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?

[Paul of Tarsus]

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

If Jesus was a real man, then it seems to me that he could be any combination of the above. If he was Lord, for instance, then depending on your theology there's nothing that would logically prevent him from also lying and suffering from a mental illness. My own opinion is that Jesus was deluded and like all people he was not above lying if he felt he needed to.

So Lewis wasn't quite correct when he narrowed Jesus down to those three possibilities. Lewis oversimplified the possibilities and limited them unnecessarily. Some of his critics accuse him of the "fallacy of trifurcation" which is to say he artificially limited the possibilities to three when there are more than three possibilities.

[1213]

...If Jesus is not God then much of what he is recorded as saying and doing is terrible if not outright diabolical. ...

I would like to know why is that. After all, Jesus himself said in the Bible that there is only one true God that is greater than him, which I think means clearly that he is not the one and true God.

This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
John 17:3

...the Father is greater than I.
John 14:28

[The Nice Centurion]

[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...

Best answer I ever read to Lewis false trichotomy

But I have to add that one of the rising problems is the fact that it is highly debatable (even if one believes the gospels word for word [ But what then about the discrepancies? Parallel Universes? ] ) if Jesus even claimed to be Lord!

Jehovahs Witnesses, for instance, say:"No, he never claimed to be Lord!"

The OP is also conveniently misleading in saying that a lunatic who thinks he is "Lord" ( Greystoke? Tarzan of the Apes? ) would have been poached egg crazy.

A Jehovah-complex back then is best analogized with a modern Napoleon-complex.

[William]

[Replying to The Nice Centurion in post #13]

Add to that:

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to William in post #14]

First: What in the world has that to do with the topic ?

Second: I disgustingly begann playing the video - When I read "Jews for Jesus", I instantly recognized my error and hastily stopped viewing!

Third: I am adding, I am adding:

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to The Nice Centurion in post #15]

Firstly, that is a very interesting Topic. Of course Lewis' 'trifurcation' is a fallacy because it could all be invalid record. But the idea that (aside that - whether that was Lewis' point or not), on the basis of the gospels, which of the three is Jesus likely to be?

But I'll deal with the second point. How (if Christianity isn't true) could it be the success it was? There are two parts to that answer, 1. is that other religions also spread with equal success. Notably Islam has done well and one has to consider that conquest accounts in a large part for the success of a religion. Rome was already an Empire and it only had to take Christianity as the state religion and the job was one third done. The Spanish and British empires accounted for the other two thirds.

Factor 2 is the appeal of the religion. True or not, it has a historical setting for the story, not some mythological place (aside from Eden), and it has an attraction for the disenfranchised in a way that the rather snobby Roman religions didn't No I don't think that 'being true' is the only explanation for its' success.

As to the character of Jesus, as was pointed out it is not always the same from gospel to gospel or even within gospels. Now, I have already argued that IF we take the gospels as reliable (I don't) then the 4 big miracles - water into wine, Jairus' daughter, healing blind bar-Timaeus and the raising of Lazarus, all look like gradually more daring frauds. So we are looking at a liar. It has also been observed with regard to the blasphemy charge that it wasn't blasphemy to claim to be the messiah. Only in the Christian sense (which the Pharisees and Sanhedrin wouldn't have known or considered). But they might have thought him a lunatic. What the gospels don't show (to those who really consider what the gospels actually say) is that he was Lord to anyone other than his bamboozled followers.

[William]

[Replying to The Nice Centurion in post #15]

Another thing to note is that Christians have been kept in the dark about how the religion unfolded - which was/is not hard to do since the religion attracts the kind of folk who are not overly interested in details anyway...and is a reasonable explanation for why many Christians [regardless of denomination] make great efforts to avoid discussing said details...

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to William in post #10]

I got the impression that Christians are not discouraged to discuss and even question, but within particular parameters. The video 'Losing faith' (Theramin trees) recounts how discussion was controlled and directed and awkward questions were either deflected or stifled.

Real discussion such as we get here, is tougher for the faithful and Kudos for them in getting stuck into it.

[William]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #18]

To be fair, it is a rather ordinary human practice - and can pop up in all sorts of situations, cultural, political, et al - as it is - for the most part - an activity of defense...

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #18]

To be fair, it is a rather ordinary human practice - and can pop up in all sorts of situations, cultural, political, et al - as it is - for the most part - an activity of defense...

I totally agree. Critical thinking and logic is needful to be curriculum, but those who decide on education appear to see no need for it.