The quote is of course a famous argument by CS Lewis about the divinity of Christ.
I admit I haven’t read what Lewis actually wrote so I may not be doing his argument justice and I would be happy if anyone who has read the original has anything to add about it.
But the argument roughly goes: Jesus makes such specific claims about his divinity that we have one of three choices: we can accept them in full or else we are forced to say that he was either a complete lunatic or a out-and-out liar. The latter two options ,Lewis implicitly suggests, are so preposterous that we are forced to accept Christ’s divinity.
In particular the Jefferson/Benjamin Franklin type of claim that Jesus was a great man but not divine is not admissible.
Now I don’t know about you but this strikes me as a seriously flawed argument:
First of course there is the problem that our actual historical knowledge of the real Jesus is so sketchy that we cannot be sure of what he actually said; the gospels may well be wrong on some details. Apparently Lewis considered this argument and had a counter but I can’t seriously think of a good one.
A variant of this: how can we be sure that Jesus wasn’t speaking metaphorically when he was talking about his divinity?
2)Secondly Lewis has a rather stark view of mystical experience; it must be either be true or a lie or madness. But surely it is possible that Jesus had some profound mystical experience which made him genuinely beleive in his divinity but which wasn’t necessarily “true”. Mysticism isn’t the same as madness and surely Lewis has far too simplified a view of what is a complex and ambiguous state of mind.
Lewis’s argument can be applied to virtually every religious figure. Since ,as a good Christian, he presumably didn’t believe they were all true, did he think they were all liars or madmen?
I don’t know much about the argument either (except that I can’t really say that I but it) so I can’t contribute meaningfully here, but I do want to point out that (3) may not be quite right; Lewis’ entire argument hinges on Jesus claiming he was God, and I don’t know that this can be said about virtually every religious figure. Although admittedly I’m also not as well educated on world religions as I should be, so maybe I’m wrong in thinking that it’s not entirely common for major religious figures to claim to be God.
My point with 3) was not necessarily that other religous figures made claims about being divine but that they made very specific supernatural claims , at least some of which contradict Christianity.
The point is that if we accept Lewis’s simple trichotomy as an argument we either have to accept their claims or call them liars or madmen.
Well why would every religous figure be a liar/madman except Christ? Since all of them make specifc supernatural claims, it would seem that you have to apply a consistent standard to each one of them.
Anyway my main point is that the Lewis trichotomy is too simple.
How is it too simple? If you start from the assumption that Jesus did make those claims (assuming he is quoted accurately, in other words…if not, then why are we even talking about it?), there are only two possibilities:
(1) His claims were true, or (2) they were false.
If (1), then, well, he’s God. Duh.
in the case of (2), his claims being false, there are only two further possibilities:
(a) He knew they were false, or (b) He believed them to be true.
If (a), then he was lying. Duh.
If (b), then he was delusional. Also a no-brainer.
Joe Cool.
You are just repeating Lewis’s argument. Check in particular my point 2.
Also why exactly assume that he was accurately quoted. It is a pretty strong assumption to make given the very little we know about Jesus’s real life. Unless of course Lewis’s argument was only for devout Christians who accept on faith the accuracy of the Gospels (in which case the whole argument seems kind of pointless since those people accept the divinity of Christ anyway)
BTW do you believe that every religous figure who contradicts Christianity is a liar/madman? (assuming as seems likely that you are a Christian)
If I have a mystical experience that tells me I’m a duck, it makes no difference. I’m still not a duck. If I go around, on the basis of that experience telling people that I’m a duck, then I am most definitely delusional.
Works the same way if I were to think I’m God.
Show me a cite demonstrating that Jesus was not accurately quoted. I assume you know better than eyewitnesses?
OK let’s leave aside the mysteries of mystical experience for the time being.
2 seems to indicate that you think the burden of proof is on non-Christians to show that the Gospels are inaccurate rather than the other way around. Why exactly? How do we even know that the Gospels were written by eye-witnesses apart from what they say. And even eye-witnesses have their own agendas and biases and the four authors, as followers of Jesus, were certainly not disinterested observers. So this is hardly an eyewitness account from a NY Times reporter we are talking about.
BTW how do you know that Jesus wasn’t speaking metaphorically when he talked of his divinity?
The phrase in modern times is usually associated with C.S. Lewis, but it originates in a much older argument attempting to prove Christ’s divinity in a disjunctive syllogism: “Aut deus, aut homo malus, et non homo malus, ergo deus”. Translated: " Either God or a bad man, not a bad man, therefore God".
So you have “Either A or B. Not A. Therefore, B.” You can’t argue with the syllogism. You’ll lose every time. In its own closed system, it’s flawless.
What you can argue with, though, are the premises. You have to accept that A and B are the only two possibilities. Instead of arguing deductively that these are the only two possibilities (Jesus was either God or crazy/evil), you reverse the process and make an inductive argument by establishing particular premises and moving to the general; that these are not the only two possibilities, that there is also the possibility that Jesus claims were misunderstood, or that Jesus’ claim of divinity in the Gospels was greatly embellished by writers without firsthand knowledge several decades after the crucifixion, etc. etc. Your argument isn’t conclusively proved like a syllogism would be, but you can decide that the premises of your induction constitute good reason to conclude that the conclusion of the “Aut deus” syllogism does not follow because it’s based on faulty premises.
But inductive reasoning has perils of it’s own. For example, three nights ago, I had a scotch and soda and got a hangover. two nights ago, I drank gin and soda and got a hangover. Last night, I drank whisky and soda and got a hangover. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that soda causes hangovers, and tonight I am drinking straight tequila and no soda.
So, maybe you’re right back where you started, with a belief not based on logic, but faith.
The argument you cite is contained in the book Mere Christianity in the section entitled What Christians Believe - The Shocking Alternative
This is the gist of Lewis’ claim: “Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.”
“Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.”
“One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.”
“Yet (and this is the strange, significant thing) even His enemies, when they read the Gospels, do not usually get the impression of silliness and conceit. Still less do unprejudiced readers. Christ says that He is ‘humble and meek’ and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.”
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
“We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems obvious to me that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or Unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.”
As CyberPundit, et al. point out, there is no reliable evidence that the Gospels are verbatim accounts of Jesus’ life. They might not even be reasonable approximations and there is no reason for Lewis to assume that they are.
Furthermore, the fact that Lewis says that “… it seems obvious to me that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend …” is only proof that Lewis believe that. Not really all that convincing as an argument for the divinity of Jesis.
Nice post pravnik I like the drink plus soda point about inductive reasoning. I’ve used it as a joke at parties a couple of times. It is, however, limited in its application: to lazy reasoners. At a cost of one more hangover, you will know your reasoning was flawed and will have to look for the common ingredient in all those drinks, apart from soda/water. It won’t take long to figure out the truth.
The moral is: Don’t stop thinking about the issue once you have arrived at an answer you like. If more people did that, the world might be a very different place.
I ought to add: I read this book back in college, “Beyond Heaven and Hell”, by Peter Kreeft. It seems C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, and John F. Kennedy all died on exactly the same day: November 22, 1963. Kreeft plays on this by imagining them in sort of a “waiting room” for the next life sharing coffee and debating the identity of Jesus: JFK as a secular humanist, Huxley as an eastern pantheist, and Lewis as a Christian theist. Kreeft is himself a Christian theist, and I think he does give Huxley short shrift to a certain degree and Lewis an unfair literary advantage, but it’s an entertaining book.
1.) Christ’s words and/or actions have been misreported or embellished by his chroniclers. Lewis, as a devout Episcopalian, would not have accepted this, but I have no problem with it. It’s entirely believable.
2.) Christ never existed, and the stories amount to a pious fiction. See, for example, the books of G.A. Wells. Lewis would like this possibility even less.
3.) Christ was speaking metaphorically, but misunderstood by his followers, who amplified his statements. This is really a modification of #1, but assumes that there’s a kernel to start from.
By the way, seeing that Christ was reportedly literate (see the Gospel of Luke), doesn’t anyone think it odd that he never wrote anything himself, and that this has not come down to us?
Show me a cite proving that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses, considering that everything I’ve ever read say that they were written at least 30 years after the events they describe. (If I can find a cite online I’ll put it up.)
Even if the gospels were written by eyewitnesses, if they were writing that many years later, it’s not unreasonable to think that they could have gotten some of Jesus’ words wrong.
“While there is disagreement about where Mark wrote, there is a consensus about when he wrote: he probably composed his work in or about the year 70 CE, after the failure of the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple at the hands of the Romans.”
Yeah, 30 years is a long time, but really, while I’d expect some changes, that’d be a pretty major one, wouldn’t it? I can accept that perhaps Jesus made some metaphorical claim of divinity which in 30 years got twisted into an actual claim of divinity, but going from no claim whatsoever to even a metaphorical claim in 30 years strikes me as somewhat more unlikely.
Oh, and Cyber Pundit, thanks for clarifying what you meant, and yes, I agree that it does mean that if we assume that Christ did in fact make a real claim to divinity and was neither a liar nor a madman, then it follows that other people who have made claims about the supernatural are mistaken. I don’t, however, see this as a major problem, since if we have multiple contradictory claims about the supernatural, we would expect many or all of them to be wrong in any event, yes?
Lewis leaves out the possibility that Jesus was a reformer of Judaism whose message was misconstrued by his followers (and by Paul in particular).
Though you’ve rendered Jefferson’s view “inadmissible,” that was his take on the subject. He thought Jesus was just trying to strip Judaism down to two fundamental tenets: Love God and love one another.
