Who is He?

In this age of religious pluralism it has become rather un-politically correct to claim yourself to be a 'Jesus Only' Christian (as if there are other kinds). Instead, it seems to have become popular to proclaim Jesus as a 'great moral teacher' of some kind. To this C.S. Lewis has famously responded by stating:

"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 the 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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."^[5] 

 This has been called the Lewis's 'trilemma,' referring to a forced option between believing the Jesus was either Lord (who He claimed to be), Liar (He knew He was not God but lied about it), or a Lunatic (was not God but sincerely believed it).

This trilemma has fell onto some hard times but I am willing to argue the core of what Lewis was getting at rings true.

One criticism is that Lewis assumes the historicity of the New Testament. This claim essentially says that Lewis left out a third option. The option that Jesus' divinity could have been an invention of the early church and inserted into His biographies (the four gospels). The problems with this criticism are many.

First, if Jesus' claims of divinity were an invention of the early church we would expect some kind of organic growth of the belief. Put differently, if Jesus' divinity was a legend propagated by the early church we would expect the first writings about Him to be modest claims about His being a good moral teacher and later writings push His divinity. The truth is, however, that the earliest documents we have do not portray Jesus as a great moral teacher but as the Risen Son of God (see Galatians 1). Second, the first time we have any evidence of anyone claiming that Jesus was not divine is through Arianism around 300AD. This is well after the last New Testament document was written.

Second, we have absolutely no evidence of any other Jewish messianic group making their messiah into a legendary figure. As much as we want to put Jesus into our box He won't do it! Jesus was a first century Jewish carpenter not a Germanic or Anglo Saxon king like King Arthur.  

For more on the ridiculousness of the assertion that Jesus' divinity was an invention of the early church you can check out these four youtube clips:

Another criticism is that Jesus could have thought himself to be a guru. That when Jesus refers to himself as God He meant he was god (small g) along with everything else. Just as Jesus was not a king of Germanic, Viking, or Anglo Saxon descent neither was he Indian. This concept was completely foreign to the Judeo ethic in which Jesus lived. Do the critics really think that Jesus was crucified because He was proclaiming to be god along with everything else? If this was how Hebrews thought, it would have been no big deal. 

It is clear from anyone who has read the Old and New Testaments that the writers believed God to be Holy. Meaning that God was wholly other, working through creation but completely above it. This is why John refers to Jesus as the 'Word' become flesh in John 1. This would have reminded the readers of that rich philosophical tradition of the Greeks. Fort them the 'Word' was the eternal uncreated principal or reason of the universe. The 'Word' was also thought to be the 'unmoved mover' that was before creation, began creation, and will be here when the creation is gone. That's why it was so startling when John says that 'the word began flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:14). 

There is much more to say about the criticisms however there is one thing the critics never seem to address. This is the fact that many have claimed to be God. None of them have been attached to a major religion. Buddha was probably an atheist  Muhammad believed himself to be a prophet, and Confucius was not even a religious philosopher but an ethicist. Of those to claim deity, some have been raving lunatics that we now hospitalize  some have been power hungry dictators that we now demonize but NOBODY has believed them to be God or even to be a god after their death. 

However much people want to manipulate, mock, minimize and criticise Lewis' argument Jesus' question is still put to all of us: 

Jesus asked His disciples “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

But the question that Jesus really wants us to answer is "what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” (Mark 8:-27-30)

So who is He to you?