Lewis' Trilemma

[Talishi]

In Mere Christianity C.S Lewis proposes a famous thought experiment taught in Apologetics 101 in every Sunday School:

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.

It seems to me that Lewis omits a fourth possibility, that rather than being insane, Jesus simply held an erroneous religious belief. It is likely that Jesus did the reckless things he did that led to his crucifixion because he believed, erroneously, that God would intervene, and perhaps no one was more surprised than he when he found himself nailed up there. Of course, a generation later the gospel writers would put words into his mouth to the effect that Jesus knew full well that he would die, but they would have been foolish not to do so.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by Talishi]

Yes, that is a possibility if we are to assume that the miracles he performed were fictional or that there is no God (thus no possibilities that miracles can be performed). In short, if we have already decided the above then the possibility Jesus accidently claimed to be the promised Messiah and savior of the world is indeed a possibility.

It is likely that Jesus did the reckless things he did that led to his crucifixion because he believed, erroneously, that God would intervene.

Yes again first (ie before this becomes a logical conclusion) we must reject the gospel narrative that reports Jesus predicting his death by the hands of his religious opponents. But again, if we reject the gospel accounts before proceding in our analysis then this is again a possibility.

Of course, rejecting the gospel narratives then leaves us with the problem of having much information at all about Jesus actions, but this would be convenient since it would mean any suggestion at all, from could Jesus have been an African dancing woman travelling on her way to seduce Nero, to could he have been a left handed musician that eventually married a Jewish woman and fathered a company of midgets that migrated to the Solomon Islands. So yes, your suggestion, the African dancing woman and the father of a company of midgets all have equal footing once we have rejected the gospel narrative entirely.


JW

[bjs]

It seems to me that Lewis omits a fourth possibility, that rather than being insane, Jesus simply held an erroneous religious belief. It is likely that Jesus did the reckless things he did that led to his crucifixion because he believed, erroneously, that God would intervene, and perhaps no one was more surprised than he when he found himself nailed up there.

If memory serves, Lewis’ argument was that Jesus made such wild claims that saying he had “an erroneous religious belief� is not a sufficient description. If Jesus said that he had a message from God or a new understanding of the Law or even that he had seen God or seen an angel then I could agree that this could just be a mistake on his part.

However, his claims were of a different nature. Jesus didn’t just believe that God would intervene to save him from crucifixion; he believe that he personally had the authority to call down 10,000 angels to save him if he so chose. Jesus didn’t just claim to provide a means for forgiveness of sins; he claimed to be the One who could forgive all sins. Jesus didn’t just direct worship to God; he accepted worship as if it were rightly due to him. Jesus didn’t just provide a new understanding of the law of the Lord; he claimed to have authority over that Law. Jesus didn’t just claim to have heard a message from God; he claimed that he was God himself.

I tend to agree with Lewis that Jesus could not simply have held an erroneous religious belief. If a man genuinely believed that he was God, and the belief was not true, then I would have to call him a lunatic. A man who believes himself to be a microwave oven is saner than a man who believes himself to be God.

[Talishi]

I tend to agree with Lewis that Jesus could not simply have held an erroneous religious belief. If a man genuinely believed that he was God, and the belief was not true, then I would have to call him a lunatic. A man who believes himself to be a microwave oven is saner than a man who believes himself to be God.

That's the thing. The only place Jesus might have indicated that he believed himself to be God was in John 8:58, written c. 110 by a school with a high Christology for the 2nd Century.

[Divine Insight]

The problem with Lewis' Trilemma is that he bases his trilemma entirely on the premise that every word attributed to Jesus in the Gospels must have necessarily been said by Jesus verbatim.

In other words, Lewis is looking the the Christian Gospels from a Christian perspective. Every word of the Gospels must be accepted as a valid account of what actually happened, and therefore requires an explanation.

Looking at the Gospels from that perspective I supposed I too would agree with Lewis' Trilemma.

However there is a fourth possibility that Lewis never considered. The Gospels may very well be nothing more than exaggerated rumors about this Jesus fellow. If that's the case, then we have absolutely no reason to believe (much less explain) everything the Gospels claim that Jesus said or stood for.

In fact, once we recognize that the Gospels are undependable rumors, we're done. We no longer have any need to explain anything further.

Lewis fell into the "apologist's trap", hook, line, and sinker. He felt that he needed to apologize for every single word attributed to Jesus verbatim in the Gospels rumors. That was his problem.

If we look at all the things the Gospels attribute to Jesus, Jesus would not only need to have been a lunatic, but he would have also needed to have advanced Alzheimer's disease, or some other form of short-term memory loss or dementia. Because the Gospels have Jesus proclaiming things that are extremely self-contradictory.

On the one hand, Jesus renounces many of the jots and tittle of the Old Testament laws, and then he turns around and proclaims that not one jot or tittle shall pass from those laws until heaven and earth pass.

Clearly this is an extreme problem of self-contradiction.

An easy answer is quite simple. Jesus simply never said everything the Gospels attribute to him. This SOLVES EVERYTHING.

Yet this wasn't even one of Lewis' proposed options. He was so busy thinking about the need to apologize for the Gospels verbatim, then it never even dawned on him that there's no reason to take the Gospels as the "Gospel Truth" in the first place. They are simply undependable rumors. No need to even talk about Jesus. We have no clue what Jesus might have actually said. Jesus never wrote anything down.

So there's nothing to defend in terms of any actual Jesus.

[Divine Insight]

I tend to agree with Lewis that Jesus could not simply have held an erroneous religious belief. If a man genuinely believed that he was God, and the belief was not true, then I would have to call him a lunatic. A man who believes himself to be a microwave oven is saner than a man who believes himself to be God.

That's the thing. The only place Jesus might have indicated that he believed himself to be God was in John 8:58, written c. 110 by a school with a high Christology for the 2nd Century.

Even with your above reply you are falling into the Lewis Apologetic Trap.

You're responding as if everything written in the Gospels and attributed to Jesus needs to be addressed as if Jesus "might" have actually said it.

There's really no reason to even go that far.

[bjs]

I tend to agree with Lewis that Jesus could not simply have held an erroneous religious belief. If a man genuinely believed that he was God, and the belief was not true, then I would have to call him a lunatic. A man who believes himself to be a microwave oven is saner than a man who believes himself to be God.

That's the thing. The only place Jesus might have indicated that he believed himself to be God was in John 8:58, written c. 110 by a school with a high Christology for the 2nd Century.

The divinity of Christ is a common topic on this forum. For my part, I don’t have the time to go through the whole thing again. Feel free to pick up any of the many, many times it has be debated. For now it is enough to say that the statement “The only place Jesus might have indicated that he believed himself to be God was in John 8:58� is false. We also have John 8:24, John 10:30-33, John 20:28, John 9:35-38, Matthew 14:33, Matthew 28:9, Luke 22:70, Mark 2:5, and others.

Lewis’ “trilemma� was based on the idea that Jesus believed himself to be God. I wholeheartedly agree that this is the picture of Jesus we get in the four gospels. You can disagree with Lewis on this issue, but if you are arguing against Lewis’ trilemma based on the belief that Jesus did not think of himself as God then you have a strawman argument.

[Divine Insight]

Lewis’ “trilemma� was based on the idea that Jesus believed himself to be God. I wholeheartedly agree that this is the picture of Jesus we get in the four gospels. You can disagree with Lewis on this issue, but if you are arguing against Lewis’ trilemma based on the belief that Jesus did not think of himself as God then you have a strawman argument.

Actually that's false for the reasons I just gave in my post #5 above.

We have no clue what any man named Jesus might have believed. All we have are hearsay rumors by unknown authors that they seem to believe that Jesus was claiming to be God. But it could be that they have it all wrong. They could have either misquoted Jesus in major ways, or simply misunderstand what Jesus was actually trying to say.

I believe that the man named Jesus could have very well been a mystic-minded Jews who was trying to bring the higher moral and spiritual values of Mahayana Buddhism into the religion of his home culture. If that's the case, then Jesus wasn't claiming to be the egotistical jealous Godhead that Christians think of when they think of the term "God". Instead Jesus would have simply been expressing the pantheistic view that we are all a facet of God. And there would have been nothing lunatic about that. It's a perfectly rational mystic view.

In fact, consider the following passage from John:

John 10:
[30] I and my Father are one.
[31] Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
[32] Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?
[33] The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.
[34] Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

Look at Jesus' own defense when accused of blaspheme. He says, "Is it not written in our law, I said, Ye are gods?"

This sounds to me like Jesus confirming that when he says "I and my Father are one" he intends this in pantheistic sense. Otherwise why would he defend his words by suggesting that "Ye are gods". He's saying specifically, "Anyone can claim to be one with the father because that's what we ALL are."

There's no lunacy in that. It's simply the Buddhist pantheistic view of God.

Where does Jesus actually say, "I AM GOD!".

Or more correctly, where do any of the hearsay Gospels claim that Jesus says, "I AM GOD!".

[Talishi]

Even with your above reply you are falling into the Lewis Apologetic Trap.

You're responding as if everything written in the Gospels and attributed to Jesus needs to be addressed as if Jesus "might" have actually said it.

There's really no reason to even go that far.

While I myself do not believe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the gospel truth, when debating believers I will often meet them halfway. In this case I am calling into question the reliability of John in light of the earlier synoptics, where Jesus clearly never made a claim to divinity.

[bjs]

[Replying to Divine Insight]

This is a re-write of the “liar� option from Lewis’ trilemma. You have just pushed back who the liar is. Instead of having Jesus delivering powerful moral teaching mixed with horribly devilish lies, you have a slightly later writer recording a mixture of powerful moral teaching and horribly devilish lies.

If this supposed “unknown author� was working off a historical individual or grabbing a name he once heard and creating a story around it makes little to no difference. He was either fabricating a story about a horrifying liar and presenting it as true (making himself into a horrifying liar), or he was corrupting the story of an existing moral teacher into the story of a devilish liar (again making this “unknown author� into a devilish liar).

The view you present fits nicely into Lewis’ trilemma.