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Title details for God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman - Available

God's Problem

How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

by Bart D. Ehrman
L.J. Ganser
Audiobook
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In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many ""answers"" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:

  • The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin
  • The book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and suffering is beyond comprehension, since we are just human beings and God, after all, is God
  • Ecclesiastes: suffering is the nature of things, so just accept it
  • All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world

    • For renowned Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, the question of why there is so much suffering in the world is more than a haunting thought. Ehrman's inability to reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of real life led the former pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church to reject Christianity.

    In God's Problem, Ehrman discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the Bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites all people of faith—or no faith—to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us.

    • Creators

    • Publisher

    • Release date

      February 19, 2008

    • Formats

      • OverDrive Listen audiobook

        • ISBN: 9780061629709
        • File size: 298249 KB
        • Duration: 10:21:21

    • Languages

      • English

    • Reviews

      • AudioFile Magazine
        Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at UNC, Chapel Hill, a former evangelical, and now an agnostic, uses the various biblical views of suffering to address the question of why we suffer. After much grappling, and suffering, he doesn't come up with any answers other than: Do the best you can (which is pretty much the answer in Ecclesiastes and proves that there is truly "nothing new under the sun"). This work is rather personal, and L.J. Ganser reads it well. Not a lecture, it's more musings on the topic, and the narration is conversational--clear and easygoing, even acceptably rambling in places. M.T.F. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
      • Publisher's Weekly

        April 28, 2008
        Noted religion scholar and agnostic Ehrman explores the divergent array of biblical perspectives on the essential question of suffering. Ehrman also traces his own journey from belief to doubt as he puts forth a case for why both Old and New Testament teachings fail to reconcile the concept of a loving God with the reality of human misery. L.J. Ganser, a 2005 Audie winner for Russell Shorto's The Island at the End of the World
        , sets an animated professorial tone that is appropriate to both the weighty nature of Ehrman's argument and the author's wry, irreverent commentary. Ironically, the musical interludes between the discs—coupled with Ehrman's extensive Scriptural readings—evoke a Sunday School vibe. Ganser gives voice to Ehrman as a thoughtful curmudgeon in the national dialogue about faith; a figure whose challenges to orthodoxy somehow manage to steer clear of the caustic polarization that characterizes much of the current culture war. Simultaneous release with the HarperOne hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 3).

      • Publisher's Weekly

        December 3, 2007
        In this sometimes provocative, often pedantic memoir of his own attempts to answer the great theological question about the persistence of evil in the world, Ehrman, a UNC–Chapel Hill religion professor, refuses to accept the standard theological answers. Through close readings of every section of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, he discovers that the Bible offers numerous answers that are often contradictory. The prophets think God sends pain and suffering as a punishment for sin and also that human beings who oppress others create such misery; the writers who tell the Jesus story and the Joseph stories think God works through suffering to achieve redemptive purposes; the writers of Job view pain as God's test; and the writers of Job and Ecclesiastes conclude that we simply cannot know why we suffer. In the end, frustrated that the Bible offers such a range of opposing answers, Ehrman gives up on his Christian faith and fashions a peculiarly utilitarian solution to suffering and evil in the world: first, make this life as pleasing to ourselves as we can and then make it pleasing to others. Although Ehrman's readings of the biblical texts are instructive, he fails to convince readers that these are indeed God's problems, and he fails to advance the conversation any further than it's already come.

    Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

    subjects

    Languages

    • English

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