What was wrong with C.S. Lewis's argument that Jesus had to be either Lord, liar, or lunatic?

TonyChanYT said:
Right. Can he then assume the following for the non-believers?
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Assume what, exactly? Whether a believer or unbeliever reads that argument, the entire book is predicated on God's existence, the Bible being true and authoritative, and that the gospels are an accurate account of Jesus's life and ministry. For an unbeliever, it would have to be made clear, in case it somehow wasn't, that that is the assumption, and then they can read Jesus's words in light of Lewis's argument and come to a conclusion.

It doesn't require anything beyond that, because the whole point is that Lewis is defending Christian belief based on what the Bible says.
 
Free said:
Whether a believer or unbeliever reads that argument, the entire book is predicated on God's existence, the Bible being true and authoritative
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If you expect unbelievers to assume that the entire book is predicated on God's existence, then what are you arguing about with the unbelievers? You have assumed the conclusion.
 
TonyChanYT said:
Lewis’s argument that Jesus must be either Lord, Liar, or Lunatic—often referred to as the trilemma—appears in Mere Christianity (1952). This kind of breakdown in reasoning often fails because it oversimplifies real-world possibilities to just three. It constitutes a false trichotomy.

Here is a fourth possibility. From a non-believer's perspective, the story could be regarded as a legend. If the divine claims were later additions by followers, Jesus might have been a profound legendary teacher without being God, a liar, or a lunatic. Judaism views him as a rabbi and not God, while Islam regards him as a prophet. Fundamentally, non-Christians do not perceive the gospels as entirely historically reliable.

There are more possibilities. The early manuscripts might have been systematically corrupted.

Furthermore, Lewis oversimplified psychology and mental illness. Again, from an atheist perspective, someone might be delusional about their identity yet coherent in their speech. Jesus could have had a messianic self-conception—common in 1st-century Judea—without exhibiting full-blown insanity or deceit.

Consider Siddhartha Gautama who claimed to have achieved Buddhahood. Was he Lord, liar, or lunatic?

To say that he was a lunatic would only trivialize his case. He wasn't unique. There were plenty of others.

Wiki:


Sathya Sai Baba may not have been the Lord, a liar, or a lunatic (in the simplistic sense). From the atheists' perspective, he might have been genuinely self-deceived.

Another example, Wiki:


Apollo's followers do not think he is a liar or lunatic, even though non-followers may. Psychological reality is more complex than Lewis' simple delineation.

C.S. Lewis's trilemma is a memorable argument for Christians, but it has limitations for non-Christians, including Judaism and Islam. It works well within a Christian framework and for those who accept the Gospels as historically reliable. However, it does not fully address the complexities of historical criticism, cultural context, or alternative interpretations of Jesus' identity. It made assumptions that atheists would not accept. His argument is more celebrated in Christian circles than among skeptical ones. In the end, logic alone almost never converts anyone because different people use different kinds of subjective reasoning.
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It is not the Job of the believer to validate the life of Jesus. It is the job of every person to believe in Jesus or burn in Hell. Not so much of a job really just reality.
Proof doesn't change how people think and behave so intellectual/ logical arguments for Christ are asinine on their face.

People know smoking causes cancer. They keep smoking anyway because they love smoking.

Everyone knows Jesus was real and what he taught. They deny that they know it because they want to be their own gods.

That's the only option. Either you think Jesus is God or you believe yourself to god.
 
Niblo said:
Back in the day, I found the ‘trilema’ both convincing and useful. That was because I paid no heed to the fact that it is predicated on the assumption that Jesus walked around, calling himself God.

For around a hundred and fifty years there has been broad agreement among New Testament scholars that the historical Jesus did not lay claim to deity; that he did not understand himself to be God, or God the Son, incarnate.

John Robinson, an English New Testament scholar, and one-time Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, writes:

‘We are often asked to accept Christ as divine because he claimed to be so – and the familiar argument is pressed: “A man who goes around claiming to be God must either be God – or else he is a madman or a charlatan. And, of course, it is not easy to read the Gospel story and to dismiss Jesus as either mad or bad. Therefore, the conclusion runs, he must be God. But I am not happy about this argument.

‘None of the disciples acknowledged Jesus because he claimed to be God, and the Apostles never went out saying, “This man claimed to be God, therefore you must believe in him”. In fact, Jesus himself said in so many words, “If I claim anything for myself, do not believe me”. It is, indeed, an open question whether Jesus ever claimed to be the Son of God, let alone God. He may have acknowledged it from the lips of others – but on his own he preferred “the Son of Man”’ (‘Honest to God’).

Here are other quotes to think about:

'Jesus did not claim deity for himself' (Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey: ‘Jesus and the Living Past’).

'Any case for a "high" Christology that depended on the authenticity of the alleged claims of Jesus about himself, especially in the Fourth Gospel, would indeed be precarious' (C.F.D Moule – an Anglican priest and theologian: ‘The Origin of Christology’).

‘There was no real evidence in the earliest Jesus tradition of what could fairly be called a consciousness of divinity' (James Dunn – New Testament scholar, and minister of the Church of Scotland: ‘Christology in the Making’).

‘It is no longer possible to defend the divinity of Jesus by reference to the claims of Jesus' (Canon Brian Hebblethwaite – a staunch supporter of Nicene/Chalcedonian Christology: ‘The Incarnation’).

‘There is good evidence to suggest that (Jesus) never saw himself as a suitable object of worship…. (it is) impossible to base any claim for Christ's divinity on his consciousness once we abandon the traditional portrait as reflected in a literal understanding of St. John's Gospel' (David Brown – an Anglican priest, and another staunch supporter of Nicene/Chalcedonian Christology: ‘The Divine Trinity’).

Professor Bart D. Ehrman – and American New Testament scholar – writes:

‘Only in the latest of our Gospels, John, a Gospel that shows considerably more theological sophistication than the others, does Jesus indicate that he is divine. I had come to realize that none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all of our sources would be eager to report it. To put it differently, if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part?’ (‘Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible – And Why We Don't Know About Them’).

James Dunn, a New Testament scholar and one-time Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, writes:

‘Scholars have almost always found themselves pushed to the conclusion that John's Gospel reflects much more the early churches' understanding of Jesus than of Jesus own self-understanding... Again, evangelical or apologetic assertions regarding the claims of Christ will often quote the claims made by Jesus himself (in the Gospel of John) with the alternatives posed 'Mad, bad or God,' without allowing that there may be a further alternative (viz. Christian claims about Jesus rather than Jesus' claims about himself).’ (‘The Evidence for Jesus’; my emphasis).

About sixty years ago, I had a colleague who was a Biblical Unitarian. We discussed (often) both the trinity and incarnation. He was older than I, and very well acquainted with the Bible. On one occasion I became angry with him (I was fiery in those days!). I grabbed my Bible (KJV) and thrust it under his nose. ‘This is my Book’, I hissed. ‘What’s yours?’

He smiled, and very gently removed the book from my hand. ‘This!’, he replied. I was stunned. How could this man read the very same words as I, and yet reach conclusions so opposed to my own? He was no fool; neither was he perverse. He was both genuine and honest; a decent man who lived his faith according to his conscience. And yet, he did not, could not, believe what I believed.

Here is a quote by Cliff Reed, a Unitarian minister:

‘Unitarians believe that Jesus was a man, unequivocally human. It has long been our view that to talk of him as God is unfaithful to his own understanding of himself. The New Testament accounts describe a Jewish man, chosen, raised up, adopted and anointed by God. They claim that the divine purpose was that Jesus should reconcile first the Jews and then all humanity to each other and to God. This would prepare the way for the Messianic age of peace.’ (Sourced from a Unitarian website).

Two groups of people read the very same scriptures. One group interprets these in a way that makes the Beloved a Trinity, and Jesus ‘wholly God, and wholly Man’. The other group sees no justification for the notion of a trinity; and regard Jesus as just a man; in no way divine.

According to Professor Ehrman, Biblical texts:

‘Are always interpreted by living, breathing human beings with loves, hates, biases, prejudices, worldviews, fears, hopes, and everything else that makes us human.’

He goes on:

‘All of these factors affect how texts are interpreted, and they explain why intelligent people can have such radically different interpretations of the same text.’ (‘Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible – And Why We Don't Know About Them’; my emphasis).

John Hick – English philosopher of religion, and theologian – writes:

‘Until about a hundred years ago (as still very widely today in unlearned circles) belief in Jesus as God incarnate was assumed to rest securely upon his own explicit teaching: 'I and the Father are one', 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father', and so on.’ (‘The Metaphor of God Incarnate – Christology in a Pluralistic Age’).

Hick reminds us that one response to the realisation that Jesus never claimed to be God:

‘…has been the use of the concept of the 'Christ-event'. This helpfully elastic idea is now widely used to take the weight off the pillar of dominical authority, now found to be hollow, by shifting it to the historically solid fact of the church's teaching. For the 'Christ-event' is supposed to consist not only in the life of Jesus but also in the formation of the church and the growth of its faith in Jesus' deity. It is this larger complex, rather than Jesus' own words and actions, that are now said to authorize the belief that he was God incarnate.’ (Ibid.).

Is it possible for folk to deify an individual – even when that individual has made no claim to deity – and to believe, absolutely and sincerely, in the veracity of their claim?

Who am I talking about here:

This man was the very incarnation of God; a messianic figure who was prophesied in the Old Testament; whose birth was marked by miracles; who – even as a child – exhibited profound, divinely given, wisdom; who performed miracles in public; who continues to live on, in spite of evidence of his death; who is worshipped by his followers, and who communicates with them in prayer; a saviour who will return, someday, to gather his chosen people and take them to live with him in God’s kingdom?

No, not Jesus, but Emperor Haile Selassie; as described by the Rastafarians.
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Odd Niblo...
No one remembers Emperor Haile Salessie.
Well, some do of course, including my brother -not because he's a follow of HS, but because he's soooo intelligent and seems to know everything.

If Jesus went around declaring Himself to be God, He would have been crucified shortly after he began His ministry and that would have been the end of that.

Also, please remember the resurrection.
These scholars you refer to above...
Scholars are in agreement that the resurrection actually took place.
Too much history to deny it. Maybe I should say MOST scholars.

This was to show that Jesus IS GOD....

If Jesus thought He was just a nice teacher...
yes, He would have had to be crazy to go to the cross for being a nice teacher.

Jesus went to the cross because He had a MISSION to complete...
and He knew what that mission was.

For consideration:
BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS,,,,I AM
ALL OF THE "I AM'S" IN JOHN
JESUS FORGAVE SINS
THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE
I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
LAZARUS.....COME FORTH
WHOEVER IS ASHAMED OF ME, I WILL ALSO BE ASHAMED OF HIM....
HE RULED OVER NATURE...CALMING THE WATERS

There's probably more....
 
Free said:
How is that a problem? How many times is Jesus called Lord in the NT? Is this nit-picking really necessary?
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It matters very much indeed, whether we call Jesus Lord over this world. Getting that wrong has encouraged enormous amounts of death in the name of the Lord over all of the centuries since He rose.
 
TonyChanYT said:
If you expect unbelievers to assume that the entire book is predicated on God's existence, then what are you arguing about with the unbelievers? You have assumed the conclusion.
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I have done no such thing; you're simply not understanding. It is a book that was written to defend the core beliefs of Christianity as held by Christians over the centuries and why such beliefs are rational. So, if an unbeliever is going to read Mere Christianity, if they are going to try and understand what Lewis is saying, as a Christian, and that he is defending core Christian belief, they necessarily must come to it understanding that all that Lewis says is predicated on the Bible being true.

It makes no sense at all for someone to read Mere Christianity without understanding that the author actually believes God exists and the Bible is true. It has nothing to do with an unbeliever's view of God or the Bible, but Lewis's views.
 
I dunno 🤷‍♂️

Honestly my only problem with the cs Lewis quote is the lunatic aspect. Usually people in extreme distress who come to believe for a while that they are this or that divine being simply need some sleep and care. I do enjoy Lewis. I also appreciate szasz. Mental illness probably doesn’t exist. A less dramatic trio of options: liar lord or sadly confused carpenter?

Given my own faith and the way God has moved over the past 2,000 years…

I think and believe that Lord is the only valid choice.
 
Free said:
That the Christian claims are coherent and true.
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That's really the essence of the situation, the core trouble with Lewis' delivery. The Christian claims throughout the centuries, are neither coherent nor true for the most part. The statements of Christ the Lord are both coherent and true. But the two diverge tremendously. There is no consistent lineage within the self-described Christian churches leading back to Christ the Lord. The truth arrives to us despite the churches and their infamies, not because of them.
 
jonathanbrickman0000 said:
That's really the essence of the situation, the core trouble with Lewis' delivery. The Christian claims throughout the centuries, are neither coherent nor true for the most part. The statements of Christ the Lord are both coherent and true. But the two diverge tremendously. There is no consistent lineage within the self-described Christian churches leading back to Christ the Lord. The truth arrives to us despite the churches and their infamies, not because of them.
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First, where is your evidence? Second, what does any of this have to do with Lewis's argument, which is based on what Jesus said and the NT states?
 
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