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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (16210)	2/5/2004 9:14:23 AM
From: briskit	Respond to of 28931

It's a good question whether Jesus was raised to god-status much later, or if he made claims regarding himself that he was more than a moral teacher/philosopher. The gospels themselves were written in the first century, as well as various letters. Your question is partly addressed by the Oxford atheist's assertion that the historical authenticity of the gospels is on solid ground. It sounds like you and Lewis agree that no other moral or religious teachers would have entertained the thought of their own deity. Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Moses, Socrates, would have laughed (or cut your head off in the case of Mohammed). Lewis thought Jesus did make that claim, and referred to it as his "appalling claim" to be the messiah. When Jesus says, "before Abraham was, I am," he was using the Old Testament name for God given to Moses, "Tell them 'I am' sent you." Freud said of Jesus' claim to forgive sins, "Suppose I said to a patient, I Professor Freud, forgive thee thy sins. What sort of fool would I make of myself?" It would take a lot of time to go over all the various data points, questions, etc., to consider the issue of whether, and if so how, Jesus made this claim for himself in detail here. Lewis makes the following conclusion, "you can shut him up for a fool, or spit at him as a demon....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." That's a strong statement.