{"id":5471,"date":"2011-03-06T04:12:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-06T04:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=5471"},"modified":"2011-03-06T04:12:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-06T04:12:46","slug":"mere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/mere\/","title":{"rendered":"Mere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Much as I enjoyed the Narnia books as a child, I\u2019ve never got the whole C.S. Lewis thing and I don\u2019t intend to start trying now. Writing<\/a> in the New York Times <\/em>Mark Oppenheimer looks at the Lewis phenomenon and, reasonably enough, quotes one of Lewis\u2019 more well-known arguments for the divinity of Christ:<\/p>\n

In \u201cMere Christianity,\u201d Lewis writes of Jesus: \u201cI am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: \u2018I\u2019m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don\u2019t accept His claim to be God.\u2019 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 \u2014 on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg \u2014 or else he would be the Devil of Hell.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Oppenheimer notes this:<\/p>\n

This famous passage does not, on a second read, make much sense. After all, could not a great moral teacher have messianic delusions? But on a first read, it is quite persuasive, and classic Lewis. It is clear, confident and a bit humorous, and it offers a stark choice as it firmly suggests the right answer. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair enough, but it has always struck me (and I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the first to think so) that Lewis\u2019 argument (at least the extract quoted here) also sidesteps the rather important question as to whether the writers of the Gospels offer an accurate account of what it was that Jesus may have actually said. Was the claim to divinity His or theirs?<\/p>\n

No way of telling, I suppose. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much as I enjoyed the Narnia books as a child, I\u2019ve never got the whole C.S. Lewis thing and I don\u2019t intend to start trying now. Writing in the New York Times Mark Oppenheimer looks at the Lewis phenomenon and, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[689],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5471"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5483,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5471\/revisions\/5483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}