Criticism of Jesus

Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, is believed by Christians to have been sinless yet there has been criticism of his character as portrayed in the Gospels.

Philosophical criticisms of Jesus

Thomas Paine

In his treatise entitled The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine stated:

It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee." Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche has many criticisms of Jesus and Christianity, even going so far as to style himself as "The Anti-Christ." In "Human, All Too Human" , and Twilight of the Idols for example, Nietzsche accuses the Church' and Jesus's teachings as being anti-natural in their treatment of passions, in particularly sexuality; "There [In the Sermon on the Mount] it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out." Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept." since even if one did so, "the Christian who follows that advice and believes he has killed his sensuality is deceiving himself: it lives on in an uncanny vampire form and torments in repulsive disguises."

Bertrand Russell

In Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell pointed to parts of the gospel where Jesus seems to be saying that his second coming would occur in the lifetime of some of his listerners (Luke, 9:27). He concludes from this that Jesus' prediction was incorrect and thus that Jesus was " not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise."

Regarding Jesus' moral teaching Russell has the following to say:

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation.

C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis was a Chrisian apologetic, however in his influential book Mere Christianity, he was critical of Jesus' moral teachings. He wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people 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 the 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. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

See also

• Criticism of Christianity
• God complex
• Jesus as myth
• Rejection of Jesus

Further reading

• Toledoth Yeshu, translation of Morris Goldstein (Jesus in the Jewish Tradition) and Alan Humm.