The Philosophical Evidence of Jesus’ Deity

The question is, was Jesus what He and others claimed Him to be? C. S. Lewis said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people say 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 a 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.”1

 

1.  The Evidence Says He Can’t be a Liar

Deceptions will be found out and fallacies will be discovered. If Jesus was lying about His deity sooner or later His words or actions would have betrayed Him. But His moral life speaks purity and blamelessness. How could He encourage holiness if He was history’s greatest farce? As Lewis said, He would not have been a great moral teacher. And if He was lying, then why would He have died for such a lie. Maybe it was because He was not in His mind lying but was delusional?

1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: HarperSanFransico, 2001), p. 52.