What do you think about lewis's trilemma?

[Lion_IRC]

Lion_IRC:

To categorise Him as something other - like a nice man or liberal rabbi - requires that one ignore or rewrite history.

Asserting that the NT is scripture/reportage doesn’t make it scripture/reportage.

Yes it does.
Gainsaying is fun and everybody can play.

Seriously though, you do know it wasn’t called “The New Testament” back when it was being written - right? You do know that don’t you?

 

[Lion_IRC]

It’s a false trilemma. C.S. Lewis says that either Jesus was L ord, L iar, or L unatic. There’s a fourth L he forgot: L egend.

Lewis’ Trilemma can be used for fictional characters too.

People could think Clark Kent was lying if he said he was superman.
People could think Clark Kent losing his marbles if he said he could leap tall buildings.

…OR, like Lois Lane and many others, they could conclude that he really was Superman.

 

[po18guy]

Semantics, I think. At least the way I used the word.

 

[Kaninchen]

you’d just have to define who is doing the lying!

Just pious fiction.

 

[Kaninchen]

Beg to differ.

It’s always seemed to me that the trilemma argument was targeting people brought up in a Christian world from which they’d wavered or in which they’d lost interest, in other words it’s based on a story in which they half believed.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I’d argue that that’s effectively encompassed by the liar and lunatic paths. Just the liars/lunatics are the Apostles rather than Jesus.

When C.S. Lewis presented his trilemma it was either Jesus was a liar, Jesus was a lunatic, or Jesus was Lord. It wasn’t about others being lunatics or liars. But if you want to add those possibilities to the first two Ls it just makes them that much more likely to be correct (without disparaging Jesus).

The point remains that you can’t believe Jesus was “just a legend/fairy tale” and that he’s a good teacher who had philosophic advise we can learn from.

If we go with the idea that he was a real person but what was said about him built up to include claims that aren’t true, he absolutely can be called a good teacher.

Imagine a person named Rowsdower writes an advice column. He makes a lot of sense espousing both common and uncommon wisdom. Now 30 years later the legend of Rowsdower grows where there are tales of him advising state leaders, being a whiz at the stock market, and once saving a woman from an attacker. Even though all that extra stuff is not true (and he never claimed to have done any of it), we can still judge whether he is a good teacher based on what he taught.

So now for the “fairy tale” option. Let’s keep Rowsdower as a well-respected advice columnist. The newspaper syndicate that publishes his daily column goes bankrupt. They admit at the end that there never was a Rowsdower. He was really an ever changing editorial group that worked collectively on the advice column. You can’t say that Rowsdower was a good teacher, but depending on the strength of what was written you might say that “he” had good teachings.

Why take philosophy lessons from a fictional character, especially one who the authors went to their deaths asserting his reality? You want to take a lesson on, for example, lying by someone who wrote the biggest lie in all of human history?

Wouldn’t die for a lie? Really? Please show evidence of the apostles that did this.
Exclude:

• Stories that popped up many years later.
• Any apostle who has conflicting stories as to his death.
• Stories where it doesn’t say that the apostle died for not recanting belief in Jesus (in other words, it’s not that they died but it has to be that they died for a lie).

I think Lewis’s point holds. And besides, all the trilemma assumes is Jesus is a man who at some point claimed to be God. Seeing as the crucifixion is commonly accepted as probably fact even by secular historians, that doesn’t seem like a stretch.

So you’re going to assume something that very well could not be true (that Jesus said he was God). You’re adding possibly false information into an argument and don’t see the cognitive dissonance in defending this now broken argument?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

No credible scholar makes the suggestion that Jesus is merely a legend. I guess that makes your “fourth possibility” Laughable.

Literally take any credible scholar who believes Jesus was a real person, but has serious doubts as to the supernatural aspects of his life and you have scholars who see him as a legend (barring stronge evidence). It’s because of thes that apologists have cobbled together the minimal facts argument to combat this strain of doubt among some scholars.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I think its real popularity started with people like Josh McDowell and the Alpha Course evangelists.

Oh, Josh McDowell. The man for which no link between Biblical passage is too tenuous. I imagine one day he’ll try to bridge two verses together because they both have the word “and”

 

[Kaninchen]

Oh, Josh McDowell. The man for which no link between Biblical passage is too tenuous. I imagine one day he’ll try to bridge two verses together because they both have the word “and”

I seem to remember that the creationists have a list of arguments so stupid that they want people to stop using them because it’s too embarrassing.

Evangelists/Proselytisers should have an equivalent list with McDowell at the top.

 

[po18guy]

In Lewis’ time, modernism was raging - but a new, aggressive atheism had also appeared. His reasoning was equally applicable to both.

 

[Londoner]

We have to remember that C.S. Lewis was a professional scholar in the field of medieval and renaissance English literature, but that he was an amateur theologian with only a brief undergraduate training in philosophy.

The way the trilemma was presented to me was, “He was bad, mad, or he was God.” We were able to dispense quickly with “bad”. Even a cursory look at how Jesus was portrayed in the Gospels would satisfy most people that he was not a “bad” person. His moral teachings and his interactions with people are clearly admirable.

“Mad”, however, proves harder. While Jesus is not portrayed as being mentally ill, it’s still possible that he held beliefs that were not entirely congruent with reality. Psychiatry distinguishes between beliefs that are indicative of mental illness and beliefs that reflect a person’s cultural background or belief system. We do not say that 1.8 billion people are mentally ill because they believe that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Nor do we say that Aboriginal Australians are mentally ill because they believe in Dreamtime. Similarly, a Jewish teacher living in Roman Judea could reasonably form the belief that he was the Messiah without being mentally ill.

That leaves us with the conclusion that Jesus was God. By this point I am entirely unconvinced. For one thing, Jesus’ own claims about his divinity are sufficiently ambiguous that it is not impossible to dismiss the final proposition by suggesting that Jesus may not even have believed himself to be divine in the way in which we now understand it anyway.

More fundamentally it seems to me that the strength of the argument depends upon the person making it already being convinced that the Gospels are true. The trilemma would be a persuasive apologetic tool for further convincing people who were already Christians. But if you come from a neutral background there’s no more reason to believe that Jesus was God than there is to believe that the Roman emperors were divine. Even if we accept that Jesus probably did actually exist, one cannot use Lewis’s trilemma to convince somebody who is not already a Christian that the Gospels must be accepted as reliable historical documents. It is just as persuasive to say that Jesus was a good man and not mentally ill, but that the people who subsequently wrote about his life placed him in a long tradition of texts about a Jewish Messiah and introduced supernatural claims, such as his ability to perform miracles, in a way that would not have seemed unreasonable to their intended audience.

I think it would quite easy to propose the same trilemma with regard to Siddhārtha Gautama. Either he was bad/a liar, mad/a lunatic, or he was the Buddha. A Buddhist would probably agree, whereas anybody else would want to look at the claims in the context of the history, culture, religion, and literature of the Indian subcontinent in the period of the 5th-3rd centuries BCE.

 

[Londoner]

Literally take any credible scholar who believes Jesus was a real person, but has serious doubts as to the supernatural aspects of his life and you have scholars who see him as a legend

Yes, I would say that most historians agree that Jesus did exist, but that we must reject as historical fact aspects of his life such as the virgin birth, any stories involving angels, demons, etc., the miracles, the transfiguration, the resurrection, and the ascension, and that we should also assume that many fictional biographical details were introduced in order to consolidate the view that Jesus was the Messiah, e.g. the entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, casting lots for his clothing, and drinking vinegar. What you are left with is a Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans and not a lot more.

 

[chessnerd321]

You’re adding possibly false information into an argument and don’t see the cognitive dissonance in defending this now broken argument?

You’re just being silly. All arguments have a starting place. The trilemma isn’t supposed to convert the unbeliever. It’s supposed to call those who follow Christ in an intellectual manner to building relationship with him.

You made some other good points I’ll have to think about but I’m letting you get away with the good old “your argument starts from an assumption I don’t agree with so it’s inherently a bad argument”. That makes as much sense as “I can’t drive a nail with this screwdriver, so it’s a bad fastener.” If you don’t agree with the starting point of course you won’t be tracking at the end point. That doesn’t mean the logic in between is flawed.

Atheist types seem to LOVE that fallacy.

 

[Gorgias]

Gorgias:

you’d just have to define who is doing the lying!

Just pious fiction.

Except that it’s not presented as ‘fiction’. Therefore, “lying” (if it’s not true).

That leaves us with the conclusion that Jesus was God. By this point I am entirely unconvinced. For one thing, Jesus’ own claims about his divinity are sufficiently ambiguous that it is not impossible to dismiss the final proposition by suggesting that Jesus may not even have believed himself to be divine in the way in which we now understand it anyway.

See Pitre’s “The Case for Jesus”. He makes the point that, what appears “implication” or “ambiguity” is really just a modern-day person’s lack of knowledge of second-temple Judaism. In those days, Jesus’ references were not only blindingly obvious, but the Gospels relate that His audiences understood Him as claiming divinity for Himself. (That’s why they reacted so strongly to His claims. )

Yes, I would say that most historians agree that Jesus did exist, but that we must reject as historical fact aspects of his life such as…

And, what is the reason that we “must reject” them?

What you are left with is a Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans and not a lot more.

Of course. If you deliberately remove all but the mundane bits, then guess what you’re left with? The mundane bits! (Woo… big surprise! )

 

[Kaninchen]

Except that it’s not presented as ‘fiction’. Therefore, “lying” (if it’s not true).

Certainly, a character in a work of fiction may lie, but it’s fiction.

 

[Gorgias]

Certainly, a character in a work of fiction may lie, but it’s fiction.

My point was, if it’s fiction that’s being presented as fact, then the author is lying.

 

[Kaninchen]

My point was, if it’s fiction that’s being presented as fact, then the author is lying.

Except the trilemma isn’t about the author, it’s about the character.

 

[Londoner]

And, what is the reason that we “must reject” them?

Of course. If you deliberately remove all but the mundane bits, then guess what you’re left with? The mundane bits! (Woo… big surprise! )

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that academic historians trying to establish what facts we can actually know about Jesus’ life would regard the supernatural aspects of the story to be matters of faith and not provable historical events.

I assume that you do not accept as historical fact the claim that Muhammad travelled (riding on the Buraq) from Mecca to Jerusalem over a single night (a journey of some 1,400 km) and that when he arrived in Jerusalem he ascended into heaven.

 

[Gorgias]

Except the trilemma isn’t about the author, it’s about the character.

If it’s fiction, then the trilemma is about the author.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that academic historians trying to establish what facts we can actually know about Jesus’ life would regard the supernatural aspects of the story to be matters of faith and not provable historical events.

If they disregard reports out of hand, then they’re not much in the way of scholars.

I assume that you do not accept as historical fact the claim that Muhammad travelled (riding on the Buraq) from Mecca to Jerusalem over a single night (a journey of some 1,400 km) and that when he arrived in Jerusalem he ascended into heaven.

Did anyone witness it or provide eyewitness testimony? ‘Cause… that’s what we have with Jesus’ miracles.

 

[Londoner]

If they disregard reports out of hand, then they’re not much in the way of scholars.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imagine that a historian would disregard out of hand reports of events such as somebody walking on water or raising the dead. I think these kinds of events would be regarded as matters of faith and not of reliable historical record. I think one would have to say that the Gospels at best attest the fact that Jesus’ contemporaries or near contemporaries believed that he had done these things.

Did anyone witness it or provide eyewitness testimony? ‘Cause… that’s what we have with Jesus’ miracles.

I think you overestimate the historical reliability of those accounts. Take the transfiguration, for example. It is said that it was witnessed by three people. The two of them who later left written sources (Peter and John) only allude to the event in vague and ambiguous terms. The three Gospels that describe the event in detail were at best written by people who knew people who had been there. Or take the resurrection. In the different accounts Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene, possibly with one or two other women, and in some accounts the resurrection is first announced by one or two angels. None of the women who first witnessed the resurrection were among the authors of the Gospels. Possibly they knew one or more of the authors. I wouldn’t say that that sounds like a particularly reliable eyewitness account.

Error creeps into historical records very quickly. Take the controversy over The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The author, Heather Morris, based her novel on interviews of the main eyewitness to the events described, Lali Sokolov. The interviews took place three times per week for three years, a total of around 450 interviews. The book is a few hundred pages long, so one or two interviews per page. Morris was able to employ scholars to check facts against archive materials and a massive body of scholarship. Nonetheless, her book is riddled with errors to the extent that it has been dismissed as virtually worthless as a historical document. For example, a key part of the plot (the basis of a subsequent book) is the contention that a senior SS officer openly conducted a relationship over several years with a female Jewish prisoner. It is alleged that Sokolov was an eyewitness to these events. But professional scholars say that it cannot possibly be true. For one thing, the SS officer would have been convicted of racial crimes, dismissed from his position, and sent to almost certain death on the eastern front. Furthermore, the building in which the relationship allegedly mostly took place was in fact never put into use as it was only completed towards the end of the war shortly before the camp was liberated. The Tattooist of Auschwitz was written about 70 years after the events it describes, has the advantage of eyewitness testimony, archive material, and an abundance of historical scholarship, and describes events that are not inherently implausible, and yet it turns out to be fundamentally unreliable.