A High-Level Intellectual with an Infuriating "Solution" to the Problem of Suffering

[00:00:01] Speaker A: A high level intellectual with an infuriating solution to why there is suffering, written by Bart Ehrman, read by Ken Teutch. A blog member recently commented on a radio debate I did on the problem of suffering many years ago. Over the years, I've forgotten a lot of my debates, or at least what actually happened in them, but not this one. I found it completely infuriating, so I thought I would repost it. I'm happy to hear your reviews, whatever they may be. This is a radio debate that I had on January 10, 2009 with Richard G. Swinburne, a philosopher who teaches at Oxford. Swinburne is a Christian and is well known in philosophical circles. The debate involved an area we are both interested in, the problem of suffering and whether it makes sense to be a theist in light of the pain and misery in the world. I have to say this is probably the only radio debate that I've ever done where I got genuinely angry at an opponent. Swinburne's answers to the world's misery struck me as completely remote from any pain, the stereotypical armchair ivory tower rationalism that makes me wonder if some people have any empathy at all with their fellow human beings who suffer so terribly. In any event, the debate was moderated by Justin Brierly for his radio show Unbelievable, a weekly program on UK premier christian radio. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Good afternoon. Welcome along to the program. It's unbelievable between now and 04:00. I'm Justin Brierly, your host for this hour and a half. And if you're listening by podcast, Internet or live this Saturday afternoon, welcome along. This is the place where Christians and non Christians get together to talk. My thanks to all those who have gone before me, to Rick Easter, to David Rose, to, to Tony Miles, and there's lots more to come this afternoon here on Premier Christian radio. So do stay tuned. You're unbelievable, but do stay tuned. Right now if you're into christian non christian discussion, defense of the faith, etcetera, we've got back on the program. He was with us last week. Back again today. Bart Ehrman, he's a noted writer. He's the professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He's written a number of books, most famously misquoting Jesus, which we looked at last week. But his latest book, God's problem and how the Bible fails to answer our most pressing question, why we suffer. That's his latest book. We're going to be asking, well, are there answers from the Bible on why suffering happens? Why would a good loving or powerful God allow suffering. We're going to be looking at this in some depth with the help of christian philosopher Richard Swift Swinburne. He's an Oxford philosopher and two intellectuals meeting on common ground here on unbelievable. So it's going to be a really interesting program. And don't forget, you can hear Barthes program of last week online [email protected]. Dot uk unbelievable. That was when he met Peter Williams of Tyndale House to debate whether we can trust the New Testament as we've received it. Barthes book misquoting Jesus makes the case that we can't know the original words in many cases because of manuscript variation, the copies we have received, if you like, of the New Testament documents. But Peter making the case last week that in fact, what we have is actually very good evidence of the New Testament documents and we can really look at them as authoritative. Well, listen [email protected]. Dot UK forward slash unbelievable before we get to our discussion for today on the problem of evil, let me say that thank you to Arne in Norway, who says, I just listened to the podcast of Unbelievable from back on the 8 November where you personally challenged Richard Dawkins. Justin, I felt that the conversation between you two revealed some of those areas which Richard Dawkins does not want or does not have the ability to explore. The ways Richard Dawkins answered stood, in my opinion, in in strong contrast to the self confident way he makes absolute conclusions in the God delusion. But as the german theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed it, a God who let us prove his existence would be an idol. Keep following your calling. Thank you very much, Arne. Thanks also to Bram Poquette in the north Brunswick area of New Jersey in the USA. You say, Bram, that you're a listener from the states, and although a newcomer to the program, you say it's one of the highest quality Christian shows I've heard. As such, you'd like to suggest a topic for a future broadcast, Christianity and the problem of animal pain and suffering. Well, I'm sure you'll be interested in today's edition of the program, Bram, though obviously we're not focusing on animal pain, obviously more on human suffering. But you say here, Bram, that the subject is rarely discussed of animal pain and suffering among the christian community, either in popular or scholarly books. As a Christian who loves animals, I find this quite disappointing, not only for personal reasons, but also because it demonstrates a severe lack of concern among the christian community for the welfare of God's creation. Today, I know of only a single book that treats this subject directly. And that's you've said by Michael J. Murray, nature read in Tooth and claw, theism and the problem of animal suffering. Well, that will be a fascinating thing to delve into on another program. Thank you for alerting me to that book, Bram and I will see if we can organise something on that. Today. We're going with the classical problem, though, of suffering, and we're going to be hearing from from Bart Ehrman and his latest book, God's problem, why he lost his faith. What put the lid on him losing his faith was the problem of evil, the problem of suffering. We'll hear a response from Richard Swinburne, noted Oxford professor of philosophy. That's all to come. Father John Twistleton, first of all, though, answers a question all to do with evolution and creation in frequently asked questions. Frequently asked questions with John Twistleton. [00:06:14] Speaker C: How do christians square the theory of evolution with what the Bible says? We square the two by getting to grips with the heart of what both the Bible and evolutionary theory really say. I say the heart because if the biblical accounts of creation in genesis need interpretation, so does evolution theory. We don't have to choose between God bringing everything we know into being in hours or days and billions of years of a process run by chance. Most churches accept we need care in interpreting the Bible, lest we end up doing the impossible. Defending God. Very many scientists are also unhappy with the idea of evolution disproving God, because they see in this theory homage to his glorious purpose in the creation of the world. The Bible starts by describing the way the world was made. In a great hymn, with a repeated chorus, God saw that it was good. There are six verses for six days of creation, covering aspects from light through to human beings. Turn over a page and you get another, shorter version, more focused on the creation of man and woman. An Internet definition of evolution runs that it is the process of change in all forms of life over generations, so that organisms inherit features from their parents through genes. Changes, or so called mutations in those genes can produce a new trait in the offspring of an organism. If a new trait makes these offspring better suited to their environment, they'll be more successful at surviving and reproducing. This process is called natural selection, and it causes useful traits to become more common. Over many generations, a population can acquire so many new traits that it becomes a new species. The understanding of evolutionary biology began with the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's on the Origin of Species. In addition, Gregor Mendel's work with plants helped to explain the hereditary patterns of genetics. This led to an understanding of the mechanisms of inheritance. At first sight, the Bible contradicts this description of evolution. The Bible talks of six days of creation, whilst evolution theory talks of 5 billion years. Yet the Bible talks in poetry here and science talks in prose. The Bible talks not of the mechanical laws of the universe, but of who's behind the universe and what his plan is for us all. By contrast, evolutionary theory shows a purpose and direction to human history that should puzzle any atheist. So much so people are now talking about atheism in the gaps, or the need for atheists to tackle the consensus of today's science that there's an order and direction and by implication, a purpose to life on earth. How do christians square the theory of evolution with what the Bible says? There are broadly two approaches. One that denies evolutionary theory and one that accepts it with qualifications. Some extremely cautious christians go as far as to suggest God has allowed fossils to test our faith rather than to point us to his genius in making an evolving world. They can't accept any challenge to the literal interpretation of scripture, perhaps because any other interpretation would seem to give christian tradition some authority over the Bible. The other approach widely adopted is to see scriptural truth as of a different kind to scientific truth. Science deals with how things are made, whilst the Bible deals with why things were made. The Bible and its God given supplement nature are to be taken together and not allowed to be rival interpreters of reality. On this view, creation is presented as something continuing rather than as simply an event. In the past, the french priest, scientist and mystic Theodor Chardin taught from the first chapters of Johns Gospel, Colossians and Hebrews how Christ holds all things in being and is bringing all things together in himself. He saw the whole cosmos as like a cone, with the movements within it converging upon Jesus as the apex or omega point. Our individual futures, the future development of the church and the whole creation rests in Jesus and is to end in Jesus. The evolution and connecting up of conscious beings into the sort of collective consciousness that we call the World Wide Web was actually prophesied in his writings. Though he lived long before the Internet. To hold christian faith requires no surrender of intellectual integrity in the face of evolutionary theory. Truth of Christ is an anchor that holds us, but it's also the greatest clue to the forward movement and fulfillment of the universe. [00:11:13] Speaker B: If you have any difficult questions about the christian faith, or have your own answer for the frequently asked question we looked at today, please visit www.premier.org dot Uk faq. Unbelievable. With Justin Brierly well, welcome along to the programme, and it's, it's a pleasure to have back with me in the studio, Bart Ehrman, for this edition of the program. Last week we were looking at misquoting Jesus, but his most recent publication is God's problem, and the subtitle is how the Bible fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. It's available via Harper one. And it's a question that's been asked for millennia, I suppose, and continues to be asked today and probably ranks among the top questions people have when it comes to objections to the existence of God. An all loving, all powerful God, allow the level of suffering we see in the world around us. And that is fundamental to Barthes book and the way he sees the Bible. Failing to answer that question, Barthes, from that description, you can probably tell he's not a Christian. He once was, and we'll find out from him why this particular issue was fundamental to him actually abandoning his faith in the end. Richard Swinburne is our Christian on the phone today with us. Richard has a long and distinguished career in philosophy and the explanation of christian doctrines. He is the Nolath professor of philosophy of the christian religion at the University of Oxford. He's been doing that since 1985 and has written, as I say, extensively on philosophical issues and justifications for the central claims of the christian faith. So two extremely noted and, well, academic guests with me on the program today. Again, a real treat for you. So if you want to read a book by Richard on suffering and the problem of evil, perhaps Providence and the problem of evil is a good place to start. That's also available via Amazon, via the premier shop, etcetera. So let's, first of all, before we hear from Richard again, come to Bart. Bart, thank you for joining us again on the program. Thanks for having me. Now, I found again that this book, similar to last week's one with misquoting Jesus, has a certain autobiographical element to it. Certainly in the introduction to the book, you describe how your faith really, you abandoned it because of the problem of evil and this question of how can a loving or powerful God allow suffering? So take us through, as it were, what happened? Obviously, you had already abandoned your belief in the inerrancy of scripture, the authority of scripture, because of the issues we were talking about last week. But what happened to, as it were, put the lid on your deconversion? [00:14:13] Speaker D: Yes, my deconversion. I have a friend who said that I went from being born again to being dead again. So, yeah, I had started out as a young adult, as a very strong evangelical Christian. But then, for reasons that we were talking about last week, I began to think that the Bible wasn't the inerrant revelation from God. And I became a fairly liberal Christian for probably 15 years where I thought that the Bible was important and I thought God was still active in the world, that God answered prayer, that God had provided salvation through the death of Christ. So I believed the traditional christian doctrines about that time, about, I don't know, some years, five or six years after abandoning my evangelical faith, I was actually the pastor of the church in Princeton, New Jersey. I was just finishing up my PhD at the Princeton Theological Seminary, and I was also teaching part time at Rutgers University in New Jersey. And one of the courses that I was asked to teach was a course called the problem of suffering in the biblical traditions. That was to deal with how different biblical authors talked about this problem of suffering. Namely, if God is a powerful God and Israel is his people, or the christians are his people, why is it that they're suffering in the world, according to the authors of the Bible? And so we went through various solutions to this problem of why there's suffering in the Bible. And that was what the class was all about. It got me started, starting to think seriously about this problem of suffering. I read widely in what biblical scholars and theologians had said about this problem. I read what some philosophers had said about the problem. I tried to read widely on the problem, especially in the biblical and theological traditions. And after a while, I just became increasingly dissatisfied with the answers, especially the answers of the Bible. It started making less and less sense to me that there was a God who was active in this world, either in bringing salvation through Christ or in answering prayer. Today, given the enormity of suffering in the world. And I got to a place where I simply couldn't believe it anymore. Looking around the world, I simply didn't think that there was a God who was in any way in charge of it. [00:16:44] Speaker B: I mean, there are obviously many people, you're an intellectual, extremely bright, but there are also many others, you know, with similar intellectual abilities, but who for them, don't share your conclusions. In fact, your wife would be one of them. And you mentioned in the introduction that your wife is a Christian and that she doesn't hold the same view as you. I mean, for you, though, you just can't understand why another person wouldn't see it the same way. [00:17:12] Speaker D: Well, it's, you know, I tell people that faith isn't a matter of smarts, it's not a question of intelligence, because there are people who are far more intelligent than me who remain believers and for whom this problem of suffering simply isn't an enormous problem. And yeah, my wife's a good example. She is an intellectual. She's actually a Brit, trained at Oxford and at King's College, teaches in the States, teaches medieval english literature, and is active in christian circles and writes on theology. She's smart, but this problem doesn't cause her problems, but it causes me problems. So it's not that I think that everybody should agree with me, it's that personally, I don't see how there can be a God who is active in this world, given the state of things. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Well, joining us for the discussion today, I'm privileged to have on the line Richard Swinburne. As I say, he's got a long career in philosophy, and explanation really, of the justifications for central claims of the christian faith. A very good afternoon to you, Richard. Thank you for joining us. Let's start out, Richard, with a bit of your background. We've heard something of Barthes, but christian faith for you, has it been something that's been part of your life from a very early age? [00:18:39] Speaker E: Oh, yes. Yes. [00:18:41] Speaker B: Tell us a bit about that, how that started. [00:18:42] Speaker E: Well, I don't remember a time when I was not a Christian, though my parents were not Christians. Where I first imbibed it, I really have no idea. But yes, I have been a layman all my life for most of the time as a member of the Church of England. But in recent years, I joined the Orthodox Church. My religion has always been not so much Bible based as church based. I think the Bible should be interpreted in the light of the church's teaching and not the other way around. But professionally, I've always been a philosopher rather than a theologian. I did a philosophy degree at Oxford, research degree, and I've taught in various universities. My work on philosophy has been in various areas. Indeed, I didn't teach the philosophy of religion at all for the first ten years or so of my philosophical career. I taught other areas of philosophy. But for the last 30 years or so, I have been mainly writing on philosophy of religion, not exclusively by any means. And many of my books have been designed to make sense of the existence of God, what it means, how it could be true, and what is the evidence for and against it. [00:20:24] Speaker B: And obviously a large amount of that, I'm sure, invested in the problem of suffering because it is a perennial issue. It comes around time and time again on this program, and I'm sure for you it's been something that's been a lifelong pursuit. Was there ever a time when you did feel that, when you were perhaps first presented as a Christian with this problem, that it was in any way insurmountable, or have you never seen it as a ground shaking kind of problem? [00:20:57] Speaker E: I've never seen it as insurmountable, but I think there would be something morally weak about us if we didn't see it as a problem. See somebody hurting somebody else. It's a reasonable conclusion. Other things being equal, somebody doing the hurting is not a nice person. But, of course, you can be terribly mistaken about that. If you're young and you see somebody sawing somebody else's arm off, there's an inevitable conclusion that he's a very wicked man. But, of course, he may be a doctor saving a man's life by amputating a limb to prevent gangrene. And so you need to look into the circumstances a bit more. And, yes, I have quite devoted quite a number of years, one substantial book and a few other things which connect with that problem, and, I like to think, provide the structure of a reasonable solution to it. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Coming back to you, Bart. Obviously, the book focuses on whether the Bible provides any kind of justification or explanation, and your conclusion is that it doesn't or it provides a variety, none of which are compelling. I mean, we'll come to those in the course of the program. I mean, ultimately, though, many people struggle with, as christians struggle with the idea of God, that it is a problem, but it's not insurmountable, as Richard was saying. And they feel that there are explanations, there are ways of conceiving it, that we may still struggle with the idea that there is injustice and pain and everything else in the world, but to actually abandon belief in a God on whom so much would seem to depend, would seem to be throwing the baby out with the bath water, perhaps. Were there not other aspects of your faith which led you to believe in God that perhaps went against the, if you like, the evidence against God that you felt in terms of the argument from evil? [00:23:04] Speaker D: Yeah. For me, it wasn't a cut and dried situation where I sat back and sort of dispassionately considered the problem of evil and came to a conclusion and decided, well, now I'll leave the faith. There were many things in the faith that kept me in the faith and that I miss now that I'm not in it. So this was, in fact, a very wrenching, emotionally very wrenching experience for me to leave the christian faith, and it took place over a long period of time. As I indicated. For me, the issues really were more biblical and theological. I'm not a philosopher, although I have read philosophical discussions of the problem and have not found the ones I've read to be particularly satisfying. But as I said, this isn't an issue that everybody's going to agree on. I should say, though, that I get a lot of emails from people who have gone through a very similar experience to mine. And my sense is that this is one of the premier reasons for people deciding that the christian faith is no longer tenable given what we know about the state of the world. [00:24:21] Speaker C: Okay. [00:24:21] Speaker B: Well, we'll come to more detail about your particular arguments in the book here. As Richard says, he has already indicated he comes probably at a different angle to you as to where we should draw our reasoning from. You know, and it would be interesting to have a discussion on that aspect as well. Joining me today on the program, Bart Ehrman. He's our non Christian, and he's professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, author of Misquoting Jesus. We were talking about that last week. His latest book is God's problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. And we're asking today, does the Bible fail to answer that? Are there answers to the problem of suffering? Richard Swinburne has been Nolath professor of philosophy of the christian religion at Oxford since 1985, and certainly you can read his views on the problem of suffering in his book Providence and the problem of evil. They're my guests. One is christian, one is not. This is the program where christians and non Christians get together to discuss. So do join us again in a couple of minutes time here on unbelievable. You're listening to unbelievable on premiere christian radio. Welcome back to the program. I'm Justin brierly with you until 04:00 this afternoon with unbelievable. And it's the second time that Bart's been with me, Bart Ehrman, my guest last week, my guest today, as well as we look at his book, God's problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. And it has been a question that's been asked by people down the centuries, why would a loving, all powerful God allow suffering in the world? And there have been all kinds of reasons put forward. But fundamentally, Barthes feels that whatever reasons have been put forward, the Bible fails to answer the question satisfactorily. And we've already heard how that contributed to his abandoning the faith so, Bart, spell out for us how you see this problem, just for those who maybe aren't particularly familiar. But it's a fairly simple kind of argument, isn't it, as to why we couldn't believe in God, given the existence of suffering? [00:26:36] Speaker D: Yeah, I think as it's come down to us in our intellectual tradition, it's fairly simple. Some of the scholars of the Enlightenment dealt with the problem in fairly simple terms, which involve three propositions that most people in the christian tradition would agree with. Yet when you put the three next to each other, there appears to be some kind of inconsistency or contradiction. The three statements are that God is all powerful, meaning, presumably, that God can do anything he wants, including prevent suffering. God is all loving, meaning he doesn't want people to suffer. And the third statement is that there is suffering. And so how does one reconcile these three statements? And what people have generally done over the years is one of two things. They've either denied one of the propositions, or they've called in some kind of extenuating circumstance that can explain how all three can be true at once. So you could deny, for example, the God's all powerful. This is the solution found in probably the most popular book ever written about this by an american jewish rabbi named Harold Kushner, called when bad things happen to good people. That I actually used in this class at Rutgers when I taught my course. By the end of the class, the students started calling it when bad books are written by good people. But in fact. In fact, it is a wise book by very wise rabbi, who basically maintains that God wishes he could help you, but he can't. His hands are tied. And so that explains why they're suffering. Other people would deny that the idea of God is love is open to dispute. For example, in the writings of Elie Wiesel, God doesn't appear as a loving God in any kind of traditional christian sense, for example, in his book God on trial. And there are some people, of course, who want to deny that they're suffering, but there aren't that many of that sort in the christian tradition, although there are some. So the other way of getting around the problem is by saying that there's some kind of extenuating circumstance. And this is what you find mainly in the authors of the Bible. Now, the authors of the Bible, of course, don't have these three statements in mind, when these are statements have come down to us from the enlightenment, but they have the basic problem in mind, which is that God is supposed to be the God of his people. He's powerful, he loves us, and yet we suffer. Why is that? And there are reasons for it. For example, we'll go into these more later, I'm sure. But just to explain how this works, some people would argue that the reason they're suffering is because God is punishing people for their sins. So this is a very common answer in the Bible, and it explains how God can be all powerful and all loving and why there's still sufferings. Because God's all powerful and he's trying to make people to repent. He does this by creating suffering for them so that if they repent, then they'll be back on his good side and things will become good again. This is the view found on page after page after page of the Old Testament prophets, for example. And so it's an extenuating circumstance that can explain how all three things can be true. And so this is the basic problem that I think everybody in the christian tradition has to grapple with, how to explain the existence of suffering, given the understanding of God. [00:30:03] Speaker B: Well, you've spelt out for us, you know, the fundamental argument that exists and just given us an idea of how it unpacks for you in the Bible. Richard, you've, as I say, looked extensively at this issue. I mean, where do you come from? Is your response presumably the one that Barth would label the extenuating circumstance? That is, there is a way in which all three of those things can be true, but there is an extra, if you like, a clause or proposal which makes sense of them all being true at the same time. [00:30:36] Speaker E: Yes, basically. But I question the first premise. God is all powerful. The way this has been traditionally spelt out in the christian tradition by most thinkers is that God can do anything that's logically possible, that is, anything the description of which doesn't involve a contradiction. So God can't make me both exist and not exist exist at the same time. And the reason for that, of course, is it makes no sense. So I would then go on to say that there are certain kinds of good states which it makes no sense to suppose cannot be achieved without allowing suffering. And then I would develop what those good states are. So basically, yes, I think when the first premise is understood in that way, all three premises are compatible with each other. And the first thing that is important to notice is that ordinary good human people may allow suffering to occur so long as there's a good reason for it. I mentioned earlier the case of somebody who saw surgeon, who saws off someone's arm to save his life. Now the surgeon doesn't of course, want to cause suffering for its own sake, but it's a necessary consequence of the good action that he's doing. It's involved in that and it's great good to save a life. And the surgeon is doing it because the patients ask him to and he has the right to do it. And so we don't think he's doing anything wrong. On the contrary, we think he's doing something good. Now, of course, the limits on the surgeon's ability are those caused by physical laws. He can't save the patient's life except by doing this. God can change the physical laws, but he can't change the logical laws because that makes no sense. Now, there are certain kinds of good state which simply cannot be promoted without allowing evil to occur. The first and most obvious one of those is the good state of agents, people having a free choice between good and evil. You can't give people this sort of choice without allowing them to produce evil and more fully. What's really valuable is not the free choice in itself, but a free and responsible choice that is. It's a great good for us to have a great responsibility for other people, responsibility for our own children, responsibility for our neighbours and so on and so forth. But we can't have a real responsibility for them unless how things go with them really does depend on us. And it's a great good for us that we have this responsibility. It's a benefit for anybody that their life is of use. And God wants our life to be of use. He wants to delegate responsibility such a way that things do depend on us. And that means the possibility of suffering for others. Now you might reasonably say, okay for us, but we're not the victims. But we think that the only people who really have the right to cause suffering for others are those who have some sort of parental responsibility for the Mican or who are asked by the other person to do something which will cause suffering. I can take my child to the dentist, or indeed, if necessary, ask someone to saw my child's arm off for the sake of his well being. But no stranger has the right to do this. Now that's because why I have this right is because I'm in to some extent the source of the well being of the good things that happen to my child. I'm not just talking of a biological parent, but of a nurturing parent. And if that's right, then God as our creator has much more right in this respect because he is responsible for our very existence. And all the good that anyone can do to anyone else is due to his allowing it to occur. So he has enormous rights to allow us to hurt other of his children so long as he makes for those other children a life which is, on balance, a beneficial one. That is to say, he's got the right to allow us to hurt them in very great degree, so long as he provides other benefits for them. [00:35:47] Speaker B: I mean, it's a very kind of, in a sense, philosophical argument by which you're aiming to show that there is not an inconsistency with the idea that God would allow suffering to take place given that a greater amount of good, or a different kind of good, of more valuable good is produced when people are given that choice, that responsibility. And in fact, God is the one who, if you like, is the only person who is able to give them that right, etcetera. These, though, Bart, you deal with reasonably quickly in your book because you feel that they don't on one level engage with the reality of what suffering is. You feel that these are somehow perhaps ivory tower sort of arguments which don't actually engage with the reality of what suffering looks like for people on the ground. And a lot of your book is given over to just describing a lot of suffering at the end of the day. [00:36:41] Speaker D: Yes, well, that's right. And obviously, I think for Richard, this might be a foundational point, but it's not going to be his entire understanding of why they're suffering. Because, of course, taken in isolation, this understanding that free will can explain so much evil in the world is highly problematic. It doesn't explain a lot of things. And I think, especially Richard's point, that God has the right to do this so that when people, that people can suffer so long as their lives are in some sense beneficial. But when you look at the real suffering in the world, in fact, many people suffer for whom their lives are not beneficial at all. When I started teaching this course at Rutgers, it was in the mid eighties during one of these horrible ethiopian famines. There were 8 million people in Ethiopia at the time, and about one out of every eight died of starvation, starved to death, and one of many events of massive starvation. These people who starved to death, there was nothing beneficial to their lives. They died horribly, in great anguish, and part of it was caused by human free will, part of the reason for the famine. But sometimes famines are caused independently of human free will. They're natural disasters, such as we have all sorts of natural disasters, and the starvations continue. We live in a world today in which every 5 seconds a child dies of starvation. And I don't think that the free will answer can cope with this. The only other thing I'll say about the free will answer, I don't know if this is true for Richard, but most people I know who appeal to free will as an explanation for why they're suffering, happen to be Christians who also think that there's going to be a blessed existence in the afterlife. There'll be heaven after we die. And these people think that in heaven there won't be any suffering. That's the whole point. There won't be suffering in heaven. And yet they believe that there will be free will in heaven, that we won't be programmed as robots in heaven. People will be able to exercise free will in heaven. But this means that there's not a logical inconsistency between the existence of free will and a world absent of suffering. So that this could be something that God could have done, namely, created a world in which there's free will, but there's no suffering. And so this answer for me, even as the sort of foundation for a solution, doesn't prove completely satisfying. Although I will say that, of course, much of our suffering is because of how people treat one another. Absolutely. That's absolutely right. [00:39:30] Speaker B: What do we say, though, Richard, to natural disaster? Things that are not within the scope of humanity? [00:39:36] Speaker E: Yes, I was only giving the first stage of a full theodicy, that is, a full account of why God would allow the different evils to occur. And I have answers to all, I hope, to all the points that he made about that. But what you're asking first is natural disasters. Yes. Natural disasters give us certain opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have. If the only sort of evil that occurred in the world was due to the malice of other people, many of us, I mean, humans, are quite good on the whole. Many of us wouldn't suffer at all, and we would therefore lack a great deal of opportunities that we would otherwise have. Because the most serious decisions of our lives are as to how to deal with suffering ourselves. If I am in pain, I have a choice, a choice of whether to be very bitter about it or to. To be patient and cheerful about it. And you have a choice as to how to deal with my pain, either by being sympathetic or being callous. Now, if we imagine all the evil caused by natural evils, that is, evils of a sort that humans cannot currently prevent, removed, few of us would have those sort of opportunities. And because few of us would have those sort of opportunities. We would firstly not have the ability to make significant decisions in a large area. And secondly, one of the, when we make a choice between good and evil, it's not merely that the choice itself has great value and great value in its consequences for others, but it has great value in its consequences for ourselves, its character. For each time I make a good choice, it becomes easier to make a good choice next time. Each time I make an evil choice, it makes it easier to make an evil choice next time. And so I gradually form my character for good or ill. Now, it's an enormous good for us that we should have the opportunity of deciding the kind of person we are to be over a period. And it's only the existence of these really serious situations that enable us to take the first steps towards holiness. We wouldn't have an opportunity to be holy. [00:42:25] Speaker B: Is that really an argument, though? I mean, four years ago, tsunami wiped out hundreds of thousands of people. I mean, to say to one of those, the victims of that who's lost their entire family, well, it's giving an opportunity for people to do good in the aftermath. I mean, that's not going to sound very convincing, is it? [00:42:44] Speaker E: Well, one must distinguish between what one says to someone who is immediately bereaved and what, in a cool moment, one says about the situation. And I hope we're in a cool moment now. And in a cool moment, one just has to stand back and one has to say, all right, you think this is an evil which counts against God? Imagine a world in which that's taken away and all the consequences are taken away. Now spell out the differences fully and what you begin to realize is that a certain sort of good is lost. And God is interested not in humans living a reasonably comfortable life on earth, though of course he's interested in that, but he's not interested primarily in that. He's interested in us being saints, really totally dedicated people who love the good and pursue the good. And he's therefore interested in giving us opportunities for sanctity, for taking the steps towards sanctity. And the tsunami is just one of those situations which did provide that sort of opportunity for everybody involved. [00:44:04] Speaker B: I've got Bart here looking very pained, Richard, so let's allow him to respond and then we'll get into the biblical aspects of. [00:44:10] Speaker D: Yes, Richard, you're making me suffer here. [00:44:15] Speaker B: For your own good, though. [00:44:16] Speaker D: Yes, right. I think that, I mean, two points. Yes, suffering. We do have the choice whether we should be cheerful or not during the time that this broadcast will occur in an hour's time, there will be 700 children who starved to death in our world. And I simply don't believe that they have the choice to be cheerful about it. I don't think that that is a very satisfying solution. And to think that they're starving to death so that I can have a better character is, in my view, an egocentric view, that it's really all about me. Somebody else is suffering so that I can become a saint. I simply don't believe that. [00:45:03] Speaker E: Well, there's further moves here I would want to make. And this is a serious problem which can't be answered simply by saying, well, suffering is a bad thing. One's got to spell it all the way through. And there are various sorts of goods which are perverted, which we so far haven't come to. And one of the very great goods in life is the good of being of use to others. Not merely by what you do intentionally or what you do compulsory, but also by what happens to you. Now, let's take this in stages. Before almost all cultures except our own, in the present sort of hundred years, have regarded it as a great good for someone. If they were to be a soldier and be killed in a war, which led a just war on behalf of their country, which led to the salvation of their country from a tyrannous oppressor. They believe that human good doesn't consist only in the experiences you have. It concerns, in very large part, the use that your life is made, is made of your life. And they thought that someone who had served in that way had had such a valuable life that it was a real great good for him. Now, coming down, if our life is of some way of use to others, by our suffering as well as by what we do, that's a good for us. I'm not saying it's an overwhelming good for us. It's a good for us. A great good for us, even though not the greatest. Coming to the starving children. And please, you are inevitably going to think I am callous, but we must stand back. A large part of the reason why they are starving is, of course, because of a lot of governments, and western governments in particular, not doing anything about it. Not just governments, but all of us. We know that. And nevertheless, there by their availability to suffer, just as by the availability. And I'm going to mention this because it's always the case that comes up by the availability of the victims of the Holocaust to suffer. Not merely were choices made for other people, but because those choices were made for other people, it was a good for the victim that they were allowed to be agents who provided the opportunity for other humans to make choices for good or ill. If there wasn't the possibility of the children starving, then it wouldn't matter what we did with our money or with our lives or with anything. But because there is that possibility, it does matter. And those who are the vehicle, albeit the unknowing vehicle of this, are greatly benefited by that. Now, that's not the only reason, but it's a significant reason. [00:48:12] Speaker B: I mean, given that the timeframe and the scope of the programme, we probably won't be able to obviously unpack this to its fullest level. But it seems to me, Richard, that you're taking, as it were, a very kind of broad view, if you like, in the overall scope of time, what things contribute to goods and that sort of thing. I mean, when you come down to an individual starving child, it's obviously very hard to look at it in that, that grand sweep. And that's the difference, I suppose. And they also say there is obviously a difference between the emotional problem of evil and if you like, just a purely, as you say, cool, rational way of looking at it philosophically, and if you like, it's very difficult. You're not going to give a philosophical, rational answer to someone who has just been bereaved. That's not what they need at that moment in time. But, I mean, Bart, again, you've been looking very pained while Richard's been giving those reasoned, philosophical arguments for why there may be. There is a way in which we can view a greater good, a more valuable good, as coming even from lives which on the surface are pitiable and not good. I mean, for you, though, this is not something you're prepared to. To countenance. [00:49:30] Speaker D: No, I don't think I am. I think that the cool, detached approach to the Holocaust is problematic. To say that 6 million Jews were slaughtered so that I could learn to make good choices or so that I. [00:49:52] Speaker E: Could become more noble, but say that a lot of millions of people who started antisemitic activities over many centuries, if they had chosen otherwise, this wouldn't have happened. And the availability of people, in the end, to suffer, made their choices of significance. [00:50:12] Speaker D: They didn't choose to suffer. That's the point. They were forced to suffer. And we're talking not just about 6 million Jews, we're talking about 5 million others who were slaughtered. And to try and justify that on the grounds that it makes others good, I think, is simply trying to make. [00:50:30] Speaker E: Others the opportunity for goodness. And God has to make a choice of the sort of world in which to put us without being able to ask us, because he makes us without a character to start with. I simply don't believe God gives us the credit for thinking that he would want to be in a world where we suffered for the benefit of others rather than that we wouldn't. [00:50:54] Speaker D: I simply don't believe that these 6 million Jews suffered for my benefit. [00:51:01] Speaker E: Well, millions of other people, no, they. [00:51:03] Speaker D: Didn'T suffer for anyone's benefit. They suffered because of crazy Nazis who wanted to exterminate. [00:51:09] Speaker E: Yes, but God allowed the crazy nazis. [00:51:12] Speaker D: Only if you believe in God. The other option is that it happened because people do these things to people and God has nothing to do with it. [00:51:20] Speaker E: God is not arguable, unless you want. [00:51:24] Speaker D: To say that, that God caused these people to be killed, that God killed them, if that's the road you want to go down. I simply don't think there are very many people who are going to find that a very satisfying solution. That God sacrificed 11 million people so that we can be more noble. [00:51:39] Speaker E: God allowed them to suffer. God allowed other people to have a choice of whether they were to suffer. And it's not just Hitler and his henchmen. It dates back to a number of centuries of people who encouraged the atmosphere in which Hitler could flourish. He anyone who at the end is the victim of this, their availability to suffer in the end means that all these people over the centuries had significant choices. I'm asking you to stand back and say, well, suppose there were no such significant choices, then those people would be alive. Yes, indeed they would. And if they. If the end of life is simply to have 60 years on earth, then it doesn't really matter what sort of a life it is and whether we are holy people or not, then, of course, that would be a better world. [00:52:35] Speaker B: I'm going to have to just start to draw things to a close for this section of the program. So we're already over time, but we've really gone into some depth here on the philosophical issues, and obviously a very big difference in the way that it's being approached between yourself, Richard, and the way Barth deals with it, you know, in terms of not one, if you like, not being prepared to engage in the way that you would like him to, with sort of the big picture of overall, if you like goods and value, etcetera. What we must do in the next section as we come to it, is engage a little more with the substance of Barthes book. As far as how the Bible deals with the problem of suffering. And I think we would like to hear your response to that as well, Richard. So we'll aim to do that in the next section. You're listening to an edition of Unbelievable. As usual, a Christian and non Christian. Joining me on the program today, Bart Ehrman and his book God's problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question, why we suffer. We've looked at it from a philosophical angle up to this point. We'll get a little more detail on why Barth feels the Bible doesn't offer us an adequate explanation for this in a short moment. Welcome back to unbelievable, back to the problem of suffering with Bart Ehrman and Richard Swinburne in a moment. Let me tell you. Next week, though, start of a two part special as James Crossley and Michael Byrd join me. They're the authors of how did Christianity begin? A believer and a non believer examine the evidence. Very different views from them. Michael Byrd, our Christian next week, telling us why he believes the biblical account for the start of Christianity. James Crossley, an atheist historian who doesn't believe the account, will be hearing their different views and their debate at the same time. Next week, you're listening to unbelievable on premiere christian radio. Continuing on our discussion now of the problem of evil. It's been a perennial problem, and it's the one that Bart Ehrman tackles in his latest book, God's problem. But specifically Barthes, we haven't up until this point in the program been able to address the specifics about the way that you feel. Different parts of the Bible give different answers to the problem of suffering, none of which you feel are satisfactory. So just take us on a whistle stop tour of what those different answers are, in your opinion, and why they fail to satisfy, right? [00:54:53] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:54:54] Speaker D: So the interesting thing about the biblical views of suffering is that they don't correspond closely to what philosophers in our world are saying. Although, of course, there are theologians who would see continuities between biblical answers to suffering and modern, more philosophically based answers. But the authors of the Bible, of course, were not philosophers. They were people who were living in different contexts with different worldviews and different assumptions about God and the world. The Bible has a wide range of answers to why they're suffering. This is one of the interesting things that I found as I did my research on the book and as I thought about this subject for so many years. There are a range of answers, and some of these answers are not consistent with one another. Probably the most common answer you find in the Bible for why there's suffering is that God is causing suffering for people in order to punish them for their sins. This is a view found, for example, throughout the prophets of the Old Testament. There are other authors of the Bible who think that it's not God who's causing the suffering, but humans cause suffering for one another. This is more similar to the free will explanation philosophers in the modern period have come up with, that people do things wrong, and there are consequences for this that affect others. Some authors of the Bible think that suffering is in some sense redemptive, that the reason they're suffering is because this is God's way of bringing about salvation to the world. A key example, of course, being Jesus. The story of Jesus in the New Testament, that his crucifixion is what brings about salvation from sin. There are other people who think, other authors of the Bible who think that God, in fact, is not involved with suffering at all, either redemptively or in order to cause, to punish sin. But then, in fact, there are forces in the world who are aligned against God, the devil and demons, and other powers and principalities that are out to harm God's people. So that in this view, an apocalyptic view, God in fact is removed from suffering. And his role in suffering is to resolve suffering at the end of time, when he overcomes the forces of evil and sets up a good kingdom on earth. And then there are other authors of the Bible, for example, the author of the Book of Job, who thinks that the answer to suffering is that there can be no answer, and that we shouldn't ask about why they're suffering, that in fact, suffering comes as a mystery. And even to question why we suffer is to impinge on God's sovereignty. There is one answer in the Bible that I personally relate to rather well, which is the answer to the book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes, the author of Ecclesiastes, thinks that there is no justice in the world, that sometimes bad things happen and we can't explain it. The world is chaotic and sometimes we get in the way. Life is short. We're eventually going to die, and we should simply deal with life as best we can and enjoy it for as long as we can enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Suffering doesn't have any deep rooted meaning. Suffering simply happens, and we should avoid it as much as we can and try and make it so that others also can avoid suffering. So this view of ecclesiastes is one that, as an agnostic, I personally relate to. [00:58:23] Speaker B: I mean, we'll allow Richard to come and comment on that view of the Bible in a moment. I mean, one thing that struck me as very interesting from your introduction to the book is when you describe one particular Christmas, you were over again here in the UK, and you went to church with your wife, who, as you said earlier, is a Christian herself. And you say in this introduction, deep down I am profoundly stirred by the story of God coming into the world for the salvation of sinners. And so I was prepared, even as one who no longer believes, to find the service on this Christmas Eve to be moving and emotional. It was emotional, but not in the way I'd expected. Hymns were sung, the liturgy recited, the sermon delivered. What moved me most, however, was the congregational prayer, which didn't come from the Book of Common Prayer, but was written for the occasion, spoken loudly and clearly by a lay person in the aisle, filling the vast space of the cavernous church around us. You came into the darkness and made a difference, he said, come into the darkness again. This was the refrain of the prayer, and it brought tears to my eyes as I sat with bowed head, listening and thinking. But these were not tears of joy. They were tears of frustration. If God had come into the darkness with the advent of the Christ child, bringing salvation to the world, why is the world in such a state? Why doesn't he enter into the darkness again? Where is the presence of God in this world of pain and misery? Why is the darkness so overwhelming? And I just got the sense that you want the christian story to be true, but you can't see why, how even if it is true, that the state remains the same. [00:59:53] Speaker D: Right. I once believed that God, God did intervene in the world and continues to intervene in the world. I used to believe that God answered prayer and that God would resolve problems of suffering on large scale and on small scale. But I came to see that, in fact, that's not the case, that in fact people continue to suffer, that it doesn't matter how much somebody prays, there are still going to be 300 people who die of malaria every hour. It doesn't matter how much you pray, there's still going to be tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes, and there's still going to be genocides, and prayer doesn't matter for it. And it doesn't seem that God intervenes. And so reluctantly, I. [01:00:42] Speaker B: But even this story of God coming to share in that suffering, to share in that story, in that struggle, doesn't kind of in any way help you to understand how God does, if you like, interact. [01:00:56] Speaker D: And yes, that was the, you know, as I moved along in my christian faith, I didn't go immediately from a, being a hardcore fundamentalist to being an agnostic for many years. I believe that that was the point of the story, that God shares our suffering with us by suffering in the christ. But on the other hand, the point of that story is that God does something. God intervenes for us. He brings us salvation. And when you look around the world, I ask, where is the evidence that God intervenes? What makes us think that God interacts with us here? Unless the story of the Christ is just a history lesson about how God did it once, where is he now? [01:01:40] Speaker B: Well, two things then, to maybe respond to Richard. Firstly, Barthes analysis of the Bible overall, and this idea that there are different responses, different ways that different people try to explain, and God's interaction and etcetera. But also this, particularly the christian emphasis on the suffering God to the first one then. What's your view of the Bible and how we should look to it for answers to the problem of suffering? [01:02:05] Speaker E: Yes, I entirely agree with Barth. There are different answers, and I think there are different kinds of theodicy, different explanations for different kinds of evil as to why God allows them to occur. Certainly certain evils serve one good, other evils serve another good, and so on. So I'm happy with this analysis. Yes, I'm certainly happy with some of our suffering being divine punishment and some of our suffering having nothing to do with that. Free world events is fine and so on. There are many different answers. That is correct. That's because there are many different good reasons why God should allow suffering to occur and at different places. The Bible adduces different ones of them. There are reasons which he doesn't stress in his book, because I didn't find any reference to them in the index. The great value of suffering as character formation, for example, is the theme of the letters of the Hebrews, especially chapter twelve. But he doesn't talk about that. And the great value of somebody being used by God to show something as a result of his suffering comes out very much in the story of Jesus curing the man blind from birth in John nine, where the disciples asked, did this man sin or his parents that he was born blind? And the answer was neither of them. But the point of his being born blind was that God was going to allow the power and goodness of the incarnate God to be shown by Jesus curing him. So yes, plenty of answers. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Plenty of answers. Then it's just that God has different ways, different reasons for allowing suffering and the Bible gives us different perspectives on that. Is that a reasonable answer to why? There are different answers, presumably, though still none of them for you compelling to actually give a. [01:04:19] Speaker D: Well, yeah, certainly one could take that view. The problem is that some of these perspectives are at odds with one another. And so it isn't just that there are different points of view that can explain different kinds of suffering. Some of these authors have views that stand at odds. I would say that the apocalyptic understanding that there are forces of evil in the world that are creating suffering stands at odds with the prophetic view that God is using, that God is causing the suffering. Because in the apocalyptic texts God isn't causing the suffering at all, his enemies are causing the suffering. [01:04:54] Speaker E: Yes, but in any reasonable depends on which apocalyptic text we're talking about and so on. But the overwhelming biblical view and the overwhelming church view of how these ought to be interpretive is that any forces contrary to God are allowed to act only as long as God allows them to act. So there is really no incompatibility here. Do you want me to go on to the. [01:05:26] Speaker B: Yes, give us as well how you see the issue of if you like what Christ does in terms of in any way bringing us. [01:05:33] Speaker E: Well, the first thing is, of course if you, if I cause someone to suffer for a good reason, if I have to give an example, take a moment. But suppose there's a war and young men are called up, but parents are allowed to, as it were, veto the call up and keep their young men at home. But my son is called up and I don't veto the call up and it's a very serious war and so on, then I have an obligation to go and fight too, because if I going to cause him to suffer and be exposed to great danger, I ought to do so myself. So if God, for good reason, as I think, causes us to be exposed to suffering, he ought to share that. And the story of the incarnation is the story of his doing that. But of course, there is another doctrine there and that is the doctrine of redemption, and that is that the life and death of Jesus provided a redemption for our sins. I dont think it has ever been a primary doctrine of the church that is immediately going to end a lot of suffering. I don't think you'll find that anywhere in the New Testament, or if you do, you'll find it pretty soon interpreted in a different way by the church. And I say we must interpret the Bible in the light of the church's. Teaching, but it's a redemption for sins. And therefore, the point is that we have done wrong to God. If you've done serious wrong to a person, you ought not merely to repent and apologize, but you ought to offer reparation. If criminals have vandalized your house, they ought to be set to do to repair it. And we owe a lot to God for our sins. Reparation. But we owe so much, we've made such a mess of our lives that really nothing we could do would constitute adequate reparation. But if you owe something and you can't pay, someone else can pay the fine for you and the life, and I stress the life as well. The death, I think, is only of significance because the life was led so well that it terminated. Jesus was so honest and so promotioning of justice that it terminated in the way that he was executed for it. The life and in consequence, death of Jesus was the life that we ought to have led. And we now can say to God, except instead of the life that I ought to have led as my reparation, the life that Christ led, the life that you led in Christ. And therefore, we can take our sins seriously by offering a serious reparation, even if the reparation is provided by someone else. And God has said that he will forgive us. So that's quite a different doctrine. There is no guarantee that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is going to lead to an end of suffering, but it is going to make available to human beings redemption for their sins and so eventually lead to a better world, but not immediately. [01:09:18] Speaker B: I mean, I suppose that's what you're looking for, though, Bart is the obvious proof that God is interested in making our world better right now. And that's what you don't see in some sense? [01:09:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I think the biblical authors did think that. And I would say that what Richard has just given us is an interesting theological appraisal of the Bible. But the views that he's just now sketched out, in fact, are not views of the authors of the Bible. [01:09:45] Speaker E: I didn't agree with that in Hebrews all the way. [01:09:48] Speaker D: Yes, I know you don't. My profession is as a biblical scholar. I study the Bible for a living. And it is my judgment that the view that you've mapped out is one that is based on a theological understanding of the Bible that the biblical authors don't share. One view that the biblical authors do have is that the end of suffering is coming very soon and that the kingdom of God is soon to arrive in which there will be no more pain and suffering. This isn't found only in the book of Revelation, but it is certainly found there. I think it's also found on the lips of Jesus. And I think that the earliest christians did believe that, in fact, this age of suffering was very soon to come to an end. Or as Jesus says, some of you standing here will not taste death before you see that the kingdom of God has come in power. I think that Jesus really anticipated this imminent arrival of the kingdom of God, as did his followers, and it never arrived. What arrived was the church and the suffering continued and continues to today. So that if I think for me personally, if I saw God's activity in the world, if I saw that, in fact, there wasn't such massive suffering, which is hard for us to see in our environment because we live in fairly comfortable conditions, but in fact, in most parts of the world it's a miserable cesspool. I think if that were different, I might be more inclined to accept the christian notion that in Christ things were made different. [01:11:31] Speaker E: Yes, a number of convoys. Kingdom of God coming soon. Well, certainly as that quotation, many of you standing there will see the king of God coming. Power certainly implies that something is going to change in a big way. And of course, on the christian view, something did change in a big way because Christ was risen from the dead, and therefore God accepted his sacrifice that signified to humans that God had accepted his sacrifice for the sins of the world. Therefore this was available to us. But the idea that the end of the world with the end of suffering would come, certainly I think many of the early christians expected that soon. And if you preach that God is going to end the world and you get taken seriously, people expect it the next day. And of course, there are parables in the new testament which imply that that's not quite a reasonable, that people may, that it will come when people have given up hoping for it, and as they have perhaps now, we're going to. [01:12:49] Speaker B: Have to just start to draw our thoughts to a close. And I'll ask you both to, if you like, just have a nutshell kind of summing up as we come to the end of the program, it's been fascinating to kind of delve into the biblical side of this as well in this section of the program. So thank you both for being able to do that. If you're listening and you'd dearly like to get involved and give your opinion, and I'm sure there's many opinions out there on this, do get in touch via email that's unbelievableremeer.org dot uk. And if you'd like to phone your response through, it's zero 845-652-5252 select option five. Leave me a voicemail message there and I can play it out on next week's programme, unbelievable with Justin Brierly. So we've been looking at God's problem. Does the Bible fail to answer the problem of suffering? And what I'm hearing from you, Richard, is that the Bible has different answers, as you would agree with Barth, to suffering. But ultimately, yes, there is a philosophical dimension to this, and we see God's action in Jesus Christ as perhaps the ultimate expression in the Bible of how a good can come from even apparent evil and suffering. I mean, something, Barthes, that you've been doing is a while back, you had a dialogue with Bishop Tom Wright on this issue as well. And something that struck me about one of his replies was that the Bible doesn't answer the question, why is there suffering? But the question what is God doing about it? And that's the kind of answers that God provides in the Bible. And it is about the kingdom of God, and it is about us being involved in this process of bringing in the kingdom and the ultimate hope that is brought by the resurrection of justice and joy, etcetera. I mean, do you see that maybe the Bible isn't kind of there to give a kind of philosophical outline of exactly how one comes to an apologetic understanding of, of the problem of evil, but that God's doing something different there? [01:14:59] Speaker D: Yeah, I would agree that parts of the Bible are doing what Tom Wright says, that parts of the Bible are dealing with what God's doing about it. I don't think that there's a biblical view on that subject or on any other. So I don't think there's a biblical view of suffering. I think there are lots of different biblical views and that some of them are as at odds with one another. Where I especially agree with Tom, though, is that. Is this. My view is that even though the Bible doesn't give satisfying answers to why they're suffering, so that we. I mean, I think the book of job is right. It's a mystery. We can't understand it. And I think ecclesiastes is right, that it's the way the world is, and we need to enjoy life as much as we. As we can. In the meantime, I think both of those views are right. I think ultimately we can't have an answer to why they're suffering. And that we are fooling ourselves if we think we do have the answer to suffering. But at the same time, I think that even though we can't have a perfectly satisfying answer to why they're suffering, we can have a response to suffering. And that that's really what we need, is the correct response to suffering. And the response to suffering is to try and resolve it as much as we can, not simply to sit around and think about why it might happen, but to do something about it, to do something about homelessness, to do something about AIDS, to do something about malaria, to do something about poverty and starvation, and that all of us can do more than we are doing, and we should do more because the world is in a very sad shape and we're the ones who can improve it. [01:16:45] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Bart. Richard, any final thoughts from you as. [01:16:49] Speaker E: Yes, well, first of all, I agree, of course we should do something about suffering, and we should think we are very privileged to be allowed to do something about suffering. And. But my general comment is that I don't think Barthes seriously taken the background taken seriously the consequences of simply God simply creating a world without the possibility of people hurting each other and without the possibility of natural evils, because that is a world in which we have no serious responsibility for each other and no serious possibility of character formation. Now, Gartbart did make the point that, well, what about heaven? Wouldn't we be in that situation there? But the point about heaven is it comes after earth, and therefore we're only in heaven if we, given that we've lived on earth, if we choose to live and we have the opportunity of choosing whether on this earth, whether to make ourselves the sort of people fitted for heaven or to make ourselves the sort of people not fitted for heaven. And it's good for us to have this choice. And if we're in heaven and don't therefore have as a serious possibility doing evil, it's only because we've made it that way. There are two sorts of good states, the good state of us having serious choices of good and evil, and the good state of us naturally being evil, naturally being good. These are good states, but you can't have both at the same time. And the best of all worlds is where you have the first and the opportunity thereby of getting second. And that the christian tradition, is what we've got. Now, I'd like to end, if I might, with a parable which I've used in all my writings, which I hope may help you to see the point of this. Suppose you're in a world before this world, and you're given the world a choice of the sort of world, a sort of life you ought to have. Suppose one of the choices is that you are to have a life of short, life of extreme sensory pleasure, allegedly given by heroin or something like that. You won't have any choices, but you'll be extremely happy. The other life is a life where you'll have a lot of pain, such as the pain of childbirth, but in which your pain is the vehicle of the coming into existence of some great good which you may not at the time realize, for example, the birth of a child which otherwise wouldn't exist now before the world, this world. You're allowed the choice of which of these lives you're to have, and you're asked to make the choice, not the one you ought to make, but the one which would be best for you to have. And surely the answer is the one that would be best for you to have would be that your life, although painful, is of great value. And that's what I think this world's like. [01:20:16] Speaker B: It's a fascinating argument, obviously not one that Bart has agreed with in the course of the program, but it's been fascinating to hear the different ways in which this problem is approach spelt out so clearly on the program today. Thank you very much for joining us, Richard. Thank you. [01:20:32] Speaker E: And thank Bart very much. [01:20:33] Speaker B: And thanks also to Bart Ehrman for joining us the second time on the program. [01:20:37] Speaker D: You're welcome. And thank you, Richard. [01:20:38] Speaker E: Okay. [01:20:39] Speaker B: And take our good wishes back to America with you, Bart. And I do hope maybe next time you're around or if there's a new book in the offering, you'll let us know about it, and we could have another fascinating discussion. You've been listening to God's problem. Does the Bible fail to answer the problem of suffering? That's the title of Bart Ehrman's new book. It's available via Harper one. Do get hold of it. And while you're doing that, you might want to get hold of Providence and the problem of evil by Richard Swinburne, which is his view on how the problem of evil can be resolved in a philosophical way. Thanks very much for listening to unbelievable today. And don't forget, we're available [email protected] dot uk. Unbelievable. You're unbelievable. Yes, do check it out online. Next week. I'm joined by Michael Byrd. He's our Christian. James Crossley is our non Christian. Both historians of the Bible with very different ideas about how Christianity began. They've written a book, a dialogue with each other on why James Byrd believes in the biblical account of the resurrection and the start of a new christian community. And James Crossley gives his reasons why he doesn't believe that account. It's going to be a fascinating program at the start of a two part special next week. Do join me again between 230 and 04:00 for unbelievable. Subscribe.