>>>>
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that
people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral
teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing
we
must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a
lunatic
- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg- or else he would
be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and
is, the Son of God: or else a madman or some thing worse. You can shut
Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you
can
fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any
patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not
left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Lewis C.S., "Mere
Christianity," 1977, p52)
<<<<
First, Jesus is never quoted as saying, "I am God" but only making
oblique statements such as, "If you have seen me you have seen the
father." This could mean something like, "I am as close as you are going
to get to seeing God." This is a common situation when one wants to
access the top man in an organization. Sometimes you can't get past
number two man.
Second, the Bible writers could have added these hints of deity to
"prove" their theology. They could have done this while accurately
reporting the moral material.
Third, most of his moral teaching is either an OT quotation or a rehash
of rabbinical material. There is very little origional moral teaching in
the NT.
Fourth, his ethical complaints seem to be against the life style of some
of his contemporaries and not a criticism of the OT teachings or
rabbinical moral teachings.
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