Liar, Lunatic or Lord

[bjs1]

From another thread:

19. C. S. Lewis claimed in "Mere Christianity" that Jesus is either a liar or a lunatic or the Lord. There is a fourth option - Jesus is a fictional character.

This idea has come up a few times, so I thought I would give it a full treatment and see if there is any validity to this idea.

First, for anyone interested in the topic I recommend reading Mere Christianity. I think that doing so would probably resolve this issue for most people.

The short answer (again, reading Mere Christianity would be more helpful) is that saying Jesus was a fictional character, or a Legend, is a subset of the Liar option.

Lewis was not trying to prove who Jesus in an overall sense, but rather eliminate one false descriptions of Jesus. Specifically, saying that Jesus was a good moral teacher, or a less-than-divine supernatural being, but not God is false. Jesus’ teachings through all four Gospels are built on his Divinity. If Jesus is not God then much of what he is recorded as saying and doing is terrible if not outright diabolical.

Saying that Jesus is fictional character, or that he was a real person whose claims at Divinity were added post mortem, just pushes back who the Liar is. In that scenario the Liar is the person who imagined Jesus or who re-wrote nearly everything Jesus said to make it appear that he was claiming to be God.

Now there is nothing wrong with creating a fictional ethical teacher for a story (though there is no indication that this is what the Gospel writers were doing). Many ethicist and philosophers have done so. But if that were the case for Jesus then the fictional character or Legend is itself either completely insane or a diabolical liar.

Either way, do not listen to him. His advice is terrible. Jesus (as a historical person, fictional character or Legend) cannot be just a good moral teacher. It is possible that he was God in flesh, accurately described in the Gospels. It is possible that he was insane, and I mean insane on the level of a man who says that he is a poached egg. It is possible that he (or whoever is responsible for the words that have been attributed to him) was a horrific liar bent on destroying the lives of anyone who listened to him. A good but entirely human (or fictional) teacher is not an option. He was a Liar, a Lunatic, or the Lord God Almighty.

For debate: In context, was Lewis correct in saying that Jesus is a Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

[Compassionist]

[Replying to bjs1 in post #1]
Please see: and and and read the book "On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt" by Richard Carrier and also see https://www.evilbible.com and http://skepticsannotatedbible.com and https://www.stopindoctrination.org/#jesus-evidence Thank you.

[bjs1]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #2]

Instead of links to hour+ long videos, please make your own argument on the topic at hand. I, like everyone else, can find these videos if I am interested.

[Tcg]

The short answer (again, reading Mere Christianity would be more helpful) is that saying Jesus was a fictional character, or a Legend, is a subset of the Liar option.

This doesn't add up. The idea that Jesus became a Legend doesn't imply that Jesus was a liar. In fact, he would have had nothing at all to do with his status as a Legend. The idea of Jesus being a Legend is a totally separate option.

For debate: In context, was Lewis correct in saying that Jesus is a Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

No, because as has been pointed out before, he ignored the Legend option. I've always imagined that if Jesus were to come back, not that there is any reason to expect that he's dead after all, but if he were to and he read what has been written about him after the first bit of shock, he'd get a good laugh out of the stories. I suspect his reply would be, "I did what?"


Tcg

[Difflugia]

For debate: In context, was Lewis correct in saying that Jesus is a Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

No. Mere Christianity is terrible apologetics. I've read it several times because each time a well-meaning Christian gave me a copy and gushed about what a great thinker Lewis was, I thought that maybe it's not as as bad as I remembered it.

Spoiler: It is.

Each of his arguments is based on some sort of logical fallacy and he is particularly fond of the false dichotomy. "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" is just a bit different because it's a false trichotomy rather than a dichotomy, but by reducing the argument to these three categories, he left out at least two other more likely possibilities: "allegory" and "mistaken."

The short answer (again, reading Mere Christianity would be more helpful) is that saying Jesus was a fictional character, or a Legend, is a subset of the Liar option.

It's not. The "short answer" is that you're kindly trying to rescue Lewis from his false trichotomy. Lewis doesn't even countenance that the story might be fictional, but uncritically treats the Gospels as unvarnished narrative of the life of Jesus. He completely skips the step of recognizing that we're looking through the lens of an author even if Jesus was a real guy. He treats the story itself in terms of Jesus' own volition:

Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.

Lewis is being sloppy. The Jesus of the Synoptics claims to forgive sins, but John's Jesus doesn't. John's Jesus says that he has always existed, but the Synoptic Jesus doesn't. Similarly, Jesus is only the judge of the world in John; in the Synoptics, only the Father judges. Not only does Lewis neglect to account for authorial interpretation, but the composite image of Jesus that he presents is one that doesn't actually appear in the Bible at all. Lewis has actually shown us the contortions one must engage in to treat the accounts as historical rather than allegorical. If anything, Lewis has successfully demonstrated that the Gospel authors overestimated their future audience.

Let's assume for the moment that Lewis' (and orthodox Christianity's) composite view of Jesus was actually what a historical Jesus believed about himself. If Jesus was, in fact, not God, Lewis asserts, he can only have been lying or "on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg." The first thing to notice here is another false dichotomy wherein there can be no overlap between people that are delusional and those that are moral teachers. Lewis denies as a matter of course that "Jesus was a great, though deluded, moral teacher" can ever be a true statement. He also discounts the possibility that Jesus may have been genuinely mistaken, either through incomplete knowledge or flawed logic. This seems a remarkable oversight for a man that has talked himself, with no evidence aside from his own reasoning, from atheism into believing that there's an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator that only uses ambiguous and overly subtle clues to announce His presence. Does Lewis allow the possibility that he, himself is simply mistaken or does he believe that if he's wrong, he is necessarily insane?

[Compassionist]

[Replying to Compassionist in post #2]

Instead of links to hour+ long videos, please make your own argument on the topic at hand. I, like everyone else, can find these videos if I am interested.

I don't have the time to transcribe all the points made in the videos and the websites and the book I cited. If you want to know the points, then watch the videos and examine the websites and the book. If you don't want to know the points, then ignore the videos, the websites and the book.

[William]

[Replying to bjs1 in post #1]

For debate: In context, was Lewis correct in saying that Jesus is a Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

Well firstly one has to acknowledge that a "Lord" can also be a lying lunatic...

If the biblical Jesus is a fictional character, then - even that the authors made him up - they were not fictional themselves - just liars.

So one would have to explain what advantage such liars might have over those who believe their stories are true.
We need also to examine what advantages believers in those stories have over non-believers in those stories.

In that, we would have to explain why those who believe the stories are not guilty of lying to themselves, and the only explanation appears to be because they are 'having faith' in the stories being truth...to such an extent that many of them have not even bothered to examine said stories as if those stories just might be lies. There is far less effort involved by simply taking things by faith...and anyway, folk are busy just trying to survive and don't have the luxury of time to examine those whom gave us the stories and what advantage their god gave them over us.

I myself suppose that if the story was true, then we should already have reaped the benefits and exist in a self-created system of Parity, for there are just so many Christians believing this stuff, that they should well and truly have changed the world for the better by now...

Which is why it is probably another lie that Jesus is coming back to do all that for them...they are just doing what they are told while they wait for that great day...how easy it is to have faith in something you don't even have to deserve...

It is safe to assume that if Jesus is "The Lord" we are not going to know that until he returns and shows himself, for certainly we cannot expect Christians to show us that.

[Difflugia]

I don't have the time to transcribe all the points made in the videos and the websites and the book I cited. If you want to know the points, then watch the videos and examine the websites and the book. If you don't want to know the points, then ignore the videos, the websites and the book.

Maybe you could pick an argument that you find particularly compelling and summarize it for the debate.

[Mithrae]

Saying that Jesus is fictional character, or that he was a real person whose claims at Divinity were added post mortem, just pushes back who the Liar is. In that scenario the Liar is the person who imagined Jesus or who re-wrote nearly everything Jesus said to make it appear that he was claiming to be God.

As Difflugia noted, it is at least conceivable that Jesus was honestly (and not insanely) mistaken about his own destiny and essential nature, seeing Providence in every coincidence of his life and reading himself into the Scriptures; if many Christians think it's blindingly obvious that there were prophecies of a Nazarene Messiah around Jesus' era who would actually be God incarnate, surely Jesus himself could have made the same mistake! Obviously that option of being neither intentional liar nor complete lunatic becomes even more plausible in the case of motivated rationalizations by later followers and writers even less informed about Jesus' real nature than he himself was.

More to the point it's not a case of reworking "nearly everything Jesus said" by any stretch of the imagination; trinitarian arguments depend on perhaps half a dozen lines of Jesus' purported sayings (primarily from John) and maybe twice that number of the gospel authors' own commentary (eg. John's prologue) and reported events (eg. people worshiping him)... while of course downplaying similar numbers of counterpoints (eg. Jesus' insistence on his own limited knowledge, that only God is good etc.). In this possibility the Legend of Jesus' divinity or superhuman status would be little more than the garnish on the meal, at least in the synoptics, perhaps underscoring the importance or authority of Jesus' example and teachings, but not noticeably changing them. Admittedly the ubiquitous choice of Christendom to completely reject Jesus' lifestyle and criteria for discipleship has found a convenient distraction in emphasizing 'belief' in his supposed divinity instead, but I'd guess that's an effect of the rejection moreso than a cause of it


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Let's assume for the moment that Lewis' (and orthodox Christianity's) composite view of Jesus was actually what a historical Jesus believed about himself. If Jesus was, in fact, not God, Lewis asserts, he can only have been lying or "on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg." The first thing to notice here is another false dichotomy wherein there can be no overlap between people that are delusional and those that are moral teachers. Lewis denies as a matter of course that "Jesus was a great, though deluded, moral teacher" can ever be a true statement. He also discounts the possibility that Jesus may have been genuinely mistaken, either through incomplete knowledge or flawed logic. This seems a remarkable oversight for a man that has talked himself, with no evidence aside from his own reasoning, from atheism into believing that there's an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent creator that only uses ambiguous and overly subtle clues to announce His presence. Does Lewis allow the possibility that he, himself is simply mistaken or does he believe that if he's wrong, he is necessarily insane?

There's also the possibility of overlap between deceivers and moral teachers. One might argue that trying to shift the locus of worship away from the temple and towards Christ, the mediation of worship away from a centralized, hierarchical priesthood and towards an abstract conception of God, and the process of worship away from ritual observances towards imitation of Jesus' presumed love and holiness was a step in a good direction even if it had been based on a deliberate lie. Even if we imagine that Jesus did claim to be God incarnate, and even if we imagine he knew that to be a falsehood, it could be viewed as akin to weaning someone off a bad habit with a lesser vice or as something akin to lies-to-children (eg. atoms as a little planetary system); a simplified or even wholly false idea nevertheless intended to progress understanding in the long run. The less cosmopolitan, less educated and less philosophical environment of rural Galilee in which Jesus preached would seem like exactly the sort of place where such an approach might be more effective than complex or potentially brutal truths... as Jesus' own extensive use of parables suggests.

Of course if that were the case, the fact that Christendom has generally opted to simply replace the Jewish temple, hierarchies and rituals with Christian cathedrals, hierarchies and rituals instead - inevitably resulting in powerful Churches' involvement in temporal power politics, crusades, colonial 'missions,' witch-hunts and other scapegoating, anointing of presidents and mass prophecies over election outcomes - could imply that it's not just the backwards Galileans who needed the deception. Given that one way or the other we'll always have ambitious men seeking to elevate themselves over another, it may be that the story and exemplar of humility of a God who was just a man wandering penniless through the streets helping whoever he met may be as relevant today as it was in the days of the Caesars and would-be conquering Messiahs.

[William]

There's also the possibility of overlap between deceivers and moral teachers. One might argue that trying to shift the locus of worship away from the temple and towards Christ, the mediation of worship away from a centralized, hierarchical priesthood and towards an abstract conception of God, and the process of worship away from ritual observances towards imitation of Jesus' presumed love and holiness was a step in a good direction even if it had been based on a deliberate lie.

So we have the half truth and we also have the deliberate lie...

Ultimately "Why"?

What you have to say throughout your post is reminiscent of other mythologies - the one which significantly springs to mind is that of Enlil and Enki - son's of Anu...and could Jesus have been tricked by those entitles with a deliberate lie which was ultimately about something good?
Or perhaps Jesus was one of the brothers and Lucifer the other?

Anu, Anum, or Ilu (Akkadian: 𒀭𒀭 DAN),[6] also called An (Sumerian: 𒀭 AN, from 𒀭 an “Sky”, “Heaven”),[7] is the divine personification of the sky, supreme god, and ancestor of all the deities in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Anu was believed to be the supreme source of all authority, for the other gods and for all mortal rulers, and he is described in one text as the one "who contains the entire universe". He is identified with the north ecliptic pole centered in the constellation Draco and, along with his sons Enlil and Enki, constitutes the highest divine triad personifying the three bands of constellations of the vault of the sky. By the time of the earliest written records, Anu was rarely worshipped, and veneration was instead devoted to his son Enlil, but, throughout Mesopotamian history, the highest deity in the pantheon was always said to possess the anûtu, meaning "Heavenly power". Anu's primary role in myths is as the ancestor of the Anunnaki, the major deities of Sumerian religion. His primary cult center was the Eanna temple in the city of Uruk, but, by the Akkadian Period (c. 2334–2154 BCE), his authority in Uruk had largely been ceded to the goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven.

[link]

The myths themselves are all interwoven through human stories - stories so similar in context to be too much of a coincidence ....perhaps the many scattered tribes had individuals within them throughout history whom had contact with these beings and thought them as 'gods'...and were told or shown things to which they then transcribed as best they could, when next around the fireside in safe company.

Which then would mean we are best not to simply assume that these ones were lunatics at all...maybe the ones who followed after them - long after they had gone - maybe they are a little loopy...given the ton of information available to us all which does help put the pieces of the puzzle together...questions such as these really do need to be asked and answered.

Things have significantly shifted....