Stephen said
... Oh Judith if I could successfully accomplish but one act it would be to help you see the contribution you make at this forum every time you post.

I second this! 

BJH1960 said
Tjalling, an earlier post you mentioned a little of your background (e.g. not coming from a fundamentalist background).  If you find the time, and are so inclined, I'd love to hear more of your own journey.  We've got a thread for that very thing.
  

it's there now 😉

Before I flag anything I want to say I think it's one of the cleaner things Bart has done on this topic. The reason isn't the burial material, good as it is. It's a single discipline he keeps up for the whole forty-five minutes: he never lets "history can't establish this" drift into "history has shown this didn't happen." He says it outright, more than once: you can't prove a miracle, and for the same reason you can't disprove one; he is not arguing it didn't happen. That restraint is rare. Most people on both sides can't hold that line for a paragraph, let alone an episode.

If I put a finger on one spot, it's the very end. After keeping those two things apart for forty minutes, Bart says the resurrection "can't be the most likely explanation." That's a small step past where the rest of the episode stands. "History can't reach it" and "it's the least likely option" aren't quite the same claim. The first says the question is outside history's range; the second puts it back inside and ranks it last. It doesn't damage his case, but it's interesting that the one place the discipline slips is the exact place where the comment section then loses the distinction.

I downloaded and read through the comment section, because I wanted to see whether viewers kept Bart's distinction intact. The pattern was striking. A rough count gave me about 65 comments making the slide from "not historically demonstrable" to "false/debunked/fantasy," about 36 using probability analogies such as Elvis sightings, urban legends or Sherlock Holmes, and only about 27 that clearly preserved Bart's distinction; the rest were jokes, asides, burial sub-debates, or unrelated. The irony is that the comments preserving the distinction usually sit near the bottom with very few votes, while the probability-punchline comments are among the most liked.

The title and thumbnail already push in that direction a little: Why No One Can Prove the Resurrection is fair enough if "historically" is understood, but "The tomb proves nothing" is punchier than Bart's actual argument. The comment section then pushes the same simplification much further.

Because that's where the interesting thing happens. The audience overwhelmingly agrees with Bart, and yet the most upvoted comments almost all discard the discipline that makes the video good. A large share takes the step Bart specifically refused: "so it's been debunked," "so it obviously didn't happen," "so the Bible is false." That is not Bart's conclusion. It's a different and stronger claim, and it needs its own argument, the same argument Bart just declined to make in the other direction.

Is that a valid inference? I don't think so, at least not without another argument. Nothing in "history can't reach it" gets you to "it's been shown false." The move is a slide, not an inference. And it's the same slide in both directions. The few believers in the thread make the mirror version ("the Shroud of Turin proves the resurrection"), claiming exactly the certainty Bart denies to everyone. Both sides treat the historical record as settling a question Bart spent the episode saying it cannot settle either way.

The thread half-knows this. One commenter tells someone who calls the whole thing "fantasy from the start": fine, but then prove it, because "you can't prove or disprove it" cuts your way too. Another notes you could define "resurrection" narrowly enough that it would, in principle, be checkable. These are the sharpest comments in the section. They sit near the bottom, at almost zero votes.

My question for the forum is sharper than "why are commenters sloppy." It's this:

Why does an audience that shares Bart's conclusion so reliably fail to keep his reasoning? Once everyone agrees on the destination, "not demonstrable" and "false" quietly stop feeling like different sentences, which is the very slide the episode was built to avoid. Curious whether others read it the same way.

And what Stephen wrote about you, I can't wait to read more from you!

Stephen, your sentence about your minister friend stayed with me: “neither of us is frightened by the thoughts of the other.” That is very close to the kind of conversation I hope for. I am sorry about what you describe with your family. I do not want to be the kind of believer who treats another person’s questions, or even another person’s unbelief, as contamination.

I also think your point about the NT writers not being systematic theologians is important. Perhaps part of the strain comes from asking the biblical texts to give a level of rational neatness and consistency they do not themselves try to provide. They give us stories, letters, warnings, prayers, visions, arguments, memories, commands, wounds. Not a closed doctrinal machine. But that does not mean there is no coherence. Perhaps its coherence is more like a living witness than a diagram.

BJH1960, I also agree with your line that it is hardly reasonable to be given a mind but not allowed to use it. If faith requires me to stop thinking, something has gone wrong. Job and Qoheleth matter here, because they do not let piety become cheap. They keep the wound open.

I also agree that alleviating suffering and repairing the world cannot be dismissed as secondary. Matthew 25 presses that even harder for me. The Jesus who says “follow me” also says: feed, welcome, clothe, visit. He does not answer every question about suffering there. But he refuses to let the question remain only theoretical. The suffering person is not an illustration in an argument about God; he or she is the place where obedience becomes real.

Where I probably remain Christian is that I cannot make the absence of a full answer the same as the absence of God. Job does not receive the explanation he wants. Qoheleth gives us no neat closure. But I also cannot lose the sense that lament, repair, and the search for justice are not merely what we do after theology fails. They may also be signs of the God who has not finished with the world.

So perhaps that is where I can stay in the conversation: asking questions where I think the reasoning goes too quick, and showing where I think Christianity still has something to give. Not pretending the wound is closed, but also not treating the wound as the final word.

Judaism, to its credit, certainly had a space in its theological wonderings for debate and argument -even with the Ancient of Days. 

For me, such an important space.

It is hardly reasonable to be given a mind but not allowed to use it.

And I do love Judaism caring more about what we do than what we believe. Speaking of which, if Job never receives an answer, and Qoheleth views it as a permanent feature, perhaps the best that can be done is to alleviate suffering and set to repair the world (tikkun olam) - precisely what Bart is doing with his blog.

The Bible does not let me treat faith as something I own, produce, or deserve. Everyone who comes, comes by mercy. But neither does it let me treat another person’s darkness as proof that God has forgotten them. Scripture speaks seriously about judgment, and that has to be spoken of with great care; it is not as blunt or simple as we sometimes make it. But Scripture also gives every reason to speak of patience, warning, tears, searching, waiting, and a God who moves toward the lost.

The real problem - and its mostly our problem - is that the writers of the NT, even Paul, were not systematic theologians.  For our "scripture" we require a level of consistency and meticulousness that is simply not there.   Sadly, much of the history of theology consists of folks taking the passages that seem to agree with their previously arrived at positions and rationalizing the ones that seem to differ.  And at some point all sides of the argument are guilty of this.  Nothing is more to be feared than uncertainly in our divinely inspired texts!  

 “Some are born to endless night” stays with me, but it is the word “endless” I keep turning over. That some begin in darkness, I cannot deny. That the darkness is endless, that I do not know how any of us could know. It is the one word in the line I am not willing to grant him.

I'm sure all of us have known folks whose every sowing has turned into a bountiful harvest, and folks whose every attempt is frustrated and spoiled.   What are we to make of this?  Are there people who are just blessed?  And others simply doomed?  The psychologist will have one answer, a theologian another.  Blake is confronting this great mystery.  And asking the question that must always arise - was the Tyger and the Lamb born from the same Root?   

What I have not managed is to switch off the analytic part of myself entirely.

Well don't do that in any case. 

... you may be interested in knowing that Professor Ehrman claims he is not even close to his wife’s level of brilliance. She is a believer. 

I've commented before that one of my best friends is a minister. Talk about smart! He turned down two academic offers for assured tenure track positions because he wanted to pastor people at the local level.  I really respect that.  And because we both know that we are fundamentally operating in good faith neither of us is frightened by the thoughts of the other.  Meanwhile, most of my own family pulls their children away and gives me the sign of the evil eye when they see me.  And this they consider spiritual strength!  Ha!  What they arouse in me is not fear but pity. 

...but now I wish I were in order to make real contributions to The Forum.

Oh Judith if I could successfully accomplish but one act it would be to help you see the contribution you make at this forum every time you post.

I recognize your wish fully. I run a small business, and for all those years I have prayed for blessing and even for real abundance, not for its own sake but because of the good one could then do with it. So your honesty about wanting to give more, to contribute more, sounded very familiar.

Your warning I take seriously, though perhaps from an unusual angle. For some forty-five years now I have been challenging my own faith, deliberately, again and again. I keep expecting it to give way, and it keeps holding. I suspect part of that is simple good fortune in where I started: I never came from a fundamentalist background, and I was never taught that the text we hold is infallible. So I have never had to defend that particular wall, and its cracks have never threatened the whole house. Perhaps that is why I am not afraid of being changed. What I have found is that the testing changes the shape of faith without dissolving it. Yours, by your own account, has changed too, and is still faith. Maybe that is its own kind of answer.

Thank you for hoping I stay. I will be here more quietly than these past days, but you have made the door feel worth keeping open.

I have been one of the bloggers since October of 2013 and am still a believer though I no longer think of the Bible as the infallible Word of God. Also, I do not see myself the same way! Never had I ever wanted to be rich but now I do. I could give more donations. Before, I did not care to be an intellectual but now I wish I were in order to make real contributions to The Forum. Also, I would like to be more capable of helping whenever Professor Ehrman asks the bloggers for help.

We hope you stay with us but, if you do, beware of the possibility of being changed, too.

Stephen, one last small thing about your Blake. “Some are born to endless night” stays with me, but it is the word “endless” I keep turning over. That some begin in darkness, I cannot deny. That the darkness is endless, that I do not know how any of us could know. It is the one word in the line I am not willing to grant him.

And you are right that this is not a place for winning or losing. I have tried to leave the debating posture behind here and I think I succeeded. What I have not managed is to switch off the analytic part of myself entirely. It seems to come with me wherever I go. But perhaps that is all right, as long as it serves the conversation rather than tries to win it.

Judith said
Stephen: "A Gift not bestowed on everyone."
It's a mystery.
John 6:44: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
John 14:6: "no one comes to the Father, but through Me."
Is there a glitch there for those who did not grow up in a family and community where faith was ingrained?
  

I would be careful with the move from "faith is a gift" to "therefore some were never really invited and simply fall outside." John 6:44 certainly says something radical: no one comes to Christ by native capacity, self-generated decision, or personal claim. Everyone who comes, comes because the Father has drawn.

But I do not think I may reverse that into a statement about those who do not come, as if I could know they were never sought, never invited, or never wanted.

And John 14:6, "no one comes to the Father but through me," keeps Christ as the only way to the Father. But it does not give me a full map of how God may bring people to Christ, especially people who never received the gospel in a form they could recognize as good news.

So this does not make your question easy. It only keeps me from making one conclusion too quickly. People may be born without a living language of faith, without a believing family, without any trustworthy witness to the gospel as good news. But I do not find warrant in these texts to say: therefore they were forgotten by God or simply left outside.

The Bible does not let me treat faith as something I own, produce, or deserve. Everyone who comes, comes by mercy. But neither does it let me treat another person's darkness as proof that God has forgotten them. Scripture speaks seriously about judgment, and that has to be spoken of with great care; it is not as blunt or simple as we sometimes make it. But Scripture also gives every reason to speak of patience, warning, tears, searching, waiting, and a God who moves toward the lost.