Lewis Trilemma

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{{cquote|While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way — one might cite {{wpl|Blaise Pascal|Pascal}} — and to some it is dreary and absurd — here one cannot avoid naming [[C. S. Lewis]] — both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain they have to bear. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence|How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible.]]|||[[Christopher Hitchens]], ''[[God Is Not Great]]''<ref>[[Christopher Hitchens]], ''[[God Is Not Great|God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]'' (p. 7)</ref>}}
The '''Lewis Trilemma''' is a fallacious [[Christian apologetics|apologetical]] argument for the divinity of [[Jesus]], invented {{hint|circa|c.}} 1844 by preacher {{wpl|Mark Hopkins (educator)|Mark Hopkins}} (published 1846 in ''Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity''<ref>[https://archive.org/details/lecturesoneviden00hopkrich/page/n8 ''Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity''] by Mark Hopkins (1846) T. R. Marvin.</ref>) and popularized by C. S. Lewis on [[BBC]] radio, hence the name of the trilemma.

The argument is also known as "'''liar, lunatic, or Lord'''", "'''mad, bad, or God'''", or "'''myth, madman, or messiah'''", referring to the three given parts of the 
[[Trinity]]
 trilemma — a three-way [[false dilemma]].

==Lewis's own statement of the argument==
Lewis wrote in ''Mere Christianity'':<ref>''Mere Christianity'' by C. S. Lewis (1943) Collier Books.</ref>{{rp|40-41}}
{{quotebox|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 the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the [[Devil]] of [[Hell]].<ref group=note>I.e., a [[liar]].</ref> 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. …Now it seems to me obvious 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.}}

Lewis’s own words appear to undermine premise 3 of his argument below, which relies on Jesus being a great moral teacher to rule out the possibility of his being a lunatic. Additionally, his final statement, which he tries to make sound like a conclusion he came to reluctantly, bears all the hallmarks of being precisely the conclusion he wanted to reach.

Lewis does not seem to countenance the option of accepting some facets of Christ but not others. This is akin to saying that if you accept that Martin Luther King was a great man, you must accept that cheating on your wife is perfectly fine. Lewis also ignores the option that some of Jesus' words and claims may have been altered when they were reported.

Lewis' formulation of the argument does not intend to prove the divinity of Jesus (although Lewis believed in it), but merely the impossibility of accepting Jesus as a moral teacher while refusing his claims to divinity.  Naturally that hasn't prevented fervent Christians from hijacking it for the purpose of trying to prove Jesus's divinity.

==The logic of the argument==
Assuming Jesus claimed to be God, Lewis' thoughts can be summed up as follows:

1. Due to the law of the [[excluded middle]], [[Jesus]] was either correct or incorrect in his claim of divinity. He also either believed or did not believe he was divine. Therefore, one of 1A, 1B, 1C, or 1D applies to Jesus:

:1A. Believed He was God and was correct in His belief (Lord).
:1B. {{wpl|Mental health of Jesus|Believed he was God and was incorrect}} ([[Illusory truth effect|lunatic]]).
:1C. Correctly believed he was ''not'' God because he wasn't God ([[Charlatan|liar]]).
:1D. [[Coincidence|Did not believe He was God but actually was God]] (ignored as a possibility).

This trilemma, on its own, is relatively sound. The problem is how Lewis tries to use it to prove that Jesus Christ was God. From this, Lewis gets:
<ol>
<li value=1>[[Liar paradox|Jesus spoke out against liars, so he was either a hypocrite, or he was not a liar.]]
<li value=2>Jesus did not show any ''other'' signs of being deranged, and [[Argument from authority|was a great moral teacher]], [[Cherry picking|so he was not a lunatic]].
<li value=3>[[Argumentum ad populum|Everybody who knew about Jesus paid attention to him.]]
<li value=4>[[Non sequitur|Therefore]], you must believe Jesus was God or [[Atheists hate God|completely reject Him]].
</ol>

===Additional points by other authors===
Josh McDowell writes:<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20181231084525/https://www.cru.org/us/en/how-to-know-god/who-is-jesus-god-or-just-a-good-man.html Jesus: God or Just a Good Man? Analyzing our 3 options to explain His identity: a liar, a lunatic, or Lord?] by Josh McDowell, ''Cru'' (archived from December 31, 2018).</ref>
{{quotebox|If, when Jesus made His claims, He knew that He was not God, then He was lying and deliberately deceiving His followers. But if He was a liar, then He was also a [[hypocrite]] because He told others to be honest, whatever the cost, while He Himself taught and lived a colossal lie. More than that, He was a demon, because He told others to trust Him for their eternal destiny. If He couldn't back up His claims and knew it, then He was unspeakably evil. Last, He would also be a fool because it was His claims to being God that led to His [[crucifixion]].}}

==Problems with the argument==
===Hidden premises===
The above argument holds a few hidden premises beyond the ones given outright by Lewis. These hidden premises include:
#[[Evidence for God's existence|The Abrahamic God exists]].
#[[Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ|Jesus existed]].<ref group=note>A necessary starting point, since if he didn't exist, the debate is moot.</ref>
#The [[Gospel]]s are [[Biblical literalism|an accurate record of Jesus' life and teachings]].<ref group=note>Also an important point to raise, since there is quite a bit of evidence against it (which, to be fair to Lewis, he ''probably'' [[Ignorance|wasn't aware of]]).</ref>
#Jesus (and people in general) are of homogenous character and cannot contain contradictory or opposing aspects within their person.
#Jesus himself claimed to be God.<ref group=note>There is some debate about this, as there are no ''overt'' claims to divinity made by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels that he is God. Rather, that is found in subtextual readings and later writings.</ref><ref>[https://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300246095/if-jesus-never-called-himself-god-how-did-he-become-one If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One?], interview with [[Bart Ehrman]], scholar and author of ''How Jesus Became God''.</ref>

These hidden premises appear when we formalize the trilemma, and all can be challenged or undermined, with the last one breaking the logic altogether. Anyone with any non-zero amount of social activity<ref group=note>i.e., everybody over age three except for [[Jack Chick|good ol' Jack]], whose literature indicates he has not talked to any actual [[human]]s for years.</ref> has tons of experience encountering good and bad facets in themselves and others. Even young children can remember cases where they or someone else contradicted themselves.

There are a further 2 points:
#If Jesus existed, it is assumed that all the sayings ''attributed'' to Him were by Him. If the preachings of many men were attributed to Jesus, some may have been mentally unstable and/or liars.
#Any false accounts could have been added to the narrative during the decades of {{wpl|oral transmission}} before the [[Gospels]] were written down.<ref group=note>Given how oral transmission works, there may not have been any ''conscious'' attempts to change the narrative, but it probably happened anyways, since information that is preserved in human [[memory]] alone is incredibly likely to be distorted over time. In other words, even if we assume that the authors of the Bible were honest and did not intend to deceive their readers, they may still have presented a false narrative [[Garbage in garbage out|due to having bad information]]. (They also probably wouldn't have defined historical truth the same way that modern historians do, but that's a separate issue.) See our page on [[lie detection]] for more information on how honest people may unwittingly fail to tell the truth.</ref>

===Delusion===
{{main|Delusion}}
There are also more problems with the argument beyond these alone. Step 3 in the argument can be challenged, as Jesus may have had that one [[Delusions of grandeur|delusion of the false belief of auto-divinity]] but been otherwise okay, much like how [[Isaac Newton]] was an [[alchemy|alchemist]] and tried to find [[The Bible Code|messages in the Bible]], but otherwise made [[gravity|great contributions]] to [[science]].

Did Lewis overestimate how deluded a person who saw himself as God would have been in ancient Judea? The concept of a [[human]] as God is totally unacceptable in [[Judaism]], but in the [[Greco-Roman religion]], men can be gods.<ref group=note>Both the Bible and actual archaeological evidence suggest that the Greco-Roman religion would have had a great deal of influence on Judaism during Jesus's lifetime, as well as influencing Christianity afterwards.</ref> The [[Roman emperor]] was, for example, seen as a man and a god.<ref group=note>Seeing women as goddesses was [[Misogyny|less important]] if it happened.</ref>

===Morality===
One could disagree with the claim of Jesus being a great moral teacher.<ref>[http://freethoughtblogs.com/alstefanelli/2012/01/09/christian-morality-hostile-to-the-individual-and-society/ Christian Morality: Hostile to the Individual and Society]</ref> A great deal of Christian morality is about inducing guilt and reducing self-respect.<ref>[http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/aug2008/myth_christian_morality.html The Myth of Christian Morality]</ref><ref group=note>For instance, {{wpl|Humility}} is generally regarded as the greatest of the {{wpl|Seven virtues#Seven capital virtues|Seven Heavenly Virtues}} — though this is in part because it is the opposite of {{wpl|Pride||,}} which is the greatest of the {{wpl|Seven deadly sins|Seven Deadly Sins|.}}</ref> The teachings of Jesus have been used to justify widely divergent belief systems, like [[Communism#Christian communism|Christian communism]], [[Christian economics]], and [[Liberation theology]]. The teachings of Jesus' followers were used to justify the [[Spanish Inquisition]] and various other persecutions of those considered [[Heresy|heretical]] by various Christian orthodoxies. In the [[United States]], they were used at least as much in favor of [[Slavery in the Bible|slavery]] as they were for its [[abolition]]. How the moral teachings of Jesus are interpreted is greatly affected by how later Christians developed what is in the [[New Testament]].

In Lewis' specific version of the trilemma, it is not apparent how Jesus would not have been a great moral teacher simply because he falsely believed himself to be God and for no other reason. This blends with the above paragraph: Newton practiced the [[pseudoscience]] of alchemy, yet that did not make his contributions to actual science any less valuable. Many great moral teachers had significant flaws: [[Aristotle]] justified slavery; [[Kant]] was an anti-semite; {{wpl|John Stuart Mill}} was an imperialist and racist; to say nothing of [[Mohammed]],<ref group=note>That's a whole other can of worms — one which has been rather heavily mutilated by people with [[Islamophobia|axes to grind against Islam]].</ref> [[Nietzsche]], or Shaw.<ref>[http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/slavery/ethics/philosophers_1.shtml Philosophers justifying slavery], BBC</ref><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/opinion/philosophy-anti-semitism.html Confronting Philosophy’s Anti-Semitism], New York Times 18 Mar 2019</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jul/26/gbsat150 Artist of the Impossible], The Guardian, 26 Jul 2006</ref>

The true essence of the argument is that Lewis, in reading the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, simply had the [[Presupposition|subjective opinion]] that it did not seem like they could have come from anyone but God, and the rest of the argument is mere window dressing around that core.

===Tetralemma===
Our fourth, ignored possibility — of Jesus not knowing he is God — also shows up. It isn't enough to refute the trilemma beyond turning it into a "tetralemma"<ref group=note>Just a dilemma with four conflicting possibilities, much like a trilemma has three or an ordinary dilemma has two.</ref> and is little more than a triviality due to the confusing implications that nobody, either [[theism|theist]] or [[atheism|atheist]], has explored in depth. That possibility isn't part of the established story, and no one has made the claim (that we know of). Beyond that, Jesus claims his relation to divinity multiple times throughout the Bible, though they all appear to be in arrears of other people claiming it.

===In Narnia===
A version of the trilemma appears in Lewis' fiction book ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe''<ref>''The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'' by C. S. Lewis (1950) HarperCollins.</ref> in the Narnia series. After Lucy visits Narnia through a magic wardrobe and tells her siblings, they dismiss her story. Later, one of her brothers enters Narnia with her, but when they come back, he denies the story to the older two. This prompts the older two siblings to voice their concerns about Lucy to the owner of the house where they are staying. However, the owner, a professor, argues that since Lucy is neither dishonest nor insane, her story must be true. This shows both the absurdity of the argument and the disingenuity in employing it (the man had already visited Narnia, and thus this argument wasn't his true reason for believing Lucy, just as Christians have [[indoctrination|other]] [[confirmation bias|reasons]] for believing in Christianity).

In fairness, the professor was referring to a specific single claim of Lucy, not to the broader worth of all of Lucy's musings. Lewis' argument works if you ''only'' look at Christ's claim to be God — He was either lying, if He did not believe it,<ref group=note>This covers [[#Tetralemma|Him being lucky]]. If He did not believe it but by odd fortune actually was God, then He was at least lying in spirit.</ref> delusional, if He was incorrect in believing it, or actually God.
In addition, Lewis may not have decided at the time that the professor had been to Narnia before, since the book where he and a friend witness Narnia’s creation as children was written several years after this one.

===Hammurabi's Trilemma===
If one accepts the Lewis Trilemma, then one would have to accept very similar arguments for the existence of [[gods Christians don't believe in]]. For example, the {{wpl|Code of Hammurabi}} begins with an introduction asserting that all the gods of the Ancient Mesopotamian religion descended from heaven and told Hammurabi that he is so totally awesome that he gets to make all the laws. A Babylonian could therefore argue Hammurabi either
a) Did not believe he was chosen by the Ancient Mesopotamian gods (liar),
b) Believed he was chosen by the Ancient Mesopotamian gods but was wrong (lunatic), or
c) Believed he was chosen by the Ancient Mesopotamian gods and was correct (lord).

The Babylonian apologist could further argue that Hammurabi cannot be a liar, because Hammurabi condemned liars (prescribing the [[death penalty]] for [[perjury]]). The apologist could argue that Hammurabi could not have been a lunatic, as he was able to keep control of a city without being assassinated or overthrown. If one accepts this argument, they would have to conclude that the Ancient Mesopotamian gods exist and that they did indeed choose Hammurabi to make all the laws.

This argument carries the same flaws as the original Lewis Trilemma. Namely, it is possible Hammurabi could [[Hypocrisy|lie despite condemning lying in others]]. It is also possible Hammurabi could falsely believe he was chosen while still having the mental capacity to rule a city.

==Hitchens==
Within his book ''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', Christopher Hitchens claims to be refuting Lewis, but basically follows [[False dilemma|the same fallacy]] (only Hitchens applies it to the entire Gospels)

{{quotebox|[Lewis] happens to be speaking about the claim of Jesus to take [[sin]]s on himself: Now, unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.<br>

. . .
	
I am not choosing a [[straw man]] here: Lewis is the main chosen [[propaganda]] vehicle for Christianity in our time. And nor am I accepting his rather wild [[supernatural]] categories, such as devil and [[demon]]. Least of all do I accept his [[reasoning]], which is so pathetic as to defy description and which takes his [[False dilemma|two false alternatives as exclusive antitheses]], and then uses them to fashion a crude ''[[non sequitur]]'' ("Now it seems to me obvious 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."). However, I do credit him with honesty and with some courage. Either the Gospels are in some sense [[Biblical literalism|literal truth]], or the whole thing is essentially a {{wpl|fraud}} and perhaps an immoral one at that.<ref>''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'' by Christopher Hitchens (2007) Atlantic Books. {{isbn|1786491478}}.</ref>{{rp|118-120}}}}

==See also==
*[[False dilemma]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note|2}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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[[Category:Apologetics and counter-apologetics]]
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[[Category:Existence of gods]]
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Categories: Apologetics and counter-apologetics, Christianity, Jesus, Existence of gods, Philosophy