Bart Ehrman's God's Problem considers the 'end of the world' answer to the problem of evil. I have a few disagreements with Bart about this although the chapter does have some problems:
1. He plugs some social issues again -- malaria and water issues around the world. Both could be dealt with by humans but were going to blame God.
2. I disagree with Bart's assessment of origin of the apocalyptic view in Scripture. The fact is that it occurs in the writings of Solomon in Ecclesiastes as well as David's psalms and the idea of judgment occurs in Job as well.
3. When people assess that the Jewish people failed to keep the covenant and thus received punishment for not keeping the covenant it is not anti-Semitic. Did not the prophets and Jesus (all Jews) say the same. If Christians simple say the sames things Jews say about themselves how are they anti-Semitic. Jesus pointed this out further in his own when he called the religious leaders self-righteous -Is Jesus anti-Semitic
4. He has some interesting theories about the date of Daniel -- that Daniel is written in Aramaic is proof of a later date for Daniel after the fact of all the predictions of course. The fact is if Daniel is educated by the Babylonians his language would a have been changed into Aramaic along with the rest of the Jews seeing Aramaic is the result of Babylonian influence.
5. Because he does all this his version of apocalyptic views is assume that God has relinquished control for now and will bring things back to right in the end -- The apocalyptic view does not have god out of control at anytime.
Next: Agreements with Chapter Eight
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Point number one seems to be a running theme with authors like this - choosing to blame God for the evil acts of people. What's interesting to me, is these same authors never give the credit to God when good things happen.
ReplyDeleteYep. It is a recuring theme in this book.
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