What C.S. Lewis had wrong about Jesus
The author said if Jesus wasn't God we should disregard him altogether. What if there's a better response?
A literary genius
C.S. Lewis was a brilliant author, writing more than 30 books during his lifetime, including the Narnia fantasy series, many classic Christian essays, and a few science fiction novels. It’s estimated Lewis’s books have now sold over 200 Million copies. Admirably Lewis made the decision to give away all of his royalties via a charitable trust.
The literary genius of C.S. Lewis is unquestionable, however there is one argument of his which I’ve come to disagree with, and that’s the question of Jesus’s identity and state of mind.
Who was Jesus of Nazareth?
This question fascinates me.
Years ago I found comfort in the argument C.S. Lewis made that Jesus was either God or he was mentally unstable, which seemed like pretty good logic to me at the time. Lewis was saying that Jesus was either exactly who the New Testament writers interpreted him to be, the son of God, or he was crazy.
But, Lewis points out, Jesus most certainly couldn’t have been just a good man. Lewis uses alternate phrasing like “lunatic” and “the Devil of Hell” to describe any mere mortal who might’ve dared to say the types of things attributed to Jesus.
Here’s the full quote:
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 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 — on the 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.
This may be a compelling argument for anyone who views the contents of the Bible as the inerrant word of God, accurate down to the very last word, and therefore an actual historic record of the exact words Jesus said.
But what if the Bible isn’t to be treated as historical record? And what if we don’t know what Jesus actually said? In fact, barring inerrancy, how could we know word for word what Jesus actually said?
Perhaps we can’t.
The meaning of much of Jesus’s teaching in the New Testament is unclear. Some of the language is apocalyptic. Some of it refers to concepts such as the Son of Man and the Kingdom of Heaven. And some of it, depending on which Gospel you read, has others suggesting, and Jesus admitting, that he was a son of God.
It’s mysterious.
And maybe Jesus did make some comments implying his divinity, or rather a connection to the divine. I’d argue that Jesus saw himself as a Messianic figure, an earthly savior for his people who were facing oppression. But even if Jesus saw himself as a Messiah doesn’t mean he saw himself as God—all powerful and preexistent. Even in the First Century CE there were many interpretations of what these Messianic titles meant, and one could argue that it was only years after Jesus's death that early Christians reinterpreted the meaning of the title.
Many Messiahs
We know there were various Messianic movements in the years surrounding Jesus’s life, and many Messianic figures, and it’s quite likely that both Jesus and John the Baptizer saw themselves as joint Messiahs1.
But the reality is two thousand years later we still struggle with a lack of context for understanding the goals and meaning of Jesus’s ministry and teaching.
The four gospels were likely written over a 30-40 year span, with the gospel attributed to Mark being written around 70 CE, or about forty years after Jesus’s ministry was over. Most Christians don’t realize that the original ending of Mark doesn’t even include the Resurrection, only an empty tomb, although one could argue that within Mark there are hints at the divinity of Jesus.
But as Bart Ehrman points out in his brilliant book How Jesus Became God, divinity in the ancient world was viewed along a spectrum. And when we study the gospels and understand the likely order in which they were written, we see that the more time that passed, the more “divine” Jesus becomes. By the time the gospel attributed to John was written around 100 CE, or 70 years after Jesus’s ministry ended, his divinity is far more explicit.
So the further we get from Jesus’s ministry, the bigger the claims of his divinity become.
We could also argue that Paul, who never actually met the historical Jesus, was more likely to emphasize the divinity of Jesus over the earthly teachings of Jesus.
All of this makes it difficult to know just what Jesus meant when he said certain things, or how he actually thought of himself. Perhaps Jesus did see himself as an earthly, Messianic figure that had been prophesied in the holy scriptures he grew up with. And somehow along the way he also stumbled upon some greater truths about ultimate reality that he was trying to communicate through the language and framework of his native religion?
But this doesn’t mean he was mentally ill.
So if we set aside this mysterious portion of Jesus’s teachings what are we left with?
Something even more important.
Jesus’s teaching in context of the First Century
The First Century World was a brutal environment. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth—a reliable method of keeping order, as it seems the threats of robbery and murder were quite common.
Today those of us fortunate enough to live in the first world generally enjoy a high degree of daily safety and security, so we might forget we’re living in historically anomalous times. For most of humanity’s existence societal order as we know it has been scarce, and when it has occurred it’s been maintained largely through the use of state-sponsored force from one’s own community or governmental authority. (Not a judgment, just an observation.)
In fact our modern world of trust and general safety is as historically rare, and as much of an accomplishment, as indoor plumbing. The true modern miracles are often those that have become invisible to us even though we couldn’t imagine living without them. I’m not in awe of every trip to the toilet, but perhaps I should be. The same is probably true for the fact that I can generally trust my neighbors and most anyone I come into contact with not try to rob or kill me as I walk down the street.
But the Galilee and Judea of Jesus’s time were harsh, and the mindset was tribal. Everyone generally looked out for themselves and their immediate family or people group. Think of the story of The Good Samaritan. Today it might seem quaint, but two thousand years ago the idea of helping someone with a different background from your own was quite shocking. So shocking in fact that someone felt they better write that story down.
And Jesus and his contemporaries lived in Roman-occupied territory under foreign rule. They knew fear and submission. And their own rules-based religion was stern and patriarchal. All of these factors coalesced to form a world largely devoid of mercy, forgiveness, and love.
And so out of this First Century World of tyranny and retribution emerged someone proposing radical ideas of loving one’s enemies and turning the other cheek.
He elevated women and spent time with outcasts. He had the courage to call out the authority figures of the day for serving themselves instead of the people.
These weren’t everyday, accepted ideals or concepts like they are today.
A true radical
The ideas presented by Jesus were truly radical.
And hearing someone share these ideas in the First Century CE would’ve been astonishing, if not scandalous, to a First Century audience. Jesus was working to turn things upside down and inside out, and soon enough the forces he was pushing on pushed back—with capital punishment.
Jesus was eliminated; convicted and executed through an apparent collaboration between local religious authorities and government officials. (Scholars think the evidence leans mostly towards the latter, suggesting the Romans bore most of the responsibility.)
We can debate what happened next, but we do know that over the next twenty to eighty years there were people who felt Jesus was a remarkable enough figure, with remarkable enough teachings, that they should go out of their way to write down what they thought he said and did. Not all of these writings agree with one another or match-up perfectly, but we get a general flavor of what Jesus was trying to teach.
Early on these writings were in the form of letters (epistles). Then came the biographies (gospels). And eventually a few hundred years later the very government that executed Jesus adopted Christianity as its own state religion.
Regardless of who Jesus was he seems to have had a message that was radically different from the zeitgeist of his day. A message we’re still trying to fully assimilate and live by even today. Love your enemy. Turn the other cheek. Respect all people. Look into the eyes of the outcast. Serve the people.
And the fact that these ideas seemed to originate from a poor, itinerant preacher, two thousand years ago can be mind blowing if you really let it sink in.
Were all these his original ideas? Maybe, but unlikely. But the fact that he seems to have coherently packaged so many high-consciousness thoughts and ideas into his teaching and behaviors is remarkable.
In fact it may be one of history’s great tragedies that the more mysterious aspects of Jesus’s teachings, stuff like heaven and hell, seem to have been prioritized in the codification of Christianity.
History’s Missed Opportunity
Where would we be if the centuries had been filled with efforts to create Heaven on Earth by working to try and love one another, here and now, or forgiving and forgetting our grievances amongst ourselves?
Of course that religion sounds really hard, and it’s easy to understand why dreaming of some future sky-paradise-infinity-vacation would be more appealing; and so maybe the only reason we have these really cool parts of Jesus’s teachings today is because of the popularity of the mysterious parts.
God or Madman?
So who was Jesus of Nazareth, anyway?
What are we to make of the man who seems to have said such radical things? A messenger from the Divine? Someone struggling with mental illness?
Maybe he was both.
Or neither.
Can we take the portions of Jesus’s teaching that are helpful and set aside the rest?2
What if we release ourselves from the pressure to define Jesus as a binary figure and instead imagine him as a man with a somehow vastly expansive consciousness for his day. Someone who was experiencing a deeper understanding of the Divine, and who was trying to share this understanding through the metaphors of his religion and culture, all in an effort to help people make their world a better place.
Did he also see himself as an earthly Messianic figure who might usher in freedom for his people? Likely.
Did some of his metaphors leave most everyone confused, both while he was alive and certainly after he was gone? Yes.
But he also left us with paradigm-shifting insights on the ideas of love, forgiveness, and inclusion that have grown and slowly permeated cultures throughout the world over the last two millennia.
And this is why I believe Jesus was one of the most important humans to ever live.
Why didn’t C.S. Lewis see it this way?
It’s doubtful that Lewis ever dug too deeply into the historical facts of Jesus and First Century Christianity, even though they were widespread among scholars during Lewis’s life.
Many modern day Christian theologians make this same choice to not look too closely.
I can understand why. It can be devastating to realize that the clear and perfect scriptures you so readily accepted at an earlier time in your life are actually quite obscure and problematic upon closer inspection. Many faced with these facts are tossed into a crisis of faith, realizing their foundation of Biblical inerrancy was not so solid after all.
And so it’s easier not to look too closely. Not to dig too deeply. It’s easier to make large, sweeping dualistic statements such as Jesus is either God incarnate or mentally ill.
So what do we do with this information?
Our goal with Reorder is to take the old story, examine it, and explore how it may be useful moving forward.
If Jesus wasn’t God does this mean we have to discard him as a C.S. Lewis suggests?
How do we relate to a Jesus who may not be divine-incarnate, but might have had tremendous insights into the divine?
One way to look at it would be that Jesus saw himself as preparing to become an earthly ruler in a new era ushered in by God, and therefore his teachings were the playbook for how he expected society to operate in this new era.
Because Jesus operated at such a high level of consciousness he was therefore able to provide a framework for a higher consciousness society: taking care of the less fortunate, loving the other tribe, elevating women, calling out corruption, and living with presence.
So while we may not understand Jesus or his intentions entirely, we certainly shouldn’t throw him away. Jesus was a radical teacher with astonishing insights for his day. And even now, two thousand years later, we can apply many of those insights into our own daily lives. Because it seems our world today could use a little more love, mercy, and forgiveness.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
-Jesus of Nazareth
How has your perspective on Jesus changed over time? Let us know in the comments…
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The idea is John the Baptizer saw himself as a Messianic Priest and Jesus saw himself as a Messianic King.
Jesus was the man who showed those who lived then and since, what it means to be human born in the image of “God”, or with the gift of insight to grow in the ability and will to live compassionately, non-violently. Particularly, when we’re lovingly, compassionately raised in such a community of parents and others who nurture us thusly, does this gift grow. Others lose the knowing they’re loved and born into goodness, depending on their contexts/environments. Jesus doesn’t have to be “Son of God” for me. He simply reminds me how I was born to live, to forgive myself and others, to know myself and others as originally blessed/loved! He reveals the goodness/Godness by which is what it means to be human.
Stimulating thoughts. Thanks, Bodhi. Like you, I have both enjoyed, in fact loved, reading Lewis's Christian writings, and I daresay have profited from them, while also recognizing the shortcomings of his famous "trilemma" ultimatum of "liar, lunatic, or Lord."
For what it's worth, it seems clear to me -- obvious, patent, crystal -- that Jesus was a wisdom teacher whose deeply, formatively Jewish upbringing and thought world had been exploded or illuminated by a spiritual awakening that has clear resonances with the tradition of nonduality as it has manifested in various other cultural, societal, and religious environments throughout history and around the globe. Even if we don't factor in the Thomas gospel, which we have every reason to think comes from as early a stratum of the Christian tradition as Mark, the evidence is plainly visible from reading just the four canonicals. Jesus said things that blew the roof off the traditional religious worldview of his culture, using the only terms that were available to him, which were the terms of that very culture. Then those fellow members of his culture who first heard him and first passed on the teaching, and later those who wrote it down and infused still further layers of partial understanding or misunderstanding into their interpretive literary portraits, essentially and involuntarily "encoded" it in ways that make it simultaneously obvious to those who see it and obscure to those who look, read, and hear through layers of doctrinal presupposition.
Of course, if we *do* factor in the Thomas tradition, then what happened is just flat-out obvious to all. The Jesus of Thomas openly and exclusively says all the things, and more, that the canonical Jesus of Lewis's thought world says in more veiled form, with occasional instances of pure nonduality slipping through the interpretive net -- e.g., "I and my father are one," "The kingdom of heaven is within you." It's simply fascinating to work one's way through all of this.