DEBATENATE

Topics / Faith and God

The challenge

“Jesus was just a good moral teacher”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Just a good teacher is the one thing Jesus can't be. He is Lord and Savior, crucified and risen, and he made claims no mere teacher makes. In Mark two he tells a man his sins are forgiven, and the scribes ask who can forgive sins but God alone. In John eight he says before Abraham was, I am. A man who talks like that is lying, out of his mind, or telling the truth. C. S. Lewis made that argument in Mere Christianity, and I've never heard a good way around it. You'll say his followers added those claims later. Paul's letters, written within a generation, already call him Lord. Let me ask you this. Would you call a man who falsely claimed to be God a good teacher? Jesus didn't apply to be a teacher. He claimed the throne.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Jesus made claims no mere teacher makes. He forgave sins against other people and took God's name for himself.

    In Mark 2:5-7 the scribes object that only God can forgive sins, and in John 8:58 Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am.

  2. Worship of Jesus as Lord shows up at the very start. It isn't a late legend.

    Paul's letters, which scholars widely date to within roughly twenty to thirty years of the crucifixion, pass on a creed of his death and resurrection in First Corinthians 15 and call him Lord in Philippians 2.

  3. If his claims were false, his moral authority goes with them. Just a good teacher is not a position you can stand on.

    C. S. Lewis argued in Mere Christianity that a man saying what Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher unless his claims were true.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: The Gospels were written decades later by believers, so the divine claims could be legend layered on top of a wise rabbi.

Nate: Mark, widely considered the earliest Gospel, already has Jesus forgiving sins as only God can. Paul's letters are earlier still, and they already worship him. His execution under Pontius Pilate is confirmed outside the Bible by the Roman historian Tacitus. This was a real man, and his earliest followers proclaimed him Lord.

What he grants the other side

His moral teaching is admired by people of every faith and none.

The lines

Sources

  1. The Bible, Mark 2:5-7; John 8:58
  2. The Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; Philippians 2:5-11
  3. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952)
  4. Tacitus, Annals, Book 15.44 (c. 116)

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