Clutch

The argument is dismal, even on this interpretation. It hinges on a contrived sort of brinkmanship.

I think, for instance, that Gandhi counts as a great moral teacher. (Not perfect, mind you, but a great moral teacher.) Now, suppose that Gandhi believed himself to be a human incarnation of the divine, or the son of a divinity, or at least that he gradually came to believe this. He had this idiosyncracy, suppose, or a strain of grandiosity, though it did not interfere with his pacificism, his practice of living simply, his determination to set an example. We might even find some hidden writings of Gandhi to this effect.

Now, if Lewis is right, I would have to retract my belief that Gandhi was a great moral teacher! Why? Because he'd be a lunatic! Looooonatic, I tell you!

But that's not an argument. It's deliberate obtuseness. The Trilemma fails on any interpretation.

Vorkosigan

GD, is there some inherent contradiction between being a great moral teacher and being a madman? Also, could a man be wrong about being god, but right about ethics?

Also, how do you know Jesus claimed to be god? I could probably quote several scholars who feel that is later Christian interpolation into his thoughts and sayings.

Lewis' argument hinges on the reader not realizing that these claims are controversial, and on not spotting the many flaws in his logic.

Vorkosigan

Echo

To echo the above posts, I have never understood this idea that one cannot be esteemed as a wise teacher or role model if one happens to suffer from a mental illness or possesses some bizarre belief.

So, if I had a neighbor or colleague or beloved high school teacher who was kind and compassionate, loving and caring, never had a harsh word to say to anyone, and gave selflessly of his time and money to charitable causes, I couldn't hold that person up as a role model if, for example, he claimed to be in psychic communication with his dead cat.

And as for all of those people in mental institutions...well, we have nothing to learn from those people about life and love because they're in mental institutions for Pete's sake! Their psychological impairments simply wipe away any valuable lessons they may have to teach us.

This theistic argument is lost on me.

Vorkosigan

The Economist just had an article on a book about Bayard Rustin, who was a giant of the civil rights movement and a deep ethical and political thinker, who was also lied and fabricated much of his biographical data. Even in its own terms, the Trilemma is nonsense. it reads well because of Lewis' master of rhetoric, but it has no rational basis.

Vorkosigan

Peter Kirby

Sometimes something rotten turns worse when set loose from its cultivator, especially when the tree is itself infected and the disease is an epidemic throughout the forest. Such is the case with the Trilemma. See if you can figure out who said this:

"The evidence is clearly in favor of Jesus as Lord. However, some people reject the clear evidence because of moral implications involved. There needs to be a moral honesty in the above considerations of Jesus as either a liar, lunatic or Lord and God."

Now who said this:

"The historical difficult of giving for the life, saying and influence of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity of His moral teaching unless He is indeed God has never been satisfactorily explained. Hence the non-Christian hypotheses succeed one another with the restless fertility of bewilderment."

Who's responsible for this?

"This testimony, if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former hypothesis cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in His every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. Self-deception in a matter so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and sound, is equally out of the question. How could He be an enthusiast or a madman who never lost the even balance of His mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the wisest answer to tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately predicted His death on the cross, His resurrection on the third day, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of His Church, the destruction of Jerusalem--predictions which have been literally fulfilled? A character so original, so complete, so uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human and yet so high above all human greatness, can be neither a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been well said, would be in this case greater than the hero. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus."

Or who does this argument belong to: "any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 13-31; John xx. 15, xxi. 4). Even granting that God sent a holy hallucination to teach truths already widely belived without it, and far more easily taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by this, might we not at least hope to would get the fact of the hallucination right? Is He who made all faces such a bungler that He cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was Himself?"

Or this one: "All the accounts suggest that the appearances of the Risen Body came to an end; some describe an abrupt end six weeks after the death. . . . A phantom can just fade away, but an objective entity must go somewhere--something must happen to it."

Or who said this: "Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely uniform experiences' against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know that all the reports of them to be false only if we know already that miracles never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle."

I bet you can guess this one: "The authority of experts in that discipline is the authority in deference to which we are asked to give up a huge mass of beliefs shared by the early Church, the Fathers, the Middle Ages, the Reformers, and even the nineteenth century. . . . In what is already a very old commentary I read that the Fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a 'spiritual romance', 'a poem not a history' . . . Read the dialogues: that with the Samaritan woman at the well, or that which follows the healing of the man born blind. Look at its pictures: Jesus (if I may use the word) doodling his finger in the dust; the unforgettable 'it was night' [translated from Lewis's Greek]. I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of the text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage--though it may no doubt contain errors--pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read."

Check out this argument: "There are characters whom we know to be historical but of whom we do not feel that we have any personal knowledge--knowledge by acquaintance; such are Alexander, Attila, or William of Orange. There are others who make no claim to historical reality but whom, none the less, we konw of as we know real people: Falstaff, Uncle Toby, Mr. Pickwick. But there are only three characters who, claiming the first sort of reality, also actually have the second. And surely everyone knows who they are: Plato's Socrates, the Jesus of the Gospels, and Boswell's Johnson. Our acquiantance with them shows itself in a dozen ways. When we look into the Apocryphal gospels, we find ourselves constantly saying of this or that logion, 'No. It's a fine saying, but not His. That wasn't how He talked.'--just as we do with all pseudo-Johnsonians."

This would be... "Now I do not here want to discuss whether the miraculous is possible. I only want to point out that this is a purely philosophical question. Scholars, as scholars, speak on it with no more authority than anyone else. The canon 'If miraculous, unhistorical' is one they bring to their study of the texts, not one they have learned from it. If one is speaking of authority, the united authority of all the Biblical critics in the world counts here for nothing. On this they speak simply as men; men obviously influenced by, and perhaps insufficiently critical of, the spirit of the age they grew up in."

Name that tune: "remember, the biblical critics, whatever reconstructions they devise, can never be crudely proved wrong. St. Mark is dead. When they meet St. Peter there will be more pressing matters to discuss."

Here's a hint: only one of the above is from Josh McDowell.

best,
Peter Kirby

Calzaer

Buddah was a great moral teacher. So: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord? If he was a great moral teacher, he must be The Lord.

Peter Kirby

Perhaps closer would be "Bombastic, Befuddled, or Buddha." I don't recall traditions that Siddharta said he was a god--maybe late and similarly false ones?--but certainly ideas that Siddharta received a unique enlightenment (was the Buddha).

So, cough it up anti-Buddhists: was the Buddha simply being bombastic smartie-pants in his claims, was he as befuddled as a man who said he was a swallowed by a whale, or did he receive a supernatural enlightenment and ascend to nirvana as the one and only Buddha that millions proclaim him to be throughout history? I don't want to hear any nonsense about how he was a mystic with a lot of good ideas--that shows that you are not willing to be challenged by the unique moral authority of the Buddha.

best,
Peter Kirby

wade-w

italics in the above quote added by me to convey the original emphasis

If you dismiss someone’s moral teachings on that basis, you are committing a classic argumentum ad hominem. So based on your interpretation, Lewis is asking us to buy into a logical fallacy.

Steven Carr

Many sceptics do not claim that Jesus was a great teacher.

Jesus taught about God,Heaven,Hell,demons and Satan. Sceptics do not believe in God,Heaven,Hell,demons and Satan so do not claim it is great teaching to teach about them.

Jesus taught about the Flood. There was no Flood. Would not a great teacher not have known that?

Jesus taught that some people were in a 'synagogue of Satan'. Great teachers do not use antisemitisms.

Jesus called his enemies 'hypocrites', 'blind guides', 'whitewashed tombs', 'snakes', 'broods of vipers'.

Jesus promised the people of Capernaum that it would be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for them.

Sceptics prefer the teachings in Paul's letter to the Ephesians 4:29 'Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen... Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice'

Steven Carr

I always wondered how John Nash was given the Nobel Prize. The man was a lunatic, for goodness sake!