these texts. Most are believed to be from the mid to late second century or later. The age of these texts all but certifies that none of them could have been written by people from Jesus’ inner circle or his contemporaries .… As for the authorship? No, Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene did not survive two to three centuries after Jesus! But their legacies certainly did for many people in the early Church.”

So for the third straight week, we see that, though Ehrman popularizes a position that questions why these other works were not included in the canon of Scripture, academically he embraces the reality that these other works do not hold up like the New Testament documents do. 

This goes back to helping us trust that God has persevered his word, for what he wanted to communicate throughout the centuries in what we call the Bible. Through war, emperors, scribes, and all the sin that’s there, God has brought us a firm foundation on which to seek him for salvation. And we can be assured what the eyewitness saw is what they communicated in writing, and what we have today. 

For my challenge for you is this, I have printed off the shorter of the three good ancient documents, called the Didache. It’s out in the foyer. If you’d like to see what was being shared by the early Church, take a copy and read through it this week. It’s an interesting read and has insight into how the early Church conducted things like worship services. Then take time to seek God in praise for keeping his word from his eyewitnesses to today. 

And next week, we’ll finish up this series by looking at the heart issue that Barth Ehrman really has.

But for now, let us be a people who seek the truth that God has reveled in his word. Amen.