Josh McDowell in “Evidence Demands a Verdict” proclaimed that, according to what is said about the Jesus of the bible, one only has three options to describe Jesus. If he is not a lier or a lunatic, he must be the Son of God. Based on your research, is there room for other characterizations of Jesus?
I mean Bart Ehrman says Jesus never claimed to be God so that kinda messes up C.S Lewis’ trillema if true as he can’t then be lord if he’s not claiming to be he can’t be lying about something he never claimed and he can’t be lunatic if he’s not claiming to be God although if he’s claiming so sort of divinity which I think even Bart may agree he was even if Bart disagrees he saw himself as the son of God then if he isn’t divine you could probably class him as a lunatic
Ohhh okay was listening to a talk with him the other day and he said he thought Jesus most probabalh said that you will see the son of man coming from the clouds I can’t remember the exact verse but was suprised as whilst he wasn’t claiming to be God it still slunds quite divine
Lewis was an odd duck. His literary scholarship is first rate, but thats not what his fans read. When it came to study of the New Testament his otherwise formidable critical faculties went right out the window. Lewis completely rejected historical critical study of the NT. Consequently his religious writings are full of silly shallow arguments that are constantly repeated by apologists. Lewis is the exemplar of the compartmentalized mind, famous for the very worst of his output.
One thing I’m not clear about is Bart’s position on Jesus claiming to be Son of Man.
In multiple books and podcasts Bart opines that Jesus discussed the Son Of Man as if it would be somebody else.
But, reading the actual text of the Gospels, it is pretty clear that Jesus is discussing the Son Of Man as himself.
Is Bart’s position that Jesus never claimed that and the Gospels made it up?
Like Robert said: The discrepancy, for Bart, is between Jesus and the Gospels. Jesus did speak of the Son of Man, but did not identify himself with the Son of Man. The Gospels portray Jesus as the Son of Man, and they change (sometimes subtlely) his own teaching to reflect their own theology about him, that is, they changed his words so that what he said about the Son of Man, was actually about him.
Still, BDE thinks we can find passages in the gospels where they didn’t fully update his teaching to match their own, so we can still see the implication in some traditional material, ascribed to Jesus and recorded in the gospels, that either hints or implies that the Son of Man is one other than Jesus.
Funnily enough have just asked Bart this samw question in the comments section to his most recent post as in Matthew 17:9 it says how Jesus tells them not to tell anyone of the vision they had until the son of man is raised from the dead and then right at the end of the gospel Jesus rises from the dead so surely it would make more sense for Jesus to be the son of man than them be two separate people unless Bart doesn’t think Jesus actually said this and if so am curious as to why he thinks that
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert