6 ms·

> why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness. No Bertie. He did not leave that op

by mav88 3y ago

> why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness. No Bertie. He did not leave that option open to us and never meant to. To call him a great moral teacher is to entirely miss the point. He was either insane or lying or telling the truth.

twodave 3y ago
- Lewis, paraphrased (some 20-30 years later I believe).
- troupe 3y ago
  “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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ~C.S. Lewis
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).
    - troupe 3y ago
      For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      By what would the lunatic ground their thinking? From one angle, I can respect your argument as in a case where someone opines "Wow, look at Crazy Pete. He sure is crazy but he's nice to animals. Maybe I should be nice to animals too, like he is!" In the case of Jesus, he told his followers to eat him (John 6). Potentially normal lunatic stuff...when they were like "whoa wtf bro" he doubled down and kept using a word which describes teeth tearing and chewing. I don't find cannibalism to be highly moral (since it usually involves murder) so shouldn't that disqualify Jesus from being a lunatic but also a good moral teacher?
      - nicoburns 3y ago
        You seem to assuming that all of ones teachings must be moral in order for one to be able to be a good moral teacher. But if people are able to pick and choose teachings then this may not be required. As an example, many people would consider the bible to be a good source of moral teaching, but most would admit that it contains some teachings which are outright reprehensible. If someone needed to be entirely good to be a good moral teacher then almost nobody (if anybody) would qualify.
        I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        In Matthew 5:48, Jesus tells us to "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect". I'm just holding him to his own moral standard :) Moral authority is only as powerful as the believers not finding out you don't ACTUALLY believe what you are telling them to. People easily write off the Catholic Church because of the disgusting abuses Catholic authority figures have perpetrated throughout the ages. Pick and choose works with bare philosophies but Jesus isn't asking us to believe right, he's asking us to live right. You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.
        nicoburns 3y ago
        > You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right. I don't really believe that. I think it's more of a continuum. And that everybody does both good and evil deeds.
    - throw0101b 3y ago
      > Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? To follow this lunatic you have to eat his flesh. From John 6: > 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” > 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” > 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&versio... Similarly at the Last Supper, where he also instructs his followers to drink his blood: > 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&ve... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the_Eucharist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the... Some folks (even Christians, like some Protestant denominations) believe it is meant to be symbolic, but the earliest Christians did not take it symbolically: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the_Eucharist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...
      - nicoburns 3y ago
        You don't have to do everything someone says in order for them to teach you something.
        throw0101b 3y ago
        So what is Jesus teaching when he says that you must love [Hh]im above all, and that [Hh]e is the truth itself? > 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve... > 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&versi...
  - majormajor 3y ago
    If only this quote also convinced the Church to never do the opposite - accepting Jesus as God but ignoring his moral teachings in favor of more vindictive, spiteful ones from the OT or Paul or whoever else.
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority. I can somewhat understand people wanting to reach for a supernatural explanation for the creation of the world: I don't personally find "God" a satisfactory explanation, but I also don't really have a better one. But I really struggle to understand why they would then defer to that creator's (supposed) moral teachings. It's really a completely separate belief to the belief of god as a creator, but the two are often combined into one question of whether one "believes in god".
      - troupe 3y ago
        Perhaps the reason the two things are conflated is because there is an assumption that if you knew God exists, your choice wouldn't be to choose to reject doing what he commands. But as you point out that, that is an assumption that isn't necessarily true.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad". Catholics throughout history have written about it in depth (sometimes like REALLY in depth). It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness. Darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. Therefore, God is good. Too bad we believers have done such a terrible and easy to criticize job of being Christlike. I can't blame anyone for saying Christianity has too much baggage for them to even want to believe.
        pstuart 3y ago
- kej 3y ago
  Lewis probably stated it better than anyone else, but the argument predates him (and Russell, for that matter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma
- analog31 3y ago
  Lewis also believed that people were inherently immoral, to the point of deserving eternal punishment without the intercession of a savior. So his concept of a "moral teacher" might have been a bit suspect.
  - twodave 3y ago
    That’s a general tenet of all religions rooted in Judaism. OT—-“No one is righteous, no, not one.”—and later in NT Romans—-“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The inadequacy and even brokenness of man is what necessitates a Messiah in the first place.
meepmorp 3y ago
> He was either insane or lying or telling the truth. Or wrong. People can say untrue things without being insane or lying. Sometimes, we're just mistaken.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  I don't think that counts when you're claiming to be God.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    Did he request anyone kill anyone else on behalf of his claimed godliness? Donate their fortunes to him? Sleep with him? Even that lunacy seems to have avoided compromising the moral lessons, even assuming we take the written accounts literally.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Teaching people it's okay to claim you're a god sounds like a mad or bad idea if you're not one.
  - tasty_freeze 3y ago
    Sure it does. There are many people who have claimed to be God. In nearly every case they are deemed as crazy. There was even the famous case where three different men, each sincerely believing they were the return of Christ, were put together by a psychologist who had a hunch that it might snap them out of their delusions. It didn't. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/15/three-christs/ https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/15/three-christs/
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      That appears to be as part of Lewis' trilemma, though.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  or metaphorical.
CapitalistCartr 3y ago
We don't know any of that. He didn't write anything down, nor did anyone else at the time. The Gospels were written decades later.
- jhbadger 3y ago
  We don't even really have good evidence that such a person as Jesus even existed. There are literally no mentions of him in documents of the time. People say "what about Tacitus? Or Joseph Flavius?" but like the Gospels, these people weren't writing at the time but decades later.
  - jmprspret 3y ago
    I don't think that's correct. I have no sources on me. But I think historians generally agree - son of god or not - he did exist.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      The closest agreement you're likely to get is that a person existed who was a model for the accounts that follow. His divinity is a matter of opinion and nothing more.
      - jhbadger 3y ago
        I realize that, but I object to the idea that the historical Jesus had to exist and that there is "no debate" to it when there don't seem to be any documents mentioning him from when he was supposed to have lived. I realize there could be reasons for this -- the Romans and/or Jewish authorities could have found and destroyed all such documents, but the fact is without the existence of such documents even the historical Jesus is dubious.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Please give a citation of a source mentioning Jesus that can be dated during his supposed lifetime. I'd be glad to know of such a case, but seriously the earliest documents commonly known are Tacitus' Annals book 15, chapter 44 (AD 116), and Joseph Flavius' The Jewish War (AD 75). Both are long after Jesus was said to have lived (dying sometime in the AD 30's).
majormajor 3y ago
It's often useful to be able to view people as more complex, across more dimensions, than you do here.
thejohnconway 3y ago
I recognise the source of this sentiment, but it‘s absolutely a false trilema.

by mav88 3y ago

twodave 3y ago

- Lewis, paraphrased (some 20-30 years later I believe).

troupe 3y ago
“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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” ~C.S. Lewis
- jhbadger 3y ago
  Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? Goodness and understanding of reality seem to be orthogonal (or even opposed as many people who are, or at least think they are, realists, are quite cynical).
  - troupe 3y ago
    For statements like, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," sure. Lewis' point is that he made all kinds of other claims that are either true or false. And if they are false, they are false in a way that led to lots of people dying for no reason. So Jesus was either saying those things that led to all his followers being killed either because he was crazy and believed what he said, because he was a liar and evil, or because he was telling the truth and good.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    By what would the lunatic ground their thinking? From one angle, I can respect your argument as in a case where someone opines "Wow, look at Crazy Pete. He sure is crazy but he's nice to animals. Maybe I should be nice to animals too, like he is!" In the case of Jesus, he told his followers to eat him (John 6). Potentially normal lunatic stuff...when they were like "whoa wtf bro" he doubled down and kept using a word which describes teeth tearing and chewing. I don't find cannibalism to be highly moral (since it usually involves murder) so shouldn't that disqualify Jesus from being a lunatic but also a good moral teacher?
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      You seem to assuming that all of ones teachings must be moral in order for one to be able to be a good moral teacher. But if people are able to pick and choose teachings then this may not be required. As an example, many people would consider the bible to be a good source of moral teaching, but most would admit that it contains some teachings which are outright reprehensible. If someone needed to be entirely good to be a good moral teacher then almost nobody (if anybody) would qualify.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        In Matthew 5:48, Jesus tells us to "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect". I'm just holding him to his own moral standard :) Moral authority is only as powerful as the believers not finding out you don't ACTUALLY believe what you are telling them to. People easily write off the Catholic Church because of the disgusting abuses Catholic authority figures have perpetrated throughout the ages. Pick and choose works with bare philosophies but Jesus isn't asking us to believe right, he's asking us to live right. You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right.
        nicoburns 3y ago
        > You can't pick and choose living right, either you are or you aren't. If you only sometimes rob the bus station you aren't living right. I don't really believe that. I think it's more of a continuum. And that everybody does both good and evil deeds.
  - throw0101b 3y ago
    > Can't a lunatic be a great moral teacher? To follow this lunatic you have to eat his flesh. From John 6: > 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” > 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” > 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%206&versio... Similarly at the Last Supper, where he also instructs his followers to drink his blood: > 27 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the[b] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2026&ve... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the_Eucharist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper#Institution_of_the... Some folks (even Christians, like some Protestant denominations) believe it is meant to be symbolic, but the earliest Christians did not take it symbolically: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the_Eucharist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      You don't have to do everything someone says in order for them to teach you something.
      - throw0101b 3y ago
        So what is Jesus teaching when he says that you must love [Hh]im above all, and that [Hh]e is the truth itself? > 37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2010&ve... > 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[b] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” * https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014&versi...
- majormajor 3y ago
  If only this quote also convinced the Church to never do the opposite - accepting Jesus as God but ignoring his moral teachings in favor of more vindictive, spiteful ones from the OT or Paul or whoever else.
  - nicoburns 3y ago
    One of the things I find strangest about religion is the acceptance of God not only as the creator of the world, but as a moral authority. I can somewhat understand people wanting to reach for a supernatural explanation for the creation of the world: I don't personally find "God" a satisfactory explanation, but I also don't really have a better one. But I really struggle to understand why they would then defer to that creator's (supposed) moral teachings. It's really a completely separate belief to the belief of god as a creator, but the two are often combined into one question of whether one "believes in god".
    - troupe 3y ago
      Perhaps the reason the two things are conflated is because there is an assumption that if you knew God exists, your choice wouldn't be to choose to reject doing what he commands. But as you point out that, that is an assumption that isn't necessarily true.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      In Christianity, this is theologically explained as "God is good and the source of all good, his will is good and to go against his will is therefore bad". Catholics throughout history have written about it in depth (sometimes like REALLY in depth). It also follows that if God made the universe, and the universe has goodness in it, then God either created goodness too or he IS goodness. Darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. Therefore, God is good. Too bad we believers have done such a terrible and easy to criticize job of being Christlike. I can't blame anyone for saying Christianity has too much baggage for them to even want to believe.
      - pstuart 3y ago
kej 3y ago
Lewis probably stated it better than anyone else, but the argument predates him (and Russell, for that matter): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma
analog31 3y ago
Lewis also believed that people were inherently immoral, to the point of deserving eternal punishment without the intercession of a savior. So his concept of a "moral teacher" might have been a bit suspect.
- twodave 3y ago
  That’s a general tenet of all religions rooted in Judaism. OT—-“No one is righteous, no, not one.”—and later in NT Romans—-“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The inadequacy and even brokenness of man is what necessitates a Messiah in the first place.

meepmorp 3y ago

> He was either insane or lying or telling the truth. Or wrong. People can say untrue things without being insane or lying. Sometimes, we're just mistaken.

robertlagrant 3y ago
I don't think that counts when you're claiming to be God.
- majormajor 3y ago
  Did he request anyone kill anyone else on behalf of his claimed godliness? Donate their fortunes to him? Sleep with him? Even that lunacy seems to have avoided compromising the moral lessons, even assuming we take the written accounts literally.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Teaching people it's okay to claim you're a god sounds like a mad or bad idea if you're not one.
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
  Sure it does. There are many people who have claimed to be God. In nearly every case they are deemed as crazy. There was even the famous case where three different men, each sincerely believing they were the return of Christ, were put together by a psychologist who had a hunch that it might snap them out of their delusions. It didn't. https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/15/three-christs/ https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/11/15/three-christs/
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    That appears to be as part of Lewis' trilemma, though.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
or metaphorical.

CapitalistCartr 3y ago

We don't know any of that. He didn't write anything down, nor did anyone else at the time. The Gospels were written decades later.

jhbadger 3y ago
We don't even really have good evidence that such a person as Jesus even existed. There are literally no mentions of him in documents of the time. People say "what about Tacitus? Or Joseph Flavius?" but like the Gospels, these people weren't writing at the time but decades later.
- jmprspret 3y ago
  I don't think that's correct. I have no sources on me. But I think historians generally agree - son of god or not - he did exist.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    The closest agreement you're likely to get is that a person existed who was a model for the accounts that follow. His divinity is a matter of opinion and nothing more.
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      I realize that, but I object to the idea that the historical Jesus had to exist and that there is "no debate" to it when there don't seem to be any documents mentioning him from when he was supposed to have lived. I realize there could be reasons for this -- the Romans and/or Jewish authorities could have found and destroyed all such documents, but the fact is without the existence of such documents even the historical Jesus is dubious.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    Please give a citation of a source mentioning Jesus that can be dated during his supposed lifetime. I'd be glad to know of such a case, but seriously the earliest documents commonly known are Tacitus' Annals book 15, chapter 44 (AD 116), and Joseph Flavius' The Jewish War (AD 75). Both are long after Jesus was said to have lived (dying sometime in the AD 30's).

majormajor 3y ago

It's often useful to be able to view people as more complex, across more dimensions, than you do here.

thejohnconway 3y ago

I recognise the source of this sentiment, but it‘s absolutely a false trilema.