When I was 14, Walt Wangerin came to my church. He became my Sunday school teacher before he became our assistant pastor. Walt taught me to think, not be afraid to ask God questions. He introduced me to great Christian writers and thinkers. I had been a pretty legalistic Missouri Synod Lutheran up to that point. Jesus was real to me and I loved Him deeply. But...I definitely lived by rules, right and wrong. Walt challenged me to think about why I believed what I believed. I will forever be grateful to him for that among so many other things.
As several have already said above, it seems way counterintuitive to oppose “teacher” and “Lord:” the explicit point of Lewis’s saying is that he is not “just” a teacher. But others above have also gone along with this needless juxtaposition and prefer him to be teacher, but not Lord.
Raised on CS Lewis as a liberal Presbyterian, my take on Lewis’ quote has always been that Jesus is moral teacher as human and Son of God. Still love CS Lewis as liberal theologian in his day. Junie Ewing, Rev.
At 15, I read various mystics (Christian and Zen Buddhists, mainly), tried to meditate (didn't nail that one for another 30 years!) and was largely puzzled by evangelical theology (I too was raised Methodist). I still am, and concluded 20 or so years ago that it was just fine that I'd never found evangelical views of Jesus compelling. I have had several in-house evangelical interpreters (partners who were raised in the tradition) and that has helped me get my head around the tradition's emphasis on the Great Commission over the Greatest Commandments, but I still turn to Jesus as teacher and role model for "doing unto others."
At age 15, and subsequently, I found the Lewis fragment the most convincing apologia I had ever encountered. Milk toast American Protestantism was unconvincing. But it never occurred to me that if Jesus had to be God if he mattered at all, that meant he couldn't be a teacher. Both/and thinking came instinctively.
I think the passage you were "supposed" to read are words Lewis wrote to himself. Wasn't he a famous skeptic before his conversion? People who suddenly change their perspective on the world are the most avid proselytizer for their own new thinking.
As other comments have suggested here, the boy you had a crush on was in error by his misinterpretation of Lewis and McDowell. An avid Lewis reader myself, he believed that Jesus was the greatest teacher mankind has ever known and that Christ's dogma on human morality was the essence of salvation itself.
I love the Marcus Borg quote you provide. To acknowledge that Jesus is more than Teacher does not need to diminish his role as Teacher nor the significance of what he taught. It seems to me that when folks are so insistent on putting aside Jesus as a great moral teacher, it becomes easier for them to brush aside their failure to live by what he taught. Just a thought...
I just pre-ordered the book, to add to my shelf of other DBB books of insight, information, and inspiration. Judging from this essay, this book will fit nicely just after Grateful and Grounded.
I, too, was challenged with this C.S. Lewis/Josh McDowell question while in college, majoring in Bible. It was by my professor in the class, Christian Apologetic. I, too, wanted to fit in with my fundamentalist faith group. I became zealous for defending the divinity of Christ.
Now, I see everyone having the divine with them. I am a Quaker who believes God's creatures has goodness within them but also are influenced by their environment to fight for a self interest to be a part of the group. Unfortunately, this leads to competitiveness, even among faith groups who look for a scapegoat that forms their identity and unity as a group - over against their enemies.
If people would research the history of religious ideas, they will find Buddha had already said what Jesus taught. But Jesus was not in competition with Buddha, nor Buddhists with Christians. There is a unity in the wisdom of these teachers - compassion, mercy, and love. It's when we move away from their teachings grounded in love that we set them up as idols and use ideology to judge others. Thus, we have moved away from love to judgment....and even violence.
But if we can see the Light of love as "The Way" out of darkness into the light of seeing one another created in the image of creative love, we will find our differences are the creative call to listen to and bless each other for who we are - children of Light created out of the stardust of the heavens to enlighten the path we journey together.
When I was fifteen I was a strong, believing Roman Catholic but within a year I'd be on the road to atheism as I butted up against a whole variety of issues, including my dislike of the giggling teenagers in the youth group I'd joined who seemed more interested in dating and gossip than in talking about God.
I am just now, in the past few years, discovering Jesus as teacher-liberator and I love Him so much more! The disciples knew Him as such and I want to be a true disciple like the Mary’s that sat at the feet of Jesus.
When I was around 15 in my conservative, fundamentalist Baptist church, I began asking a question that began my own painful and liberating journey: "Don't words have to mean something real?" For me, the pivotal word lately is "freedom." Freedom means something in terms of lived human experience - we know what it feels like, and we know what its absence feels like. I love how you described the effects of a teacher and I look forward to reading your book!
Why does anyone need to be more than what we all are, teacher? Jesus did not come to set himself apart as one whom no one else could be, as someone who had something no one else could have. He came that we could have life, and have it abundantly, which he did by imparting, through word and deed, how we, each and all of the Same Stuff, could be so much more than that which merely met eye and ear. But we could never realize that unless someone taught it to us. That means we are all disciples (learners), even as we all teach from the myriad lessons we assimilate and become throughout our lives. Teachers make the unknown/Unknowable accessible to the extent that they have learned and imparted it, as well as to the extent that their learners can appropriate it.
In college I heard Josh McDowell speak, as well as others who offered a concise, tight understanding of theological and biblical mysteries, packaging their attempts at systematic theology into a neat container that we could all either carry around or fit into. At the time, it seemed practical and neat, a handy way to master Life. But as I went along my way, I learned that one person’s “answer” is likely not my answer. Indeed, I learned, through the scholarship and teaching of seminary instruction and formation, that answers were a whole lot less helpful than questions, and that my best discipling was through responses, not answers, which seemed to always close off a thing. Responses always allowed for new questions to arise, or old ones to persist until I could meet them with an equal or worthy response.
Leo Perdue was one of my favorite professors in seminary (he died in 2017). He was a Jobian scholar among other things, making the wisdom of God so hospitably incarnational. I remember him preaching in one of our regular Wednesday chapel services, from Job, and he said something I will never forget: “The essence of being human is to question, and the essence of question is to have no answer.” That changed my understanding of pedagogy and gave me a new and ever renewing hope for ministry, which, of course, is grounded in the eternal lessons that come from the unbounded experience of being fully human and fully alive.
But how would we know that if someone hadn’t taught us?
Thank you for your continued scholarship, Dr. Bass, and your enthusiastic desire to share it. I appreciate this opportunity to respond to and with you. Peace be with you.
You totally missed the point of McDowell and Lewis ... to say Jesus was a teacher is like saying Mother Teresa was a nun. Of course she was but there is so much more to her that you belittle her by saying that. The same with Jesus. The point of McDowell and Lewis was to do away with the argument that Jesus was ONLY a moral teacher and nothing more. I don't think you believe that but that is what your writing seems to say.
When I was 14, Walt Wangerin came to my church. He became my Sunday school teacher before he became our assistant pastor. Walt taught me to think, not be afraid to ask God questions. He introduced me to great Christian writers and thinkers. I had been a pretty legalistic Missouri Synod Lutheran up to that point. Jesus was real to me and I loved Him deeply. But...I definitely lived by rules, right and wrong. Walt challenged me to think about why I believed what I believed. I will forever be grateful to him for that among so many other things.
As several have already said above, it seems way counterintuitive to oppose “teacher” and “Lord:” the explicit point of Lewis’s saying is that he is not “just” a teacher. But others above have also gone along with this needless juxtaposition and prefer him to be teacher, but not Lord.
John Paul Ii Apostolic Exhortation October 1979 CATECHESI TRADENDAE See Section I and Section 2 Subtitles
http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_16101979_catechesi-tradendae.html
Raised on CS Lewis as a liberal Presbyterian, my take on Lewis’ quote has always been that Jesus is moral teacher as human and Son of God. Still love CS Lewis as liberal theologian in his day. Junie Ewing, Rev.
At 15, I read various mystics (Christian and Zen Buddhists, mainly), tried to meditate (didn't nail that one for another 30 years!) and was largely puzzled by evangelical theology (I too was raised Methodist). I still am, and concluded 20 or so years ago that it was just fine that I'd never found evangelical views of Jesus compelling. I have had several in-house evangelical interpreters (partners who were raised in the tradition) and that has helped me get my head around the tradition's emphasis on the Great Commission over the Greatest Commandments, but I still turn to Jesus as teacher and role model for "doing unto others."
At age 15, and subsequently, I found the Lewis fragment the most convincing apologia I had ever encountered. Milk toast American Protestantism was unconvincing. But it never occurred to me that if Jesus had to be God if he mattered at all, that meant he couldn't be a teacher. Both/and thinking came instinctively.
I think the passage you were "supposed" to read are words Lewis wrote to himself. Wasn't he a famous skeptic before his conversion? People who suddenly change their perspective on the world are the most avid proselytizer for their own new thinking.
As other comments have suggested here, the boy you had a crush on was in error by his misinterpretation of Lewis and McDowell. An avid Lewis reader myself, he believed that Jesus was the greatest teacher mankind has ever known and that Christ's dogma on human morality was the essence of salvation itself.
I love the Marcus Borg quote you provide. To acknowledge that Jesus is more than Teacher does not need to diminish his role as Teacher nor the significance of what he taught. It seems to me that when folks are so insistent on putting aside Jesus as a great moral teacher, it becomes easier for them to brush aside their failure to live by what he taught. Just a thought...
I just pre-ordered the book, to add to my shelf of other DBB books of insight, information, and inspiration. Judging from this essay, this book will fit nicely just after Grateful and Grounded.
I, too, was challenged with this C.S. Lewis/Josh McDowell question while in college, majoring in Bible. It was by my professor in the class, Christian Apologetic. I, too, wanted to fit in with my fundamentalist faith group. I became zealous for defending the divinity of Christ.
Now, I see everyone having the divine with them. I am a Quaker who believes God's creatures has goodness within them but also are influenced by their environment to fight for a self interest to be a part of the group. Unfortunately, this leads to competitiveness, even among faith groups who look for a scapegoat that forms their identity and unity as a group - over against their enemies.
If people would research the history of religious ideas, they will find Buddha had already said what Jesus taught. But Jesus was not in competition with Buddha, nor Buddhists with Christians. There is a unity in the wisdom of these teachers - compassion, mercy, and love. It's when we move away from their teachings grounded in love that we set them up as idols and use ideology to judge others. Thus, we have moved away from love to judgment....and even violence.
But if we can see the Light of love as "The Way" out of darkness into the light of seeing one another created in the image of creative love, we will find our differences are the creative call to listen to and bless each other for who we are - children of Light created out of the stardust of the heavens to enlighten the path we journey together.
When I was fifteen I was a strong, believing Roman Catholic but within a year I'd be on the road to atheism as I butted up against a whole variety of issues, including my dislike of the giggling teenagers in the youth group I'd joined who seemed more interested in dating and gossip than in talking about God.
I am just now, in the past few years, discovering Jesus as teacher-liberator and I love Him so much more! The disciples knew Him as such and I want to be a true disciple like the Mary’s that sat at the feet of Jesus.
When I was around 15 in my conservative, fundamentalist Baptist church, I began asking a question that began my own painful and liberating journey: "Don't words have to mean something real?" For me, the pivotal word lately is "freedom." Freedom means something in terms of lived human experience - we know what it feels like, and we know what its absence feels like. I love how you described the effects of a teacher and I look forward to reading your book!
Why does anyone need to be more than what we all are, teacher? Jesus did not come to set himself apart as one whom no one else could be, as someone who had something no one else could have. He came that we could have life, and have it abundantly, which he did by imparting, through word and deed, how we, each and all of the Same Stuff, could be so much more than that which merely met eye and ear. But we could never realize that unless someone taught it to us. That means we are all disciples (learners), even as we all teach from the myriad lessons we assimilate and become throughout our lives. Teachers make the unknown/Unknowable accessible to the extent that they have learned and imparted it, as well as to the extent that their learners can appropriate it.
In college I heard Josh McDowell speak, as well as others who offered a concise, tight understanding of theological and biblical mysteries, packaging their attempts at systematic theology into a neat container that we could all either carry around or fit into. At the time, it seemed practical and neat, a handy way to master Life. But as I went along my way, I learned that one person’s “answer” is likely not my answer. Indeed, I learned, through the scholarship and teaching of seminary instruction and formation, that answers were a whole lot less helpful than questions, and that my best discipling was through responses, not answers, which seemed to always close off a thing. Responses always allowed for new questions to arise, or old ones to persist until I could meet them with an equal or worthy response.
Leo Perdue was one of my favorite professors in seminary (he died in 2017). He was a Jobian scholar among other things, making the wisdom of God so hospitably incarnational. I remember him preaching in one of our regular Wednesday chapel services, from Job, and he said something I will never forget: “The essence of being human is to question, and the essence of question is to have no answer.” That changed my understanding of pedagogy and gave me a new and ever renewing hope for ministry, which, of course, is grounded in the eternal lessons that come from the unbounded experience of being fully human and fully alive.
But how would we know that if someone hadn’t taught us?
Thank you for your continued scholarship, Dr. Bass, and your enthusiastic desire to share it. I appreciate this opportunity to respond to and with you. Peace be with you.
You totally missed the point of McDowell and Lewis ... to say Jesus was a teacher is like saying Mother Teresa was a nun. Of course she was but there is so much more to her that you belittle her by saying that. The same with Jesus. The point of McDowell and Lewis was to do away with the argument that Jesus was ONLY a moral teacher and nothing more. I don't think you believe that but that is what your writing seems to say.