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.

[wiploc]

"Liar, lunatic, or lord"? Why couldn't he be all three?

[PghPanther]

Lewis' argument is seriously flawed due to the presupposition of confirmation bias.

He assumes because the words and deeds of Christ are recorded in canonized scripture that they must be a fact that happened in reality.

We don't know what Jesus really said or did but only know what is reported from decades of story telling........

So there is a 5th option................that Christ simple did not state or do these things as recorded.

Lewis' argument only holds true if what is written is an objective historical account of the life of Christ..........it is not, it is a text based on the proselytizing of a faith.

and that path to recording events is less reliable than UFO abductees writing a book about aliens being captured from a crash in Roswell, NM and being used to back engineer antigravity crafts at area 51.

Lewis' faith in Christian doctrine required him to make idiotic statements like that in the tradition of the on/off right/wrong digital mindset of the apologist.........never stopping to think other options exist in reality....

[Elijah John]

"Liar, lunatic, or lord"? Why couldn't he be all three?

He couldn't be both LORD(YHVH) and liar/lunatic. But he could certainly have been none of the above.

The fourth possiblility of the GoJ being fallible just never seems to occur to some believers, including the otherwise well-reasoned Lewis.

And even the Gospel of John is ambiguous or self-contradictory at best, regarding Jesus claims of Divnity.

Take away Church proclamation, and we are left with the questions, "is that all ya got"? "Is that your best shot"?

[Goat]

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.

There is also a fifth possibility. That Jesus was lied about. Then a sixth possibility, that Jesus was misunderstood. It also could be that he was both lied about (I,e some of the stories about Jesus are fictional), and that his message was also misunderstood. Not all of the alternate possibilities are mutually exclusive.

[Divine Insight]

[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.

It doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is because Jesus himself would have needed to be both a lunatic and a liar. In part, because he contradicts himself quite often. So he would need to either be a lunatic or at least have a terrible memory of what he had previously said.

Also, the authors of the Gospels could have been intentional liars. Specifically lying to create a religion for political purposes. In fact, this actually makes quite a bit of sense. The idea that the original Jesus would have been trying to do that via hearsay rumors about himself makes no sense.

So as soon as you start looking at the authors of the Gospels as being the liars, this is dramatically different from viewing Jesus as being the liar.

And it doesn't even need to be outright purposeful lying (although I personally feel that various parts of the Gospels are clearly that). But instead it could have simply been a misunderstanding of what Jesus was actually trying to say.

So this doesn't fit under Lewis' Trilemma, because Lewis considers only Jesus as the culprit whilst totally ignoring the idea that it might have been the hearsay rumors about Jesus that are false. This would alleviate Jesus of any wrong-doing and still allow Jesus to be a perfectly healthy, sane, normal human.

Notice that Lewis' does not even allow for that option. So this does not fit in with Lewis' Trilemma. Lewis never considered the possibility that the Gospels could actually have Jesus all wrong. That option simply isn't contained within his proposed Trilemma.

[bjs]

It doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is because Jesus himself would have needed to be both a lunatic and a liar. In part, because he contradicts himself quite often. So he would need to either be a lunatic or at least have a terrible memory of what he had previously said.

Yes, Lewis’ argument was that “lunatic� is a possible description of Jesus.

Also, the authors of the Gospels could have been intentional liars. Specifically lying to create a religion for political purposes. In fact, this actually makes quite a bit of sense. The idea that the original Jesus would have been trying to do that via hearsay rumors about himself makes no sense.

That would be the “liar� option.

So as soon as you start looking at the authors of the Gospels as being the liars, this is dramatically different from viewing Jesus as being the liar.

No, not really.

And it doesn't even need to be outright purposeful lying (although I personally feel that various parts of the Gospels are clearly that). But instead it could have simply been a misunderstanding of what Jesus was actually trying to say.

The claims Jesus made are rather extreme and are common themes throughout all four Gospels. I am curious what you think Jesus was trying to say that so many separate sources all misunderstood him to be claiming divinity. I cannot think of any claims which he could make and someone, even though rumor, would interpret as claims to divinity without either Jesus or the writers being intentional liars of flat out insane.

So this doesn't fit under Lewis' Trilemma, because Lewis considers only Jesus as the culprit whilst totally ignoring the idea that it might have been the hearsay rumors about Jesus that are false. This would alleviate Jesus of any wrong-doing and still allow Jesus to be a perfectly healthy, sane, normal human.

Technically Lewis was focused on Jesus himself, since all the available evidence says that we have a basically accurate record of what Jesus said and no evidence exists to contradict that. However, if we ignore all the actual evidence and say that the words attributed to Jesus came from hearsay and rumors, we are still ultimately saying that either a lunatic or liar was responsible for the account we have.

Notice that Lewis' does not even allow for that option. So this does not fit in with Lewis' Trilemma. Lewis never considered the possibility that the Gospels could actually have Jesus all wrong. That option simply isn't contained within his proposed Trilemma.

Of course it wasn’t explicitly mentioned, because we have to ignore reality or make up conspiracies theories to get there. The conspiracies theories were around in Lewis’ day. I assume he ignored them because the overwhelming majority of people, from scholars to laymen, dismissed such conspiracies theories for what they were. However, switching who the “liar� or the “lunatic� is does not change Lewis’ theory in any significant way.

[Divine Insight]

The claims Jesus made are rather extreme and are common themes throughout all four Gospels. I am curious what you think Jesus was trying to say that so many separate sources all misunderstood him to be claiming divinity.

What "separate sources" are you taking about?

Paul's writing are the first writings we see. But clearly Christian mythology had already preexisted Paul since Paul was persecuting Christians as Saul. Not only that, but Paul converted to some early form of Christianity, and was even writing letters to other existing Christian Churches. So Paul's views on Christianity could hardly be said to be an "independent source". Although Paul did claim to have a direct encounter with Christ. But that's highly questionable. Especially why would Christ appear to Paul and not to some more devout Christian? The idea that Christ would have appeared to Saul is extremely suspicious.

Mark is the next text we see appear. However, the rumors that Mark writes about must have already been in circulation prior to Mark having written about them. So even Mark is not a "separate" account of anything. It's just the writing down of rumors that had already been circulating by word of mouth.

Matthew and Luke were clearly regurgitating Marks rumors and adding to them. So they can hardly be said to have been "separate" or independent sources. Although they did clearly add additional rumors.

Finally we get the writings of John much later, after Paul, Mark, Matthew, and Luke had already penned their views. John was clearly working with all those previous rumors and just twisting them to fit his idea of what he thought Jesus should be. In fact, it's clear that John added far more to the Jesus rumors than had been contained in the earlier rumors. And John take the strongest stance in claiming that Jesus was God.

Later writings by Peter and James are known to be pseudepigraphical and highly questionable.

So I don't know where you get the idea that any of these sources are separate or independent in any way. These were all people reacting to common rumors they heard on the street or from previous authors.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 13 by Elijah John]

He couldn't be both LORD(YHVH) and liar

Why not? Thessalonians explains that God lies to people, is willing to do it.

He couldn't be both LORD(YHVH) and lunatic

Why not? The Old Testament has YHVH regretting that he ever created humans, and thus deciding to flood the planet to get rid of them...which would mean he's a lunatic given that God is supposed to be all knowing.

[Talishi]

Mark is the next text we see appear. However, the rumors that Mark writes about must have already been in circulation prior to Mark having written about them. So even Mark is not a "separate" account of anything. It's just the writing down of rumors that had already been circulating by word of mouth.

There is a (proposed) thing called the Q Document, or Quelle (for "sayings"), which contained the Beatitudes and various parables. It would roughly parallel the structure of the Taoteching. Following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Mark assembled this material together with an action narrative, and his gospel became the template for Matthew and Luke. Mark kicked off the entire genre of gospels, but he wouldn't have been able to do it during the lifetime of the people who knew Jesus in person, because he made most of it up.

[The Nice Centurion]

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.

Thinking fallacy!
God is still personal, while a microwave oven is a thing. Therefore thinking to be the latter isore insane.
And I'm not sure these things were invented in Jesus time.