What do you think about lewis's trilemma?

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Mickey3456987

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What do you think about lewis’s trilemma?
And
If you need to use it to protect your christian faith is it ok to use lewis’s trilemma instead of Resurrection?

(but I myself think that argument from resurrection is better)
 
You might want to find better arguments or at least know how to refute their rebuttals.
 
Sorry If I have bad english.
I mean to do evangelism by use this argument.
🙂
 
Mickey3456987 said:
Sorry If I have bad english.
I mean to do evangelism by use this argument.
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Ahh… you mean defend the faith, not ‘protect’ it. Apologetics, then…!

I think that the question of whether Jesus was liar, lunatic, or Lord goes to establishing the credibility of the possibility of the Resurrection, don’t you? I mean to say… sure, we defend the doctrine of the Resurrection, but the means by which we do so are up to us, in our personal conversations. If you want to use the trilemma as a defense of the reasonability of the Resurrection, then by all means… do so!

Just don’t defend the trilemma instead of defending the doctrine of the Resurrection! . 😉
 
It’s a false trilemma. C.S. Lewis says that either Jesus was Lord, Liar, or Lunatic. There’s a fourth L he forgot: Legend. That’s doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist (although that is a possibility). What it means is what’s written in the Bible as to what Jesus said or did may not be accurate.

For example, it’s believed by some that Heracles (Hercules) was based on a real person. That doesn’t me that this person did superhuman feats like reroute a river to clean the Aegean Stables, nor does it mean he ever claimed he did.
 
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Mike_from_NJ said:
There’s a fourth L he forgot: L egend.
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I’d argue that that’s effectively encompassed by the liar and lunatic paths. Just the liars/lunatics are the Apostles rather than 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.

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?

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.
 
The Legend moniker doesn’t mean He didn’t exist, it refers to legends quickly attaching to His story…the miracles, the resurrection, etc.

All serious NT scholars, even the atheist ones accept that He lived and had a ministry. It’s that the oral traditions of His life built up the stories to legendary proportions. Hope that helps explain the L.
 
I don’t think I have a misunderstanding of the post I replied to, but thank you for your help.

“Legend” isn’t a viable way to understand Christ, if you want to follow his advice. Which is what the trilemma is about, after all. So Lewis’s point holds. Christ is God, or you shouldn’t be a follower of Christ.
 
Quick answer: I accept Lewis’s trilemma as a strong argument, logically.
 
The Lewis Trilemma is a fairly good apologetic argument when applied in the right way. It’s best used when talking to people who see Jesus as one of many great moral teachers, but not necessarily as Divine.

Some modern philosophers have expanded the Trilemma to address the “Legend” allegation.
 
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Why can’t it use with
Muhammad as hamza tzortzis use it
(Liar deluded or truthful?)

Since Muhammad got martyr (not liar)

His story about when he face the eclipse if I not mistaken it happen when his son died at that moment there was eclipse happen if he was deluded then he must see it and tell his crowd as sign of Allah to show his prophethood but he didn’t do that, so he cannot be deluded or lunatic)

Then he was truthful and he is prophet from God?

How to answer this?
Thank:)
Sorry if I have bad english.
 
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I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the trilemma. The trilemma is that you can’t 1) follow the teachings of Christ. And 2) believe he either lied about being God or was crazy.

I have absolutely no interest in the teachings of Mohammed. I think he was a liar, and I have no intention of valuing his teachings.

So yes, he’s liar lunatic or Lord, fine. To me he’s a liar.
 
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The basis is that many non-Christians and even people who call themselves Christian but do not believe in Christ’s divinity describe Jesus as a great teacher. Lewis’s point is that He cannot just be a great teacher, because he taught that he is divine, the Son of God. So one must accept liar or lunatic along with being a great teacher, which would be a contradiction.

To apply the same test to Mohammed, one would have to agree to start with the premise he was a great teacher. Of course, many of us would say no, so the test really doesn’t apply to us. Just so, if someone says Jesus was not a great teacher, then Lewis’s trilemma would be meaningless to him also.

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.
 
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Or one could asset that Jesus was a great teacher and also a lunatic.

Another solution would be to add another L - legend, ie, to assert that the recorded claims of Jesus to Deity were added by others to the narrative
 
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It’s not just the bible tho; it’s also the continuous beliefs and understanding of the Church, east and west, beginning from day one.
 
TechieGuy said:
Or one could asset that Jesus was a great teacher and also a lunatic.
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The whole point of the argument is that this would be a contradiction.

As to the legend argument, that does not really stand up to the logic either. Yea, one could dismiss the miracles that way, but we are not talking about the signs he performed, but his statements and teachings, of which a large number are focused on himself, eg “I am the way the truth and the light”, Cannot know the father unless they know me", etc, etc, etc. I think I read somewhere that over half of Jesus’s teachings are about himself (which btw, is completely unique as far as Jewish prophets are concerned, they talk of themselves very, very little). So if one assumes he is a legend, ie over half of what he said he did not say, then one still cannot call him a great teacher. Because one is claiming that we have no idea what he taught.

The whole point of the argument is to say that the statement “I think of Jesus as just a great (good) teacher” is really incoherent. One cannot take that stance and at the same time consider him a liar, or a lunatic, or a legend, with any degree of sincerity.
 
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It is only applicable in the situation you describe. The whole point is that one cannot hold that Jesus is a great teacher and that he is a liar/lunatic.legend. It would be a logically incoherent position. If a person does not hold that he is a great teacher, then the argument is useless.

As to the extension of the argument to include the legend, see my post on this thread

https://forums.catholic-questions.org/t/why-cant-lewiss-trilemma-use-with-muhammad/553171/5
 
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