Regular readers will be aware of my recent Coming Out. Since then, at least two friends have sincerely and earnestly said: “What about Lewis’s Trilemma? Jesus had to be mad, bad, or God.” Rather than rehearse the arguments myself, I have found at least two people who have already done it very well. I am posting one of the articles below. It was originally written by Michael Turton and was then picked up by Roopster and re-published in de-Conversion .
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Let me share with you something I wrote for a friend on Lewis’ Trilemma (which as I understand Lewis actually got from Chesterton). This is presented thusly on p.55 of 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 said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a 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 patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
If you type this into Google, you’ll find thousands of Christian websites that apparently feel this is a high point of Christian apologetics. It’s actually illogical and uninformed, and it does not reflect well on people who accept it as serious thinking.
You can see the first problem here. Lewis writes “A man who said the sort of things Jesus said…” but accepting this premise first requires that we establish what Jesus said. It is not easy to separate what Jesus said from what was added to his sayings later. There is widespread disagreement among scholars on what goes back to Jesus. Many scholars believe, for example, that nothing in John goes back to Jesus. Others argue that anything about Gentiles or food laws is a later addition. Still others point out that Jesus’ sayings closely resemble popular philosophical sayings of his time.
What arguments or evidence does Lewis offer about what Jesus said? Well, I’ve read Mere Christianity, and I didn’t see any. So unless Lewis can tell me how he knows what Jesus intended, I do not see that there is any support for his claim from that direction. In fact, Lewis even writes that Jesus claimed to be God, but nowhere is there a clear statement of that in the Gospels (even a statement like “I and the Father are one” can be interpreted in many ways). Many, many scholars would dispute that historical Jesus ever made such a claim.
But it gets worse, because in addition to lacking scriptural support, Lewis’ position is a string of logical fallacies. First, he offers you three choices. Either Jesus was really God, or he was a devil, or he was crazy. “A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell.” Any time someone gives you violently opposed choices you should start becoming suspicious about his arguments.
Think about it. Could a liar be a great moral teacher? Of course! All the great moral teachers of history were human beings, and like all humans, must have been liars. Martin Luther King plagiarized his doctoral thesis and cheated on his wife. His “I have a dream” is taken unacknowledged from a speech written by a friend of his. Does that mean he wasn’t a great moral teacher and leader? Of course not! Just imagine all the great moral leaders and teachers you know – didn’t they all have human failings? So with Jesus. There is no reason to imagine that simply because he was a great moral teacher, he must be divine.
Furthermore, there is no reason to imagine that Jesus had to have been a liar to make the claims that he did. He might have sincerely believed in what he said. He might even have sincerely believed he was God. His followers might have believed it too. That sort of thing has happened before as well. But even if he were crazy, would that invalidate him as a great moral teacher? Crazy people are as likely to say intelligent and insightful things as anybody. After all, saying Jesus was a nut doesn’t really say anything about what kind of nut he was. He might have been a nut like Kurt Godel, one of the great philosophers of all time, who in his later years insisted on communicating with everyone by phone even if they were in the same room. Yet his social strangenesses did not prevent him from being a truly great thinker and teacher.
Another problem with this point of view is that in fact there is nothing particularly divine about Jesus’ teachings in any case; they can be found in the popular philosophy, Cynic and Stoic, of his day, and in the Old Testament. For example, when Jesus tells people that the physicians do not heal the healthy, he quotes a famous Cynic maxim going back several centuries. Do we then claim that the Cynic philosopher who first thought that up was divine? Probably most people would not. When Jesus cites the famous Shema in Mark 12:29-31, he is citing a bit of Jewish moral teaching. So should we then regard all the Jewish teachers who taught this as divine also? The Golden Rule, found in many cultures, is another example of this. Were all those teachers divine?
In fact, there are many more than the three dramatic choices – God, Devil, or Nutcase – that Lewis offers us. Maybe Jesus was just a human like you and me. Maybe he was misunderstood. Maybe the things he said were made up, or spoken by others and then attributed to Jesus. So next time someone says “Lord, liar, or lunatic?” You can respond by thoughtfully saying, “No, more like man, myth, or misunderstood.”
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See also Simen’s article: C.S.Lewis’ Trilemma - Liar, Lunatic or Divine.
Napoleon,
“I Know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Ceasar, Charlemagne and I found empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire on love; and at this hour millions of people would die for Him. Everything in Christ astonishes me. His Spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me…. I search in vain in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything that can approach the gospel.”
I’m not sure that the Napoleon quote supports the Christian assertion that Jesus was God.
Dear Thinking Man,
Lewis did deal with the issue of the Gospels possibly being legendary–though he doesn’t talk about that in “Mere Christianity”. If you are really, seriously interested in examining the issue you might try reading my book “Mere Theology” in which I examine Lewis’s trilemma and his view of Scripture.
Also, if you are interested, a more serious, up-to-date argument for the divinity of Jesus is made by theologian and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright. Wright is a man very serious and honest in his examination of the evidence for the historical Jesus. The best popular statement of his case is made in his book “The Challenge of Jesus” published by IVP.
Sincerely,
Will Vaus
As you say, Lewis’s “Trilemma” does not exhaust the possibilities but even if it did, so what? The claim that Jesus was divine is so extraordinary that extraordinary evidence is required in order even to consider it. There is no evidence at all, let alone extraordinary evidence. Therefore we do not need to waste time over it.
It can be interesting purely as an intellectual pastime looking to see what evidence there is for the life and teachings of Jesus. For the uncommitted mind, this can be as interesting as any other historical or biographical study. For a wounded mind, one that has been injured by religion and now seeks recovery, such study can be unnecessarily painful. I wonder why people do it: perhaps it is a kind of grieving process, akin to grieving the loss of a dear one and feeling that one is partially to blame for his death.
Grieving has to come to an end or it becomes an illness. We must stop poking the wound and let it heal.
As we see from the comments, saying that the divinity of Jesus is the incoherent fantasy that it is brings the apologists out of the woodwork with their little tubes of Polyfilla with which they try to fill the unfillable gaps. This is a reaction of fear. They are afraid of the knife-edge of disbelief sliding in and need to convince - not you - but themselves that they possess the watertight answer, which of course they do not.
The newly deconverted, I think, are apt to feel the same way, afraid of finding evidence to support their new atheist position and equally afraid of finding evidence to suggest their old faith was true. They feel compelled to go on turning over stones, as it were.
There is more to life than making an obsession out of a faith one has lost. Religion takes your life and freedom away from you while making promises that cannot be fulfilled. Disbelief returns your life to you. None of us knows what is around the corner, how long we have to live, how long health and sanity will last. To waste that time in unnecessary and painful speculation is a pity - I might almost say a sin - when it could be spent so much more productively.
Lewis was a religious obsessive but he is dead. Let him stay in his grave.
Wow! Lots of long words trying to explain away Jesus. If he is not so important why all the fuss?
Mat 18: 1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
Wow! Lots of long words trying to explain away Jesus. If he is not so important why all the fuss?
Why are you making such a fuss?
I was answering your claims. If you don’t want them answered, don’t make them.
Quoting “scripture” is a waste of time unless you can show why we should take any notice of it.
You could easily reply to all criticisms by simply showing why we should believe in this farrago of myth and Bible called Christianity. Why don’t you?
Come on: cut to the chase. Show us your evidence. You don’t have any do you? That is why you continue to waffle.
I guess it was my turn to use irony, like me, you missed the point too.
It is my belief that Jesus is important because:
• He loves us and wants only the best for us.
• Salvation is possible through no other.
I accept the fact that not everyone will believe. There were many who actually met him, but still did not believe!
At the end of the day we both can’t be right…If I, and millions of people from all cultures and all walks of life, over thousands of years, are wrong, then all we would be guilty of is following a man who taught and preached love for each other. If you are wrong…
I am answering and speaking to athinkingman,so will not comment on any individuals answers here of which there are many and complex.
No-one has the right to dictate who or what we should believe in. That is a personal choice and I have no right to say otherwise.
All I would like to say though is the immense sadness I feel here. You have spoken of your life of ministry,christian writings, all the work you have put in over the years because of your faith. If as you say this faith was misguided perhaps, wrong, there being no faith, no God, and no Jesus that you thought he was; then all this work of yours must have been for nothing then. No wonder you feel angry, conned perhaps, that this was all a waste of space. Because if you don’t believe in the essence of christanity anymore-the simple gospel message ,this must be how you are feeling; for me this is the real tragedy.
You could try and argue for and against. Evidence to prove evidence to disprove.
I just wonder a little though, if you had not become so disillusioned with the christian underbelly that you write about and, if for example, the Bible had argued that the point of homosexuality you speak of was ok. I am not saying it is or isn’t here, then I wonder where your position would be now.
You have also not mentioned in my personal reply to you (not written here )about the power of the occult. There is real evidence out there to state this does exist because of my own personal stories to you and I could give you plently more.
So my one question remains. If the power of the Cross used in exorcisms is used to defeat evil, perhaps then this suggests that the Life and death of Christ was more than a hoax.
For me, believe is not necessarily following rules, dogma, or Church but in having faith when you can not see things in black and white and where there is no concrete evidence. Some would say this is a stupid philosophy to take. But then can you explain away all the answers to prayer of which people claim? I have heard some incredible stories that melt the hardest of hearts. I have one myself. Let me tell you it someday!
If anybody is interested on the historicity of the gospels, this article summarizes the evidence:
http://www.apologetics.com/default.jsp?bodycontent=/articles/historical_apologetics/habermas-nt.html
onethoughtfulwoman, in trying to respond to your points:
1) Yes you are right. I am very angry about the wasted years. However, I take comfort from the fact that a) during that time I got to know some great people; and b) it is better to face up to the truth and live the rest of your life in that reality than to go on trying to convince yourself of a lie.
2) Homosexuality was just the tip of the iceberg that I used in my description of ‘Coming Out’. I don’t want to get hung up on that specifically - it was just an illustration of a much broader point. The bible says some very strange things about lots of things. Most evangelicals either don’t read their bibles from cover to cover or have found ways of explaining away the difficult bits and inconsistencies. I got tired of trying to pretend that such an ancient document - parts of it from 3000 years BCE - had much to say to my C21st Century life.
3) You mention the power of the occult. I’m afraid that I now know too much about psychosis and group think and the power of the human mind to create things and then believe in them to be persuaded by the reality of that.
4) You mentioned the power of prayer. I have written elsewhere about that, so won’t repeat the arguments here. However, I would suggest that coincidence and interpretation of events would account for most so-called supposed answers. If god really does answer prayer, in a way that is demonstrably more than coincidence, why does she/he never heal amputees? There is a very thoughtful and well-argued article at http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm that I would really encourage you to read.
5) “Having faith when you can see no evidence …” Oh boy! I can’t even begin to go there!
To Raul Nidoy:
Thanks for the interesting article. As I read it, the thrust of it says: There is lots of good manuscript evidence for the New Testament.
To me, that doesn’t address the central issue of my posting about the divinity of Christ. I have no doubt that the people who wrote the New Testament believed what they wrote, and that the documents themselves are well attested. But of course, what they believed and wrote may have been wrong.
the thing is this, no matter what apologetic we can use to ascertain with credibility that Jesus is God. You choose not to believe, in the face of clear proof you will always deny. Good luck to you. as to your last comment, “What they believed and wrote may be true, and then what?”
Hey Glenn, all I said was: I am not sure how your quote from Napoleon proves that Jesus was divine.
I like to think that I am now reading evidence and being willing to consider it, unlike when I was a Christian and gullibly accepted everything without thinking about it. If you want me to believe that Jesus is divine, you are going to have to do better than:
1) quote the opinion of a dictatorial French general at me that Jesus was a great man;
2) tell me I am closed to evidence.
I just find that completely unimpressive.
so true, what about what some of the other more enlightened individuals had to say. I know my Napoleon quote means dibbly squat in the greater light of things, thought it was an interesting remark from a guy who really thought he was God at one time in his life… Anyhow, I don’t want you to believe anything, I would like you to be a little more open minded and a thinking man as your name states, to other peoples theories. thats all… sorry if I offended, was not the intention, it was just what I was percieving from reading all your responses to comments made. deduction.
Glenn, I am not closed to evidence. If you make a claim that Jesus was divine (the central question of my original posting) you need to give me evidence.
All I am saying is that both you and the interesting article suggested by Raul Nidoy have not addressed that issue.
And the fact that I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I am closed to evidence. It just means that what you present hasn’t yet convinced me.
WARNING: Long [I do recall sending on some of these thoughts to just one other blog, but I no longer recall which one, and I extend sincere regrets if it was this one -- thanks].
A lifelong skeptic, I’ve been fascinated by evolution, taking socialization as central to humanity. While urges to eat, have sex, etc., may also be tied to species survival, interdependent cohesion seems as crucial. Isn’t empathy toward others as critical to evolution as procreation, etc.? All cohesive structures, from humble villages to sprawling global alliances, seem reflective of an empathy just as biological/natural as any other drive. So history’s written paper trail seems crucial in unveiling humanity’s critical leaps forward in a growing sensitivity toward the “other”.
The earliest social reformer, Urukagina, reformed temples in ancient Sumeria to honor his belief in a god Ningirsu, the shield and safeguard of the “widow and orphan” (the first time this phrase appears), his belief in altruism and in freedom (or “amagi” [Sumerian]). This idea to shield the vulnerable typifies every subsequent countercultural theist spin, from a Buddha, a Socrates, a Jesus, or any other. Such figures play critical roles in prodding us toward an increasingly inclusive ethic.
But I wanted to unearth the earliest surviving skeptic who similarly addressed the social ways of his people. The earliest (known) atheist is Brhaspati, the founder of Lokayata/Carvaka doctrine in India (7th-to-6th centuries B.C.E.). Since he also submits countercultural notions on how to treat each other, he immediately piqued my interest. His Brhaspati Sutra is lost, but his ideas survive in Haribhadra Suri’s Sad-Darsana-Samuccaya, Samkara’s Sarvasiddhantasamgraha and (half a millennium later) Madhavacarya’s Sarvadarsanasangraha.
Haribhadra Suri cites Lokayata thinking as maintaining “There is neither god nor liberation” [freeing from entanglements of this world]. “This world consists of only as much as is within the scope of the senses.” “Moreover, earth, water, fire and air are the four forms of matter”, etc. This is just what I was looking for! Samkara confirms this skeptical take: “There is no world other than this; there is no heaven and no hell; the realm of Siva and like regions are invented by stupid impostors of other schools of thought.” Samkara gives direct quotes from Brhaspati himself, the earliest extant quotes from Brhaspati’s lost Sutra: “‘The Agnihotra ritual, the three Vedas, the triple staff, the ash-smearing, are the ways of gaining a livelihood for those who are lacking in intellect and energy.’” This quote also treats on how we view others: “‘Gifts of gold and land, the pleasure of invitations to dinner, are devised by indigent people with stomachs lean with hunger. The building of temples, houses for water-supply, tanks, wells, resting places, and the like, please only travelers, not others.’”
This may not necessarily show care for one’s neighbor, but Madhavacarya goes into greater detail on Brhaspati’s own sayings than do either of the other two. Many scholars of today give greater weight to this third summary because of that, despite its much later date. As in Samkara, Brhaspati says “‘The Sacrifices, the three Vedas, the ascetic’s three staves, and smearing oneself with ashes - These are but means of livelihood for those who have no manliness nor sense’”. Any advice on proper behavior? Well, Madhavacarya further quotes from Brihaspati: “‘While life remains, let a man live happily, let him feed on melted ghee though he runs in debt’”. Candidly, while nothing’s wrong with living happily, the notion that it’s O.K. to get fat and drown in debt seems almost counter-evolutionary to me. Perhaps the fact that this is not as early a source as Samkara should make me take this with a grain of salt. At the same time, there is nothing anywhere in this third summary that contradicts either the letter or the spirit of the callous remark in the Samkara aimed at the hungry and at travelers.
Now, neither Haribhadra Suri nor Samkara nor Madhavacarya are Lokayata promulgators, being partly critics of it. So while it’s true that two of these sources agree on Brhaspati’s remark about rituals, are these sources trustworthy on the rest of his disquieting thoughts? Let’s see. Samkara’s and Madhavacarya’s closing summations offer overall rationales for this doctrine. Neither summation explicitly harks back to anything directly from Brhasapati. Samkara’s comes immediately after a closing remark in the previous paragraph, “So believes Brhaspati”, explicitly referring to the last quote previous to that. So Samkara’s closing summation is clearly outside any quote and is in his own voice: “The wise should enjoy the pleasures of this world through the more appropriate available means of agriculture, tending cattle, trade, political administration, etc.” Surprisingly, this is one of the more prudent prescriptive sentiments in Samkara, leaving a less explosive impression than earlier.
Madhavacarya’s summation plays out similarly. After an “Iti” notation (signaling the conclusion of a direct Brhaspati quote), Madhavacarya himself closes with: “Hence, in kindness to living beings, one flies to the Carvaka doctrine. Such is the pleasant conclusion.” Since both summations are relatively positive, no unfavorable distortion seems intended by either writer. In fact, no other references can be found that point to a concern with either living beings in general or with useful pursuits like agriculture/politics in particular, and consultation with a Sanskrit specialist confirms that the original Sanskrit of even the agriculture/politics remark addresses only usefulness for oneself, not for others. Disappointing. At the same time, the impression from both summations is that both try to tame an explosive philosophy, not demonize it. Thus, Brhaspati’s own discreditable sentiments early on may be accurate precisely because they are discreditable. Finally, Haribhadra Suri simply sums up with “The implication of the conclusions is to be critically discussed by the intelligent.”
As a skeptic, I concluded reluctantly that Brhaspati’s the first extant espouser of a self-centered ethic! The Sanskrit specialist also confirmed it’s widely accepted anyway that the first clearly self-centered philosophy in India is indeed Lokayata. Actually, philosophy itself starts in India (the Upanishads ca. 1000 B.C.E.) and next appears in ancient Greece, with Thales, a contemporary of Brhaspati but no espouser of self-centeredness — the latter doctrine not appearing in Greece until the 5th century B.C.E. Sobering that the earliest (known) atheist, Brhaspati, is also the earliest (known) social isolationist!
Is this pattern involving religious founders versus pioneering atheists a coincidence — one sustained over thousands of years? On one hand, religious founders (separating aside bloodthirsty, often immoral, followers of various creeds, and sticking only with founders) introduce countercultural altruism again and again while, on the other, countercultural innovators in atheism like Critias, a Greek dictator, a century or so after Brhaspati, and a number of others in ancient and not so ancient times as well, are primarily supporters of a recurring self-centered ethic. Frustratingly, the philosophical demographics among countercultural pioneering atheists only start veering toward a generally caring ethic a bare five hundred years ago, but at least that shows that rank-and-file atheists have the same checkered ethics pattern that rank-and-file believers — and all humans — do.
If a self-centered ethic is indeed counter-evolutionary - and I feel it is - then the apparent symbiotic relationship between pioneering self-centeredness and pioneering atheism is troubling. It may constitute a mirror image of a similar relationship between altruism and countercultural spins on belief — the latter two being equally essential to our evolution? If so, would it make sense for mere belief to assist evolution so tangibly with no need for an actual deity? Perhaps it would; perhaps belief by itself, whether or not based on a fiction, could still remain useful as an evolutionary prod on a purely social level. Yet, can a constructive process that’s based on a fiction be logical? Ultimately, the apparent historical primacy of the role of belief in human evolution seems to point to deity itself (whether mono- or poly-) being real too, and thus just as essential to human evolution as mere belief.
It’s not easy for a lifelong skeptic like me to make this conclusion. But my keen disappointment at the earliest extant atheists being also the first extant self-centered philosophers, and vice versa, has made me conclude that engagement with deity is essential for healthy cultural/social evolution. Now, it’s exciting to discover the earliest espousal of skeptical ideas that have characterized my own thinking for most of my life; but I’m suddenly pulled up short by the unwelcome baggage that comes with these ideas at their inception. I don’t think I’m mistaken in perceiving empathy or altruism as essential to humanity’s cultural/social evolution. So any doctrine that also starts as a pioneering rejection of either concept would seem counter-evolutionary and therefore wrong.
I’d simply add to all this that my intense interest in the closest kind of research still abides today, and consequently I’d be just as eager today as I ever was to study some newly discovered pioneering atheist of Brhaspati’s day or earlier who might show the same kind of countercultural altruism in his social ethics as a Buddha or a Christ has. That would upend my argument here, and I’d willingly accept that. It’s just that, so far, after having fully expected for years to find just such a figure, I have failed to find even one (in ancient times).
My two cents,
Stone