“If you reject that statement, you can still believe He is a great moral teacher, but you can’t believe He is the Messiah in any meaningful sense.”
Not really. Great moral teachers don’t lie about themselves and puff themselves up as something they are not. Great moral teachers don’t give people false hope, or say that they will do things that they are incapable of achieving. They don’t have to resort to “do as I say, not as I do”. If Christ wasn’t the Son of God, then he was a fraud, not a great moral teacher.
Good points.
Though moral failures of a teacher do not of themselves invalidate his teachings.
My statement was more along the lines of the many who refuse to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, but default to his being a “great moral teacher.” In fact, remarkably few people really criticize Jesus himself, as there just isn’t much there to base it on. Nietzche (sp?) is about the only one I can think of, and he based it on Jesus promoting a “slave morality.” Even Islamists must revere Jesus himself, if they remain true to Muslim doctrine. Jesus is arguably the second most important human in Islam, after Big Mo.
When Monty Python was looking around for a movie that would get attention, they discussed doing a parody of the life of Jesus, which would certainly have gotten attention! After a little research, they decided there just wasn’t much of anything there to make fun of effectively.
So they made Life of Brian instead, about a guy who is constantly being mistaken for Jesus.