Loading...For the first time since roughly the Pleistocene Age, I am teaching a new and different undergraduate course at UNC this semester. It’s a course I taught in a very different form when I was just starting out at Rutgers, in probably 1986 or so; I haven’t taught it since, and actually don’t remember how I set it up then. But now that I am no longer teaching PhD seminars at UNC or the large Introduction to the New Testament course (Hugo Mendez is doing both of those now), I have free spots in my schedule. And the course I taught all those years ago (39?) made a big difference to me — eventually leading to my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer.
At Rutgers the course was called “The Problem of Suffering in the Biblical Tradition,” but to teach it here — since I didn’t submit it as a new course — I have to teach it under one of the current course titles on the books, and the one that makes sense is “Religion and Violence.”
I started just this week, and so far it’s been fantastic (from my point of view). About 35 students — small enough still to be able to have class discussions.
Here is the syllabus. I’m pretty happy with it at this point. See what you think. (There are obviously a ton of ways to teach a course on religion and violence and a ton of ways even to do it on the topic I’ve chosen; but choices have to be made, and the syllabus reflects mine):
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Bart, I like the conversational tone of the admonishments. I also think highly of asking for a few minutes of in-class writing on a topic to get thinking started. One such exercise in a history of philosophy class I took in the 1980s — can we know anything for certain? — has inspired my thinking ever since. (It’s also a clever way of getting a writing sample.)
Given a title of “Religion”, it might be interesting to include some Islamic perspectives as well. My recollection of the Quran is that it’s usually on the “Suffering as punishment for wrongdoing” side where God is behind all disasters, and they’re punishments for the evil ones, unbelievers, etc. The suffering of the devout is always due to bad actions by evil people, and don’t worry, that’ll be fixed with afterlife rewards & punishments.
It would be very interesting indeed. And if we had time and I had the expertise, we would!
I think we can add some religious comparisons, especially the monotheistic Hindu Vedanta and Islamic theology.
Looks like a great course. Though the 8 AM thing – maybe not so much! All I’m able to do at that hour is stumble in the direction of the coffee maker. These days, I’m of the opinion that reality is neither good nor bad in itself, but is defined (or even created in some circles of thought), by our will and intentions. However reality is manifested, the idea is that it only becomes evil through our willful actions or willful inactions, or in the way natural events are interpreted. I came across a Great Courses series of lectures that I thought was actually quite insightful and relevant to this topic, for anyone interested: https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/secrets-of-the-occult
check it out at the library https://www.kanopy.com/en/sfpl/video/14065630
“Voltaire, Candide”
This was the book I read that I credit to sealing my disbelief in religion. I had already read the Bible in middle school (as best I could) and was highly skeptical after that, but Candide has a profound effect on me.
I think Harold Kushner’s book is WHEN (not Why) Bad Things Happen to Good People. If I remember right, Kushner mostly punts on the question of why.
Ha, you’re right.
Hello Dr.Bart Erhman
Koine greek was really popular in the Roman world during Jesus time but did Judea region also speak it dominantly?
No. The native language wsa Aramaic. Most places had their own language; only the highly educated elite spoke Greek (and so were bilingual).
I wish I had had professors like you when I was at university. That was the most entertaining syllabus I’ve ever read
Will you cover Plantinga’s solution to the problem of evil?
Actually, I guess what I’m asking is if you would discuss that here in the blog.
Hi Bart, I’m not advocating for the KJV; I’m just curious about your perspective on where it falls short for your course goals compared with modern translations. What are the underlying issues with the KJV and where does it fall short?
This sounds like a fascinating course. Shame you don’t have an online version. I have read several of your books and watched some of the videos. As an atheist, it has always been fascinating to me how assorted denominations deal with the issue, C.S. Lewis notwithstanding.
I have an interesting story for you if you have read In this Name by Claude Welch [https://www.amazon.com/This-Name-Doctrine-Contemporary-Theology/dp/1597524182.] He was president and dean of Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and happened to be my father. Considered by most to be a theologian, he considered himself to be a historian of theology and I remember as a child my parents having Richard Niebuhr over for dinner.
We were talking one afternoon a couple years before he died. He said he had been approached by Yale University Press to write a new introduction to a new edition of the book. Dad told me he had reread the book and said he thought it was quite good, but… he didn’t believe it anymore.
The bible presents us with two conceptions of God in relation to suffering.
One is that God wants to take away, prevent, protect, alleviate, and vanquish all suffering. E wants to take us to a place and a world where there is no suffering, and the things that cause suffering don’t even come to mind. There, there is nothing but joy, harmony, love, and peace, so much so that it is beyond words.
The other is that God causes suffering. E even enters into a bet with the devil in the case of Job, which causes a person an intense amount of suffering. When we suffer, it is Always all our fault, and God can just bully us around anyway E feels like it.
I personally go with this first understanding of God and not at all with the second.
——————————-
Psychologists say that when children experience suffering, they always think and feel that it is somehow their fault.
Perhaps the same is true of primitive and earlier cultures.
I would love to take this course, if I was in North Carolina. It looks great!
I think it fitting that a course on suffering and human misery requests that young adult students show up for an 8am start to the class. The experience of personal suffering is perhaps the greatest teacher of such subject matter. Brilliant.
Seriously, I’d love to take this course.
Yes, the irony has not escaped me…
I look forward to your commitment to the BSA lecture series course, though your class size will be considerably larger. Of course I am super excited for you on this change of flavor.
(30) Jesus said, “Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him.”
(31) Jesus said, “No prophet is accepted in his own village; no physician heals those who know him.”
Jesus!
There gods!
Gods are one with Jesus
Prophet in village
Heals who know
Know who heals village
In prophet Jesus
With one are Gods
Gods there!
Jesus!
(32) Jesus said, “A city being built on a high mountain and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden.”
Jesus
City on mountain
Cannot
Can
Hidden
Hidden
Can cannot
Mountain on city
Jesus
(81) Jesus said, “Let him who has grown rich be king, and let him who possesses power renounce it.”
Jesus
Him
Grown king
Him
Power
Power him king
Grown
Him
Jesus
God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer.
On LinkedIn to a former NZ judge in Hong Kong & professor. I wrote that Christianity is European [as the NT was written, approved & expanded by educated Romans], Not original chosen disciples.
this will be the 1st Ehrman book I bought for nearly a decade, then I was buying your older editions on NT survey.
Thanks!
& “God has NOT blessed China” like we learned how he blessed the USA. I witnessed the super developing nation work ethic
I read C.S. Lewis’ Problem of Pain recently and found it to be a pretty disturbing read. I had heard for years in my Christian upbringing that this book had deeply wise things to say about this problem, but I had never actually read it. When I did, I was shocked at the brutal, conservative simplicity of his ultimate argument. Behind all of his lay-theologian rhetoric, he basically says most suffering is deserved because we all are sinners, and are in fact sinning more or less all the time, and punishment from God is a form of correction, in the way a loving parent teaches their children a tough lesson to make them “better people.” Diseases and other forms of suffering that would seem undeserved get much less attention of course. All he says is that these horrible cancers that afflict even innocent children are mere consequences of God’s creation that He somehow cannot control, despite being powerful enough to cause people to capitalize His pronouns for eternity. Lewis even hints that these diseases are possibly also caused by the devil somehow, but this is merely glanced at in a parenthetical. I’m curious what you made of it?
Here in Australia, the university grading system is slightly different.
I was wondering if the Deist movement during the Enlightenment was in response to the question of suffering? I believe that a Deist views God as the creator who then watches as the world and everything in it unfolds so to speak, he is not involved in or interfering with anything. I would think with this belief, suffering would be more easily explained as mans inhumanity to man occurs.
Largely, yes; the issue became a major question among philosophers of the Enlightenment, who recognized the importance of science for obtaining knowledge rather than religoius belief; that’s when deism (e.g., in England) became a live option as a result.
Is the syllabus only available on a higher tier account?
Would love to see it!
It was in the post itself, for all members.