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Was There a “Moment” When I Left the Faith?

I sometimes get asked if there was a moment when I realized I simply did not believe in the Christian God and subscribe to the Christian faith any more. What I have been trying to explain is that for me it was a long drawn out process. It was not a matter of my being a fundamentalist, then finding a contradiction in the Bible and throwing up my hands in despair and saying “Oh no! There *is* no God!!” It didn’t happen like that at all. I didn’t go from being a fundamentalist to being an agnostic. It was a many-year struggle in which I went from a rabid fundamentalist to becoming a slightly left of center evangelical to being for many years a liberal Christian active in the church and thinking as deeply as I could about the theological views that had long been established in my tradition. I explained in the previous post how it was the problem of suffering that finally made me leave the faith. And in a sense there *was* [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:07:30-04:00July 22nd, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Leaving the Faith

By the early to mid-1990s I had come to think that whatever I had held dear and cherished on the basis of my belief in the Christian God, could still be held dear and cherished without that belief. Do I stand in awe before the unfathomable vastness and incredible majesty of the universe? Do I welcome and feel heartfelt gratitude for moments of grace? Do I value the love of family and the companionship of friends? Do I appreciate the many good things in life: My work? Travel? Good food and good drink? All the little things that make life enjoyable? Yes, but what does any of this necessarily have to do with God? As a Christian – from the time I was able to think, through my teenage and early-twenties fundamentalist period, up to my more mature adult liberal phase – I had believed in some form of the traditional, biblical God. This was a God who was not some kind of remote designer of the universe who had gotten the ball rolling and [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-16T10:44:45-05:00July 19th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Growing into Unbelief

As I continued to go to church in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I found that I simply believed less and less of the Christian tradition in anything like a literal sense. Was God the creator? Well, maybe in some kind of ultimate sense, but not literally. The universe was billions of years old, it came into being at the Big Bang, it has been expanding ever since, and the reaches of space – with its unfathomable numbers of galaxies each with billions of stars –as surely not “created” by a being principally concerned with a form of life that happened to evolve on one small planet circling one relatively small star, one of many, many billions in one relatively small galaxy. The human-centeredness of the view of “creation” did not, at the end of the day, really make sense to me. And God himself? Did he exist? Yes, I thought he did. But I wasn’t sure we could possibly know much if anything about him. I assumed he was somehow in some sense [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-16T10:45:07-05:00July 19th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Apocalypticism in a Modern Idiom

As I pointed out some weeks ago on the blog, in the mid to late 1980s, as a liberal Christian, I was fully aware that the Bible was filled with mythological views that could no longer be accepted as literal truths but had to be translated into a modern idiom if they were to have any relevance. And I thought that the Bible did have relevance. But not in its literal sense. This made interpretation of the Bible an extremely important affair. It was the *interpretation* of the text that determined how, in what sense and in what way, the Bible could and should determine how a person understood the world, the deity, and our relationship to both (the world and the deity). The teachings of Jesus, the writings of Paul, and in fact most of the earliest Christian tradition as found in the New Testament, was rooted in apocalyptic views that were very much situated in their own time and place, but were no longer tenable for 20th century Americans (i.e., for me in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:08:48-04:00July 17th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Important Announcement about the Blog!

Dear Faithful Blog Participants (or even Unfaithful Ones): An announcement. Starting July 16 I am going on a hiking expedition and will be off the grid for ten days. I’m not sure if I’ll have any Internet access or not. But not to fear (as if you would fear….): I will not leave the Blog forsaken. I have compiled blog posts enough for the week, and my all-reliable assistant Steven, to whom each of us owes a mountain of debt, will be posting them on a schedule I have given him. SO … there will be ample posts for you to ponder. The somewhat bigger issue is that I won’t be able to read and approve comments. That’s an increasingly large problem since, these days, we are getting 40-70 comments each and every day. If it turns out that I do get some Internet access over the course of my meanderings over the earth, I will approve comments, as many as I can. But if not, they will simply have to wait until I get [...]

BDEhrman2017-07-16T03:23:07-04:00July 16th, 2017|Public Forum|

The Essence of Biblical Apocalyptic Thought

I earlier pointed out that my views of suffering in the 1980s were heavily influenced by the biblical perspective that scholars call apocalypticism. I have discussed the major views of apocalypticism on the blog a couple of times over the years, but some review would be useful at this point, both for those whose memories are as sieve-like as mine, and for those who weren’t around yet for all those years of previous fun on the blog. Let me stress, Jewish apocalypticism was a very common view in Jesus’ day – it was the view of the Essenes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, of the Pharisees, of John the Baptist, later of the Apostle Paul – and almost certainly of Jesus. This is a widely held view among critical scholars – by far the majority view for over a century, since the writings of none other than Albert Schweitzer. What did early Jewish apocalypticists believe? Let me break it down into four component themes. I have drawn this discussion from my textbook on the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:13-04:00July 13th, 2017|Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Origins of Apocalypticism

In my previous post I began to explain how, in 1985, while teaching a class at Rutgers on the Problem of Suffering, I came to realize that I simply didn't accept any longer most of the views of the Bible on why there was suffering in the world. But one view did continue to appeal to me, the apocalyptic view that emerged toward the end of the New Testament period, and became the view of Jesus, John the Baptist before him, the apostle Paul after him, and, in fact, most of the early Christians. This would be a good time to review where this view came from and what motivated it. For that I am going to return to a post that I made on the blog a couple of years ago. Here I set up what apocalypticists believed (especially about suffering) by contrasting it with the view out of which it arose and to which it was reacting, the view of the traditional Hebrew prophets. ********************************************************************** The Prophetic Perspective We have seen that the [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:21-04:00July 11th, 2017|Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Apologies to All Colombians

And to those who love Colombia. And to those who simply prefer Bloggers to spell correctly. In yesterday's post I meant Colombia, not Columbia. Mea culpa. Too much university on the brain....

BDEhrman2017-07-11T11:40:00-04:00July 11th, 2017|Public Forum|

Explaining a Columbian Mudslide

During the term when I was teaching my class on the problem of suffering at Rutgers in 1985, one of those unthinkable natural disasters occurred that made headline news and disturbed all caring people around the world. The night before there had been a volcanic incident in Columbia that caused a mudslide that wiped out several villages, killing thousands of people in their sleep. The death toll in the end was 23,000, men women and children. Some people blamed the Columbian government – they shouldn’t have allowed these villages to be near a volcano. Fair enough I suppose. You have to blame *someone*. And who can blame a volcano? But why do disasters like this have to happen in the first place? And how do people who believe in the God of the Bible account for such things? Blaming government officials for a volcanic eruption seems a bit lame. And it didn’t occur to most of us at the time, as we were reading accounts in the papers. Instead, our reactions were “Oh my God! [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:33-04:00July 10th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Variety of Views of Suffering in the Bible

Some thirty years ago now, when I taught my class at Rutgers on “The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Traditions,” I came to realize – or at least came to realize more clearly – that a number of the views set forth in the Bible simply did not resonate with me. Which, I suppose, is a more tactful way of saying that I simply didn’t agree with them. By far the most prominent explanation for suffering in the Bible is that God is using pain, misery, and human disaster in order to punish his people because they have failed to live up to his standards and to follow his will. He penalizes them by inflicting pain That is why there are droughts, famines, economic crises, and military disasters. That lesson is taught time after time after time in the Hebrew Bible – just read Deuteronomy, or Amos, or Jeremiah, or, well, any of the prophets. I suppose when I was a fundamentalist I completely accepted that view. But eventually – probably when teaching this [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:43-04:00July 9th, 2017|Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Teaching about How The Bible Explains Suffering

I’m not sure exactly when the suffering of others came to pose a problem for my own faith; but I do remember clearly when the issues first crystalized for me. I started my teaching career at Rutgers University while I was a PhD student working on my dissertation in 1984. It was a fantastic job for me (teaching at a very good research university, without yet even having my degree), but it was not tenure-track. I was a poorly-paid adjunct instructor, teaching two or three courses a semester, in a range of areas: Introduction to the New Testament; Introduction to the Hebrew Bible; The Life and Letters of Paul; The Gospel of John; and so on. I had never taught any of these courses before, of course, since this was just the beginning of my career. And back then my idea was that when I gave lectures, I would actually write out them out, word for word, by hand (I didn’t own a computer then), on yellow pads. If I was teaching three courses – [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:09:53-04:00July 7th, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Is Suffering Our Fault?

Some people have responded to my comments on suffering with the interesting observation that most suffering, in their view, is caused by humans against humans, so that there is no reason to “blame God” for it. That is obviously true of some of the most horrific things that happen in our world: murder, genocide, torture, war, refugee crises, and on and on and on. And one could argue that it is true of even “natural” disasters, such as starvation: there is more than enough food in the world for everyone to be well-fed, so if people are starving, it is *our* fault, a lack of social and political will. No need to doubt that God exists just because we’re too stupid, lazy, or self-centered to deal with any problems that come along. I have several reactions to this view. The first is that on one level I heartily agree. So many of the unspeakable things that happen to people, destroying their lives, causing unspeakable pain and misery, and often leading to death, are caused by [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:10:19-04:00July 5th, 2017|Bart's Debates, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Would I Call Myself Both an Agnostic or an Atheist? A Blast From the Past

My personal beliefs came up in my debate with Dinesh D’Souza that I posted last week, and I received several questions about how I classify myself: agnostic or atheist? I’ve talked about that on the blog a couple of times, but as I am constantly reminded, many of the people who are on the blog now were not on it a year or two ago, as there is turnover and our numbers continue to grow. And certainly no one (well, almost no one) goes back and reads everything from, say five years ago! So I thought it would be fine to repost my earlier comments. It was in response to a question I received back then, very similar to the questions I’ve received over the past week. ****************************************************** QUESTION: If you don't think God exists, why do you refer to yourself as an agnostic? If this is your perspective, why not refer to yourself as an atheist? Could it be that you don't believe the Christian God exists, but are open to the possibility [...]

BDEhrman2018-06-10T09:27:03-04:00July 4th, 2017|Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Was Marcion Declared a Heretic?

The question I will be dealing with this week relates to the issue of heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity. If you have a question you would like me to address, let me know! QUESTION: As I am reading about Marcion being declared a heretic I wonder, who had the authority to do this? RESPONSE: It’s a very good question, and more significant than, on the surface, one might think. First some background. Marcion was a second-century philosopher/theologian/teacher who eventually came to be branded as one of the arch-heretics of early Christianity. Our only sources of information about him are the writings of his enemies – proto-orthodox church fathers (church writers who embraced the theological views that later came to be endorsed as “orthodox” – that is, teaching the “right beliefs”) who saw him, and his views, as dastardly and demonic false teachings meant to led the faithful astray. It is much debated how much we can trust what his enemies said if we want to determine what it is that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:10:32-04:00July 3rd, 2017|Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Do I Need to Suffer Myself to Question Whether God Exists?

When I talk about how the problem of suffering has made me question the existence of a loving God in control of the world, I sometimes get asked “What *happened* to you?” The assumption seems to be that the only reason a person would question the existence of God is if something terrible had occurred that didn’t make sense in light of their beliefs. I’ve always thought this was a very curious way to think about it, as if the only reason a person would think there was a problem is if they themselves had undergone some horrendous kind of suffering. The fact is that I’ve never experienced suffering in extremis. I’ve never had leprosy, never starved, never had multiple family members die in a senseless accident, never … never had any really excruciating suffering that stands out as unusual. Just the standard fare for middle-class Americans: death of loved ones, shattered relationships, hard times, divorce, and so on. Nothing that would be completely inexplicable if there were a God in charge of my world. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:10:47-04:00July 2nd, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why Not Believe in a Different Kind of God?

I have been talking about why suffering is a “problem” in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and here I would like to reflect a bit on a point that some commenters have made, that it is a problem if and only if one has a certain conception of God as a being who is all-powerful, loving, and active in the world. Someone who has a different understanding of the divine being – or divine beings – almost certainly won’t have this problem. I will let others on the blog comment on divine beings in other modern religious traditions, outside of traditional Christianity. But I will say that the pagan world in which Christianity originally began, there were much easier answers to why people suffer if there are powerful deities in the world. The key is that in the ancient world, everyone except Jews acknowledged that there were *lots* of other deities, at all kinds of level and of all sorts of temperament. Some divine beings could be hateful, malicious, and antagonistic. Can’t do much about [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-17T00:20:06-05:00June 30th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Classic “Problem” of Suffering

I have indicated a bit in previous posts on why the Problem of Suffering is a “problem.” Here I want to explain just a bit further, before going on, in later posts, with the question about how and why it became a problem for me personally, in my movement away from Christianity to agnosticism. Here is what I say about “the problem” as it is classically understood, by philosophers who wrestle with the issue of “theodicy,” in my book God’s Problem. *********************************************************** Theodicy is a word invented by one of the great intellectuals and polymaths of the seventeenth century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who wrote a lengthy treatise trying to explain how and why there can be suffering in the world if God is all powerful and wants the absolute best for people. The term is made up of two Greek words: theos, which means “God,” and dikē, which means “justice.” Theodicy, in other words, refers to the problem of how God can be “just” or “righteous” given the fact there is so much suffering in [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:10:58-04:00June 28th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Two Unsatisfactory Solutions to the Problem of Suffering

In this thread I have started to grapple with the question of how there can be a good, loving, and powerful God in charge of the world in the face of the massive suffering experienced by the human race – not just in general terms (“there sure is a lot of suffering out there!”) but in very specific concrete terms, as what individuals experience. What we experience. What you have experienced. How does one make sense of personal suffering (especially intense suffering) in a Judeo-Christian world in which it is widely believed that there is a God who is sovereign and in control? One of the most interesting things about this question is that – unlike anything else I ever encounter, think about, read about, or write about in my career as a biblical scholar – this is a question that virtually *everyone* has reflected on and has an opinion about. Just about everyone. Even those who say “I have no idea!” are invariably people who have thought about it and realized that none of [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:11:11-04:00June 27th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Kind of Suffering that is a Problem

I’m not completely sure when I first started realizing that the enormous amount of suffering in the world, so much of it completely gratuitous, is a problem for anyone who believes that there is a loving and powerful God who is in control of what happens. Before reflecting on the evolution of my own thinking on the problem from years ago, let me stress a couple of points. First I am talking about enormous suffering. I am not talking about the small and even not so small aches and pains of daily life – the broken wrists or torn ligaments, the fender-benders, the shattered relationships, the worries about the mortgage, or the loss of a loved one. Such things, in my view, do not call into question the existence of God, because they could well be explained if there is a loving and powerful God in charge of the world. They could, for example, be “teaching us something,” or molding our character, or making us more grateful for the (other) good things we have (no [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:11:24-04:00June 26th, 2017|Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Why I Was Afraid to Become an Agnostic

I started feeling the tug toward agnosticism sometime during my PhD program. I remember clearly a particular moment, and it was, somewhat ironically, while I was serving as the pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church. Even though I was incredibly busy at the time (I was taking a full load of graduate seminars, preparing to take my PhD exams, serving as a Teaching Assistant for a class taught by Bruce Metzger, AND serving as the pastor of the church) I enjoyed the ministry very much. Well, parts of the ministry. I have never enjoyed transition rituals very much: baptisms, weddings, funerals, and the like. And of course pastoring a church involves doing such things. And I wasn’t thrilled with visiting the sick – I was a bit out of my depth on that one. But I did very much enjoy interactions with the people I worked with in the church, and I especially liked preaching nearly every week. I remember thinking at the time, though, that ... Only Members can read the rest of this [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T02:11:45-04:00June 23rd, 2017|Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

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