Vinnie

How about great within his culture or historical context? Neither Jesus nor his contemporaries were driven by our contemporary sense of morality and that may not be the best standard to judge them by.

Vinnie

Vinnie

You are simply avoiding the issue with nonsense. Your reductio ad absurdem argument didn't work and now you want to turn this into a debate about Jesus' existence. Well, you can do that with someone else.

Vinnie

lpetrich

I also smelled a rat when I read RE's account -- it seems too contrived. The more straightforward interpretation -- let others continue to mistreat you, to attack you, to steal from you, to enslave you -- is the more straightforward one.

It reminds me of a similar fairy tale to "justify" 1 Corinthians 14:33-34 about how women should shut up about religion and let their husbands instruct them. Supposedly, women had been too talkative, but I've never seen any independent evidence that supports this alleged extra talkativeness.

Toto

We don't know that a single person named Jesus existed, but the New Testament as a document does reflect something. We do know as clearly as we can know anything in ancient history, that Roman soldiers existed. There may be some commentary somewhere that backs the first assertions up as to what these NT actually meant to the people of its era, so that the words attributed to Jesus have some particular meaning. That's all we're asking.

Radcliffe Emerson

well, if and when my friend responds back to me, I'll post here what he tells me about the references.
He actually did a sermon on the topic over the summer, so I'm assuming (and hoping actually) that he does have references!

CX

Nope. If you take away the supernatural bits there's not much special about Jesus. Celsus pointed out centuries ago that his philosophy is really just a simplistic and somewhat vulgar reformulation of existing ideas better stated by the likes of Plato. The only really valuable moral dictum in the entire NT is the "golden rule" and that is hardly original to Jesus.

Vinnie

CX, what do you think was Jesus' essential philosophy?

Vinnie

Family Man

I'm with CX on this. Of Lewis's Liar, Lunatic, or Lord options, I've always thought the Lunatic option was the obvious ones.

And Vinnie, even by the standards of his time, Jesus was considered an outcast. Remember that he spent time with tax collectors and prostitutes, and I don't believe that his rejection of his family put him on solid ground within his community. Isn't it true that he made very little headway within his own community? And if the stories are to be believed, he was executed by challenging the religious and civil authorities of the time. He was hardly a great success in his own lifetime.

-DM-

Lord, liar, or lunatic?: the so-called Trilemma "argument."

The fact is that there are many more than three possibilities:
1) Jesus was Lord.
2) Jesus was a liar.
3) Jesus was a lunatic.
4) Jesus was both Lord and a liar.
5) Jesus was both Lord and a lunatic.
6) Jesus was both a liar and a lunatic.
7) Jesus was Lord as well as a liar and an lunatic.
8) Jesus was neither Lord, liar, nor lunatic, or any combination thereof. He was simply mistaken about himself.
9) His "biographers" lied.
10) His "biographers" were lunatics.
11) His "biographers" were lunatics who lied.
12) His "biographers" neither lied, nor were they lunatics. They were simply mistaken in what they wrote.

-Don-

P.S. Of those persons who have managed to impress a good number of people with their intellect, Lewis is one of the most illogical persons that I have yet come across. His so-called reasoning amounts mostly to a bunch of non sequiturs.

-DM-

Paul and the Catholic Church are responsible for the success of Jesus, albeit a rather different Jesus than the Jesus of the Gospels.

-Don-