Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

I have given some thought to Howard's response, and I believe the crux
of the argument that ensued from it is point of view. When I first ran
across the C. S. Lewis' quotation I posted I thought, "Wow! The killer
argument." So I tried it on a Jewish acquaintance, and he proceeded to
point out all the assumptions I was making that he wasn't. I posted
Lewis' argument because I believed the person it was aimed at had
already established some sympathy for what the Scriptures say about
Jesus and what He says through the Scriptures. But Howard is right
that the argument only holds water to someone who holds that the
Scriptures are the true revelation of God. There are no shortcuts in
evangelism. You witness to people and pray for them and the rest is up
to the Holy Spirit. There are no "killer arguments".

On Saturday, December 20, 2003, at 10:15 AM, Howard J. Van Till wrote:

> Bill gave us the following quotation from C.S. Lewis:
>
>> 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 something 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 patronizing nonsense about
>> His
>> being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did
>> not
>> intend to.
>
> With all due respect for C.S. Lewis, I believe he did Christianity a
> disservice by posing the above dilemma. The two stark choices he poses
> are
> not the only two that could reasonably be posed. There are others
> based on
> differing assumptions and judgments about the character of the N.T.
> text.
> (When was it written? By whom? For what purposes? Does the text give us
> exact quotations of words actually spoken by Jesus? How does Lewis
> come to
> know Jesus' intentions so clearly?)
>
> Howard Van Till
>
>
Bill Hamilton Rochester, MI 248 652 4148
Received on Sat Dec 20 14:54:48 2003