End of an Ehra

On the twilight of Bart Ehrman

Every now and then, a public intellectual pops up in the discourse with a new book/podcast/whatever, and you think, “Oh yeah, that guy. He’s still doing stuff?” I had this feeling when I saw that Bart Ehrman is making the rounds to promote his newest work. Ehrman is best known for writing sophistical popular-level books about the New Testament. But Love Thy Stranger, similar to his book The Triumph of Christianity, is one of these “Why Christianity is still good for the world and stuff while of course not being literally true” affairs—not strictly against Christianity, but rendering a vaguely patronizing verdict on its historical impact. I’m not rushing out to procure a copy, but I got the gist from a recent debate with Sean McDowell, in which Ehrman repeatedly asserted that there are no moral absolutes, McDowell politely demurred with actual arguments, and Ehrman waved his hands and feigned exasperation in lieu of making a coherent counterargument. I would say Ehrman shouldn’t quit his day job to become a moral philosopher, but then of course I don’t think he’s good at his day job either. Perhaps he missed his true calling as a used car salesman.

However, I was very entertained by Ehrman’s appearance on Ross Douthat’s Interesting Times podcast, which continues to be essential listening. (Or reading, if you prefer a transcript.) Douthat has mastered the art of the very gentle sick burn when guests say something especially dubious, and he was in fine form here. I was especially interested to hear how Douthat would handle Ehrman around New Testament questions, since Ehrman is famous for steamrolling anyone who tries to catch his sophistry and pin it down. It’s possible Ehrman assumed that since Douthat is a fellow elite, a non-specialist, and a non-evangelical, he could be easily steamrolled. If so, that was a mistake. In fact, I come away from the interview inclined to think that when it comes to public discourse about religion and the Bible, we are approaching the End of an Era—or I should say, an Ehra.

For those familiar with Ehrman’s schtick, there are no surprises here. He played his greatest hits—the Humean Tap Dance, the Gospel Contradictions Polka, all the classics. One of his favorite assertions, per Hume, is the claim that historians can never “establish” a miracle. My father, Tim McGrew, in his Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on miracles, neatly repackages Ehrman’s version of this old chestnut in premise-conclusion form:

1. A miracle is by definition the most improbable of events; the probability of a miracle is infinitesimally remote.

2. An historian can establish only what probably happened in the past.

Therefore,

3. An historian can never establish that a miracle happened.

Dad then goes on: “Waiving the tendentious definition in premise 1, the supposed contradiction involved in denying the conclusion — ‘that the most improbable event is the most probable’ (Ehrman 2003: 229)—is merely verbal, arising from a failure to distinguish between the probability of a miracle claim considered apart from the evidence and the probability of the claim given that evidence.”

In other words, no, Dr. Ehrman didn’t really pull the quarter out of your ear. Moving on.