Our review of the Ehrman/D'Souza debate will probably differ from others. We were not looking for the clever knock out punch, but increased insight into our opponent.
Here is an assessment of the debate by its moderator, Larry Taunton, who is the head of the Fixed Point Foundation.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/blog/216-whywesuffer
“Insofar as the discussion was concerned, it was, I think, one of our best debates. Rather than mocking the issues or one another, Ehrman and D'Souza took the arguments very seriously. Were I someone attending this debate who was undecided on the topic, I think I would have found it very helpful. As for the content of the debate, Ehrman seemed to rely heavily on emotional arguments: What about the Holocaust? Children in Darfur? Injustice? D'Souza, for his part, did a good job of countering these arguments by pointing out that rather than rejecting belief in God, perhaps the fact of suffering should lead us to an entirely different line of questioning. Is God's purpose our comfort or does He have something else in mind? I was reminded of the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn's remark, "The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, that is, in prospering, but in the development of the soul." Besides, asked D'Souza, who was ultimately responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust and Darfur? God or man?”
We will look at some of the issues in this debate, and we will insert some of the criticism by JD Greear along the way. All of Greear’s quotes are taken from the following link:
http://jdgreear.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/10/ehrman-dsouza-debate.html
We will also use quotes of D’Souza’s take on the debate from this link:
http://www.tothesource.org/10_14_2009/10_14_2009.htm
We tried to find quotes from Ehrman or sympathetic groups on the debate but have been unsuccessful. If any of our readers come across any, we would be happy to post the quotes and links.
Bart Ehrman’s evangelical credentials: As always, Ehrman referred to his supposedly impeccable Christian credentials. He was a Christians who went to Moody Bible College and graduated from Wheaton before losing his faith at Princeton Theological Seminary. This is important, and we will return to it later.
Where is God in suffering? Ehrman claims that the loving God he used to believe in does not exist. He pointed out that the Holocaust, children starving, and devastating tsunamis prove that there is no God who cares for those who suffer. D’Souza claimed that there are many reasons for suffering. He pointed out that men who have free will may chose to cause cruelty to other men. He calls this moral suffering. D’Souza also explained that there are natural causes that contribute to suffering. For example, plate tectonics, which contribute to tsunamis, are important in keeping the water levels at consistent levels on the planet.
God uses suffering to promote virtue: D’Souza went onto say that God uses suffering to cause us to develop and demonstrate various virtues such as compassion. For example, without those who are hungry, we would not be compelled to reach out in compassion to those who hunger.
Greear’s critique: “This may be partially true, but it ignores the most fundamental reason why suffering exists: OUR COSMIC TREASON AND REJECTION OF GOD”.
Greear continues: “At one point, Ehrman said, indignantly, "I reject the idea that all this suffering, the holocaust, etc, was necessary just to create virtue in us." I had to sympathize with Ehrman's retort! Did God really create tsunamis just to teach us bravery? Was the massacre of thousands of Jewish children, and millions of unborn today, necessary just to make us compassionate? That's not convincing to me as a reason why a good God would allow evil.”
We have left Greear’s pointed capitals in place because he shows how strongly he feels about this. It appears the Greear believes in a very forceful approach to this question. Cosmic treason is good for a group of churched teenagers and makes for good sermon material, but one must remember the audience. Of course those of us who are well-versed Christians understand Greear’s point. However, this overstatement could lead to rabbit trails and give pause to a thoughtful listener who might wonder if Jonathan Edwards had just come to Chapel Hill. We imagine that Ehrman would have smiled and said something like, “Come, come. You can’t mean to tell me that my grandmother who gave me cookies is really guilty of cosmic treason.”
Subtlety is the name of the game in this sort of debate. It appears that Greear missed the fact that D’Souza had already mentioned mankind’s moral culpability. At this point, we believe D’Souza was showing that God could use the pain and suffering caused by men to compel men to strive for a greater good.
Why will heaven be perfect if man has free will there? D’Souza says the following about this part of the debate. “Ehrman countered that there is free will in heaven and yet there is no suffering in heaven, so clearly God could have made a world in which freedom is unaccompanied by suffering. Ehrman's point is clever, but in truth no one knows what it means to say that there is free will in heaven. Free will, after all, is exercised in a world of space and time: that's how we endure the consequences of our choices. If heaven is eternal in the sense of being outside of time, it seems meaningless to posit there the same kind of free will that we enjoy here on earth”.
JD Greear actually offers another way to handle this issue that has validity until he drops into Jonathan Edwards mode at the end. “This is not a really well thought out objection, in my opinion. Being free to do something doesn't mean that we automatically want to do it. As a grown man, I am "free" to eat rat dung or to jump off the Dean Dome in an attempt to fly. Though I am technically "free" to do either (i.e., if I could figure out how to get up on the Dean Dome), I probably will never choose either–so long as I retain my sanity and my good taste.
The Christian doctrine is that those in heaven are indeed free, but have been given a heart redeemed and purified by Christ, so that they would freely choose to avoid wickedness, perversion, injustice, and sin because they abhor it like I do rat dung. Because they have been healed, they will not choose the insanity of sin any more than I would chose to jump off the Dean Dome.
Why then, you may ask, did Adam and Eve choose to sin in paradise, and how were they different than the people in heaven? That is a good question. Adam and Eve possessed less "sight" than we will have in heaven. They were given enough sight that they could have chosen God, by faith, if they wanted. Sadly, they (we) did not. In heaven, for those whom Jesus has rescued, our eyes will be opened sufficiently and our hearts accordingly changed that we would never choose the filth of sin any more than Ehrman would choose to eat his own children”.
Once again, Greear does not appear to understand that this is a debate that reaches out to a wide variety of people. As a young teen convert, I (Dee) was attracted by the love of God and the hope of eternity. As time has progressed, I have become aware of the depth of my sin problem. I would probably have run from a guy yelling about cosmic treason and my filth. However, the other part of his answer is great, and I believe that D’Souza should consider working this into future debates.
God could still have both a natural universe and perform miracles to prevent disasters.
D’Souza comments, “ I answered that miracles in the Bible were always performed for spiritual reasons, never as far as I could see merely to counteract the workings of nature”.
This is actually an interesting question. We know that many people die of malignant melanoma each year as a direct result of sun exposure. Yet, each day when I go to my exercise class, I see people jumping into tanning beds next door at the tanning salon. Recently, a loclly well-known plastic surgeon, who was extremely intoxicated, decided to drive his vehicle home, despite the best efforts of a local restaurant to get him a ride. His action killed an aspiring ballerina. It is said that at least one boy who shot up his classmates at Columbine had been harassed without mercy by local bullies.
This is the age-old question. Where should God intervene? Should He levitate the girl out of the tanning bed, stop the surgeon from drinking, and stop the bullies? Some would say, "Yes". But, when does God stop intervening? Even Ehrman believes that there are limits but is somewhat silent on where the boundaries should be. Also, should God force other men to get involved? For example, should God make the tavern owner chase after the drunk in his car? Perhaps God gives us the parameters and then allows us to follow them or not.
Now, here is where things get really interesting.
Ehrman claims we have the resources to solve world hunger. Yet we don’t. Why not? Surely a smart man like Ehrman should be able to join forces with Bono and eliminate world hunger. Here, Ehrman’s logic starts to break down. He finished his debate, reading from one of his more recent books, God’s Problem, which deals with the issue of suffering. His reading consisted of listing all the good things in life (drinking beer, watching basketball (This is the land of the ACC), enjoying sunsets, walk on the beach, and on and on like a personal ad) and also cure world hunger. Huh? If we can, why haven’t we? And this is where many Christians think they have him. They do, but not for the reasons they think.
Greear comments: “Ehrman said something about accountability to each other, but never really spelled out what he meant by that or WHY I need to feel accountable to anyone. If there is no God, then we might be able to say that certain actions are UNHELPFUL for the human race, but we can't ever say something is truly evil. To say something is morally evil requires that there be a higher good that you compare it to. The moment you say "This ought to be different way," you have implied a higher standard, or a higher law, than what is. To say that actions are unjust requires that we have a higher law that tells us what justice is.”
In my humble opinion, this is not the way to argue the point. There is a new field of evolutionary psychology that claims that mankind is evolving new memes that cause us to show justice, mercy, and love to one another. Now that mankind has evolved, we can begin to take care of the weaker ones amongst us because we now have more resources to support more people. So, the former canard of evolution favoring the strong over the weak, to some extent, is no longer in play.
Here is how I would argue Ehrman’s point. OK, Ehrman, you have the memes to be kind and loving. But, you also divorced your first wife and probably caused her pain. Kim Jong Il of Korea apparently hasn’t developed these theorized “memes.” Neither has the pedophile who abused young boys at my former church. So, what you are saying is that some of us are evolving into a superior race, of which (of course) you are a member. So, how do we make those under-evolved sorts toe the line? Can it be done with just laws? What is to prevent you from becoming the new breed of communists? You know, all are equal but some are more equal than others?
Oh, and what do you do with some of your buddies like Peter Singer, the Princeton bioethicist, who believes that we are morally allowed and maybe even obligated to kill unwanted babies up until the age of one year and also kill off the disabled since they drain resources? Who gets to decide who has evolved sufficiently to make these decisions? I bet old Peter thinks he is quite capable of making judgments for the human race, thank you very much. And, the folks at Princeton probably think so as well since they appointed him. Wait, Princeton, isn’t that the place of the demise of Bart’s faith? So, what is there to say that your newly evolving world will not look exactly like the world we live in today? In other words, you have not solved the core problem!
Let’s take a hard look at Ehrman's “Christian” credentials. He went to Moody Bible and Wheaton College. So, he must have been around the ripe old age of 22 when he graduated. Then this “grounded” Christian went off to Princeton and threw it all away when he learned that the woman caught in adultery was not in the earliest manuscripts.
Here is what D’Souza said that shook up Ehrman. “I countered by saying that I had been raised as a Christian, but for many years mine was a "crayon Christianity" that my parents taught me when I was little. Most of us don't outgrow this, and I suggested that Ehrman never did. For Ehrman, God remains a kind of Santa Claus, always ready to perform wonders and provide presents. Surely disappointment awaits someone who has this kind of crude expectation about God. Ehrman's deconversion, I suggested, was not a rejection of Christianity but only of crayon Christianity”.
Because we arrived early, we were sitting on the sixth row from the front, and I saw Ehrman look visibly upset at D'Souza's pronouncement (albeit momentarily). Ehrman's quick grimace was something unusual for this “happy, joi de vivre agnostic.” He stammered something about his Christian background and denied it was a “crayon Christianity”, but we could see that a chord had been struck.
I, Dee, became a Christian when I was 17. I read my Bible, CS Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer. However, at the age of 22, I had little understanding of the canon, church history, and the depths of my sin nature. Had I learned of this supposed Biblical discrepancy back then, I might have been shaken to my core. In fact, I was. Fifteen years ago I first learned of this manuscript discrepancy; however, being older and wiser, I knew that far more intelligent Christians must know about this and have dealt with it or people would be leaving the faith in droves. And, I found the answers to my questions. Since then I have been on a journey, trying to find the hardest questions and looking for answers. And God has been faithful.
That being said, I am about to make a brash statement. I do not believe that Ehrman is quite the precocious ex-Christian that he attempts to portray. In fact, I think this is why he bristled at that moment. He has been found out!
Interestingly, Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, has recently been showcasing the superficial depth of Ehrman’s Scriptural understanding. He has made it a personal mission to document Bart Ehrman’s obviously mistaken assumptions Hank calls Ehrman a wooden literalist and claims that few people would read the Bible the same way as this misleading professor. In other words, this PhD is somewhat of a fundamentalist! Hanegraaff addresses supposed discrepancies mentioned in Ehrman’s books with regard to Jesus cleansing the Temple, how many angels were at the tomb of Jesus, the miracle at the wedding of Cana, and so on. Please go to this excellent resource, equip.org or, more specifically to a listing of various discussions at:
Finally, D’Souza offered an interesting insight into “Ehrman off the stage.” He says, “Back and forth went the repartee. Throughout the debate, Ehrman was a model of civility, and he went out of his way to praise the sophistication of my arguments and even to recommend my book Life After Death: The Evidence, out next month from Regnery. The questions from the students were of uniformly high quality, and the audience seemed riveted throughout. This debate was short on the kind of theatrics that have characterized some of my Hitchens debates. Later at the reception, however, Ehrman got into a heated argument with a group of Christians; one of them told me that Ehrman's cordiality and good manners on the podium were largely tactical.” Perhaps Ehrman’s mask is slipping, just a bit!
So, our message to Fixed Point and Dinesh D’Souza is: “You did great!” Continue your inspired mission to confront the New Atheism boldly and confidently. And next time, have a little fun needling Ehrman. You have a struck a chord. To our Calvinsta friends, please tone down the “cosmic treason” rhetoric when you are addressing a mixed audience. You want to be compelling, not repelling.