Vorkosigan

Here is the passage:

• '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 one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing 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.'

It's easy to argue that this is "out of context" except that will fail, because he also used this in a 1950 essay:

• "'There is no halfway house and there is no parallel in other religions. If you had gone to Buddha and said 'Are you the son of Bramah?' he would have said 'My son, you are still in the veil of illusion'. If you had gone to Socrates and asked, 'Are you Zeus' he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked 'Are you Allah?' he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius 'Are you heaven?' I think he would probably have replied, 'Remarks which are not in accordance with nature are in bad taste.' The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. If you think you are a poached egg, when you are not looking for a piece of toast to suit you, you may be sane, but if you think you are God, there is no chance for you. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.'"

Lewis clearly thinks of the argument in a certain way. He also used this in the Problem of Pain, both it and Mere Christianity we discussed a while back here.

• "'There was a man born among these Jews who claimed to be, or to be the son of, or to be 'one with' the Something which is at once the haunter of nature and the giver of the natural law. The claim is so shocking—a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking lightly—that only two views of this man are possible. Either he was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type, or else He was, and is, precisely what He said. There is no middle way. If the records make the first hypothesis unacceptable, you must submit to the second.'"

It is clear how Lewis thinks about this argument in the first example:

• 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.'

However you slice it, the fact that he incorporated the word "human" into his argument is pretty clear. Lewis may be pretending his responding to a certain kind of milquetoast response, but he is a slippery deployer of rhetoric, sliding from the context of "Oh, this is just an aside" to a declaration that Jesus was either a nut, a demon, or greater than human." Such a movement is vintage Lewis.

Sven

Umm, sorry, if I indeed believe the gospels to be entire reliable - why do I even need Lewis argument?

Isn't believing the gospels being reliable the same as believing Jesus=Lord ?

Not_Registered

Umm, apparently not.

Sven

Could you elaborate? Why it's not the same?

Not_Registered

I'm not being rude, but I cannot. I truly cannot elaborate on it. But, if believing the gospel's reliability = believing Jesus is Lord, then Lewis' argument is kinda a moot point. I know there is a number of religions (or religious movements/cults...whatever one calls them) that accept the Bible, yet don't accept Jesus' divinity.

I cannot explain to you why this is so, because the opposite is so clear to me I can't understand why someone who accepts the gospel's reliability would argue otherwise. It is as if you were watching a football game with someone and a player fumbles the ball before he is legally down (and many replays show this definitely), yet there are always those who say it wasn't a fumble. I am speaking of a play that is absolutely, 100%, would bet your life on it, clear. Because it is so clear that it was a fumble, I cannot explain why someone would say it wasn't. The same is true for the question you ask.

Now, I can see why some wouldn't believe in the bible or why someone would be an atheist or agnostic. I can understand that. I accept the bible's reliability, but I can understand why someone wouldn't. But, if you believe the gospel's reliability and then don't believe in Jesus' divinity, I cannot understand that. That's like reading an algebra book and then saying "Yeah, it's all true, but 2*3 = 7." Why does that person believe what he reads in the algebra book and then say that 2*3=7....I have no idea.

GakuseiDon

No it doesn't. I don't know how I can get this point through, but I'll try one last time. After this, I'll bow out.

The extent of Lewis's logic is that there are a limited number of options, if the Gospels were an accurate reflection of Jesus's words. Whether that was 3 or 10 is irrelevant. (Lewis never used the term "trilemma"). Whether "lunatic" or "great moral teacher" overlap doesn't matter. Whether Jesus may have been a lunatic great moral teaching Son of God doesn't matter. I hope this is clear.

This is what Lewis said:
Remember, Lewis was using the premise that the Gospels were a reliable source of Jesus's words. In his view, if people accepted Jesus's moral teachings as presented in the Gospels, then why do they reject Jesus's own claims of divinity? (Lewis uses the same argument for people who accept the Resurrection but reject the reports of Jesus's miracles). He wanted to confront people who say "oh, I like what Jesus says" but ignored Jesus's claims to be God. That's what he calls "patronizing nonsense".

That's why Lewis never rules out that Jesus was a liar - it simply doesn't matter to his point. And if he hasn't ruled out one of the options, how on earth can it be a logical proof of anything?

The "trilemma" was popularised by McDowell, and has been misused by both theists and atheists alike. Trying to make it sound like Lewis was postulating some logical proof about Jesus is simply wrong, and is wrong whether a theist does it or an atheist. But it would be nice if people read what Lewis actually wrote, rather than assume it.

Toto

As to why someone would accept the Bible as historically accurate (at least as far as what Jesus said) but not believe Jesus was Lord: I can think of two groups who do exactly that. Deists such as Thomas Jefferson carved out Jesus' sayings and proclaimed Jesus a humanistic moral teacher, while rejecting all of the supernatural baggage in the gospels, which they claimed was added by Jesus' disciples who never understood him.

Muslims accept the basic story of Jesus, including the virgin birth and the crucifiction, but still see Jesus as a prophet who was misunderstood, and not God incarnate. I have seen a debate between a Muslim scholar and a Christian on the topic of whether Jesus was God, and the Muslim did much better that the Christian.

Atheos

I looked over the "Search for the Historical Jesus" link you provided, but didn't get much from it that I considered "proof" of the conjecture that Jesus didn't actually make the claims ascribed to him in the gospels. As others have mentioned the synoptic gospels portray Jesus in a decidedly different manner than the gospel of John but this could easily be explained by a common source document which the synoptic writers used as an outline, editing to their particular tastes.

But in the end the viewpoints being made by the various scholars was based more on a different interpretive method than evidence. In other words, these scholars weren't claiming that they had discovered new documents from a period earlier than the compiliations of the synoptics that showed a less evolved Jesus-Messiah-God connection. They were re-interpreting the synoptics based on a different viewpoint and accepting or rejecting portions of the records based on whatever criteria they considered reasonable.

If you ascribe to this method then as one of the "New Search" scholars suggested it would be impossible to assemble a real biography of the historical Jesus since no two scholars might ever agree on which portions of the gospels to accept and which to reject.

Which brings me back to the idea that the only connection modern people have with Jesus is the 4 gospel accounts and associated writings of the NT. Picking and choosing which portions you want to accept and which you want to reject is tantamount to saying Jesus was nothing but a legend and may have never existed at all. I would imagine that there actually was a man behind the myth but wouldn't completely disregard the possibility that he was as real as Santa Claus.

So, if we're going to accept the gospel accounts about Jesus then we have little choice but to accept his various means of claiming that he was equal with God. His claim to divinity is established in several passages of the Synoptics and downright asserted in the first 5 verses of John's gospel.

In the synoptics, the following would show that Jesus made this claim for himself:

• Matthew 7:21 - "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of the father which is in heaven"
• Matthew 7:22-23 - " Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."
• Matthew 9:1-6, Jesus forgives the sins of a man with palsy. Then he proves that he has divine power to forgive sins by healing the man of the palsy.
• Matthew 9:18 - "While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live." (Would Jesus have accepted WORSHIP if he didn't think he was God?)
• Matthew 10:37 - "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

Well I guess I could go on for a long, long time but these should be sufficient.

-Atheos

Ellis14

Well, you might believe that the bible has a lot of moral lessons and truths in it; and you might believe that Jesus was a wise teacher who we can learn from; but question his divinity. I suppose this might be the view of an ultra-liberal Christian. That's my attempt at answering your question anyway, but it's probably wrong, because if you accepting the Gospels as divine then the LLL argument is superfluous anyway!

Clutch

Right. And the question of whether his argument commits the false of false n-chotomy is the question of whether this statement is true -- whether Lewis is correct to say that, given the Gospel's descriptions of his (living) words and actions,

So, what evidence is there for this claim? None, of course, as the Gandhi scenario makes clear. Moreover, supposing the claim were true, what could link it to Lewis' conclusion that it's "patronizing nonsense" to consider Jesus to be merely "a great human teacher"? Either it's a colossal non-sequitur, or we need the assumption that madman /= great teacher. QED. It's one false contrast stacked upon another.


Silly irrelevance. Notice: it's a trilemma whether or not Lewis ever called it one.


Clearly false. As you were at pains to point out, Lewis takes himself to be engaging those who judge Jesus (as described) to be a great teacher, but not to be divine. The crux of his reply is that if Jesus (as described) is not divine, then (i) his words and deeds qualify him as a madman or worse and (ii) hence that it would be nonsense to consider (aspects of) his words to be great teachings.

Diagnosed in the way, the argument is clearly invalid, failing at both points of inference (i) and (ii) in ways that a child can see. When compressed, as such shoddy reasoning often is, the invalidity is swapped for false premises -- the first explicit ("[e]ither this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse") and the second implicit (If X is a lunatic X is not a great teacher) but necessary if the reason is intended to connect somehow with the proffered conclusion .


I think it's called using one's judgement. I have considerable confidence in Plutarch's report that Coriolanus was a stiff-necked but brilliant leader; I have little confidence in the story he relates about a Coriolanus statue weeping (IIRC -- for that matter, I don't think Plutarch believed it either). I think Plutarch is a great biographer, and I don't think everything he says should be uncritically accepted. This would be "nonsense" how, exactly?


And that vacuous rhetoric entirely exhausts the content of his "argument".


Huh? Lewis contends that the atheist he's responding to must rule out the Liar option (after all, "I like what Jesus says"). So then it's Lord or Lunatic. Now, how from there do we validly reach the conclusion that it's "nonsense" to consider Jesus a human teacher?


It's entirely unclear what you're complaining about. Lewis seems to be arguing something. What he's arguing seems to be that it's "nonsense" and "foolish" to say "'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'"

So someone who understands the concept of an argument will be interested to see whether Lewis provides a sound, or even a suggestive, argument for this conclusion.

You seem to be complaining that Lewis should be held to such a standard.


Oh, whatever.

Why don't we just try this: If you think Lewis' reasoning -- whatever you think it is -- is rationally recoverable, present it. Clearly state what you take his conclusion to be, clearly number and state his premises -- there can't be more than four or five -- and let's see what the sound argument looks like. That would end the matter decisively, after all.