Jesus a "great teacher"

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lynnehelen

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To call Jesus (merely) a “great teacher,” in other words, just another Ghandi or MLK, is to break the 2nd (?) Commandment, “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

This stumblimg block denied me access to the Lord (the Son) in my spiritual life all my life long, taught to me on a daily basis. I took Him “for granted,” Obviously, you do not revere a mere man as Holy and Immortal. Indeed, this line of reasoning, used by many as a cop-out for fence-sitting, is grossly undermining to the faith. If you do not acknowledge that Jesus is immortal then, first of all, obviously you are calling Him insane even while calling Him a great teacher, or merely ignoring I-don’t-know-what percentage of what He said. Moreover, obviously you are calling him a bastard.

Sorry, no fence-sitting. Either you believe or you don’t.

This “line of reasoning” has blocked me in my spiritual life since I was young, because of the source. Perhaps others have a different take on it.
 
To acknowledge Jesus as simply a great teacher, prophet and healer is to deny the more challenging aspects of the Gospel. Even non-believers can see the inherent beauty in Christ’s teachings and embrace them with little reservation. To be a True Believer requires that leap of faith - to see the Plan of Salvation realized through the Perfect Sacrifice. Further, we do it through the witness of others, requiring yet another leap of faith. It’s hard to be a true Christian, both in terms of belief and in the way in which we live our lives. Christ also acknowledged this in His many teachings, knowing our nature intimately through his own human experience. To truly embrace His teachings one must ponder those lessons most of all.
 
To say Jesus is simply a great teacher means that his teachings (Sermon on the Mount, etc.) can be great ethical concepts for living a positive life. However this limits who Jesus is.

Unlike someone who follows the teaches of Buddha, Daoism, etc., Jesus invites us to a personal relationship with him and communal relationship with the Church.

This is the big difference!!
 
DaddyGirl said:
The insane part, above, has always flummoxed me.
What is that line…“He was either liar, lunatic, or lord”, right?

But I think if someone doesn’t believe Jesus was/is immortal, it doesn’t have to mean they are saying he’s a liar and mad…it could mean they are questioning more the words, perceptions and motives of his small (at the time) group of followers, or those who wrote everything down decades later.
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Good reply DaddyGirl. C.S. Lewis said to call Christ merely a great man is to miss the point entirely. He didn’t claim to be a great man. He claimed to be God. Either he is God and therefore the proper focus of a human life (whether running from him or charging after him), or a lying lunatic to be ridiculed and then ignored. His, “Teaching,” was contingent upon his claim of divinity. If he is not divine, his teaching is actually worthless.

Again, he is not a great man. He IS God. It’s very different.
 
lynnehelen said:
To call Jesus (merely) a “great teacher,” in other words, just another Ghandi or MLK, is to break the 2nd (?) Commandment, “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

This stumblimg block denied me access to the Lord (the Son) in my spiritual life all my life long, taught to me on a daily basis. I took Him “for granted,” Obviously, you do not revere a mere man as Holy and Immortal. Indeed, this line of reasoning, used by many as a cop-out for fence-sitting, is grossly undermining to the faith. If you do not acknowledge that Jesus is immortal then, first of all, obviously you are calling Him insane even while calling Him a great teacher, or merely ignoring I-don’t-know-what percentage of what He said. Moreover, obviously you are calling him a bastard.

Sorry, no fence-sitting. Either you believe or you don’t.

This “line of reasoning” has blocked me in my spiritual life since I was young, because of the source. Perhaps others have a different take on it.
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I would argue it violates the 1st Commandment. He claimed to be God. Assuming he is (and he is), to say he was merely a great man is seeking enlimiting power over him. To claim such power over Very God, is making myself god. I am therefore having a god besides God.

Also, lets not mix the words immortal and eternal. Immortal, traditionally speaking refers to creatures that cannot die. Uncreated, Jesus is eternal. He had no beginning. He will never end. In fact, he is the beginning and end of all that is creature.
 
DaddyGirl said:
The insane part, above, has always flummoxed me.
What is that line…“He was either liar, lunatic, or lord”, right?

But I think if someone doesn’t believe Jesus was/is immortal, it doesn’t have to mean they are saying he’s a liar and mad…it could mean they are questioning more the words, perceptions and motives of his small (at the time) group of followers, or those who wrote everything down decades later.
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But he clearly stated he was God. Who but an insane person would do that?
 
Have you all read the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Even if you are not Catholic and have no intention of becoming one, it can be read with great profit. It will help refine some of your thoughts and terms. vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

👍
 
DaddyGirl said:
I can’t remember his exact words (can you refresh my memory on the quotes?)…but I think many say those words could have been mis-interpreted.
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The Jews at the time were pretty clear on his meaning. For example, when he said “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” they immediately tried to stone him. And of course later they crucified him for claiming to be the the Annointed One, the Son of God.
 
DaddyGirl said:
Which terms do you speak of? That need refining?
I’m imagine the Catholics here have read it.
Funny you say this, because every time I attempt to read it…I just come away perplexed!
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Perhaps I missread you post. But you did say that regarding Jesus as a great teacher was a stumbling block to you for a long time. And it wasn’t clear that this was not still the case. Therefore I wanted to refer you to the Catechism, especially the part dealing with the Creed since that shows that Jesus has never been regarded by the Catholic Church merely as a great teacher but as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, our Lord and Savior. I apologize if I missread your message.

😊
 
DaddyGirl said:
I can’t remember his exact words (can you refresh my memory on the quotes?)…but I think many say those words could have been mis-interpreted.
Many religions teach that all of us, in a sense, are God…that God is within us. So many people read his words as saying that. That he is God, that you are God, that God is inside us.
As in:
“…the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21?) et al.

So he may have been saying one thing, but some might say it’s possible the meaning or words were tweaked in that first century or two, especially during the oral storytelling.
All this to say there can exist other options other than liar/lunatic…he doesn’t have to be insane…it’s the others who could be in error.
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This tract from Catholic.com is a good beginning.

CS Lewis makes a case that Jesus taking on authority to forgive sins after healing, for example the paralytic (Luke 5:20), is implicitly a claim to divinity and was understood that way by his contemporaries. Lewis’ point is that wrongs done to someone else are only forgivable by the one wronged, so Jesus - since he himself was not wronged by the acts in question - granting forgiveness on behalf of someone else would be incredibly presumptuous, unless he really was God. God, as creator of the cosmos and all people in it, would in fact be personally wronged by every evil act. Therefore, Jesus claims concerning divine forgiveness entail that he was either God himself forgiving wrongs legitimately or a very deluded individual.

It would be difficult to argue that Jesus claims to forgiving sins was a later interpolation because the fact that he was crucified is not generally disputed and is supported by non-Christian sources. His claim to divinity serves as the best explanation for his crucifixion, i.e., fomenting both Jewish (blasphemy) and Roman (sedition: Caesar is Lord) antipathy.
 
Following from the previous post, I don’t know if I am saying something similar as I am so devoid of spiritual education but I wanted to point out this example that I came up with myelf as to why it just doesn’t hold water to refer to Him as a “great teacher” (only.)

Forgiveness is a wonderful principle. It makes the person who forgives, feel better. It releases them from their bitterness and anger.

So you could say, “That’s what Jesus taught. He was a great teacher, you see.”

But one human can’t forgive another without the source–the fount of Mercy flowing from the Eternal One. We don’t have that power within ourselves. Before Jesus, we were dragged down, as St. Paul described so eloquently, to sin and do everything wrong the harder we try to do right.

It is through reference to Jesus’s immortality or eternality, his Passion, his mortification, for our sake, (I am not the best-spoken religious philosopher but I am trying), that we draw the power to forgive. It comes through Divinity, through Divine Love. Only

So the “teachings” are meaningless without attachment or reference to the immortal or eternal Christ.
 
lynnehelen said:
To call Jesus (merely) a “great teacher,” in other words, just another Ghandi or MLK, is to break the 2nd (?) Commandment, “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

This stumblimg block denied me access to the Lord (the Son) in my spiritual life all my life long, taught to me on a daily basis. I took Him “for granted,” Obviously, you do not revere a mere man as Holy and Immortal. Indeed, this line of reasoning, used by many as a cop-out for fence-sitting, is grossly undermining to the faith. If you do not acknowledge that Jesus is immortal then, first of all, obviously you are calling Him insane even while calling Him a great teacher, or merely ignoring I-don’t-know-what percentage of what He said. Moreover, obviously you are calling him a bastard.

Sorry, no fence-sitting. Either you believe or you don’t.

This “line of reasoning” has blocked me in my spiritual life since I was young, because of the source. Perhaps others have a different take on it.
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Where is the source of the stumbling block? Who taught you that Jesus was merely a teacher?
 
DaddyGirl said:
Thank you 🙂
I for one, tho, wouldn’t say his teachings are worthless if he’s not divine.
Why would teaching peace, understanding, and love be worthless?
People in the current era, like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama…or the guy next door, or the kid down the street…teach peace and love every day…and their teachings are not worthless just because they are not divine.

Can you elaborate, if i may ask, as to why you’d think so?
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Lunatics, especially charismatic ones, always start by preaching peace and unity. Then, they divide people and do little but destroy. Christ claimed to be God. The history of Cristianity says that (referring to another of your posts). One can say, now especially, that that may have been misinterpreted. But, the Apostles didn’t think so. Peter declared it in MT 16. The teachings handed down consistently since the middle of the first century bear out that to become Christian is to declare as Peter did, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”:

If he isn’t God, he is a nutcase to be ignored. Ghandi, Buddha and other non-christian charismatics preached those same innate tenets. They weren’t claiming to be God. And, they weren’t lunatics. Assume Christ was a nut. Why not ignore him when we have so many sane people preaching the same behaviors? Christ wasn’t saying love one another because he thought it was a good idea. He commanded it because it is his divine will and was from before time.
 
Here is the Lewis quote that framed the “trilema” (though “Jack” never used that term himself):

“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 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. 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 with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” CS Lewis; Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952), p. 55.
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
Here is the Lewis quote that framed the “trilema” (though “Jack” never used that term himself):

“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 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. 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 with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” CS Lewis; Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952), p. 55.
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Didn’t CS Lewis kill himself? I have been taught that is the surest way to get to hell, because it shows you have no faith in God, and you take His plan into your hands. If so, (maybe I’m thinking of someone else!), he obviously isn’t a great “quote” for Catholicism.
 
ReachingFaith said:
Didn’t CS Lewis kill himself? I have been taught that is the surest way to get to hell, because it shows you have no faith in God, and you take His plan into your hands. If so, (maybe I’m thinking of someone else!), he obviously isn’t a great “quote” for Catholicism.
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Where did you get this idea?

He died of renal failure the same day as Kennedy was assassinated.
He suffered inflammation of the kidneys, blood poisoning, then a heart attack from which he recovered but his health deteriorated and acute renal failure resulted in his death on the 22nd of November in 1963 at 64 years of age.
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
Here is the Lewis quote that framed the “trilema” (though “Jack” never used that term himself):

“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 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. 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 with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” CS Lewis; Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1952), p. 55.
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There is nothing that prevents somebody who has a few crazy ideas about himself to be a great moral teacher in other respects. The one simply hasn’t got anything to do with the other.
Besides, Jesus was not a ‘great’ moral teacher. He was not an utterly bad moral teacher either, but his morality was lacking too much to be called ‘great’.
I certainly don’t think somebody who didn’t consider slavery wrong to be a great moral teacher. As a human being living in the first century his moral stance of slavery may be somewhat excusable, as the Son of God, it imost certainly isn’t. And that’s just one example. His completely unjustified rage at people doing their jobs in the temple is another one.
 
Peter_Plato said:
Where did you get this idea?

He died of renal failure the same day as Kennedy was assassinated.
He suffered inflammation of the kidneys, blood poisoning, then a heart attack from which he recovered but his health deteriorated and acute renal failure resulted in his death on the 22nd of November in 1963 at 64 years of age.
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Also the same day Aldous Huxley (Brave New World and The Doors of Perception) died–which Peter Kreeft picks up in his dialogue book
Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley and one of the best expositions of the “trilema” (and its FAR older than Lewis–it’s found in the ECF’s at least as far back as Augustine “aut deus aut homo mallus–either God or a bad man”)
 
belorg said:
There is nothing that prevents somebody who has a few crazy ideas about himself to be a great moral teacher in other respects. The one simply hasn’t got anything to do with the other.
Besides, Jesus was not a ‘great’ moral teacher. He was not an utterly bad moral teacher either, but his morality was lacking too much to be called ‘great’.
I certainly don’t think somebody who didn’t consider slavery wrong to be a great moral teacher. As a human being living in the first century his moral stance of slavery may be somewhat excusable, as the Son of God, it imost certainly isn’t. And that’s just one example. His completely unjustified rage at people doing their jobs in the temple is another one.
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Yes there is–if someone is claiming to be the source of all being and by that authority, being the standard of all right and wrong, then if his claim of deity is bogus we might as well disreguard everything else he has to say at best of being parroting of already accepted morality and ethics.

If you follow what Jesus taught ("as you do unto the least of my brothers…) then slavery is utterly incompatible. He was to give his life utterly innocent of any moral or civil crime–to explicitly condemn slavery would have been de facto guilty of inciting a slave revolt, a crime.
 
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