- Feb 5, 2002
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Employing an argument popularized by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, Christian apologists often point out that there are only three basic possibilities about Jesus. In claiming He was God, Jesus was either: 1) a liar, 2) insane, or 3) God. This is sometimes referred to as “Lewis’s Trilemma.” Lewis’s observation is not only logical but universally applicable, meaning that anyone who claims to be God is either a liar, insane, or God. In this series of articles, we will investigate these possibilities. But before we arrive at those, we are going to address two possible prior arguments:
Skeptics of Historical Magnitude in the Argument That Jesus Lived
The proposition that Jesus never lived certainly does an end-run around Lewis’s trilemma; after all, one cannot fall into one of Lewis’s categories unless he exists.
The proponents of the never-existed position (we’ll just refer to this as “NE” henceforth) begin by claiming that the Gospels are fundamentally unreliable. They argue that the Gospel authors were terribly biased toward Christianity. NE argues that the Gospels writers had something to gain in advancing the idea of Jesus’ divinity, so their writings should be dismissed as myth. And outside of the Gospels, the argument continues, there was very little—if anything—written about Jesus.
This amounts to a historical claim, so it is proper to make a historical rebuttal without any reference to theology.
Continued below.
The Trilemma of C. S. Lewis: Is There Evidence That Jesus Ever Lived?
- The argument that Jesus never lived.
- The argument that Jesus never claimed to be God in the first place.
Skeptics of Historical Magnitude in the Argument That Jesus Lived
The proposition that Jesus never lived certainly does an end-run around Lewis’s trilemma; after all, one cannot fall into one of Lewis’s categories unless he exists.
The proponents of the never-existed position (we’ll just refer to this as “NE” henceforth) begin by claiming that the Gospels are fundamentally unreliable. They argue that the Gospel authors were terribly biased toward Christianity. NE argues that the Gospels writers had something to gain in advancing the idea of Jesus’ divinity, so their writings should be dismissed as myth. And outside of the Gospels, the argument continues, there was very little—if anything—written about Jesus.
This amounts to a historical claim, so it is proper to make a historical rebuttal without any reference to theology.
Continued below.
The Trilemma of C. S. Lewis: Is There Evidence That Jesus Ever Lived?
