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This day in history: British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian, C.S. Lewis, was born on this day in 1898.
In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim.
However, Jesus never claimed to be God.
From wikipedia:
The argument relies on the assumption that Jesus claimed to be God, something that most biblical scholars and historians of the period do not believe to be true. A frequent criticism is that Lewis's trilemma depends on the veracity of the scriptural accounts of Jesus's statements and miracles. The trilemma rests on the interpretation of New Testament authors' depiction of the life of Jesus; a widespread objection is that the statements by Jesus recorded in the Gospels are being misinterpreted, and do not constitute claims to divinity. According to the biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman, it is historically inaccurate that Jesus called himself God, so Lewis's premise of accepting that very claim is problematic. Ehrman stated that it is a mere legend that the historical Jesus called himself God, and that this was unknown to Lewis since he never was a professional Bible scholar.
In Honest to God, John A. T. Robinson, then Bishop of Woolwich, criticizes Lewis's approach, questioning the idea that Jesus intended to claim divinity: "It is, indeed, an open question whether Jesus claimed to be Son of God, let alone God". John Hick, writing in 1993, argued that this "once popular form of apologetic" was ruled out by changes in New Testament studies, citing "broad agreement" that scholars do not today support the view that Jesus claimed to be God, quoting as examples Michael Ramsey (1980), C. F. D. Moule (1977), James Dunn (1980), Brian Hebblethwaite (1985), and David Brown (1985). Larry Hurtado, who argues that the followers of Jesus within a very short period developed an exceedingly high level of devotional reverence to Jesus, at the same time says that there is no evidence that Jesus himself demanded or received such cultic reverence. According to Gerd Lüdemann, the broad consensus among modern New Testament scholars is that the proclamation of the divinity of Jesus was a development within the earliest Christian communities.
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