Bart Ehrman vs. Michael Brown on Suffering

On April 15th, 2010 at Ohio State University, The Ohio Union Building in the Great Hall Meeting Room, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Michael L. Brown debate “Does the Bible Provide an Adequate Answer to the Problem of Suffering?” The debate was inspired largely due to Bart's book, "God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer". Bart argues that the Bible presents such contradictory "answers" to suffering, that we can't really know why there is suffering. For instance, in Amos and the other prophets, there is suffering because God is directly punishing people for their sins. But in books like Job, there is suffering because God is "teaching a lesson." Therefore, when we look at tragedies like a great earthquake, is God punishing them for their sins, or teaching them a lesson? According to Ehrman, we simply cannot know based on the Bible.

Video discussed on Bart Ehrman's Foundation Blog: http://ehrmanblog.org/?p=11710

Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. A graduate of Wheaton College (Illinois), Professor Ehrman received both his Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude.

Michael L. Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a visiting or adjunct professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary (Charlotte), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Fuller Theological Seminary, Denver Theological Seminary, the King’s Seminary, and Regent University School of Divinity, and he has contributed numerous articles to scholarly publications, including the Oxford Dictionary of Jewish Religion and the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.

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