What do you think about lewis's trilemma?

[tafan2]

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.

But one can allow for the position that he never claimed to be divine, and still Lewis’s argument holds. Your post leaves out the point that Lewis’s argument starts with “Jesus was a great moral teacher”. One can hold that Jesus was never said he was God, but one cannot hold the position that Jesus did not think himself to be supremely important. Over half if his teachings referred to himself, eg the Father and I are one, no one comes to the Father except through me, follow me my yoke is light, I will rebuild the temple in three days, etc. Perhaps none of these teachings are about being God, but it us unique in Jewish tradition for a prophet or rabbi to talk this way. So, the man was either supremely important, or he was a deranged narcissist. But he was only a great moral teacher if he was the former.

 

[Londoner]

I don’t really disagree with any of that, but I still think that it’s a poor argument that wouldn’t convince any professional philosopher who didn’t approach the question with a strong bias in favour of Christianity. We have to proceed on the basis that this is a tool for persuading somebody who is not already a Christian. Working on that basis, the argument still doesn’t work:

1. The Gospels portray Jesus as being a great moral teacher. I think everyone will agree with that.
2. The Gospels don’t portray Jesus as somebody who tells deliberate lies. I think everyone will agree with that too, although people who are more cynical may think that Jesus was a clever fraudster who hid behind a facade of being a great moral teacher.
3. The Gospels don’t portray Jesus as somebody who has a mental disorder. I think most people will agree with that, but some people will say, well, anybody who says things like, ‘And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory’, sounds quite mad.
4. Conclusion: Jesus is God.

It just doesn’t work. C.S. Lewis, an Oxford classics graduate and one of the foremost literary scholars of his time, must have understood that the Gospels have to be read in their historical, cultural, theological, and literary context, with attention paid to the composition and transmission of the texts. He cannot have been naive enough to imagine that somebody who is not already a Christian would simply accept the Gospels at face value as reliable historical records.

A Christian would never accept logic with regard to any other religious claims. E.g.:

1. Homer was a great writer, perhaps the most important writer in the history of western civilization.
2. Homer was not a liar.
3. Homer was not a lunatic.
4. The Greek gods are real.

We would say that Homer, insofar as he existed at all, was writing for a particular purpose and in a particular context.

 

[HarryStotle]

Mike_from_NJ:

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.

The only reason “we must reject as historical fact” those “biographical details” aspects of Jesus’ life that you call “fictional,” is if we assume there is no God or that God wouldn’t intervene in human existence as he is purported to have in the life of Jesus. That, unfortunately, is as much an a priori position as you would accuse Christians of.

If God exists and has the power to create the universe from nothing, then virgin births, miracles, angels and demons could be as real and as possible as biological reproduction, gravity, thunderstorms and jellyfish. So the bigger question, which we ought to be careful not to beg is whether God does exist and whether Jesus was God become man.

We ought also, following Lewis and honest scholars, not merely approach Scripture with the presumption that it must be fiction merely because we hold secular or atheistic presumptions.

 

[tafan2]

I don’t really disagree with any of that, but I still think that it’s a poor argument that wouldn’t convince any professional philosopher who didn’t approach the question with a strong bias in favour of Christianity.

I agree. As I posted earlier:

The logic only works by starting with the premise that he was a great teacher. In my experience, most people will abandon that premise when presented with the trilemma. Once that premise is abandoned, there is no longer a contradiction.

So from an evangelization stand point, it has to be used very sparingly, and only at the point that someone is getting really close to accepting Christianity’s main premise: that Jesus is God. Otherwise they can just very easily abandon the premise. From an apologetics standpoint, it also serves the purpose to end the antagonist’s red herring argument that we should all just be willing to accept that Jesus was a great moral teacher. This is likely where it has it greatest utility in my mind, and I suspect in Lewis’s also.

I disagree with your example of Homer and the greek gods. It is not the same at all. Homer is never making the point that any of the Greek Gods are great moral teachers. That is what you miss, Lewis made very clear that one cannot simply accept that Jesus is a great moral teacher. That is the only result that he gave from this argument. You example of Homer also fails because Homer was not presenting himself as a great moral teacher, where he had to be a lunatic or what he claimed himself to be.

 

[HarryStotle]

It just doesn’t work. C.S. Lewis, an Oxford classics graduate and one of the foremost literary scholars of his time, must have understood that the Gospels have to be read in their historical, cultural, theological, and literary context, with attention paid to the composition and transmission of the texts. He cannot have been naive enough to imagine that somebody who is not already a Christian would simply accept the Gospels at face value as reliable historical records.

Except that the Gospel, as told by the early Christians, was sufficiently convincing that it did convince a large proportion of pagan “somebodies” who were positively antagonistic to the message and persecuted Christians for hundreds of years.

These same “not already Christian” pagans had much better access to the “historical [public] records” than we do today and yet they were, indeed, “naive enough” to accept the Gospel at face value.

Now, of course, you will bring up our current state of expertise and progress in the sciences to prove without doubt that we are far more enlightened and far less naive than the primitives of two thousand years ago. The problem, however, is that there is much in Scripture – the entire corpus of it – that cannot simply be explained away by science or metaphysical presumptions.

Jesus spoke as no other human being ever has about himself – his identity and mission. Dismissing that as pious fiction misses the point that he was neither pious nor claimed to be speaking fiction.

Attributing that fictionalizing of Jesus to the early Church is fraught with issues, since there is a stronger case to be made for the Gospels being distributed early and widely than their critics care to admit. The case for Jesus as a “legendary character” has not been made and can be easily debunked. Modern critics have in engaged in far more fictionalizing about the Gospels than all Christians together in the first five centuries.

 

[Gorgias]

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.

So would reports of crossing the Alps on elephants, or other hard-to-believe reports. I get the sense that what you’re saying isn’t “it’s hard to believe”, but rather, “it’s part of a faith group’s witness, and therefore, must be disregarded.” And then, having disregarded it, it’s all too easy to say, “see! there’s nothing supernatural going on here!”

The three Gospels that describe the event in detail were at best written by people who knew people who had been there.

Right. 'Cause biographers and reporters are notoriously unreliable. Oh, wait… aren’t historians biographers and reporters?

I wouldn’t say that that sounds like a particularly reliable eyewitness account.

Read up on law enforcement detective work. The sign of false eyewitness accounts is precise identical stories; the sign of true eyewitness accounts are divergences, here and there, in the accounts.

 

[HarryStotle]

The case for Jesus as a “legendary character” has not been made and can be easily debunked. Modern critics have in engaged in far more fictionalizing about the Gospels than all Christians together in the first five centuries.