Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing’, he went on, ‘All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.’ To understand the shattering impact of it, you need to know the man…
CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy, recalling his conversation with Thomas Dewar Weldon during the evening of April 27, 1926.
HW Crocker III, over at The Catholic Thing, reminds us that the historical evidence on Christ is very good, and none of it supports modern day attempts to depict Christ as a “wise teacher”.
We’re all familiar with C. S. Lewis’s trilemma that Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, was either a lunatic, a liar, or Lord of the World. Jesus certainly didn’t seem to be a lunatic. Indeed, He was the cure for lunacy – casting out demons from those possessed – and never proposing anything as lunatic as, say, choosing your pronouns or drag-queen story hour or the idea that men can become pregnant.
Liar doesn’t fit Him either. He was, instead, a pretty obvious truth-teller, unafraid of uncomfortable truths, hard truths, and ultimate truths that most people try to gloss over, fudge, or deny. And His chief enemy goes by the name of the Prince of Lies. That prince has all the seductive lies that people like to hear: that there is no such thing as sin, that they can be as gods, that they can invent their own reality.
As for Lord, well, that does seem to suit the facts, but who, these days, wants to believe that? Who wants to repent of his sins or be judged by God? And so we often now hear of a fourth possibility: that Jesus was merely a legend, the most insupportable argument of all.
As far as textual and documentary evidence goes, we have far better sources for the life of Jesus than we do for any other figure of the ancient world. It’s not even close. And that includes figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
Go here to read the rest.
[…] the Mass Today Really What Paul Vi Envisioned for Post Vatican II – Fr. Allan J. McDonaldCrocker on Christ – Donald R. McClarey, Esq., at The American CatholicMy Final Few Thoughts on Fidelia […]
I love this.
You couldn’t make up Christianity if you tried. Our Faith glorifies what the world looks down upon. No other religion does this. Other religions look for the noble and esteemed to lead them. They give you rules of life to make you great and elevate above your neighbour. In contrast, our Faith honours the lowly. It is perpetually counter-cultural. Our Lord was counter-cultural and yet became the most important Person in history of the world to the point where our calendar centres around His birth to his humble Mother. History centres around the birth and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. What does that tell the world other than that He is the Truth, the Way and the Light. He is God made Man. And no human heart will be at Peace until they come to terms with this.