Was Christ Simply a Great Moral Teacher?

Well, while all of our internal connectivity is undergoing maintenance here at work, I guess I can post something. It's been a long time since I've done so and I feel as though I am neglecting a friend from whose companionship I could benefit greatly if I'd only take the time to sit down and talk to them.

Today's inspiration for writing comes from a quote by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

"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" (Lewis 1952, pp. 43).

There's a lot to take in here, but I think what really gets to me is the statement "...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...". Christ makes no small effort in expressing that He is the Son of God, endowed with the very divinity of God. The disciples make no efforts to disguise this and all but one of them were killed proclaiming this truth adamantly. There is no middle ground on the deity of Christ. Either He is the Son of God or he is, as Lewis states, a madman.

Within my own soul, I have struggled with this question. "Is He really still alive? Is He really the Son of God? Was He just an exemplary man?" Within my own heart I have settled upon these responses based on the evidence He has shown me. The answers to the first two questions are most emphatically "YES" and the answer to the last question is "No".