From: joyce@meaddata.com 
Subject: LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:54:19 GMT

Ok, everyone, due to the numerous responses to my post, I've changed
my mind and decided to re-visit this newsgroup. Responses also do not
need to be e-mailed to me, I just find that I'm repeating myself a lot
in responding to people individually. So I've decided to save myself
time and just post and also to explain the arguments I have obtained
in greater depth than I have in my previous posting.

LORD, LIAR, OR LUNATIC?

The distinct claims of Jesus to be God eliminate the popular ploy of
skeptics who regard Jesus as just a good moral man or a prophet who
said a lot of profound things. So often that conclusion is passed off
as the only one acceptable to scholars or as the obvious result of the
intellectual process. The trouble is, many people nod their heads in
agreement and never see the fallacy of such reasoning.

To Jesus, who men and women believed him to be was of fundamental
importance. To say what Jesus said and to claim what he claimed about
himself, one couldn't conclude he was just a good moral man or
prophet. That alternative isn't open to an individual,and Jesus never
intended it to be. 

C.S. Lewis, who was a professor at Cambridge University and once an
agnostic, understood this issue clearly. He writes: "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 something worse."

Then Lewis adds: "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 up with any patronising nonsense about
His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He
did not intend to."

F.J.A. Hort, who spent twenty-eight years in a critical study of the
New Testament text, writes: "His words were so completely parts and
utterances of Himself, that they had no meaning as abstract statements
of truth uttered by Him as a Divine oracle or prophet. Take away
Himself as the primary (though not the ultimate) subject of every
statement and they all fall to pieces."

In the words of Kenneth Scott Latourette, historian of Christianity at
Yale University: "It is not his teachings which make Jesus so
remarkable, although these would be enough to give him distinction. It
is a combination of the teachings with the man himself. The two cannot
be separated." "It must be obvious," Latourette concludes, "to any
thoughtful reader of the Gospel records that Jesus regarded himself
and his message as inseparable. He was a great teacher, but he was
more. His teachings about the kingdom of God, about human conduct, and
about God were important, but they could not be divorced from him
without, from his standpoint, being vitiated.

Jesus claimed to be God. He didn't leave any other option open. His
claim must be either true or false, so it is something that should be
given serious consideration. Jesus' question to his disciples, "But
who do you say that I am?" has several alternatives.

First, consider that his claim to be God was false. If it was false,
then we have two and only two alternatives. He either knew it was
false or he didn't know it was false. We will consider each one
separately and examine the evidence.

WAS HE A LIAR?

If, when Jesus made his claims, he knew that he was not God, then he
was lying and deliberately deceiving his followers. But if he was a
liar, then he was also a hypocrite because he told others to be
honest, whatever the cost, while he himself taught and lived a
colossal lie. More than that, he was a demon, because he told others
to trust him for their eternal destiny. If he couldn't back up his
claims and knew it, then he was unspeakably evil. Last, he would also
be a fool because it was his claims to being God that led to his
crucifixion. 

Many will say that Jesus was a good moral teacher. Let's be realistic.
How could he be a great moral teacher and knowingly mislead people at
the most important point of his teaching -- his own identity?

You would have to conclude logically that he was a deliberate liar.
This view of Jesus, however, doesn't coincide with what we know either
of him or the results of his life and teachings. Wherever Jesus has
been proclaimed, lives have been changed for the good, nations have
changed for the better, thieves are made honest, alcoholics are cured,
hateful individuals become channels of love, unjust persons become
just.

William Lecky, one of Great Britain's most noted historians and a
dedicated opponent of organized Christianity, writes: "It was reserved
for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which
through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts
of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on
all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions; has been not only the
highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice
... The simple record of these three short years of active life has
done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions
of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists."

Historian Philip Schaff says: "This testimony, if not true, must be
downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis cannot stand a
moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in his
every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent.
Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all
respects so clear and so sound, is equally out of the question. How
could he be an enthusiast or a madman who never lost the even balance
of his mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and
persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the
wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately
predicted his death on the cross, his resurrection on the third day,
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of  his Church, the
destruction of Jerusalem -- predictions which have been literally
fulfilled? A character so original, so complete, so uniformly
consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human
greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been
well said, would in this case be greater than the hero. It would take
more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus."

Elsewhere Schaff gives convincing argument against Christ being a
liar: "How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could
an impostor -- that is a deceitful, selfish, depraved man -- have
invented, and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the
purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect
air of truth and reality? How could he have conceived and successfully
carried out a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude, and
sublimity, and sacrificed his own life for it, in the face of the
strongest prejudices of his people and age?"

If Jesus wanted to get people to follow him and believe in him as God,
why did he go to the Jewish nation? Why go as a Nazarene carpenter to
a country so small in size and population and so thoroughly adhering
to the undivided unity of God? Why didn't he go to Egypt or, even
more, to Greece, where they believed in various gods and various
manifestations of them?

Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught, and died as
Jesus died could not have been a liar. What other alternatives are there?

--------------To be continued--------------------------------------