Strictly speaking, Ehrman says that Mark describes events to Jesus is making a divine claim in a roundabout way - and even then he is not claiming to *be* God, only to be the Son of Man.
@@gurigura4457 That doesn't matter, since Ehrman claimed that the Gospel of Mark had no divine claim of Jesus at all and that it was devoloped over time, culminating in the Gospel of John. By admiting that the Gospel of Mark has divine claims of Jesus, he confirmed that his theory of a gradual development is wrong.
I think Bart Ehrman's arguments are interesting but not compelling. "Jesus never claimed to be God" "He does so in X, Y, Z spots, all of Jesus' disciples appear to have understood him to be claiming divinity, and this is basically the consensus position of all the Biblical authors and the Sanhedrin" "X, Y, Z spots can't have happened because they contradict my position."
@robertstephenson6806 "Origen was influenced by Plato and incorporated his concepts of saints in heaven, sinners in eternal torment in hell, and man has an immortal soul into church dogma in the 3rd century - none of which are supported by Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity was developed in 325 at Nicaea and 381 at Constantinople. Mary was decreed theotokos in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, and a perpetual virgin in 531 at the Council of Chalcedon". Matthew 3 13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Sounds like the Trinity to me. Luke 1:39 39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” Sounds like Mary is the Mother of God Incarnate, the 2nd Person of the Most Holy Trinity, to me. John 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. If Mary had other children, why did Jesus give Mary, His Mother, to John? Sounds like the Perpetual Virginity to me. Councils affirm what Christians already believe to be true; Councils are called to combat heresy. And Council declarations are rooted in Scripture. After all, the Councils affirmed the Canon of Scripture.
Actually no, he doesn't claim that in XYZ spots. Those are only the modern english translations written after the fact they assumed he claimed to be God. All references are saying 'son of man' or are embellished/implied by the other figures. Jesus only ever claimed to be A son of God (and that we all are).
@TheChekas A lot of it is. The problem isn't if it can be rebuffed, but who is rebuffing it. The common person doesn't have the knowledge or understanding of history to make it easy, but there have been thousands of Bishops, Priests and many others who have made counter to most arguments you hear
@TheChekas When I said I don't care, I meant that I didn't care to answer your question. Not that I don't care at all. That was just a gotcha argument, a cheap argument with no substance behind it. It's the reason why I didn't care to answer your not looking for a discussion, your looking to make yourself feel better
@TheChekas A gotcha argument is when someone purposely misrepresents someone in an argument to get them in a position that hold no benefits. Usually, people don't do it unless they feel insecure about their own beliefs and instead of having open dialogue, they instead misrepresent the argument so they don't challenge their own beliefs.
Bart Ehrman brought me to Christ. I was spiritually inclined towards Hinduism so I sought bias against Christianity. While reading one of his books where he exposed the discrepancies in the gospels, I was struck with the truth the gospels proclaimed. Nice work, Bart. Wouldn't have happened without you.
Yeah sometimes the people who are actually capable of critical thinking come across these videos and they have a counter effect our Father is so amazing he turns the enemies attacks against them. Welcome to the family brother or sister you will see just how many people truly care about this decision very soon
20:12 So Ermhan claims that Mark misrepresented the trial, because Jesus wouldn't have actually been accused of blasphemy because He wasn't making divine claims. That is, Mark edited it to indicate Jesus claimed divinity. Which means that by Erhman's own logic, Mark thought Jesus was divine. Edit: for those claiming I don't understand or misunderstand Ermhan, here he is saying Jesus never claimed to be divine in the Synoptics. ua-cam.com/video/CPj-AD6KVP4/v-deo.htmlsi=d65-1oFttkXfjxRx
The author of Mark does not identify himself, does not state when and where he is writing, what evidence he has access to, but what methods he envaulted the evidence to determine what was true, and writes in a different language than what the subjects spoke. In fact, the writing is religious text with a clear theological agenda that does not even claim to be a work of history, in that writer is not attempting to determine what actually happened vs. create a narrative of belief for existing and new followers). Scholarly consensus is that it was written in Rome about 40 years after the crucifixion based on oral tradition. On top of that, on the trial it is discussing proceedings none of the apostles would have had first had info about. So given all that, I wonder why you ascribe such high confidence that this text is accurate representation of what occurred.
@michaelstanet7453 That is all irrelevant to my point. I was referring to the oft-repeated claim, which Ehrman himself has said, that the author of Mark did not believe that Jesus was God, that this was a later belief that is now read into the text. But with the trial in Mark, we have two options: Either it is an accurate representation, which means Jesus made a divine claim in Mark. Then, regardless of whether Mark believed Jesus was divine, he records Jesus making a divine claim. Or it is not an accurate representation of the trial, and the author inserted that text. Which means the author deliberately inserted Jesus claiming divinity into the Gospel, which is a clear indication the author thought Jesus was divine. In either case, Mark indicates Jesus is divine, which clearly contradicts Ehrman's oft-repeated claim.
Dear@@michaelstanet7453 I think, perhaps, you are using out-dated scholarship. The best modern scholarship indicates that the Gospel of Mark was written by a man named Mark, who was writing down notes for Simon Peter's memories of what happened. I forget what the word is that describes such notes. The other Gospels are so much more polished, they are really complete "biographies" in the way biographies were written in the first century. Mark is a "rough draft", so to speak. Further, at this point, scholars are giving weight to the fact that every New Testament book was written the destruction of the Temple -- not one mentions the actual destruction as accomplished ("and so it was", or "and it is ruins to this very day"-- the way the Old Testament indicates the truthfulness of its historical claims.) That destruction of the Temple would have been the best p.r. possible for a "new" Jewish sect to prove its God-given validity!
@@susand3668 Really, because you seem to be using church tradition regarding authorship. I have no idea "what best modern scholarship" you are referring to establishing the identity of the anonymous written text, what his sources were, that it was meant as a rough draft or supporting the earlier dating. Do you have a source?
“Mark thought Jesus was divine”. That’s exactly what Ehrman says. The question is whether Jesus himself claimed to be divine, not whether Mark thought he was. Ehrman actually changed his mind (he now thinks that Mark saw Jesus as divine, in contrast to his earlier statements), but it’s irrelevant to whether Jesus claimed it for himself.
I found this video by searching for Bart Ehrman response because I’ve been watching his podcast series and I wanted to hear someone who thought differently. I really like how you quoted him and his book, you clearly put a lot of time and effort into this video. I’m not Catholic (or even Christian), but I appreciate the video and made sure to give it a like
I agree with Ehrman actually! If you throw away the gospel of John and the letters of Paul and you also throw away all the passages in the synoptic where Jesus claims to be God, then yes: Jesus never claimed to be God. Sounds like pretty solid logic to me.
@@kennethogorman5436 "Only an idiot" would listen to these world class theologians and new testament scholars? Yeah.. Okay bud. It's not within your atheistic naturalistic echo-chamber, so this is grounds for an "immediate dismissal" in your eyes.
Ehrman talks about later interlopations but if the gospels did not give a clear message about Jesus truly saying he is God why didn't they simply place the words in his mouth as he claims they have already done in other sections of the gospels?
This makes no sense. Ehrman doesn't claim John was written then amended with added claims of divinity. So why are you pretending his argument implies that should've happened with the other gospels?
@@88mphDrBrown It is part of his idea that a Divine Jesus is a development that only appeared in Jonh. It appearing in Mark disproves the whole idea he proposed
@@igorlopes7589 You seem to be having trouble understanding the substance of my argument, so let's try this again. Ehrman never claims John was changed or that any gospel was dishonestly written. He never claims they "placed words in his mouth" as if they were choosing themselves what Jesus should say.
The Son of Man is a divine figure in Daniel, "coming on the clouds of heaven" is what God does in the Old Testament. That's why they sentenced Jesus to death, they knew that He claimed to be the divine figure from Daniel.
It's just a phrase. There's simply no reason to suspect a miracle occurred because some people dozens of years after the fact claimed it. If that's your criteria, I have plenty of modern miracle workers that I can sell you, and they have better evidence.
What new ground or arguments do you think would be covered in a trent/ehrman debate that was not already covered in the Craig and Lacona debates that have already occurred.
@@michaelstanet745399% of debates are not new ground. They’re nailing in the coffin one specific person’s arguments for a belief against another specific person.
Thank you Trent! I appreciate this podcast as I’m just now about to take my first rites at Christ the King here in Tulsa ,Oklahoma. You give me a lot of insights . Again , much thanks
@@parchment543 Vatican Catholic, who’s name is Peter Dimond, is living in heresy as he is a Sedevacantist-he believes that the Catholic Church has gone astray as the current and/or current and previous popes have been incorrect appointments. Trent has already made a video about Peter Dimond and a separate one on why Sedevacantism is wrong.
Hey Kyle, thanks again for reaching me a couple weeks back. I’m still working out a few trials but I’m holding firm to my beliefs. I pray that I have the strength, faith, and intellect to put myself and my home back on the path of Truth.
_"...but I’m holding firm to my beliefs. I pray that I have the strength, faith, and intellect to put myself and my home back on the path of Truth."_ Why is literally worshiping cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice based solely on a fictional character so important to you?
@@EvilXtianity I could certainly engage with you about what I believe and why I believe it - but before we could even get there I want to ask you what would it take to convince you that the person of Jesus Christ is not only real and true, but so true that His gift of the sacraments are essential for eternal salvation? What would it take to convince you of that? If you would say there is nothing that would convince you, then I cannot engage with you about my beliefs. Anything I would say would fall on deaf ears and only those who listen can find the Truth.
@@rosslander96 _"I want to ask you what would it take to convince you that the person of Jesus Christ is not only real and true..."_ This isn't complicated; just provide the single-best evidence you have that Jesus existed.
Just curious, but specifically when did he say a written account describing group apreanace was in fact a actual event where a group of people all reported seeing Jesus but it was really a haulucantion they all shared. I say this because the argument I have seem him give is that stories of group apperance are not referencing actual events.
Also what group testimonies? Paul reported in his letter Jesus appeared to him (post ascension), does not specify others were there. The author of revelation also says Jesus (post ascension) appeared to him, does not say anyone else was there. What testimony of group appearances needs to actually be accounted for?
@@michaelstanet7453 1 Corinthians 13 mentions the 500 witnesses. Paul had 0 reason to make that up because people would have gone out to look for those 500
@@jordondaniels9276 Not really... Re-watch it a few times and you will see Jimmy did equaly as good or even better and Jimmy eveb gave Bart a high five... Not a good look for a "floor moper"
God is an outside force that can act on this universe. If I spin a wheel and then stop it with my hand, I didn't break the laws of physics, I was just the outside force that acted on the wheel to make it stop spinning.
Unless _of course,_ you beg the question by assuming that no God exists to stop the wheel. Which is pretty much David Hume’s Argument against Miracles in a nutshell. Hume is second only to the sainted Charles Darwin in worship and adoration by online skeptics and atheists. And his “argument” was shredded by his own contemporaries almost before the ink used to write it was dry.
@@dogsnoutwhat is the problem with a naturalistic explanation? There is absolutely no evidence that anything exists outside of the realm of naturalism.
@@Mark-cd2wfyou are question begging when you assume god exists in order to explain miracles. It is more rational to assume god does not exist when trying to explain natural phenomena because unlike god, we actually have evidence natural phenomena exist.
@@omegaxx7777 No issue with a naturalistic explanation. Look into how we get life from no life. How does water magically create RNA? If you are happy with the explanation then that's great. Best of luck
At this point, the most powerful part of a modern atheist’s argument is how they perform. It’s a performance. Dawkins mastered the smirk. Even as Dr. John Lennox picked him apart.
Thanks for doing this, Trent. I was very frustrated seeing these arguments get so much (seemingly coordinated) airtime. I was hoping someone else noticed. Appreciate you digging into this!
Good video. But one thing I'd say is why not just argue for the reliability of John? It is a good source. Also I think Ehrman could reply that Elisha knew what Gehazi said to Naaman, that doesn't make him God. I think we are better off bucking up and defending John as an eyewitness.
@@Molotov49John distinctly calls himself a witness multiple times and writes in a historical genre. He's not just 'literature''. Also, earlier doesn't necessarily mean better, and later doesn't equal embellished.
@@TestifyApologetics John is explicitly described in Acts of the Apostles as unlettered meaning illiterate which is most certainly accurate as only around 3% of the population of Roman Judea could read and they were not fishermen, and an illiterate fisherman dictating advanced theology in advanced Greek to scribes is quite unlikely.
@@tomasrocha61391) your entire premise of “unlikely” requires assumptions that you can’t substantiate. 2) the Sanhedrin called them “uneducated”(Acts 4:13) not illiterate. Again, you require assumptions to make your point. Even if you make the assumption that John didn’t know how to write, it’s very possible that in his old age, he not only was more intelligent and wise from decades of ministry and experience, he also would have been able to communicate that to a scribe. If Obama were to write about his college experience decades later, does that mean it would be unreliable because he’s older and decades removed from that time? No. There’s no reason to doubt the authenticity of John or his ability to potentially have learned to write, or at the very least, dictate his eyewitness account along with his theology taught to him by Christ that he preached and taught for decades.
@@c2s2942 Agrammatoi (ἀγράμματοι) is very often used to mean unlettered or illiterate and the vast majority of people were illiterate. The Gospel of John is a carefully composed Greco-Roman biography in good Greek, it's nothing like spoken eyewitness testimony.
Bart is ironically great for Christianity because his reasons for atheism are fooling and yet he admits jesus' god claims and also admitted that the bible manuscripts are the best resources of any writing's of the ancient world
Let me get this straight what’s good for anyone who says this Christ did and said a thing, in this book we need a deciphering from a Catholic apologist like Trent proves anything thing. If a King in a far away place requires you to love them in exchange for future rewards… it’s a scam. Trent doesn’t pass the threshold this isn’t a scam and Bart strengthens that threshold by pointing out the centuries past reason many follow this scam. Eliminate the possibility your holy book isn’t deception, it’s important.
I don't get it. Acknowledgement of Jesus potentially claiming to be God, has no real bearing on wether or not he was. There have been many people that claim to be Jesus. Does us acknowledging that this is their claim, make it any more likely they are in fact Jesus?
@@brianburke1551 I disagree, since the claim of a resurrection and the claim of supernatural miracles are spurious at best themselves. This is wanting to have your cake and eat it to. The suggestion one supernatural claims for which we have no good evidence is slightly better than another super natural claim for which we have even worse sets of evidence, does not speak to the validity of the first claim. Comparison in this sense.....does not matter.
@@brianburke1551 Unfortunately there is no evidence that any of the stories of the gospels happened at all. It isn’t even certain that Jesus said any of the stuff that the gospels claim… which were written 40-80 years after Jesus died in a language that Jesus didn’t even speak. Ehrman would say that about 15% of the sayings in the gospels were actually said by Jesus… and even most Christian historians would agree that it’s at best a paraphrasing or interpretation of what Jesus said but not his actual words.
7:48 "This would be like Christians saying Jesus rose from the dead because Pope Gregory the Great said that he did 500 years after the fact." The earliest source of Moses is 1000 years after he allegedly lived...
Dr Ehrman has debated many Protestant Biblical scholars like Dr James White (who said after a debate, i paraphrase, 'that Dr Ehrman did not really consider his (Whites) argument, but just rehashed his arguments from his own books). Dr Ehrman claims that he lost his faith when faced with the problem of suffering. Thanks Trent.
What was so "eloquent" in Trent's response? Can you please be specific and provide 1 or 2 examples? Isn't this the same reheated Trent's "attack" lines? No eloquence to speak of here
There’s a difference between doing something that is logically impossible and physically impossible. We cannot imagine a reality in which a square circle can exist, because the definitions of such words are diametrically opposed to each other. Just because you can string two words together doesn’t mean that you have made a coherent sentence or has said something that can logically exist in reality. God is entirely logical and orderly. Christ is the divine logos - it is essential to his being. Thus, since God is immutable, true logic is immutable and unbreakable. However, since we can imagine a world in which physical laws are suspended, altered, or entirely different, it is not of necessity that they exist in the same way they do currently. Thus, they are not absolutely immutable in the same way logic is. We, since we are bound by physical laws, cannot suspend them. However, for beings that exist outside of physical laws, it is entirely possible that they can interact with this world in a way that defies physical laws since they are not bound by them. God, being the author of this physical universe and it’s laws, is entirely capable of suspending them in a miraculous event that is intended to give credence to his existence. Ehrman’s take is so easily refuted that it is a wonder why he still uses these arguments as if they just hit the ball out of the park. As it turns out, they’re missing the point.
But is it truly likely that an invisible magical figure that no can even remotely provide 1 piece of credible evidence as to its existence; created the world and monitors 6 billion people on earth every second of every day forever to make sure they are being good or bad ??? Yeah thats possible !! Doesn't Santa Claus do that ??/
I think I remember Dr. Bergsma said Ehrman’s breaking point was the Last Supper (Passover) being celebrated at two different times, but that can be explained by different sects of Jews having different liturgical calendars.
No, the problem is the Jesus' death takes place either before or after Passover, depending on which gospel you read. And if you mean deconversion when you say "breaking point", Ehrman himself says that it had nothing to do with the problems he sees in the NT.
It’s simple, in the early church one group of Christians believed that the resurrection should be celebrated with Passover which is based on the lunar calendar which changes. Another group of Christian’s wanted to celebrate on the anniversary the resurrection happened.
I joke but just want you to know your podcast is wonderful and essential. Also the last clip from William Lane Craig looks like he's about to do a carpentry demonstration at the local Home Depot.
Variants in texts are only a problem for Protestant Fundamentalists and inerrantists. If your religious epistemology is more sophisticated ,it's not a huge problem, because you aren't drawing on just a few phrases in the Bible to create a doctrine.
Time-stamp 11:55, 12:08 - authority to forgive sins 12:08 - While Jesus gave the disciples authority to forgive sins in John 20, a key difference is that eternal life is found in the **name** of Christ (John 20:31). We never see forgiveness of sins found in the name of disciples, but we do see forgiveness in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38). And this is the rule of the First Testament: we don’t find salvation in the name of an agent/representative of God, we only find salvation in the name of the true God (Joel 2:32). Notice in Exodus 23:20-21, that forgiveness of transgressions is connected with the true God’s name, not paired with the name of an agent or representative of God (Exodus 23:20-21). Now in the New Testament, we find forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ. 12:35 - priests and the sacrifice 13:00, 13:30 - an important detail 14:08 - 1 Kings 8:39, 1 Corinthians 2:11… Besides God, only a human being can know his own thoughts.
The Name theology is key. Think of the Angel in Exodus 23, the one who makes an appearance in Joshua, who had the authority to "pardon transgressions."
THANK YOU. I watched around half of the interview with Cosmic Skeptic and Dr. Ehrman just left a bad taste in my mouth. I was in the midst of a comment tirade on that video, but I deleted because a) UA-cam comments have never convinced anyone of anything, b) I'm not good at debates, and c) man was it uncharitable.
Have you ever considered that you’re bad at debates because your positions aren’t well thought out? You literally believe in fairy tales and are wondering why you have a tough time defending it.
His claim that reading the trial narratives gives clear indication that he was killed for claiming to be king of the Jews makes no sense. When Pilate asks him, "are you the King of the Jews?" And Jesus says, "you say so." Pilate immediately tries to release him saying that he finds no fault in him. He's either lying or just has terrible reading comprehension.
This occured to me as well, but because I was driving at the time, I couldn't be sure of myself. Thanks for reminding me to come back and double check that.
Why else would he be crucified by the Romans? The idea that the subjugated Jews somehow forced their imperial overlords to crucify one of them when they had the power to stone blasphemers is ahistorical
The best way, as far as I can tell, to demonstrate the fundamental difference between scientific impossibilities and logical impossibilities is to compare the mathematical physics of a video game to the mathematical physics of our reality. A video game designer could program a video game where the gravitational constant is larger, and thus all the playable characters in the video are also programmed with superhuman strength so that they don't die when they jump off cliffs when on a planet that is governed by a gravitational constant larger than that of Earth. Heck, the designer of this game could even design characters that can travel at speeds greater than that of light. In other words, the designer of this game would be defying the laws of physics, at least the laws in the reality that we know of. However, the designer of this video game could never create a right triangle that violates the Pythagorean Theorem, nor erect hills and valleys that violate the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, nor intererrupt the multiplicative relations between those hills that violate the Product Rule, for these laws are LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE and therfore impossible in our own reality, in any possible reality (e.g. a video game), or even abstractly.
@@acr164God is Omnipotent, but Omnipotence means to be able to do all that are possible in an absolute sense. And possibility in an absolute sense is defined by the absence of logical contradictions.
I have to admit that this was a good analysis of Bart's bad arguments, despite the fact that I disagree with much of Roman Catholic doctrine. Excellent work!
Does "bad Trent" know we don't have a single original MSS of ANY biblical book and so it is theoretically IMPOSSIBLE to verify claims that we have the "original wording" of the NT?
The old and new testaments were completed before the Bishop of Rome took over the church of Western half of the Roman empire. So please don't confuse the Roman catholic church with Christianity in general.
@@stevecinneide8183This does not invalidate reliability at all, we know about the stories of Alexander because of the copies, but they are late, and while the Bible is only decades after the stories of Jesus, this does not invalidate anything.
Only Scheinargumente - spurious arguments - as all of roman catholics arguments. Especially the misuse of mathematics and the christian narratives of appearances as historical facts!
In fact mathematicians like myself know that mathematics is not as absolute as people think. Mathematicians change the axioms of math all the time. If human beings can change the axioms of math, God certainly can
@@EvilXtianity the law of commutativity 2+3 = 3+2 3*2= 2*3 Unless you are in non-commutative group such as matrix multiplication, with matrices, A*B almost never equals B*A There is an entire branch of mathematics called Abstract or Modern Algebra where the researcher begins by taking one of the axioms of arithmetic and says “suppose I remove or modify, what happens?” The answer is “ all sorts of interesting things”
@@Michael-bk5nz _The answer is “all sorts of interesting things”_ But those "interesting things are immutable. That's the point. Wiki: Records of the implicit use of the commutative property go back to ancient times. The Egyptians used the commutative property of multiplication to simplify computing products. Euclid is known to have assumed the commutative property of multiplication in his book Elements. Formal uses of the commutative property arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when mathematicians began to work on a theory of functions. Today the commutative property is a well-known and basic property used in most branches of mathematics.
@@EvilXtianity very few mathematicians believe that mathematics is immutable, most mathematicians are constructivists, and non-commutative and even non-associative structures are very common, non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry are very broad fields and are an active area of research
You're missing the point. The axioms can be arbitrary, but the pursuit of math is still pure logic applied to platonic forms. You can't actually construct a mathematics where 2+2=5, for example. Instead, you can only equivocate on symbols to represent the same platonic interactions.
I remember, VERY WELL, when I was in grade-five school class that our physics teacher explained to us that for every mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, grammatical, etc...rule there is, AT LEAST, one exception. Further, I learned, later on, that our GOD is capable to BREAK or temporarily SUSPEND these rules whenever, HE wishes to and without jeopardising the ALL or PART of the nature of our EARTH.
Yes, that God out regret and anger decided to kill men, women, and children because they belong to a different tribe...and drown the many of them out of regret and anger.
@@jazzffer When you comment, try not to be intoxicated with your shitty addictive substances. Do comment when you are awake and have a sense of reason (it may be NOT Applicable in your case).
_"Even if god appears in fornt of them they will still not believe."_ Yet you believe, without any evidence, that God walked around town for thirty years and then died and became a zombie and then the graves opened and the corpses and skeletons rose out and "appeared to many" and all of that happened without any of the locals noticing.
Just jumping in to remind people not to engage with Twitherspoon. He is a troll who uses a series of copy/paste arguments and will prefer insane theories like Paul and Josephus "likely" being the same person to any reasonable interpretation of the evidence we have.
Dr. Ehrman was my professor of the Hebrew Bible when I was in college at UNC Chapel Hill. He was resentful and bitter and told us all from the beginning that he was an atheist. When a course lecture focused on why Moses never actually existed the Jewish students literally got up in class and left because they clearly couldn't take his extreme cynicism anymore. His course was a really terrible experience and I dropped the class so I didn't have to be around him anymore. It was just so depressing. I had friends who stayed in it because they needed the credit hours that semester to stay enrolled full time and I can honestly say he really damaged all of our faiths. I honestly can't believe anyone takes him seriously. It shocks me when people reference him as a scholar.
That’s embarrassing for UNC. First off, he’s an NT scholar, so he shouldn’t be teaching the OT. Secondly, any secular institution should be taking a more pluralistic approach. I took religious studies at a state school in the early 00’s, and our professors were so unbiased in their approaches, you could not tell what beliefs they held. Imagine a professor at a state school attempting to shred Islam the way he does Christianity. They would never! It’s disrespectful.
@@patrickmeyer2598 Moses was said to walk people through desert, No contemporary Egyptian sources mention Moses, or the events of Exodus-Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure. The most plausible explaination- It didnt happen.
@@omegaxx7777 I heard its like losing a loved one, couldnt imagine it. Probably why they choose to live in a bubble and cherry-pick science evidence that helps them and then totally disregard the evidence that DISPROVES it.
Im a former Christian, pretty well studied, yet i do think Ehrman’s arguments are pretty bad. I also don’t totally enjoy his attitude about religions in general
My main issue with Ehrman is that he really seems to have an ideological slant in his popular work but pretends that he doesn't. I think a lot of it is in response to his fundamentalist upbringing which is understandable.
@@bengreen171 I don't actually and I never said Ehrmans arguments are tainted. I merely said that he has a bias but isn't open about it. Would you like to keep telling me what I think?
Comparison between mathematics and physics is just ignorant at best. Mathematics is an axiomatic truth, one plus one always equals two that is fundamental. However, physics is our best approximation at discovering what the baseline mathematics are to set universe. The fact that physics can change over time as our understanding deepen negates the possibility that physics in and of itself is axiomatic. Even our best understanding as of now in physics comes from an incomplete picture when considering something like the Grand unification theory or the fact that we still don't understand how gravity fits into quantum physics. Plus at a fundamental level even our understanding of physics does not negate the possibility of bodily resurrection. Because I believe it was Fineman, and since I'm using voice typing I'm sure that got misspelled, who said there is no fundamental difference between moving forwards and backwards in time so really just locally moving the energies and matter from one state to another would resume or could resume biologic functioning of a body. Plus, I've never understood the inability for people to grab the concept that a being that exists literally outside of our natural world would not be subject to the same limitations as someone who is in our natural world. The term supernatural literally means above and beyond the natural, so by definition would not be subject to the same limitations.
Erhman only brought up physics to argue immediately after that an event that cannot be explained or understood by physical law cannot be explained by historical methods, Trent just cut that part out.
How can something exist outside of our physical world, I.e. outside of space and time, when the definition of the word “exist” is to occupy space and time?
Jesus does claim to be God in Mark 14: 62-63. Jesus responds to Caiphas: And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. That's a reference to being God because God rides on the clouds of heaven. Caiphas responds with an accusation of Blasphemy - why blasphemy? And all the other members of the Sanhedrin concur.
I greatly appreciate your content, Trent. In an age of lack luster apologists your content stands among the greats. I was raised Baptist, but became an atheist/agnostic for most of my high school/college years. I recently came back to Christianity in a more Reformed Baptist tradition, then I found your videos that strengthened my faith in Christ, but also challenged my beliefs about Catholicism. I'm starting to lean towards possibly converting or atleast attend a few masses (as my only real experience with the Catholic Church was being a groomsmen in a friend's wedding). I would greatly appreciate prayers that God would lead towards what I should do.
Dear @wilbert9567, yes! Please do attend a Mass! I would say to sit up front, and never mind if you miss the cues about when to stand and when to sit and when to kneel, but you might not feel comfortable there! For my first Mass, I sat in the back. I had no idea of what was going on, and couldn't hear a lot of it either. But there was a of Scripture!! (We stand for the Gospel reading, by the way, out of special respect. Also, before the Gospel is read, we make the sign of the cross with our thumbs -- on our foreheads -- that God would enlighten our minds -- on our lips -- that He would control our mouths to only speak the Gospel -- and over our hearts -- that Christ's Word would enter our hearts and fill our hearts and move our hearts.) Enjoy!!
Hi Wilbert, just want to wish you the best on your faith journey! Seek good counsel from others and pray without ceasing! Don’t fall for triumphalism on both sides of the Protestant and Catholic debate! May Gods face shine upon you friend!
Bart Ehrman is just a fundamentalist who reached the opposite conclusion. His arguments are bad because fundamentalists don’t actually know how to properly study ancient texts. The fact that he rejects Christianity from that is incidental, as weird as it is to say that.
Like James Tabor, I get the impression that Ehrman is fighting a battle with the form of Christianity he had been a part of. His message of variants is much more disturbing to a Protestant, Sola Scriptura, perfect preservation fundamentalist. To a Catholic or Orthodox, the fact of scribal error seems normal.
If it’s just a language then you actually could just say 2+2=5. Language is not logical. It changes and mutates according to those who use it. Mathematical principles are logical and do not change. I mean, just tell me you’ve never taken any higher mathematics if you don’t think math is science…
Thank you so much for this video… please pray for my mind and that I can overcome the voices telling me to doubt. I’m a new Christian and became Christian through researching and reading, so when I stumbled across Bart the other day I got shook. I’m constantly dealing with a mind battle, the spiritual warfare is real, I just got baptized. I hate that I’m still looking for “proof” at times… I’m looking at this falter as a trial to grow in my faith, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger right? Do these doubts ever stop?
I watched the debate in the first clip and was cringing a bit when he made the "resurrection violates the laws of physics" argument. In addition to Trent's objection, I don't think it's necessarily even true in the first place, and he certainly didn't cite a law of physics that would supposedly be violated. Bass didn't really pick up on this issue with his argument either, or at least he didn't point it out clearly. In other places, Ehrman argues that miracles are occurrences that are so unlikely they cannot be confirmed by historical methods, and that is still a strong argument that can actually be supported much better. I don't know why he switched to the physics argument here. Ehrman is definitely not a physicist, so he should probably be a bit more careful.
I 100% agree here. The very definition of a miracle is the breaking whatever naturalistic law under discussion. The impression that in got is Bart seems to claim to know the mind of God as well as sufficient knowledge of physics to know for certain that it holds true under all circumstances.
That is on top of the fact that humanity doesn't have a complete understanding of the laws of physics anyway. The most brilliant physicists that we have still can't fully explain gravity.
Trent himself says the resurrection would require reverse entropy - so it would defy the laws of physics.But that's what a miracle is anyway, isn't it?
@@mikev4621 Trent isn't a physicist either. Entropy can decrease in a system if energy is supplied from outside the system. That's how air conditioners work, for example. In principle, if humans understood everything about how biology works and had the right technology, there's no law of physics that would prevent us from bringing a dead body back to life. Of course, that's not something we can do today and certainly not something anyone could have done 2000 years ago, so it would still require supernatural intervention (my definition of a miracle). I'm just saying Bart should be more careful about saying miracles break the laws of physics, since he is not a physicist and probably can't back up that statement. It's straightforward enough to make the argument that divine intervention can't be demonstrated historically, so he should just stick to that.
@@montagdp Good points, thanks.But Trent mentioned Entropy, not me- perhaps he shouldn't comment on matters beyond his competence. Yes, advanced science could bring a body back to life, but only be reversing the things that caused it to die in the first place.Ultimately they would tire, or run out of money, and that person would have to die at last, as we all must. Yes, perhaps Bart shouldn't cite The Laws of Physics; but that doesn't mean he isn't right- a capable physicist would be worth hearing. Personally, I believe a God could perform miracles, but I have heard of no believable instance of it ( apart from the fact that we are living in an ongoing miracle right now)
Wow! I appreciate Trent’s calm serious delivery for his arguments for the Resurrection and his arguments against the position of Ehrman that there is no resurrection! Thanks be to God that I was baptized Catholic and stayed! Ever-Virgin Most Powerful, Mommy, bring our brothers like Ehrman to the One True Faith! Saint Benedict, pray for us especially all atheist and non-believers! Monday, July 10, 2023
Hi, I’m a Christian who believes in the resurrection. I will never for the life of me understand why people think Bart is making an argument about the laws of physics-do people just not listen? What he’s critiquing is the methodology of horrible apologetics, and the inconsistency of saying “well this text says a miracle happened so it did” while on the other hand dismissing texts/accounts of miracles that don’t fit into our beliefs. To say you have HISTORICAL evidence for the resurrection, an occurrence that never happened again or before, you need to have better sources than accounts written by Christians. The other thing I’m confused by is the selectivity of historical scholarship. Apologists will gladly accept more “realistic” dating methodologies for texts outside of scripture, but rarely agree with scholarly consensus on scripture dating. The whole thing just feels like arguing backwards.
What additional evidence do you think there should be? It is hard to explain the conspiracy of Christianity with the apostles not believing that they had witnessed the resurrection of Jesus. And what were Paul's motivations? Additionally, Paul repeats the "cloud of witnesses" line which has been noted to have been a credal statement, something that was repeated to express the veracity of their movement. Why bother, if they didn't believe the resurrection had taken place? And the letters of Paul are very close in time to crucifixion. The historical case for the resurrection is better than the physics one. If anything, the story of Jesus is surprising well attested, particularly if the resurrection never took place.
To add to the physics argument, physics is incomplete. We simply may have not arrived at an understanding of physics that would not contradict the law and still allow for the resurrection.
I'm sorry but this is irrelevant. The very definition of a miracle is that it somehow breaks the laws of whatever you're discussing. Otherwise, we are left with Dawkins claim that everything that is claimed to be a miracle is really 'aliens'. Why couldn't an all powerful creator break the laws of nature for His purposes? It seems like Bart is making a fanciful assertion, as if he knows the mind of God.
3:05 Bart doesn't understand physics - if he had an inkling of what he is talking about, he'd know that the "laws" of physics are at best poorly understood. And in any case, they're just summaries of observations humans have made, not prescriptions from on high (not that a law God institutes would be binding on himself in the first place). When you get down to Quantum physics, you find that there are no absolute laws - instead, physics is done with probabilities. And maybe you won't find any examples of two particles occupying the same space with the same quantum numbers (not that you'd be able to tell them apart if they did) - but exactly what is it about the resurrection that Bart thinks we need this for? If he appeals to "muh intropy increases!!" then he'd better be prepared to tell me how life began. That's a "violation of the laws of physics" that we all *know* has happened. Why is it so hard to believe life can come from non-life when you already have a body there, if you believe life arose from non-life without so much as a body to begin with?
@@WaterCat5 I suppose it's impossible to have an "illogical" universe, but only because I can't understand or imagine one. So I agree, I'm a bit more hesitant to cede that ground. God can create the rules of the game, and play fair. But who's to say he couldn't make another game with entirely different rules?
Erhman only brought up physics to argue immediately after that an event that cannot be explained or understood by physical law cannot be explained by historical methods, Trent just cut that part out.
@@tomasrocha6139 that's an interesting nuance, but I don't think it makes his objection any less weak. Historical methods or not we all have beliefs about things. Erhman just uses "historical methods" to shield himself from criticism, because he can justify skepticism as his default position (whereas, a true default position is neither atheistic, nor theistic, but neutral). Again, taking his own standard consistently, there's no way to use "historical methods" to understand the origin of life. Yet life exists. Therefore we know that history isn't ever going to give us the whole truth, so it's a stupid thing to use as your basis for discerning truth. It's the sort of shaky foundation you plant yourself in when you're trying to justify what you already believe, rather than follow the evidence to the truth. I may be wrong about what's going on in Erhman's mind... but I'd rather attribute it to unbelief than stupidity. He's smart enough to know that it's just a cop-out.
At Mk 14:61 Jesus' purported blasphemy was His declaration that He was the son of the Blessed, for a son is equal to his father. So Ehrman misses the fact that a son is equal to his father (and that the Jews understood this) and therefore that Jesus was claiming to be God. This then accords with John 5:18, and both Mk 14:61 and John 5:18 accord with Paul's declaration at Phil 2:6 that Jesus was equal with God. Ehrman doesn't know how to join the dots (doesn't know how to rightly divide the word) for spiritual things cannot be discerned by the natural man (1 Cor 2:14).
Have you personally examined every miracle proposed by every religion? No? Those miracles are nonsense and you dismiss them because? Just because a claim is presented doesn't mean it's true. If we accepted christian miracles on the basis of what makes them true, then we'd have to accept almost every single miracle. How do you know Muhammed didn't ascend to heaven? Tons of people claimed to have seen it
I’ll confess I was a bit surprised at how bad Bart’s arguments were here, and I don’t think that watching any more of the original videos would actually help his case. He seems to be a smart guy (tbf I’ve only seen 3 other major clips from him), but made some of absolutely terrible arguments here. They straight up assured me even more of the Bible’s accuracy lol (also do equip yourselves properly with the word of God). Then i thought - he’s probably a bit of a showman. When you included the WLC clip and I was like “oh yeah, that’s it” 😂
The only way you could be "assured of the bible's accuracy" on anything except for a few trivial geographic details is to abandon honesty and critical thinking.
@@highroller-jq3ix and there it is, the random asserting and assumption that you, the random atheist online, have enough knowledge and intellectual capability to confidently make this declaration and undo 2000 years of thinking without actually adding a single new thought to the discussion 😂. A belief is already there -> you see arguments made by a scholar who is recognized as one of the best opposition to your beliefs but despite his general intellect, those arguments are genuinely terrible -> you’re left more convinced of your beliefs because the argument made against it was so weak that you feel more confident in your beliefs not having been discredited by such arguments I would say that’s a pretty fair, no need for dishonesty. Maybe I’m not the best critical thinker, that’s possible. But in this case I’ve found Ehrman’s arguments to all be easily defeated. That’s where my thinking has led. No offense, I’m sure you’re a pleasant fellow in person and probably a fairly smart individual, but some of you guys have seriously lost sight of the sheer magnitude of history and cosmic reality to the point where you’ve simplified your thinking and come up with this current brand of atheism.
@@schnitzelfilmmaker1130 "magnitude of history and cosmic reality"......is quite the interesting phrase. I'm not sure that it makes very much sense. What is "cosmic reality" and how would recognizing it be the opposite of simplified thinking as you put it? Arguments can be good and be bad on both sides of the concept of God debate. I'm sure not all of Barts are great. But his work in textual criticism is quite thorough. I'm curious what argument you found particularly bad? This video seems to cherry pick strangely. The reality (not sure how cosmic it is), is that God claims do not have real evidence, and one must resort to magical thinking outside of our shared reality. In particular the Bible makes so many demonstrably false claims and big fish tales, that it takes some serious mental gymnastics to not fall into cognitive dissonance. I am sincerely interested in what particular argument you found so flawed that it strengthened your faith.....faith not being a n actual tool to determine what is most likely so by it's very biblical definition.
@@vandalayindustries8036 sorry mate, I’m not going into this video again 😂. If I remember correctly, though, Trent does acknowledge that much of Bart’s scholarly work is respectable. If not, oh well I guess I remembered wrong. Or maybe it was William Lane Craig that said that. Was WLC’s acknowledgement included in this video? And I’m sure it is respectable, I haven’t taken a look at it in quite a while if I ever did. I know his reputation, but if I ever bother to rewatch this video I’ll let you know which arguments I found laughable, especially coming from someone of the reputation of Ehrman and even if i never dove deep into it, I definitely looked at some of his work before at least a bit and found them respectable. That third paragraph, though, of “big fish tales” and “magical thinking” is precisely what I mean by simplified thinking. You’re approaching the Bible with the assumption that it’s as simple as “magic” with all it’s attached stigma. It assumes so little of those who came before us on this planet (the magnitude of history) and I don’t know what assures you so much that God claims have no real evidence or what you specifically mean by that (the claims specifically about God and Israel in the Bible, the characteristics attributed to God such as “omniscience”, or claims that God exists in general) but int case I feel there’s a good chance you’re not really assessing the weight of how remarkable it is to be alive, to think while on this tiny planet amongst billions upon billions in one among trillions upon trillions of galaxies, how significant it is that we can love within that reality, how nonsensical it all could be at times. If science had not already told you about these things, or if you had not already known we do love and think (pretend you were somehow simply observing that), you might think it’s magic. The current brand of atheism simplifies it’s thinking so much that it sees something outside our ordinary reality and then mocks by saying as you said that it appeals to these “magical” things outside our “shared reality” but I would say a more precise phrase would be that it is outside our “ordinary” reality. It mocks without considering there are things they simply cannot understand, and that it’s knowledge is temporal and finite - and a very, very finite that is. Don’t you also know how much has been lost to history as of our temporary knowledge? The original experience of being alive in the ancient city of Ur is something that we cannot recover no matter what archeological evidence we might eventually uncover unless we pull off something magical and find some way to visit or see the past or something absurd along those lines or discover some reality-breaking truth about consciousness and time. There is your magnitude of history and cosmic reality.
De Consensu Evangeliorum. Augustine Most of Ehrmans arguments were answered approximately 1700 years ago. Maybe Trent is about to point this out. Good subject matter.
Hiya Trent, I had a question i can't find the answer to. I checked catholic answers as well but no luck. Why did Pope Clement 13 ban the French Encyclopedia in 1759? I understand you are busy and this is just one of many comments, but if you see this, please drop a response. Thank you.
Was my comment deleted? I'll type it again. 1) Bart Ehrman isn't hiding anything. Misquoting Jesus was basically written in response to the fundamentalist viewpoint of scripture -- think KJV fundies. Ehrman's point is that you can never get back to the originals. In the Introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman literally says that the differences in the manuscript are largely insignificant, but the fact that you cannot get back to the originals was a huge problem for the fundamentalism of his youth and put him on the path to doubt. "Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant. A good portion of them simply show us that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can today (and they didn't even have dictionaries, let alone spell check.) -- Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, Introduction, Page 11. 2) Are there two Ehrman's? Trent quotes Ehrman's scholarly work with Metzger. Apparently this is such a common charge, that Ehrman has already answered this question on his blog about that particular passage of the book. Here is his answer (ehrmanblog.org/can-we-reconstruct-the-entire-new-testament-from-quotations-of-the-church-fathers/): "These are Metzger’s words (kept from his first edition, I believe), not mine, but I would agree with them for the most part. The problem is that some readers completely misunderstand what they mean (especially conservative evangelicals who want Metzter to be saying something he’s not). He is / we are NOT saying that we can know ACCURATELY what the NT originally said based on Patristic citaitons; he is saying that most of the verses can be found in quotations of church fathers. MANY (most?) of these quotations are highly inaccurate though. I’m not sure if you know, but this is the topic of my PhD dissertation written under Metzger. He knew as well as anyone that we would not come up with OUR Greek New Testament (i.e., to look the same way as it does) simply by looking at Patristic quotations. Not even close. We wouldn’t even know whwere to start - even those of us who spent many, many years on the problem. (The apologists who say otherwise: do you know if any of them has actually done any research in the field? I don’t believe so. If they had, they wouldn’t be saying these things. Are they imagining that we have church fathers who quote the Gospel of John chapters 11-14 or something???) The one point I would reword of Metzger’s statement (this particular one) if it were up to me (to make this more clear) is that we would be able to reconstruct (inaccurately or not) “practically the entire NT.” That’s not exactly true. There are lots of verses in the NT that are not attested well or at all in Patristic citations. So it depends one means by “practically” the entire NT. Metzger meant that you could find most of the important passages attested. He didn’t mean 99% of the words of the NT!! Moroever, in almost every instance, a church father who quotes a passage doesn’t tells us where it’s from. So we wouldn’t be able to strng together our NT from their quotations even if all the verses WERE quoted, let alone know WHICH of the many quotations of this or that verse is actually the way it was orginally worded. But when I helped him revise his book for the 4th edition, I decided not ask him to change it, since I knew what he meant (having talked with him about such things for over a decade!). To my knowledge I have never contradicted myself between my popular and scholarly work. People who want to attack me say I ahve, but I don’t recall ever seeing an instance of it. In almost every case, it’s simply a matter of them not reading what I say carefully enough - a bit ironic, given the fact that they are stressing the importance of my words!"
As a Protestant who routinely keeps track of apologetics, I want to applaud you for being one of the first to upload a video in response to Ehrman’s errors, even before other prominent evangelical apologists, they’re supposed to have more time on their hands.
Protestants have been debunking Ehrman for years now! Michael Laconia had a 7 hour debate with Bart Ehrman. You're either uninformed or lying about being a Protestant that keeps track of Apologetics!
You completely misunderstand Bart’s current position on Jesus’ divinity. The video with Cosmic Skeptic (which is brand new) is his current beliefs. Using his book that came out in 1999 is incorrect. Bart has since updated his perspective, which you can easily find online through a google search on his blog. This is since at least 2021. He maintains that Jesus did not call himself God in the synoptic gospels, but that he did see himself as the divine Messiah and the Son of Man. I think you’re misunderstanding Bart’s position on divinity because Bart believes people of that time saw divinity as a sliding scale. And that Jesus saw himself as divine but not equal to God. At least that portion of the video is lacking basic research and understanding of Bart’s current position on this issue in order to dunk on him.
"Can God break the laws of physics and mathematics?" Answer: GOD IS THE LAW OF PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS. How much of physics and science does man know? Checkmate. DOn't try to pretend that you are equal to God. If this Ehrman guy doesn't repent, there is a very warm place waiting for him.
Don't be silly: as if God is going to be offended by Ehrman's inability to keep faith in the face of evil and the immense suffering of the world! At most, God will reprimand him for being a dishonest popularizer of solid Biblical scholarship. As for Hell, it's the height of spiritual pride and presumption for any of us to claim to know who, if anyone, will end up there.
28:44 Trent, with regards to Jimmy Akin responding to Bart Ehrman, Jimmy on his website did a good written response with many sections. However, in the section Who was Jesus's Grandfather? is a comment that is worth responding to. Other than that Jimmy's rebuttal to the claims of Bart Ehrman are pretty solid.
Voddie is good, sadly he also believes in Calvinism. But he stands up against women pastors, against gay marriage, for scripture...etc. Sadly he also is a calvinist
I don't know the person you're referring to, but it's always struck me with amusement how many self-proclaimed atheists have a real, palpable animus towards God.
This is why Muslims USED Ehrman. When Mohammed Hijab realized Ehrman smashed Islamic belief by saying, "I believe that Jesus was INDEED crucified and buried", Hijab looked crushed! What a mess up interview that was!
There are serious arguments to contend with as to whether mathematics are necessary truths, its not so closed and shut. This also goes for how contingent they are compared to some physical truths. Yes there is a difference between induction and deduction but you stated a much bolder and more difficult claim (though it is the mainstream one)
I don’t think Bart understands the difference between logical and nomological necessity. God can easily break the laws of nature because he contingently decided what they’d be. That’s not true of logic nor metaphysics.
I read a few of Bart Ehrmans books and listened to his podcasts. I guess I can thank Bart for helping me out of my fundamentalist view of scripture but I can also thank Trent Horn for helping me have a more a Catholic view of scripture. Let us all pray for Bart Ehrman that he comes back to the faith. Please add him to your prayer list. It’s open arms for when he comes back!
Thank you for this, Trent. Ehrman is the religious fanatic that our culture pretends Christians are. He is so blinded by his hate for Christianity, his text and historical criticism suffers astronomically as a result. Good work, God bless.
Wikipedia: Bart Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His degrees in Bible study include: September 2, 2014 - James A. Gray Distinguished Professor · Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985 M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981 B.A., Wheaton College, 1978 After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned a master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. Two experts disagree over what the Bible says and Proverbs 3:5 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” This is why I don't believe any of it.
As soon as Bart spoke of, "violating the laws of nature" I was like, ah ha! an eighteenth-century argument coined by Hume that has been debunked numerous times! How original!
It seems like Ehrman says that something “didn’t happen historically,” even if it comes from our earliest and best sources, simply because it doesn’t fit his theory. (Such as the high priest accusing Jesus of blasphemy.) It seems clear from Paul’s letters that the earliest Christians thought Jesus was God, and obviously the Gospel writers want you to think he associates himself with the Son of Man. So, why not go with the easy unifying theory that Jesus made such claims about himself, which would explain both the record of the Gospels and the earliest Christian beliefs?
The first argument doesnt make much sense. God cannot break the rules of Math, but can break the rules of physics? So he could make the gravity of the Earth be equal to the moon, even though Math is the principle to calculate a mass of a body? This already would break the laws of math and physics.
Hi Trent! Soon to be Catholic here so I have lots to learn and this video gave me a question ..You mentioned only God can read thoughts and provide some biblical evidence, but I have heard Catholics speak about Padre Pio supposedly being able to do just that. Thanks in advance if you do get around to responding. Love your work, you have helped me immensely on my journey into the Church.
Dear @Kaleb.F, only God reads minds. He can give the gift to whomever He wishes. When serving God's people in the confessional, Saint Padre Pio would sometimes be given the gift of knowing what the penitent was not telling him, but needed to for a full confession. All very practical.
3:35 "The laws of physics are not descriptions of ways reality has to be." You don't know this. Not at all. On what basis do you make this claim? How do you know, for instance, that there could exist a possible world in which gravity repels instead of attracts? How do you know that the speed of light could be different? You're just assuming and asserting this without any real evidence or reasoning. You draw this distinction, but I have absolutely no idea why.
Ehrman is verifiably wrong on one point. The Jewish priest in the Temple would merely announce that sins has been forgiven. They had visual proof that God was accepting or rejecting the sacrifices. See my references from the Talmud below, thanks to Sam Shamoun. This is also confirmation that after Jesus' public ministry began, God stop accepting sacrifices. This is further proof of Jesus's divinity. Talmud Yoma 39b The Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddik, the lot for God always arose in the High Priest’s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but *during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple,* the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest’s right hand at all. So too, *the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.* Talmud Yoma 9b However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed in the First Temple, *why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred during that period.* This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed.
1:34 - has Bart ever played FPS like counterstrike? There are hacks! 8:15 - Why isn't John 13:34 the new commandment both a divine claim and something expected to be off-screen in the synoptic Gospels considering this sums up the new covenant and supersedes Leviticus 19:18 & Deuteronomy 6:5, w/c sum up the old covenant? Cf Mark 12:34
In all honesty, as a Christian i think Bart's "argument from silence" concerning Jesus referring to himself as God is a very good argument and is a true exception to the general rule of arguments from silence. I find this a very difficult question. It surely presents a type of anomaly in the Gospels that demands a quality thoughtful explanation that i have not seen anyone satisfactorily answer.
Absolutely. This is not a typical "argument from silence" situation. Additionally, Jesus being God as well as the Father being God would have been a radically different God than the Jews understood (not the unbelieving Jews, but even the believing ones), and yet there is zero explanation of anything like "hey, I know this is different from what your concept of God has been, but here's this mysterious multipersonal God that has three persons yet one essence, etc...." There was contention and resistance about all kinds of things the Jews weren't used to, and yet this massive thing that has been fought over for centuries to this day.....just wasn't discussed at all and apparently was accepted without a blip. It just doesn't make sense.
There’s a terminology “messianic secret” refers to Jesus’s subtle way of claiming to be divine. Because he had to wait till the exact time to be sacrificed, and if he once revealed his identity openly, he would be immediately put to death according to the Torah (e.g. the case in John 8) But being subtle doesn’t mean he never explicitly claimed to be God. He actually did it multiple times even in the synoptic gospels, however in a very Jewish way, just as his methodology is Jewish. And readers in 21st century like Bart simply cannot understand those Jewish self-claims if they don’t spend large amount of time to genuinely study the OT and NT.
Great video, Trent. At the very least, we can say that the bible is pretty ambiguous on this and several other important subjects. Ehrman is obviously biased towards his claims and cherry picks. But he makes some interesting observations. I'm an atheist, but im fascinated by scripture and appreciate your honest take.
You know, stating that Jesus couldn't rise from the dead because this is scientifically impossible is got to be one of the most backward things to say. For a few reasons, but mainly because the ressurection of Jesus Christ is a *miracle* - something that is supposed to be impossible without divine intervention. Bible does not try to say this is scientific or whatnot - faith and science exist in parallel realms, they don't have to intersect. The whole concept of miracle is that it is something beyond mundane or natural in broad sense of the word. Arguing against Ressurection from such a stand point is completely pointless. Yes, this is impossible - and that is the whole point! P.S. And stating that omnipotent God cannot break the laws of physics he supposedly created is just very bloody dumb. You either discuss Christian God within the framework of Christianity - in which he can do anything, literally - or you aren't discussing the Christian God at all, but some kind of Bible fanfiction of your own making. Which is - yes! - a strawman! I am baffled by the amount of atheists who does not understand that - which is quite simple to understand concept, IMO - and yet pretend they somehow come from a reasonable point of view. No, this approach is anything but reasonable. In fact, this approach is outright stupid.
Ben Wirthington III, The Christology of Jesus (1990) builds a strong case for Jesus self-identifying as divine from the Synoptics, critically assessed by the tenets of form and redaction criticism.
Thankyou for this content Trent. I could almost believe it was God that brought me upon this video at this very time as i had come across erhman 2 days ago and it shook me a little. I even ordered 2 of his books. Thankyou for the work.
Bart is pointing to the truth. Jesus would agree, that he never claimed to be the only son of God or ever wanted to be worshipped as one. He always said 'ye are ALL gods' (not just himself).
Only a minute in. I like your stuff I love Bart Ehrman. Read his books, watch his Channel, seen all his debates & taken a few of his available to public courses. I look forward to you rebutting some of his most popular arguments (if you get to them). A good counter argument is always appreciated. I want to hear how you get around attribution of authorship. The authenticity of the disputed epistles, and each Gospel does have contradictions if you take them as individual works and don’t try to hermeneuticly reconcile them. (I hope you get to all three in this vid). Any thoughts I’ll post under this thread.
Here's the honest problem. Dr. Ehrman most popular books he dials down the scholarly language to ensure the books are received by the masses. I'm TRULY waiting for these UA-cam apologist to counter his *ACTUAL* scholarly work.
@@thedude0000There are those who've already refuted him. Testify and Trent are a few. Now is this really a hill you want to die on, average internet atheist dude?
After the vid, I don’t think defending Bass is a good move, I watched that debate & it was bad for the Christian side. I think reason and theology did a good job fixing Justins’s argument and giving better responds to Bart. The rest of this vid was fine but it didn’t hit Bart’s ready to go stuff. I have yet to hear a Catholic apologists of any Caliber tackle Bart’s best objection or is most common repeated comments.
Never forget when Brant Pitre got Dr. Ehrman to admit that Jesus makes a divine claim in Mark's Gospel during the trial
Strictly speaking, Ehrman says that Mark describes events to Jesus is making a divine claim in a roundabout way - and even then he is not claiming to *be* God, only to be the Son of Man.
Yeah it was so good😂
@@gurigura4457even ehrman in this video says that Son of Man is blasphemous as it implies Jesus divinity. Ehrman just argues that Mark made this up.
@@gurigura4457 That doesn't matter, since Ehrman claimed that the Gospel of Mark had no divine claim of Jesus at all and that it was devoloped over time, culminating in the Gospel of John. By admiting that the Gospel of Mark has divine claims of Jesus, he confirmed that his theory of a gradual development is wrong.
Came here to say this, you beat me to it lol
I think Bart Ehrman's arguments are interesting but not compelling. "Jesus never claimed to be God" "He does so in X, Y, Z spots, all of Jesus' disciples appear to have understood him to be claiming divinity, and this is basically the consensus position of all the Biblical authors and the Sanhedrin" "X, Y, Z spots can't have happened because they contradict my position."
@robertstephenson6806
"Origen was influenced by Plato and incorporated his concepts of saints in heaven, sinners in eternal torment in hell, and man has an immortal soul into church dogma in the 3rd century - none of which are supported by Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity was developed in 325 at Nicaea and 381 at Constantinople. Mary was decreed theotokos in 431 at the Council of Ephesus, and a perpetual virgin in 531 at the Council of Chalcedon".
Matthew 3 13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Sounds like the Trinity to me.
Luke 1:39 39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
Sounds like Mary is the Mother of God Incarnate, the 2nd Person of the Most Holy Trinity, to me.
John 19:25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.
If Mary had other children, why did Jesus give Mary, His Mother, to John? Sounds like the Perpetual Virginity to me.
Councils affirm what Christians already believe to be true; Councils are called to combat heresy.
And Council declarations are rooted in Scripture. After all, the Councils affirmed the Canon of Scripture.
Actually no, he doesn't claim that in XYZ spots. Those are only the modern english translations written after the fact they assumed he claimed to be God. All references are saying 'son of man' or are embellished/implied by the other figures. Jesus only ever claimed to be A son of God (and that we all are).
Since none of Jesus' followers attended the Sanhedrin trial it's all speculation.
Ehrman also has no idea was a true contradiction is.
@@mattm7798 Yes he does and he constantly points them out
The sheer arrogance it takes to claim that 2,000 years of Christian thought missed out on these silly little details is obscene.
@TheChekas A lot of it is. The problem isn't if it can be rebuffed, but who is rebuffing it. The common person doesn't have the knowledge or understanding of history to make it easy, but there have been thousands of Bishops, Priests and many others who have made counter to most arguments you hear
@TheChekas Don't know, don't care. History was never my expertise, nor will I pretend it is
@TheChekas When I said I don't care, I meant that I didn't care to answer your question. Not that I don't care at all.
That was just a gotcha argument, a cheap argument with no substance behind it. It's the reason why I didn't care to answer your not looking for a discussion, your looking to make yourself feel better
@TheChekas A gotcha argument is when someone purposely misrepresents someone in an argument to get them in a position that hold no benefits.
Usually, people don't do it unless they feel insecure about their own beliefs and instead of having open dialogue, they instead misrepresent the argument so they don't challenge their own beliefs.
@TheChekas If this helps you get a good night sleep bud, I hope you become well rested
Bart Ehrman brought me to Christ. I was spiritually inclined towards Hinduism so I sought bias against Christianity. While reading one of his books where he exposed the discrepancies in the gospels, I was struck with the truth the gospels proclaimed. Nice work, Bart. Wouldn't have happened without you.
What a bizarre and broken path to ideology. You clearly have the critical thinking skills of the average tree frog.
Yeah sometimes the people who are actually capable of critical thinking come across these videos and they have a counter effect our Father is so amazing he turns the enemies attacks against them. Welcome to the family brother or sister you will see just how many people truly care about this decision very soon
@@BaggerFood101 People who are capable of critical thinking never critically think their way to god fantasies. How is Ehrman the "enemy," psycho?
@@highroller-jq3ix didn’t call him the enemy read between the lines and again
@@BaggerFood101 Yah, you pretty much did. Learn how to punctuate a basic sentence, and then read your actual lines again.
20:12 So Ermhan claims that Mark misrepresented the trial, because Jesus wouldn't have actually been accused of blasphemy because He wasn't making divine claims. That is, Mark edited it to indicate Jesus claimed divinity. Which means that by Erhman's own logic, Mark thought Jesus was divine.
Edit: for those claiming I don't understand or misunderstand Ermhan, here he is saying Jesus never claimed to be divine in the Synoptics.
ua-cam.com/video/CPj-AD6KVP4/v-deo.htmlsi=d65-1oFttkXfjxRx
The author of Mark does not identify himself, does not state when and where he is writing, what evidence he has access to, but what methods he envaulted the evidence to determine what was true, and writes in a different language than what the subjects spoke. In fact, the writing is religious text with a clear theological agenda that does not even claim to be a work of history, in that writer is not attempting to determine what actually happened vs. create a narrative of belief for existing and new followers). Scholarly consensus is that it was written in Rome about 40 years after the crucifixion based on oral tradition. On top of that, on the trial it is discussing proceedings none of the apostles would have had first had info about. So given all that, I wonder why you ascribe such high confidence that this text is accurate representation of what occurred.
@michaelstanet7453 That is all irrelevant to my point. I was referring to the oft-repeated claim, which Ehrman himself has said, that the author of Mark did not believe that Jesus was God, that this was a later belief that is now read into the text. But with the trial in Mark, we have two options:
Either it is an accurate representation, which means Jesus made a divine claim in Mark. Then, regardless of whether Mark believed Jesus was divine, he records Jesus making a divine claim.
Or it is not an accurate representation of the trial, and the author inserted that text. Which means the author deliberately inserted Jesus claiming divinity into the Gospel, which is a clear indication the author thought Jesus was divine.
In either case, Mark indicates Jesus is divine, which clearly contradicts Ehrman's oft-repeated claim.
Dear@@michaelstanet7453 I think, perhaps, you are using out-dated scholarship. The best modern scholarship indicates that the Gospel of Mark was written by a man named Mark, who was writing down notes for Simon Peter's memories of what happened. I forget what the word is that describes such notes. The other Gospels are so much more polished, they are really complete "biographies" in the way biographies were written in the first century. Mark is a "rough draft", so to speak.
Further, at this point, scholars are giving weight to the fact that every New Testament book was written the destruction of the Temple -- not one mentions the actual destruction as accomplished ("and so it was", or "and it is ruins to this very day"-- the way the Old Testament indicates the truthfulness of its historical claims.) That destruction of the Temple would have been the best p.r. possible for a "new" Jewish sect to prove its God-given validity!
@@susand3668 Really, because you seem to be using church tradition regarding authorship. I have no idea "what best modern scholarship" you are referring to establishing the identity of the anonymous written text, what his sources were, that it was meant as a rough draft or supporting the earlier dating. Do you have a source?
“Mark thought Jesus was divine”. That’s exactly what Ehrman says. The question is whether Jesus himself claimed to be divine, not whether Mark thought he was.
Ehrman actually changed his mind (he now thinks that Mark saw Jesus as divine, in contrast to his earlier statements), but it’s irrelevant to whether Jesus claimed it for himself.
I found this video by searching for Bart Ehrman response because I’ve been watching his podcast series and I wanted to hear someone who thought differently. I really like how you quoted him and his book, you clearly put a lot of time and effort into this video. I’m not Catholic (or even Christian), but I appreciate the video and made sure to give it a like
I agree with Ehrman actually!
If you throw away the gospel of John and the letters of Paul and you also throw away all the passages in the synoptic where Jesus claims to be God, then yes: Jesus never claimed to be God.
Sounds like pretty solid logic to me.
Good one!! 🤣😂
That’s pretty much what he did with some of the divine claims in Mark. He just says that they were made up.
Please read The Case for Jesus by Brant Pitre, a catholic New Testament scholar. He tackles every single one of this issues and more.
Only an idiot listens to clown apologists lol
@@kennethogorman5436and yet here you are, listening to an apologist. So you admit you’re an idiot
@@kennethogorman5436 ad hominem doesn't make your belief right. Neither will selective skepticism.
@@dominikdurkovsky8318
Doesn’t make your belief right either. Nobody knows what the truth is nobody .
There’s no data to prove any of it
@@kennethogorman5436 "Only an idiot" would listen to these world class theologians and new testament scholars? Yeah.. Okay bud. It's not within your atheistic naturalistic echo-chamber, so this is grounds for an "immediate dismissal" in your eyes.
Ehrman talks about later interlopations but if the gospels did not give a clear message about Jesus truly saying he is God why didn't they simply place the words in his mouth as he claims they have already done in other sections of the gospels?
good point
This makes no sense. Ehrman doesn't claim John was written then amended with added claims of divinity. So why are you pretending his argument implies that should've happened with the other gospels?
@@88mphDrBrownEhrman once claimed that the earlier gospels didn't have a Jesus who proclaimed Himself as Divine.
@@88mphDrBrown It is part of his idea that a Divine Jesus is a development that only appeared in Jonh. It appearing in Mark disproves the whole idea he proposed
@@igorlopes7589 You seem to be having trouble understanding the substance of my argument, so let's try this again.
Ehrman never claims John was changed or that any gospel was dishonestly written. He never claims they "placed words in his mouth" as if they were choosing themselves what Jesus should say.
The Son of Man is a divine figure in Daniel, "coming on the clouds of heaven" is what God does in the Old Testament. That's why they sentenced Jesus to death, they knew that He claimed to be the divine figure from Daniel.
🇷🇺☦️🤝✝️But you DO know the correct literal interpretation of those verses on Daniel, right?
Jesus was condemned to death because they read about him in Daniel which was written 100 years later?
@@conradbulos6164 It wasn't 100 years later, blasphemer, so shut your trap & repent please
@@conradbulos6164 Shut your trap, faceless bot & repent
@@conradbulos6164 Daniel was written before Jesus was born.
Which particular law of physics is supposed to make the Resurrection impossible?
I'd imagine that the entropic (2nd?) law of thermodynamics would be cited. It doesn't, but it's likely what they'd think.
It's just a phrase. There's simply no reason to suspect a miracle occurred because some people dozens of years after the fact claimed it. If that's your criteria, I have plenty of modern miracle workers that I can sell you, and they have better evidence.
@@Arcticroberto9376If resurrection violates the law of entropy, abiogenesis is definitely impossible.
Yeah, very curious which physical laws dictate ensoulment, lol.
@@461weavile Pretty sure souls are understood to be non-physical, so the laws of physics would not apply to them.
We need a Trent Bart debate to settle this once and for all.
I'm almost positive they've debated before. Is they haven't, I hope they find time to do so.
@@Joker22593 you might be confusing this with Trent vs Richard Carrier
What new ground or arguments do you think would be covered in a trent/ehrman debate that was not already covered in the Craig and Lacona debates that have already occurred.
@@michaelstanet745399% of debates are not new ground. They’re nailing in the coffin one specific person’s arguments for a belief against another specific person.
Have you seen Jimmy Akin's debate with Bart from last year?
Thank you Trent! I appreciate this podcast as I’m just now about to take my first rites at Christ the King here in Tulsa ,Oklahoma. You give me a lot of insights . Again , much thanks
Praise be to God!
Have you seen vatican catholic refutation of Trent Horn?
@@parchment543 no I haven't. Link?
@@parchment543 Vatican Catholic, who’s name is Peter Dimond, is living in heresy as he is a Sedevacantist-he believes that the Catholic Church has gone astray as the current and/or current and previous popes have been incorrect appointments. Trent has already made a video about Peter Dimond and a separate one on why Sedevacantism is wrong.
@@461weavileRead my above reply.
Hey Kyle, thanks again for reaching me a couple weeks back. I’m still working out a few trials but I’m holding firm to my beliefs. I pray that I have the strength, faith, and intellect to put myself and my home back on the path of Truth.
Just keep praying and keep growing in holiness. God wants the best for you even if it doesn't feel like it at times. -Kyle
_"...but I’m holding firm to my beliefs. I pray that I have the strength, faith, and intellect to put myself and my home back on the path of Truth."_
Why is literally worshiping cannibalism and ritual human sacrifice based solely on a fictional character so important to you?
@@EvilXtianity I could certainly engage with you about what I believe and why I believe it - but before we could even get there I want to ask you what would it take to convince you that the person of Jesus Christ is not only real and true, but so true that His gift of the sacraments are essential for eternal salvation? What would it take to convince you of that?
If you would say there is nothing that would convince you, then I cannot engage with you about my beliefs. Anything I would say would fall on deaf ears and only those who listen can find the Truth.
God bless you Jack. I will pray for you.
@@rosslander96
_"I want to ask you what would it take to convince you that the person of Jesus Christ is not only real and true..."_
This isn't complicated; just provide the single-best evidence you have that Jesus existed.
I remember when Bart wrote off the numerous testimonies of Christ's resurrection as "group hallucinations".
Yes, because Bart was there
@@universalflamethrower6342 😂
Just curious, but specifically when did he say a written account describing group apreanace was in fact a actual event where a group of people all reported seeing Jesus but it was really a haulucantion they all shared. I say this because the argument I have seem him give is that stories of group apperance are not referencing actual events.
Also what group testimonies? Paul reported in his letter Jesus appeared to him (post ascension), does not specify others were there. The author of revelation also says Jesus (post ascension) appeared to him, does not say anyone else was there. What testimony of group appearances needs to actually be accounted for?
@@michaelstanet7453 1 Corinthians 13 mentions the 500 witnesses. Paul had 0 reason to make that up because people would have gone out to look for those 500
Jimmy Akin v Bart is still one of my favorite debates
Bart mops the floor with him
@@jordondaniels9276 Not really... Re-watch it a few times and you will see Jimmy did equaly as good or even better and Jimmy eveb gave Bart a high five... Not a good look for a "floor moper"
@@bluckobluc8755 Not really
@@jordondaniels9276I would beg to differ on that. Jimmy did quite a good job countering Ehrman’s claims.
@@georgenassif5777 That's just not true though.
God is an outside force that can act on this universe. If I spin a wheel and then stop it with my hand, I didn't break the laws of physics, I was just the outside force that acted on the wheel to make it stop spinning.
Unless _of course,_ you beg the question by assuming that no God exists to stop the wheel.
Which is pretty much David Hume’s Argument against Miracles in a nutshell.
Hume is second only to the sainted Charles Darwin in worship and adoration by online skeptics and atheists.
And his “argument” was shredded by his own contemporaries almost before the ink used to write it was dry.
@@Mark-cd2wf Agreed. If we assume that no God exists then we are left with generating a naturalistic explanation
@@dogsnoutwhat is the problem with a naturalistic explanation? There is absolutely no evidence that anything exists outside of the realm of naturalism.
@@Mark-cd2wfyou are question begging when you assume god exists in order to explain miracles. It is more rational to assume god does not exist when trying to explain natural phenomena because unlike god, we actually have evidence natural phenomena exist.
@@omegaxx7777 No issue with a naturalistic explanation. Look into how we get life from no life. How does water magically create RNA? If you are happy with the explanation then that's great. Best of luck
At this point, the most powerful part of a modern atheist’s argument is how they perform. It’s a performance. Dawkins mastered the smirk. Even as Dr. John Lennox picked him apart.
I think the number 1 is/was Hitchens
👍
Cosmic skeptic is now trying to copy the same mannerisms, hard to take them seriously anymore
@@thatsriiiiight4170 Their identity as an atheist is all they have. It has become their religion.
@@thatsriiiiight4170wait really? When did this start?
Thanks for doing this, Trent. I was very frustrated seeing these arguments get so much (seemingly coordinated) airtime. I was hoping someone else noticed. Appreciate you digging into this!
I lost it when Ehrman appeared as a cartoon character on Paulogia instead of his true appearance 😂😂😂
@@extract8058Maybe when you get how Paulogia built his channel, you’ll understand.
Bart's arguments are exactly great. It always makes me laugh when ppl take these stories seriously.
Trent can only dig his head deeper into his arse. Nice to se he made enough space for other people too. 🤭
@@extract8058 Why?
Good video. But one thing I'd say is why not just argue for the reliability of John? It is a good source. Also I think Ehrman could reply that Elisha knew what Gehazi said to Naaman, that doesn't make him God. I think we are better off bucking up and defending John as an eyewitness.
Because the synoptic gospels came earlier and tell similar stories. John is a work of literature.
@@Molotov49John distinctly calls himself a witness multiple times and writes in a historical genre. He's not just 'literature''. Also, earlier doesn't necessarily mean better, and later doesn't equal embellished.
@@TestifyApologetics John is explicitly described in Acts of the Apostles as unlettered meaning illiterate which is most certainly accurate as only around 3% of the population of Roman Judea could read and they were not fishermen, and an illiterate fisherman dictating advanced theology in advanced Greek to scribes is quite unlikely.
@@tomasrocha61391) your entire premise of “unlikely” requires assumptions that you can’t substantiate. 2) the Sanhedrin called them “uneducated”(Acts 4:13) not illiterate. Again, you require assumptions to make your point. Even if you make the assumption that John didn’t know how to write, it’s very possible that in his old age, he not only was more intelligent and wise from decades of ministry and experience, he also would have been able to communicate that to a scribe.
If Obama were to write about his college experience decades later, does that mean it would be unreliable because he’s older and decades removed from that time? No.
There’s no reason to doubt the authenticity of John or his ability to potentially have learned to write, or at the very least, dictate his eyewitness account along with his theology taught to him by Christ that he preached and taught for decades.
@@c2s2942 Agrammatoi (ἀγράμματοι) is very often used to mean unlettered or illiterate and the vast majority of people were illiterate. The Gospel of John is a carefully composed Greco-Roman biography in good Greek, it's nothing like spoken eyewitness testimony.
“This biblical account doesn’t fit with my own narrative…. Therefore, the authors are wrong.”
- Bart, essentially.
Also Protestants, essentially.
@@thisisit2878Can you explain/back that up?
" . . . but when the account does agree with my ideas, it is valid."
@@thisisit2878Also Catholics, essentially.
Wow, I can do it too. I destroyed Catholicism!!!!!!!
@@thisisit2878 LOL 😆
Bart is ironically great for Christianity because his reasons for atheism are fooling and yet he admits jesus' god claims and also admitted that the bible manuscripts are the best resources of any writing's of the ancient world
Let me get this straight what’s good for anyone who says this Christ did and said a thing, in this book we need a deciphering from a Catholic apologist like Trent proves anything thing. If a King in a far away place requires you to love them in exchange for future rewards… it’s a scam. Trent doesn’t pass the threshold this isn’t a scam and Bart strengthens that threshold by pointing out the centuries past reason many follow this scam. Eliminate the possibility your holy book isn’t deception, it’s important.
I don't get it. Acknowledgement of Jesus potentially claiming to be God, has no real bearing on wether or not he was. There have been many people that claim to be Jesus. Does us acknowledging that this is their claim, make it any more likely they are in fact Jesus?
@@vandalayindustries8036 not necessarily but the claims of being god along with all the miracles and resurrection make a solid case for it
@@brianburke1551 I disagree, since the claim of a resurrection and the claim of supernatural miracles are spurious at best themselves. This is wanting to have your cake and eat it to. The suggestion one supernatural claims for which we have no good evidence is slightly better than another super natural claim for which we have even worse sets of evidence, does not speak to the validity of the first claim. Comparison in this sense.....does not matter.
@@brianburke1551
Unfortunately there is no evidence that any of the stories of the gospels happened at all.
It isn’t even certain that Jesus said any of the stuff that the gospels claim… which were written 40-80 years after Jesus died in a language that Jesus didn’t even speak.
Ehrman would say that about 15% of the sayings in the gospels were actually said by Jesus… and even most Christian historians would agree that it’s at best a paraphrasing or interpretation of what Jesus said but not his actual words.
7:48 "This would be like Christians saying Jesus rose from the dead because Pope Gregory the Great said that he did 500 years after the fact."
The earliest source of Moses is 1000 years after he allegedly lived...
We aren't comparing Jesus to Moses(btw, whom Jesus corroborates). He was responding to Ehrman's fallacious comparison of Jesus to Romulus.
Dr Ehrman has debated many Protestant Biblical scholars like Dr James White (who said after a debate, i paraphrase, 'that Dr Ehrman did not really consider his (Whites) argument, but just rehashed his arguments from his own books).
Dr Ehrman claims that he lost his faith when faced with the problem of suffering. Thanks Trent.
We need to pray for him.
Pain proves you are not God.
He just wants to sound smart to advertise his books
Thank you for your eloquent response to Ehrman. I genuinely appreciate the effort and integrity you put into your work. Keep up the good work, Trent.
What was so "eloquent" in Trent's response? Can you please be specific and provide 1 or 2 examples? Isn't this the same reheated Trent's "attack" lines? No eloquence to speak of here
How can there be any integrity in the Catholic position? That's a contradiction in terms.
“Eloquent.” Lol. He sounds like any random guy.
There’s a difference between doing something that is logically impossible and physically impossible. We cannot imagine a reality in which a square circle can exist, because the definitions of such words are diametrically opposed to each other. Just because you can string two words together doesn’t mean that you have made a coherent sentence or has said something that can logically exist in reality. God is entirely logical and orderly. Christ is the divine logos - it is essential to his being. Thus, since God is immutable, true logic is immutable and unbreakable. However, since we can imagine a world in which physical laws are suspended, altered, or entirely different, it is not of necessity that they exist in the same way they do currently. Thus, they are not absolutely immutable in the same way logic is. We, since we are bound by physical laws, cannot suspend them. However, for beings that exist outside of physical laws, it is entirely possible that they can interact with this world in a way that defies physical laws since they are not bound by them. God, being the author of this physical universe and it’s laws, is entirely capable of suspending them in a miraculous event that is intended to give credence to his existence. Ehrman’s take is so easily refuted that it is a wonder why he still uses these arguments as if they just hit the ball out of the park. As it turns out, they’re missing the point.
Clearly that guy does not know the laws of thermodynamics. Just cause a thing has an a very small probability, doesn't mean it's impossible.
But is it truly likely that an invisible magical figure that no can even remotely provide 1 piece of credible evidence as to its existence; created the world and monitors 6 billion people on earth every second of every day forever to make sure they are being good or bad ??? Yeah thats possible !! Doesn't Santa Claus do that ??/
lol, and what law of thermodynamics proves raising a human from the dead?
@@SkepticShay Poincaré recurrence theorem.
@@dariuszgaat5771 that theorem's still not relevant to reincarnation as the same being. And it applies to an isolated system.
I think I remember Dr. Bergsma said Ehrman’s breaking point was the Last Supper (Passover) being celebrated at two different times, but that can be explained by different sects of Jews having different liturgical calendars.
No, the problem is the Jesus' death takes place either before or after Passover, depending on which gospel you read. And if you mean deconversion when you say "breaking point", Ehrman himself says that it had nothing to do with the problems he sees in the NT.
Ehrman's reason for apostasy is the problem of evil.
It's not two different calendars. Read Dr. Brant Pitre on this in Jesus and the Last Supper
It’s simple, in the early church one group of Christians believed that the resurrection should be celebrated with Passover which is based on the lunar calendar which changes. Another group of Christian’s wanted to celebrate on the anniversary the resurrection happened.
@@mavrickglo so...?
Hey bae heat up the waffle iron this one’s going to be 🔥🧇
I joke but just want you to know your podcast is wonderful and essential. Also the last clip from William Lane Craig looks like he's about to do a carpentry demonstration at the local Home Depot.
We all love your jokes thanks for posting them.
What does it mean, if a UA-cam video is firewaffles?
Variants in texts are only a problem for Protestant Fundamentalists and inerrantists. If your religious epistemology is more sophisticated ,it's not a huge problem, because you aren't drawing on just a few phrases in the Bible to create a doctrine.
Time-stamp
11:55, 12:08 - authority to forgive sins
12:08 - While Jesus gave the disciples authority to forgive sins in John 20, a key difference is that eternal life is found in the **name** of Christ (John 20:31). We never see forgiveness of sins found in the name of disciples, but we do see forgiveness in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38).
And this is the rule of the First Testament: we don’t find salvation in the name of an agent/representative of God, we only find salvation in the name of the true God (Joel 2:32).
Notice in Exodus 23:20-21, that forgiveness of transgressions is connected with the true God’s name, not paired with the name of an agent or representative of God (Exodus 23:20-21).
Now in the New Testament, we find forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ.
12:35 - priests and the sacrifice
13:00, 13:30 - an important detail
14:08 - 1 Kings 8:39, 1 Corinthians 2:11… Besides God, only a human being can know his own thoughts.
The Name theology is key. Think of the Angel in Exodus 23, the one who makes an appearance in Joshua, who had the authority to "pardon transgressions."
@@alonzoharris9049Christ and not the islamic Al-lah
THANK YOU. I watched around half of the interview with Cosmic Skeptic and Dr. Ehrman just left a bad taste in my mouth. I was in the midst of a comment tirade on that video, but I deleted because a) UA-cam comments have never convinced anyone of anything, b) I'm not good at debates, and c) man was it uncharitable.
Have you ever considered that you’re bad at debates because your positions aren’t well thought out? You literally believe in fairy tales and are wondering why you have a tough time defending it.
Do you have evidence for (a)?
He's pretty blech, isn't he?
His claim that reading the trial narratives gives clear indication that he was killed for claiming to be king of the Jews makes no sense. When Pilate asks him, "are you the King of the Jews?" And Jesus says, "you say so." Pilate immediately tries to release him saying that he finds no fault in him. He's either lying or just has terrible reading comprehension.
This occured to me as well, but because I was driving at the time, I couldn't be sure of myself. Thanks for reminding me to come back and double check that.
Does Pilate say this in every gospel?
Why else would he be crucified by the Romans? The idea that the subjugated Jews somehow forced their imperial overlords to crucify one of them when they had the power to stone blasphemers is ahistorical
@@mikev4621that’s part of Bart Ehrmans problem. In one of the gospels, Jesus answers “hell yes” and pulls out a Tommy gun.
@@joemiller7082 Was Tommy an apostle?
Babe wake up, new Counsel of Trent dropped
The best way, as far as I can tell, to demonstrate the fundamental difference between scientific impossibilities and logical impossibilities is to compare the mathematical physics of a video game to the mathematical physics of our reality.
A video game designer could program a video game where the gravitational constant is larger, and thus all the playable characters in the video are also programmed with superhuman strength so that they don't die when they jump off cliffs when on a planet that is governed by a gravitational constant larger than that of Earth. Heck, the designer of this game could even design characters that can travel at speeds greater than that of light. In other words, the designer of this game would be defying the laws of physics, at least the laws in the reality that we know of.
However, the designer of this video game could never create a right triangle that violates the Pythagorean Theorem, nor erect hills and valleys that violate the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, nor intererrupt the multiplicative relations between those hills that violate the Product Rule, for these laws are LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE and therfore impossible in our own reality, in any possible reality (e.g. a video game), or even abstractly.
Which is greater? Nature or nature's creator? Who are we to put limits on God when we don't even comprehend all the laws of nature.
So, how does this apply to the whole argument?
@@acr164God is Omnipotent, but Omnipotence means to be able to do all that are possible in an absolute sense. And possibility in an absolute sense is defined by the absence of logical contradictions.
I have to admit that this was a good analysis of Bart's bad arguments, despite the fact that I disagree with much of Roman Catholic doctrine. Excellent work!
Your books has written by Jews and Roman Catholic.
Have you ever thought about it even for a moment?
Does "bad Trent" know we don't have a single original MSS of ANY biblical book and so it is theoretically IMPOSSIBLE to verify claims that we have the "original wording" of the NT?
The old and new testaments were completed before the Bishop of Rome took over the church of Western half of the Roman empire. So please don't confuse the Roman catholic church with Christianity in general.
@@stevecinneide8183This does not invalidate reliability at all, we know about the stories of Alexander because of the copies, but they are late, and while the Bible is only decades after the stories of Jesus, this does not invalidate anything.
Only Scheinargumente - spurious arguments - as all of roman catholics arguments. Especially the misuse of mathematics and the christian narratives of appearances as historical facts!
In fact mathematicians like myself know that mathematics is not as absolute as people think. Mathematicians change the axioms of math all the time. If human beings can change the axioms of math, God certainly can
_"Mathematicians change the axioms of math all the time."_
Provide an example.
@@EvilXtianity the law of commutativity
2+3 = 3+2
3*2= 2*3
Unless you are in non-commutative group such as matrix multiplication, with matrices, A*B almost never equals B*A
There is an entire branch of mathematics called Abstract or Modern Algebra where the researcher begins by taking one of the axioms of arithmetic and says “suppose I remove or modify, what happens?” The answer is “ all sorts of interesting things”
@@Michael-bk5nz
_The answer is “all sorts of interesting things”_
But those "interesting things are immutable. That's the point.
Wiki: Records of the implicit use of the commutative property go back to ancient times. The Egyptians used the commutative property of multiplication to simplify computing products. Euclid is known to have assumed the commutative property of multiplication in his book Elements. Formal uses of the commutative property arose in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when mathematicians began to work on a theory of functions. Today the commutative property is a well-known and basic property used in most branches of mathematics.
@@EvilXtianity very few mathematicians believe that mathematics is immutable, most mathematicians are constructivists, and non-commutative and even non-associative structures are very common, non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry are very broad fields and are an active area of research
You're missing the point. The axioms can be arbitrary, but the pursuit of math is still pure logic applied to platonic forms. You can't actually construct a mathematics where 2+2=5, for example. Instead, you can only equivocate on symbols to represent the same platonic interactions.
Your videos are just awesome. Thank you for all your efforts.
God bless you.
I remember, VERY WELL, when I was in grade-five school class that our physics teacher explained to us that for every mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, grammatical, etc...rule there is, AT LEAST, one exception.
Further, I learned, later on, that our GOD is capable to BREAK or temporarily SUSPEND these rules whenever, HE wishes to and without jeopardising the ALL or PART of the nature of our EARTH.
Yes, that God out regret and anger decided to kill men, women, and children because they belong to a different tribe...and drown the many of them out of regret and anger.
@@jazzffer
When you comment, try not to be intoxicated with your shitty addictive substances. Do comment when you are awake and have a sense of reason (it may be NOT Applicable in your case).
Even if god appears in fornt of them they will still not believe.
So true
_"Even if god appears in fornt of them they will still not believe."_
So provide the single-best evidence you have that Jesus existed.
_"Even if god appears in fornt of them they will still not believe."_
Yet you believe, without any evidence, that God walked around town for thirty years and then died and became a zombie and then the graves opened and the corpses and skeletons rose out and "appeared to many" and all of that happened without any of the locals noticing.
@@EvilXtianityYou are all over these comments, my guy. Seek help.
Just jumping in to remind people not to engage with Twitherspoon. He is a troll who uses a series of copy/paste arguments and will prefer insane theories like Paul and Josephus "likely" being the same person to any reasonable interpretation of the evidence we have.
Dr. Ehrman was my professor of the Hebrew Bible when I was in college at UNC Chapel Hill. He was resentful and bitter and told us all from the beginning that he was an atheist. When a course lecture focused on why Moses never actually existed the Jewish students literally got up in class and left because they clearly couldn't take his extreme cynicism anymore. His course was a really terrible experience and I dropped the class so I didn't have to be around him anymore. It was just so depressing. I had friends who stayed in it because they needed the credit hours that semester to stay enrolled full time and I can honestly say he really damaged all of our faiths.
I honestly can't believe anyone takes him seriously. It shocks me when people reference him as a scholar.
That’s embarrassing for UNC. First off, he’s an NT scholar, so he shouldn’t be teaching the OT. Secondly, any secular institution should be taking a more pluralistic approach. I took religious studies at a state school in the early 00’s, and our professors were so unbiased in their approaches, you could not tell what beliefs they held. Imagine a professor at a state school attempting to shred Islam the way he does Christianity. They would never! It’s disrespectful.
Moses not existing is pretty mainstream. Yes, Moses did not exist, neither did anyone before first and second Samuel.
@@patrickmeyer2598 Moses was said to walk people through desert, No contemporary Egyptian sources mention Moses, or the events of Exodus-Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure. The most plausible explaination- It didnt happen.
It can be hard to admit when everything you’ve been taught your whole life is wrong. Sometimes it’s just easier to get up and leave 🥰
@@omegaxx7777 I heard its like losing a loved one, couldnt imagine it. Probably why they choose to live in a bubble and cherry-pick science evidence that helps them and then totally disregard the evidence that DISPROVES it.
Thanks
Im a former Christian, pretty well studied, yet i do think Ehrman’s arguments are pretty bad. I also don’t totally enjoy his attitude about religions in general
My main issue with Ehrman is that he really seems to have an ideological slant in his popular work but pretends that he doesn't. I think a lot of it is in response to his fundamentalist upbringing which is understandable.
@@bengreen171 of course he's biased. I never said he wasn't.
@@bengreen171 I don't actually and I never said Ehrmans arguments are tainted. I merely said that he has a bias but isn't open about it. Would you like to keep telling me what I think?
Comparison between mathematics and physics is just ignorant at best. Mathematics is an axiomatic truth, one plus one always equals two that is fundamental. However, physics is our best approximation at discovering what the baseline mathematics are to set universe. The fact that physics can change over time as our understanding deepen negates the possibility that physics in and of itself is axiomatic. Even our best understanding as of now in physics comes from an incomplete picture when considering something like the Grand unification theory or the fact that we still don't understand how gravity fits into quantum physics. Plus at a fundamental level even our understanding of physics does not negate the possibility of bodily resurrection. Because I believe it was Fineman, and since I'm using voice typing I'm sure that got misspelled, who said there is no fundamental difference between moving forwards and backwards in time so really just locally moving the energies and matter from one state to another would resume or could resume biologic functioning of a body. Plus, I've never understood the inability for people to grab the concept that a being that exists literally outside of our natural world would not be subject to the same limitations as someone who is in our natural world. The term supernatural literally means above and beyond the natural, so by definition would not be subject to the same limitations.
Erhman only brought up physics to argue immediately after that an event that cannot be explained or understood by physical law cannot be explained by historical methods, Trent just cut that part out.
How can something exist outside of our physical world, I.e. outside of space and time, when the definition of the word “exist” is to occupy space and time?
Thank you, brother. Kind regards Kim
Jesus does claim to be God in Mark 14: 62-63. Jesus responds to Caiphas: And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. That's a reference to being God because God rides on the clouds of heaven.
Caiphas responds with an accusation of Blasphemy - why blasphemy? And all the other members of the Sanhedrin concur.
I greatly appreciate your content, Trent. In an age of lack luster apologists your content stands among the greats. I was raised Baptist, but became an atheist/agnostic for most of my high school/college years. I recently came back to Christianity in a more Reformed Baptist tradition, then I found your videos that strengthened my faith in Christ, but also challenged my beliefs about Catholicism. I'm starting to lean towards possibly converting or atleast attend a few masses (as my only real experience with the Catholic Church was being a groomsmen in a friend's wedding). I would greatly appreciate prayers that God would lead towards what I should do.
Dear @wilbert9567, yes! Please do attend a Mass! I would say to sit up front, and never mind if you miss the cues about when to stand and when to sit and when to kneel, but you might not feel comfortable there!
For my first Mass, I sat in the back. I had no idea of what was going on, and couldn't hear a lot of it either. But there was a of Scripture!! (We stand for the Gospel reading, by the way, out of special respect. Also, before the Gospel is read, we make the sign of the cross with our thumbs -- on our foreheads -- that God would enlighten our minds -- on our lips -- that He would control our mouths to only speak the Gospel -- and over our hearts -- that Christ's Word would enter our hearts and fill our hearts and move our hearts.)
Enjoy!!
Hi Wilbert, just want to wish you the best on your faith journey! Seek good counsel from others and pray without ceasing! Don’t fall for triumphalism on both sides of the Protestant and Catholic debate! May Gods face shine upon you friend!
What made you lower your standards of evidence? What a sad story. Get better. You don’t need god.
So you are a vacillating waffler, desperate to make the god fantasy work no matter how many sects you need to windowshop.
Cool. So much for the nonsense notion of free will.
Bart Ehrman is just a fundamentalist who reached the opposite conclusion. His arguments are bad because fundamentalists don’t actually know how to properly study ancient texts. The fact that he rejects Christianity from that is incidental, as weird as it is to say that.
Like James Tabor, I get the impression that Ehrman is fighting a battle with the form of Christianity he had been a part of. His message of variants is much more disturbing to a Protestant, Sola Scriptura, perfect preservation fundamentalist. To a Catholic or Orthodox, the fact of scribal error seems normal.
Thank you for your work for the Kingdom!!!
Mathematics is not a science, it's a language, that's why saying 2+2=5 is gibberish like saying a square circle
If it’s just a language then you actually could just say 2+2=5. Language is not logical. It changes and mutates according to those who use it. Mathematical principles are logical and do not change.
I mean, just tell me you’ve never taken any higher mathematics if you don’t think math is science…
Thank you so much for this video… please pray for my mind and that I can overcome the voices telling me to doubt.
I’m a new Christian and became Christian through researching and reading, so when I stumbled across Bart the other day I got shook. I’m constantly dealing with a mind battle, the spiritual warfare is real, I just got baptized. I hate that I’m still looking for “proof” at times… I’m looking at this falter as a trial to grow in my faith, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger right? Do these doubts ever stop?
Superb video Trent.
I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
I watched the debate in the first clip and was cringing a bit when he made the "resurrection violates the laws of physics" argument. In addition to Trent's objection, I don't think it's necessarily even true in the first place, and he certainly didn't cite a law of physics that would supposedly be violated. Bass didn't really pick up on this issue with his argument either, or at least he didn't point it out clearly. In other places, Ehrman argues that miracles are occurrences that are so unlikely they cannot be confirmed by historical methods, and that is still a strong argument that can actually be supported much better. I don't know why he switched to the physics argument here. Ehrman is definitely not a physicist, so he should probably be a bit more careful.
I 100% agree here. The very definition of a miracle is the breaking whatever naturalistic law under discussion.
The impression that in got is Bart seems to claim to know the mind of God as well as sufficient knowledge of physics to know for certain that it holds true under all circumstances.
That is on top of the fact that humanity doesn't have a complete understanding of the laws of physics anyway. The most brilliant physicists that we have still can't fully explain gravity.
Trent himself says the resurrection would require reverse entropy - so it would defy the laws of physics.But that's what a miracle is anyway, isn't it?
@@mikev4621 Trent isn't a physicist either. Entropy can decrease in a system if energy is supplied from outside the system. That's how air conditioners work, for example. In principle, if humans understood everything about how biology works and had the right technology, there's no law of physics that would prevent us from bringing a dead body back to life. Of course, that's not something we can do today and certainly not something anyone could have done 2000 years ago, so it would still require supernatural intervention (my definition of a miracle). I'm just saying Bart should be more careful about saying miracles break the laws of physics, since he is not a physicist and probably can't back up that statement. It's straightforward enough to make the argument that divine intervention can't be demonstrated historically, so he should just stick to that.
@@montagdp Good points, thanks.But Trent mentioned Entropy, not me- perhaps he shouldn't comment on matters beyond his competence.
Yes, advanced science could bring a body back to life, but only be reversing the things that caused it to die in the first place.Ultimately they would tire, or run out of money, and that person would have to die at last, as we all must.
Yes, perhaps Bart shouldn't cite The Laws of Physics; but that doesn't mean he isn't right- a capable physicist would be worth hearing.
Personally, I believe a God could perform miracles, but I have heard of no believable instance of it ( apart from the fact that we are living in an ongoing miracle right now)
Wow! I appreciate Trent’s calm serious delivery for his arguments for the Resurrection and his arguments against the position of Ehrman that there is no resurrection!
Thanks be to God that I was baptized Catholic and stayed!
Ever-Virgin Most Powerful, Mommy, bring our brothers like Ehrman to the One True Faith!
Saint Benedict, pray for us especially all atheist and non-believers!
Monday, July 10, 2023
Thank Humans that I was born into the only true religion! What are the chances!
Jesus doesn't have to directly say he is the son of God, because God himself says so, at his Baptism and Transfiguration.
Great Video! Thank you.
Thanks for what you’re doing Trent.
Hi, I’m a Christian who believes in the resurrection. I will never for the life of me understand why people think Bart is making an argument about the laws of physics-do people just not listen? What he’s critiquing is the methodology of horrible apologetics, and the inconsistency of saying “well this text says a miracle happened so it did” while on the other hand dismissing texts/accounts of miracles that don’t fit into our beliefs.
To say you have HISTORICAL evidence for the resurrection, an occurrence that never happened again or before, you need to have better sources than accounts written by Christians.
The other thing I’m confused by is the selectivity of historical scholarship. Apologists will gladly accept more “realistic” dating methodologies for texts outside of scripture, but rarely agree with scholarly consensus on scripture dating.
The whole thing just feels like arguing backwards.
True. I think it's the devil playing his hands.
What additional evidence do you think there should be? It is hard to explain the conspiracy of Christianity with the apostles not believing that they had witnessed the resurrection of Jesus. And what were Paul's motivations? Additionally, Paul repeats the "cloud of witnesses" line which has been noted to have been a credal statement, something that was repeated to express the veracity of their movement. Why bother, if they didn't believe the resurrection had taken place? And the letters of Paul are very close in time to crucifixion. The historical case for the resurrection is better than the physics one. If anything, the story of Jesus is surprising well attested, particularly if the resurrection never took place.
To add to the physics argument, physics is incomplete. We simply may have not arrived at an understanding of physics that would not contradict the law and still allow for the resurrection.
I'm sorry but this is irrelevant. The very definition of a miracle is that it somehow breaks the laws of whatever you're discussing. Otherwise, we are left with Dawkins claim that everything that is claimed to be a miracle is really 'aliens'.
Why couldn't an all powerful creator break the laws of nature for His purposes? It seems like Bart is making a fanciful assertion, as if he knows the mind of God.
3:05 Bart doesn't understand physics - if he had an inkling of what he is talking about, he'd know that the "laws" of physics are at best poorly understood. And in any case, they're just summaries of observations humans have made, not prescriptions from on high (not that a law God institutes would be binding on himself in the first place). When you get down to Quantum physics, you find that there are no absolute laws - instead, physics is done with probabilities. And maybe you won't find any examples of two particles occupying the same space with the same quantum numbers (not that you'd be able to tell them apart if they did) - but exactly what is it about the resurrection that Bart thinks we need this for?
If he appeals to "muh intropy increases!!" then he'd better be prepared to tell me how life began. That's a "violation of the laws of physics" that we all *know* has happened. Why is it so hard to believe life can come from non-life when you already have a body there, if you believe life arose from non-life without so much as a body to begin with?
Yeah, but it's also ridiculous to pretend that you can't create an illogical universe. Trent is being too anthrocentric in his thinking.
@@WaterCat5 I suppose it's impossible to have an "illogical" universe, but only because I can't understand or imagine one. So I agree, I'm a bit more hesitant to cede that ground. God can create the rules of the game, and play fair. But who's to say he couldn't make another game with entirely different rules?
Erhman only brought up physics to argue immediately after that an event that cannot be explained or understood by physical law cannot be explained by historical methods, Trent just cut that part out.
@@tomasrocha6139 that's an interesting nuance, but I don't think it makes his objection any less weak. Historical methods or not we all have beliefs about things. Erhman just uses "historical methods" to shield himself from criticism, because he can justify skepticism as his default position (whereas, a true default position is neither atheistic, nor theistic, but neutral).
Again, taking his own standard consistently, there's no way to use "historical methods" to understand the origin of life. Yet life exists. Therefore we know that history isn't ever going to give us the whole truth, so it's a stupid thing to use as your basis for discerning truth. It's the sort of shaky foundation you plant yourself in when you're trying to justify what you already believe, rather than follow the evidence to the truth.
I may be wrong about what's going on in Erhman's mind... but I'd rather attribute it to unbelief than stupidity. He's smart enough to know that it's just a cop-out.
@@josephbrandenburg4373 What basis besides history could be used to discern whether the Resurrection happened?
Love your content. Thank you, Trent!
At Mk 14:61 Jesus' purported blasphemy was His declaration that He was the son of the Blessed, for a son is equal to his father. So Ehrman misses the fact that a son is equal to his father (and that the Jews understood this) and therefore that Jesus was claiming to be God. This then accords with John 5:18, and both Mk 14:61 and John 5:18 accord with Paul's declaration at Phil 2:6 that Jesus was equal with God.
Ehrman doesn't know how to join the dots (doesn't know how to rightly divide the word) for spiritual things cannot be discerned by the natural man (1 Cor 2:14).
Atheists are in a conundrum - to prove God's existence, they demand miracles, but when miracles are presented, they mock them.
Have you personally examined every miracle proposed by every religion? No? Those miracles are nonsense and you dismiss them because?
Just because a claim is presented doesn't mean it's true. If we accepted christian miracles on the basis of what makes them true, then we'd have to accept almost every single miracle. How do you know Muhammed didn't ascend to heaven? Tons of people claimed to have seen it
Bart Ehrman lead me out of Christianity. After 30 years of being a Christian.
Listening to his foolishness.🤦♂️
I’ll confess I was a bit surprised at how bad Bart’s arguments were here, and I don’t think that watching any more of the original videos would actually help his case. He seems to be a smart guy (tbf I’ve only seen 3 other major clips from him), but made some of absolutely terrible arguments here. They straight up assured me even more of the Bible’s accuracy lol (also do equip yourselves properly with the word of God). Then i thought - he’s probably a bit of a showman. When you included the WLC clip and I was like “oh yeah, that’s it” 😂
The only way you could be "assured of the bible's accuracy" on anything except for a few trivial geographic details is to abandon honesty and critical thinking.
@@highroller-jq3ix and there it is, the random asserting and assumption that you, the random atheist online, have enough knowledge and intellectual capability to confidently make this declaration and undo 2000 years of thinking without actually adding a single new thought to the discussion 😂.
A belief is already there -> you see arguments made by a scholar who is recognized as one of the best opposition to your beliefs but despite his general intellect, those arguments are genuinely terrible -> you’re left more convinced of your beliefs because the argument made against it was so weak that you feel more confident in your beliefs not having been discredited by such arguments
I would say that’s a pretty fair, no need for dishonesty. Maybe I’m not the best critical thinker, that’s possible. But in this case I’ve found Ehrman’s arguments to all be easily defeated. That’s where my thinking has led.
No offense, I’m sure you’re a pleasant fellow in person and probably a fairly smart individual, but some of you guys have seriously lost sight of the sheer magnitude of history and cosmic reality to the point where you’ve simplified your thinking and come up with this current brand of atheism.
Miracles have never been demonstrated with any veracity on earth..only claims from antiquity which cannot be verified
@@schnitzelfilmmaker1130 "magnitude of history and cosmic reality"......is quite the interesting phrase. I'm not sure that it makes very much sense. What is "cosmic reality" and how would recognizing it be the opposite of simplified thinking as you put it?
Arguments can be good and be bad on both sides of the concept of God debate. I'm sure not all of Barts are great. But his work in textual criticism is quite thorough. I'm curious what argument you found particularly bad? This video seems to cherry pick strangely.
The reality (not sure how cosmic it is), is that God claims do not have real evidence, and one must resort to magical thinking outside of our shared reality. In particular the Bible makes so many demonstrably false claims and big fish tales, that it takes some serious mental gymnastics to not fall into cognitive dissonance.
I am sincerely interested in what particular argument you found so flawed that it strengthened your faith.....faith not being a n actual tool to determine what is most likely so by it's very biblical definition.
@@vandalayindustries8036 sorry mate, I’m not going into this video again 😂. If I remember correctly, though, Trent does acknowledge that much of Bart’s scholarly work is respectable. If not, oh well I guess I remembered wrong. Or maybe it was William Lane Craig that said that. Was WLC’s acknowledgement included in this video? And I’m sure it is respectable, I haven’t taken a look at it in quite a while if I ever did. I know his reputation, but if I ever bother to rewatch this video I’ll let you know which arguments I found laughable, especially coming from someone of the reputation of Ehrman and even if i never dove deep into it, I definitely looked at some of his work before at least a bit and found them respectable.
That third paragraph, though, of “big fish tales” and “magical thinking” is precisely what I mean by simplified thinking. You’re approaching the Bible with the assumption that it’s as simple as “magic” with all it’s attached stigma. It assumes so little of those who came before us on this planet (the magnitude of history) and I don’t know what assures you so much that God claims have no real evidence or what you specifically mean by that (the claims specifically about God and Israel in the Bible, the characteristics attributed to God such as “omniscience”, or claims that God exists in general) but int case I feel there’s a good chance you’re not really assessing the weight of how remarkable it is to be alive, to think while on this tiny planet amongst billions upon billions in one among trillions upon trillions of galaxies, how significant it is that we can love within that reality, how nonsensical it all could be at times. If science had not already told you about these things, or if you had not already known we do love and think (pretend you were somehow simply observing that), you might think it’s magic.
The current brand of atheism simplifies it’s thinking so much that it sees something outside our ordinary reality and then mocks by saying as you said that it appeals to these “magical” things outside our “shared reality” but I would say a more precise phrase would be that it is outside our “ordinary” reality. It mocks without considering there are things they simply cannot understand, and that it’s knowledge is temporal and finite - and a very, very finite that is. Don’t you also know how much has been lost to history as of our temporary knowledge? The original experience of being alive in the ancient city of Ur is something that we cannot recover no matter what archeological evidence we might eventually uncover unless we pull off something magical and find some way to visit or see the past or something absurd along those lines or discover some reality-breaking truth about consciousness and time. There is your magnitude of history and cosmic reality.
De Consensu Evangeliorum.
Augustine
Most of Ehrmans arguments were answered approximately 1700 years ago. Maybe Trent is about to point this out. Good subject matter.
Hiya Trent, I had a question i can't find the answer to. I checked catholic answers as well but no luck. Why did Pope Clement 13 ban the French Encyclopedia in 1759? I understand you are busy and this is just one of many comments, but if you see this, please drop a response. Thank you.
have you found awnser?
It was french
Was my comment deleted? I'll type it again.
1) Bart Ehrman isn't hiding anything. Misquoting Jesus was basically written in response to the fundamentalist viewpoint of scripture -- think KJV fundies. Ehrman's point is that you can never get back to the originals. In the Introduction to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman literally says that the differences in the manuscript are largely insignificant, but the fact that you cannot get back to the originals was a huge problem for the fundamentalism of his youth and put him on the path to doubt.
"Most of these differences are completely immaterial and insignificant. A good portion of them simply show us that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than most people can today (and they didn't even have dictionaries, let alone spell check.) -- Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, Introduction, Page 11.
2) Are there two Ehrman's? Trent quotes Ehrman's scholarly work with Metzger. Apparently this is such a common charge, that Ehrman has already answered this question on his blog about that particular passage of the book. Here is his answer (ehrmanblog.org/can-we-reconstruct-the-entire-new-testament-from-quotations-of-the-church-fathers/):
"These are Metzger’s words (kept from his first edition, I believe), not mine, but I would agree with them for the most part. The problem is that some readers completely misunderstand what they mean (especially conservative evangelicals who want Metzter to be saying something he’s not). He is / we are NOT saying that we can know ACCURATELY what the NT originally said based on Patristic citaitons; he is saying that most of the verses can be found in quotations of church fathers. MANY (most?) of these quotations are highly inaccurate though. I’m not sure if you know, but this is the topic of my PhD dissertation written under Metzger. He knew as well as anyone that we would not come up with OUR Greek New Testament (i.e., to look the same way as it does) simply by looking at Patristic quotations. Not even close. We wouldn’t even know whwere to start - even those of us who spent many, many years on the problem. (The apologists who say otherwise: do you know if any of them has actually done any research in the field? I don’t believe so. If they had, they wouldn’t be saying these things. Are they imagining that we have church fathers who quote the Gospel of John chapters 11-14 or something???)
The one point I would reword of Metzger’s statement (this particular one) if it were up to me (to make this more clear) is that we would be able to reconstruct (inaccurately or not) “practically the entire NT.” That’s not exactly true. There are lots of verses in the NT that are not attested well or at all in Patristic citations.
So it depends one means by “practically” the entire NT. Metzger meant that you could find most of the important passages attested. He didn’t mean 99% of the words of the NT!! Moroever, in almost every instance, a church father who quotes a passage doesn’t tells us where it’s from. So we wouldn’t be able to strng together our NT from their quotations even if all the verses WERE quoted, let alone know WHICH of the many quotations of this or that verse is actually the way it was orginally worded. But when I helped him revise his book for the 4th edition, I decided not ask him to change it, since I knew what he meant (having talked with him about such things for over a decade!).
To my knowledge I have never contradicted myself between my popular and scholarly work. People who want to attack me say I ahve, but I don’t recall ever seeing an instance of it. In almost every case, it’s simply a matter of them not reading what I say carefully enough - a bit ironic, given the fact that they are stressing the importance of my words!"
Testify already did a response to this.
@@Tzimiskes3506 Another apologist? Great. Which part did he respond to and please provide a link?
@@clarkjenkins316 Nice psychoanalysing. Go cope more with ehrman blogs, clark. Also could you send your phd dissertation.
As a Protestant who routinely keeps track of apologetics, I want to applaud you for being one of the first to upload a video in response to Ehrman’s errors, even before other prominent evangelical apologists, they’re supposed to have more time on their hands.
Protestants have been debunking Ehrman for years now!
Michael Laconia had a 7 hour debate with Bart Ehrman.
You're either uninformed or lying about being a Protestant that keeps track of Apologetics!
Your books has written by Jews and Roman Catholic.
Have you ever thought about it even for a moment?
@@ibrahimalharbi3358There was NO Roman Catholic Church. It was Orthodox. Rome were the first Protestants.
@@Lambdamale. That is a very ignorant statement.
You completely misunderstand Bart’s current position on Jesus’ divinity. The video with Cosmic Skeptic (which is brand new) is his current beliefs. Using his book that came out in 1999 is incorrect. Bart has since updated his perspective, which you can easily find online through a google search on his blog. This is since at least 2021. He maintains that Jesus did not call himself God in the synoptic gospels, but that he did see himself as the divine Messiah and the Son of Man. I think you’re misunderstanding Bart’s position on divinity because Bart believes people of that time saw divinity as a sliding scale. And that Jesus saw himself as divine but not equal to God. At least that portion of the video is lacking basic research and understanding of Bart’s current position on this issue in order to dunk on him.
Bart's career reminds me of the gynecologist who loses all interest in sex.
Weird way to state that Christianity is a yeast infection.
@@Alien1375 How do you equate sex with a yeast infection?
Might be the comment Bart needs to read the most.
@@Alien1375 Does sex usually involve yeast infections for you? :|
@@sirkamyk9886 science bruh lol. You know those atheists love their science.
"Can God break the laws of physics and mathematics?"
Answer: GOD IS THE LAW OF PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS. How much of physics and science does man know?
Checkmate.
DOn't try to pretend that you are equal to God.
If this Ehrman guy doesn't repent, there is a very warm place waiting for him.
Dead things stay dead.
Checkmate.
Don't be silly: as if God is going to be offended by Ehrman's inability to keep faith in the face of evil and the immense suffering of the world! At most, God will reprimand him for being a dishonest popularizer of solid Biblical scholarship. As for Hell, it's the height of spiritual pride and presumption for any of us to claim to know who, if anyone, will end up there.
Well done video. Excellent points. The point on the massive amounts of quotes from the early church fathers is an important one.
28:44 Trent, with regards to Jimmy Akin responding to Bart Ehrman, Jimmy on his website did a good written response with many sections. However, in the section Who was Jesus's Grandfather? is a comment that is worth responding to. Other than that Jimmy's rebuttal to the claims of Bart Ehrman are pretty solid.
Voddie Baucham’s description of modern atheism is the best one I’ve heard: “God isn’t real…and I hate him.”
Voddie is good, sadly he also believes in Calvinism. But he stands up against women pastors, against gay marriage, for scripture...etc. Sadly he also is a calvinist
I don't know the person you're referring to, but it's always struck me with amusement how many self-proclaimed atheists have a real, palpable animus towards God.
@@vaska1999It’s because we are angry we were lied to as children by people claiming they knew for a fact things they were completely wrong on.
People hate Rey from Star Wars, doesn't mean she's real.
@@tomasrocha6139 Genius! I’m stealing this one.
This is why Muslims USED Ehrman.
When Mohammed Hijab realized Ehrman smashed Islamic belief by saying, "I believe that Jesus was INDEED crucified and buried", Hijab looked crushed!
What a mess up interview that was!
There are serious arguments to contend with as to whether mathematics are necessary truths, its not so closed and shut. This also goes for how contingent they are compared to some physical truths. Yes there is a difference between induction and deduction but you stated a much bolder and more difficult claim (though it is the mainstream one)
I don’t think Bart understands the difference between logical and nomological necessity. God can easily break the laws of nature because he contingently decided what they’d be. That’s not true of logic nor metaphysics.
So logic exists apart from God. He is an element in a logical universe that only doesn't require God but can't be overcome by God.
I read a few of Bart Ehrmans books and listened to his podcasts. I guess I can thank Bart for helping me out of my fundamentalist view of scripture but I can also thank Trent Horn for helping me have a more a Catholic view of scripture. Let us all pray for Bart Ehrman that he comes back to the faith. Please add him to your prayer list. It’s open arms for when he comes back!
Wow! Thank you so much for this comment and for sharing! -Vanessa
@@TheCounselofTrent indeed! God Bless and thank you for the content!
If Ehrman "comes back" it won't be to Catholicism. You can't "come back" to a religion you never believed in.
Well done Trent !! You're a true soldier of Christ. ❤
Thank you for this, Trent. Ehrman is the religious fanatic that our culture pretends Christians are. He is so blinded by his hate for Christianity, his text and historical criticism suffers astronomically as a result. Good work, God bless.
Oh it's pretty clear that he's a calculated liar.
Wikipedia:
Bart Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
His degrees in Bible study include:
September 2, 2014 - James A. Gray Distinguished Professor · Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1985 M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981 B.A., Wheaton College, 1978
After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned a master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics.
Two experts disagree over what the Bible says and Proverbs 3:5 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”
This is why I don't believe any of it.
As soon as Bart spoke of, "violating the laws of nature" I was like, ah ha! an eighteenth-century argument coined by Hume that has been debunked numerous times! How original!
But Trent himself admits that Entropy would have to be reversed for resurrection to occur
A bit odd coming from someone that believes in Ancient Age books that have been debunked numerous times.
@@tomasrocha6139*attempted to be debunked
There, I fixed it for you.
It seems like Ehrman says that something “didn’t happen historically,” even if it comes from our earliest and best sources, simply because it doesn’t fit his theory. (Such as the high priest accusing Jesus of blasphemy.)
It seems clear from Paul’s letters that the earliest Christians thought Jesus was God, and obviously the Gospel writers want you to think he associates himself with the Son of Man.
So, why not go with the easy unifying theory that Jesus made such claims about himself, which would explain both the record of the Gospels and the earliest Christian beliefs?
The first argument doesnt make much sense. God cannot break the rules of Math, but can break the rules of physics? So he could make the gravity of the Earth be equal to the moon, even though Math is the principle to calculate a mass of a body? This already would break the laws of math and physics.
Hi Trent! Soon to be Catholic here so I have lots to learn and this video gave me a question ..You mentioned only God can read thoughts and provide some biblical evidence, but I have heard Catholics speak about Padre Pio supposedly being able to do just that. Thanks in advance if you do get around to responding. Love your work, you have helped me immensely on my journey into the Church.
Dear @Kaleb.F, only God reads minds. He can give the gift to whomever He wishes. When serving God's people in the confessional, Saint Padre Pio would sometimes be given the gift of knowing what the penitent was not telling him, but needed to for a full confession. All very practical.
Such things are gifts of God and Padre Pio as far as we know did not abuse them (for God would have revoked the gift).
Sam Shamoun did a thourough destruction of erhmans arguments as well. Its interesting if you have the hours to spare
3:35 "The laws of physics are not descriptions of ways reality has to be."
You don't know this. Not at all. On what basis do you make this claim? How do you know, for instance, that there could exist a possible world in which gravity repels instead of attracts? How do you know that the speed of light could be different? You're just assuming and asserting this without any real evidence or reasoning. You draw this distinction, but I have absolutely no idea why.
Ehrman is verifiably wrong on one point. The Jewish priest in the Temple would merely announce that sins has been forgiven. They had visual proof that God was accepting or rejecting the sacrifices. See my references from the Talmud below, thanks to Sam Shamoun.
This is also confirmation that after Jesus' public ministry began, God stop accepting sacrifices. This is further proof of Jesus's divinity.
Talmud Yoma 39b
The Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddik, the lot for God always arose in the High Priest’s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but *during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple,* the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest’s right hand at all. So too, *the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.*
Talmud Yoma 9b
However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed in the First Temple, *why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred during that period.* This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed.
This is a timely episode considering today’s Gospel
1:34 - has Bart ever played FPS like counterstrike? There are hacks!
8:15 - Why isn't John 13:34 the new commandment both a divine claim and something expected to be off-screen in the synoptic Gospels considering this sums up the new covenant and supersedes Leviticus 19:18 & Deuteronomy 6:5, w/c sum up the old covenant? Cf Mark 12:34
God bless Trent Horn! Please...keep at it!
In all honesty, as a Christian i think Bart's "argument from silence" concerning Jesus referring to himself as God is a very good argument and is a true exception to the general rule of arguments from silence. I find this a very difficult question. It surely presents a type of anomaly in the Gospels that demands a quality thoughtful explanation that i have not seen anyone satisfactorily answer.
Absolutely. This is not a typical "argument from silence" situation. Additionally, Jesus being God as well as the Father being God would have been a radically different God than the Jews understood (not the unbelieving Jews, but even the believing ones), and yet there is zero explanation of anything like "hey, I know this is different from what your concept of God has been, but here's this mysterious multipersonal God that has three persons yet one essence, etc...." There was contention and resistance about all kinds of things the Jews weren't used to, and yet this massive thing that has been fought over for centuries to this day.....just wasn't discussed at all and apparently was accepted without a blip. It just doesn't make sense.
There’s a terminology “messianic secret” refers to Jesus’s subtle way of claiming to be divine. Because he had to wait till the exact time to be sacrificed, and if he once revealed his identity openly, he would be immediately put to death according to the Torah (e.g. the case in John 8) But being subtle doesn’t mean he never explicitly claimed to be God. He actually did it multiple times even in the synoptic gospels, however in a very Jewish way, just as his methodology is Jewish. And readers in 21st century like Bart simply cannot understand those Jewish self-claims if they don’t spend large amount of time to genuinely study the OT and NT.
Great video, Trent. At the very least, we can say that the bible is pretty ambiguous on this and several other important subjects. Ehrman is obviously biased towards his claims and cherry picks. But he makes some interesting observations.
I'm an atheist, but im fascinated by scripture and appreciate your honest take.
You know, stating that Jesus couldn't rise from the dead because this is scientifically impossible is got to be one of the most backward things to say.
For a few reasons, but mainly because the ressurection of Jesus Christ is a *miracle* - something that is supposed to be impossible without divine intervention. Bible does not try to say this is scientific or whatnot - faith and science exist in parallel realms, they don't have to intersect. The whole concept of miracle is that it is something beyond mundane or natural in broad sense of the word.
Arguing against Ressurection from such a stand point is completely pointless. Yes, this is impossible - and that is the whole point!
P.S. And stating that omnipotent God cannot break the laws of physics he supposedly created is just very bloody dumb. You either discuss Christian God within the framework of Christianity - in which he can do anything, literally - or you aren't discussing the Christian God at all, but some kind of Bible fanfiction of your own making. Which is - yes! - a strawman!
I am baffled by the amount of atheists who does not understand that - which is quite simple to understand concept, IMO - and yet pretend they somehow come from a reasonable point of view. No, this approach is anything but reasonable. In fact, this approach is outright stupid.
We all have our favourite James White debate, and mine is his against Bart Ehrman. Say what you will about White, but he won that quite handily.
James white is extremely bottom barrel and couldn't win a debate to save his life.
@@MrKingishere1 You're wrong. We also love him when he is speaking on Catholicism.
@@MrKingishere1 If they do they should go to confession.
@@MrKingishere1 James white is as bottom barrel as they come. He can't even accept demonstrated facts.
@@lexodius I second your statement about loving Bart, whatever he is doing!
Ben Wirthington III, The Christology of Jesus (1990) builds a strong case for Jesus self-identifying as divine from the Synoptics, critically assessed by the tenets of form and redaction criticism.
Thankyou for this content Trent. I could almost believe it was God that brought me upon this video at this very time as i had come across erhman 2 days ago and it shook me a little. I even ordered 2 of his books. Thankyou for the work.
Bart is pointing to the truth. Jesus would agree, that he never claimed to be the only son of God or ever wanted to be worshipped as one. He always said 'ye are ALL gods' (not just himself).
Only a minute in. I like your stuff I love Bart Ehrman. Read his books, watch his Channel, seen all his debates & taken a few of his available to public courses. I look forward to you rebutting some of his most popular arguments (if you get to them). A good counter argument is always appreciated. I want to hear how you get around attribution of authorship. The authenticity of the disputed epistles, and each Gospel does have contradictions if you take them as individual works and don’t try to hermeneuticly reconcile them. (I hope you get to all three in this vid). Any thoughts I’ll post under this thread.
I suggest James Tabor too.
Here's the honest problem. Dr. Ehrman most popular books he dials down the scholarly language to ensure the books are received by the masses. I'm TRULY waiting for these UA-cam apologist to counter his *ACTUAL* scholarly work.
@@thedude0000 same
@@thedude0000There are those who've already refuted him. Testify and Trent are a few. Now is this really a hill you want to die on, average internet atheist dude?
After the vid, I don’t think defending Bass is a good move, I watched that debate & it was bad for the Christian side. I think reason and theology did a good job fixing Justins’s argument and giving better responds to Bart.
The rest of this vid was fine but it didn’t hit Bart’s ready to go stuff. I have yet to hear a Catholic apologists of any Caliber tackle Bart’s best objection or is most common repeated comments.