Blaze: The historical Jesus, who speaks to us through the Gospels, makes claims about himself that are inconsistent with those of a man who was merely a Jewish prophet and nothing more.
As C.S. Lewis famously argued in book 2, chapter 3 of “Mere Christianity,” a man who said the kinds of things that Jesus said could not have been a prophet, plain and simple. Either he was, as he claimed to be, the eternal Son of God, or a madman on the order of someone who thinks he is a poached egg, or the devil of hell.
American apologist Josh McDowell, in good preacher form, boiled down the options to three words all beginning with the letter “L”: liar, lunatic, or Lord. Either Jesus was the worst blasphemer who ever lived (as Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin ruled) or a crazy person who needed to be locked up (as his own family thought; see Mark 3:21) or the promised Messiah and Son of the living God (as his disciples came to recognize and believe).
No one at the time said he was only a prophet: neither his friends nor his enemies made that unsustainable claim. More to the point, no one disputed Jesus had made the claims he made. They either believed what he said, or they used his words as proof of his blasphemy or his lunacy. Those who heard his message either attacked him or ridiculed him or worshiped him. What they didn’t do was domesticate him as a mere prophet. more
C S Lewis is my favorite author. He was a brilliant man and I love his style of writing.
Forgotten by who? I have three feet of shelf space taken up by CS Lewis that I reread regularly. Twice that much GK Chesterton.
CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, JRR Tolkien, Malcom Muggeridge etc. were all atheists when they were younger and were saved by God’s grace and became believing Catholics and some of the finest writers of Christian apologetics ever. I like CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, all of his Narnia books and his space trilogy Out of the silent planet, Perelandra my oldest daughter’s favorite book of the trilogy) and That hideous strength. GK Chesterton’s books especially Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man are my favorites, along with all of his witty essays, the Father Brown books and his incredible poetry. TS Eliot is another favorite especially his long poem Choruses from the rock and Murder in the Cathedral about Thomas Becket and his battles with the king of England who ultimately betrayed him and had Beckett murdered. I just finished reading The Brothers Karamazov yesterday by Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of the greatest Russian writers ever along with Alexander Solzhenitsyn as well. I love the works of Flannery O’Connor especially A Good Man Is Hard To Find, a great short story about redemption. Others include Ray Bradbury, Robert A Heinlein and my favorite conservative author Russell Kirk. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Moby Dick by Herman Melville and even all of the more than a thousand plus pages of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I love John Steinbeck’s books as well; I cannot stand Ernest Hemingway because he hated God. And many other good books which are far too numerous to count.
And Witness by Whittaker Chambers, one of the greatest American autobiographies ever. I have 2 copies, my Regnery edition and my dad’s book of the month copy which he bought when he was a young man in the early 50’s which I only found after he died amongst all of his books.