# Has anyone ever offered a theory that Jesus was nuts?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-offered-a-theory-that-jesus-was-nuts/263435>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 7, 2004, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-offered-a-theory-that-jesus-was-nuts/263435 "2004-09-07T02:21:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-anyone-ever-offered-a-theory-that-jesus-was-nuts/263435/21 "2004-09-09T20:37:52Z")

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> [@Liberal](#):
>
> But not God qua ontological perfection. (Jesus’ moral imperative is “Be perfect.”) It is inaccurate to call an argument “nonsense” simply because it begins with a premise. Otherwise, your own argument is nonsense because you have premises too. Lewis’ argument is valid. If God is lying, He is not good. If God is delusional, His world is not real. Not every dilemma, trilemma, or other-lemma is false.

Of course any argument is only as sound as its predicates, and I’m saying that Lewis has failed to establish his predicates as sound. At the most basic level, he is asserting that “Jesus said X, therefore A, B or C must be true.” The problem is that Lewis has not proven that Jesus said X so the trilemma fails to ever present itself as needing a solution.

> [@JThunder](#):
>
> Only if you read his statements out of context. Lewis first argued that the gospels are fundamentally reliable. This is the mistake which people commonly make when they accuse him of offering a false trilemma.

I’m aware of Lewis’ arguments for the reliability of the Gospels. I’m also aware that he failed miserably to establish that. he can’t eliminate a hole in his trilemma simply by asserting it away. The Gospels have not been shown to be reliable. Just the opposite in fact. Until it can be proven that the Gospels are historically accurate representations of what Jesus said, Lewis’ trilemma is not sound.

> [@](#):
>
> First of all, compassion has nothing to do with it. And second, his point is that Jesus demonstrated a level of coherence which belies any accusation of insanity. He didn’t deny that a madman could have some intellect or insight; rather, his point was that Jesus’ words and actions held together too well for him to be characterized as a madman. And frankly, I agree.

Schizophrenics can be coherent and consistent, so I don’t think that argument succeeds, but more importantly, we do not have accurate documentation of what Jesus said and did. He probably only said about a quarter of what is attributed to him and did even less. The Gospels are not journalistic biographies. They are highly fictionalized, religious propaganda pieces written decades after the fact by non-witnesses. They are frought with factual errors, contradictions, fanatastic and implausible claims, retrojected theology masquerading as history. Out of context “prophesy” from Hebrew scriptures used to fill in historical holes, anachronistic sayings and events which could not have occurred during the times represented, etc.

There is simply no good reason at all to take the Gospels as reliable and I don’t see how Lewis even came close.

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