Jesus is not God but merely a “good moral teacher”? Well … that’s a problem, for many reasons. One of which is the argument CS Lewis made: if Jesus is not Lord, as he claimed to be, then he must be either a liar or a lunatic, which means he can’t be a “good” moral teacher.
By Deacon Frederick Bartels
4 September 2020
Newsweek reported a Ligonier Ministries State of Theology survey conducted by LifeWay Research found that 52 percent of Americans think Jesus is not God but was merely a good moral teacher. PRNewswire reports the survey polled a nationally representative sample of 3,002 adults in the U.S., which included 630 who professed to be evangelicals.
Given that 77 percent of Americans claim to be Christian, it might come as a surprise that a majority of Americans do not believe Jesus is divine. However, it’s not difficult to understand how this has happened when we consider the blatant, far-reaching attacks from modernists and secular humanists against the Church and the Christian religion over the past couple centuries. Consequently, post-modern America is suffering from an extreme loss of faith and a decline in the Christian identity.
Modernism
To avoid confusion, the Catholic opposition to modernism doesn’t mean Catholics are against modern things in the world or progress, such as technology or every modern way of living, like driving cars to work, watching movies, and using smart phones. In a theological and philosophical sense, modernism is a heresy that attacks Christian dogmas and truths by gradually introducing distortions and corruptions. Over time, the foundational principles of dogmas and doctrines are eroded away, discarded, and replaced with new, evolutionary and revolutionary ideas that cannot be said to be an authentic development of doctrine. Modernism is like a cancer that eats away at the body of Christ. Pope Pius X noted in Pascendi Dominici Gregis that modernism is the synthesis of all heresies.
Were one to attempt the task of collecting together all the errors that have been broached against the faith and to concentrate the sap and substance of them all into one, he could not better succeed than the Modernists have done.
No. 39
Heresy
In an informal sense, heresy can be defined as deliberately “letting go” of one side of the tension found in a particular theological truth. In our discussion here, modernists “let go” of Jesus’ divinity but hold on to his humanity; thus he becomes a “good moral teacher” and nothing else. This suits their ends because if Jesus is merely a good moral teacher and not God, there is no reason to pay any particular attention to him. There are plenty of moral teachers. Why should we need another one? Especially one who was crucified as a criminal? If Jesus is not divine, then the divine faith of the Church rests on a lie and everything crumbles—which is the whole point of the modernist enterprise.
Jesus: True God and True Man
Consider also that if Jesus is not divine, humankind is unredeemed, and men are unsaved. Man is redeemed precisely because the Son of God became man and offered himself up on the cross to God the Father in expiation of sin. Furthermore, salvation is made possible for men by virtue of the eternal Word made flesh. In becoming man, the Son of God makes a marriage of mankind with God. His voluntary death on the cross is a saving death that opens the heavens up before us, provided that we have faith in him and receive the sacrament of baptism, which is the normative means of salvation by virtue of configuring us to Christ.
The tension between Jesus’ divinity and humanity must be maintained. It’s disastrous to overemphasize one of his natures at the cost of the other. The Lord Jesus is true God and true man: he is perfectly God and perfectly man. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who, conceived in the flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, assumed an individual human nature to his divine Person. Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity who perfectly possesses a human nature and is therefore the Word made flesh—fully God and fully man.
Lord, liar, or lunatic?
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis gave an excellent argument against the illogical idea that Jesus is merely a good moral teacher. He argued that Jesus can’t be merely a good moral teacher because he repeatedly claimed divine status—sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. In any case, Jesus repeatedly identified himself as God.
The heart of Lewis’ argument consists in this piece of logic: If Jesus is not God, as he claimed to be, then he was either a liar or a lunatic. If he was a liar, he most certainly could not have been a good moral teacher. If he was a lunatic, then we cannot trust anything he said. Thus, according to Lewis, Jesus must be either Lord, liar or lunatic. Those are your choices.
The Virtue of Faith
While it’s true that we cannot prove in a scientific way that Jesus is God (divine and spiritual realities are beyond the scope of the physical sciences), the evidence in favor of his divinity is extensive. Nevertheless, it is only through the eyes of faith that Christ is unveiled in all his truth, beauty, goodness, and splendor. In faith, he is God and man.
The virtue of faith is a gift from God enabling us to unreservedly and freely assent with intellect and will to all that God has revealed in Christ, transmitted in its full purity through the Catholic Church. Faith cannot be earned. No amount of study in and of itself will produce it or result in passing the “test of faith.” Faith is accessed as a free gift through prayer, repentance, and humility before God. One must sincerely seek it and entreat God for it. Then, one must nourish and protect it daily.
Unfortunately, Christians who disbelieve in Jesus’ divinity lack the theological virtue of faith because it flows from the divine Person of Christ himself. One cannot have faith in Christ in a full sense yet also deny his divine nature. The two are incompatible. For these former Christians, the modernists have perhaps destroyed their faith; yet it is difficult to understand how they could have done so without their cooperation—at least to some degree.
Let us pray for all Christians and their unity, that they may profess the true and divine faith of the Church: Jesus Christ is Lord!
Deacon Frederick Bartels is a member of the Catholic clergy who serves the Church in the diocese of Pueblo. He holds an MA in Theology and Educational Ministry, is a member of the theology faculty at Catholic International University, and is a Catholic educator, public speaker, and evangelist who strives to infuse culture with the saving principles of the gospel. For more, visit YouTube, iTunes and Twitter.
Your last quote is nonsense…
“Unfortunately, Christians who disbelieve in Jesus’ divinity lack the theological virtue of faith because it flows from the divine Person of Christ himself. One cannot have faith in Christ in a full sense yet also deny his divine nature. The two are incompatible.”
Sorry, this has nothing to do with faith. It has all to do with believing Jesus’ own words.
Trinity teaches Jesus is co-equal to the God the Father in knowledge, power, and authority. However, Jesus said ‘the Father is greater’. He said he doesn’t know the day and hour of his return. He said he can do NOTHING on his own. Over and over again, Jesus acknowledges his subordination to the Father. How do Trinitarians overcome these clear contradictions of co-equality? The TWO NATURES – Trinity’s most outstanding cop-out. That’s precisely how over a hundred Bishops of Rome over the course of about 2-3 hundred years resolved these arguments. There was no overcoming the following contradictions any other way other than claiming Jesus has two natures.
His subordination to God –
The Father being greater –
Not knowing the day or hour of his return –
Not being able to do anything on his own –
Mr. Martel,
The quote you cited has everything to do with the virtue of faith. Faith is required to fully believe Jesus’ words.
While it’s true that Jesus said, “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), he was not speaking in terms of his divine nature. Jesus is co-equal to and consubstantial with the Father in his divinity (both Jesus and the Father are one God; God by nature). Here, Jesus is speaking in terms of his humanity. The Father is greater in his divinity than Jesus is in his humanity (Jesus is true God and true man). Furthermore, only God the Father is totally without origin. The Son of God (Jesus Christ) finds his origin in the Father, as we profess in the Nicene Creed in speaking about the Son, “God from God, light from light.” Thus, Jesus can also say, “the Father is greater than I” in terms of his origin. That is, he comes from the Father.
Finally, you chose to cite biblical passages that are confusing to uphold your position. However, there are many others that clearly show Jesus’ co-equality with the Father, such as his “I am” statement in John 8:58 in which he identifies himself as God in reference to the “I Am” statement of Yahweh in Exodus 3:14. The Bible must be read in context and in continuity with the constant, living Tradition of the Church. On an individual level, people can make particular passages in the Bible mean nearly anything they want. Only the Catholic Church has the authority to authentically interpret and rule on the meaning of the Bible.
Like I said, “There was no overcoming the following contradictions any other way other than claiming Jesus has two natures.”
You find the following confusing???
His subordination to God –
The Father being greater –
Not knowing the day or hour of his return –
Not being able to do anything on his own –
Truth is the two nature clause is worn out. That’s the only answer you guys have to the dozens of contradictions posed by trinity. What blows a hole in Trinity is Hebrews 2:17. Your two natures clause doesn’t work here. If fact a co-equal Trinity destroys the atonement!
If Jesus was God that makes him a fraud and the cross a hoax. The bible says he was tempted in every way and that he knew temptation. It also says God cannot be tempted and therefore cannot sin. If Jesus was God that means he could not have sinned anyway. (Back to the only Trinitarian answer of TWO NATURES) That makes the Word of God totally contradictory – makes Jesus a fraud because he never would have to overcome sin as he, as God, wouldn’t have been tempted to sin anyway – ultimately making the cross and the atonement for sin a complete hoax – think about it.
He was the Christ – the Messiah. He was divine in that he came from the Father and had an uncommon measure of the Fathers Holy Spirit. That’s how he overcame. Even so, at times, he needed to be empowered and encouraged by an angel to overcome. (Luke 22) IF Jesus was also God, why would he need any empowerment at all from an angel?
Neither does the ‘two natures’ work here…
Numbers 23:19 KJV
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
1 Samuel 15:29 KJV
And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.
Hosea 11:9 KJV
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.
Job 9:32 KJV
For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.
Hebrews 6:18
So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
Numbers 23:19 KJV
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
1 Samuel 15:29 KJV
And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent
Hosea 11:9 KJV
I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.
Job 9:32 KJV
For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.
Hebrews 6:18
So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
You said, “That would mean, one god has to be more powerful than the other two. But they are equal.”
If they are equal, why did Jesus say in John 14:28
“Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: FOR MY FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.”
Why did he say in John 10:29,
“My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.”
And why did Jesus say in John 13:16
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.”
The Bishops of Rome could not resolve multiple “CO-EQUAL’ contradictions, they overcame those contradictions in AD 451 under Pope Leo the Great. That’s when Jesus acquired TWO NATURES…the ultimate Trinitarian cop-out.
Trinity – It destroys the true Character of Jesus Christ and God the Father – who has NO EQUALS!
Trinitarian says, “Jesus is fully God and fully man.
Paul says, Jesus was fully human in every way!
Hebrews 2:17
For this reason he had to be made like them,[fn] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.
Mr. Martel,
I don’t accept the premise of any of your arguments. Just to focus on one (Hebrews 2:17), it does not prove that Jesus was not fully divine. If we back up to Hebrews 2:14, it states “he himself likewise partook of the same nature.” In other words, the Son of God assumed an individual human nature to himself, while also remaining fully God.
Also, this is not a forum for long rants against the Christian religion. I’ve left your first couple of posts up, if people would like to respond to them, but I’ve deleted the others. I don’t mind a conversational approach, but that doesn’t seem to be your intent.