City Life Starter

Written by Scott Fiddler

The Word

 30 “I and the Father are one.”

 31 The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him.

 32 Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?”

 33 The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.”

John 10:30-33

Exegesis

C.S. Lewis is known as a great Christian apologist and in large part for his “lord, liar, lunatic” argument. The force of this argument has led many to the conclusion Jesus was not merely a good human teacher but that He was who He said He was. 

Lewis’s argument goes like this. Jesus said He was God. He was either telling the truth or lying. If He was lying, He either knew He was lying or He was deluded. If He knew He was lying He could not be called a good teacher because He would be lying about his very identity. If Jesus didn’t know He was lying then He was deluded, insane, as Lewis describes it on the level of one who calls himself a poached egg. Yet, all that we know about what Jesus said, the depth of His wisdom and insight, demonstrates the opposite. That only leaves the third option: Jesus was who He said He was. Lewis sums up the arguments as follows:

“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 up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

Critics argue there is a fourth option to the lord, liar, lunatic trilemma: legend. They contend Jesus didn’t really claim to be God and that His alleged claims to deity are a result of legend developed over time by Christians before the gospels and other writings that make up the new testament were penned. This criticism attacks the premise of the argument that Jesus claimed to be God.

Lewis was profoundly influenced by the writings of G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936), who Lewis began reading while still an atheist. Lewis called Chesterton’s, The Everlasting Man, “the very best popular defense of the full Christian position I know.” In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton wrote of the trilemma in full Chesterton style. Chesterton also anticipated the legend-criticism of the trilemma and refuted it: 

“Nor is it even avoided by denying that Christ did make this claim. Of no such man as that, of no other prophet or philosopher of the same intellectual order, would it be even possible to pretend that he had made it. Even if the Church had mistaken his meaning, it would still be true that no other historical tradition except the Church had ever even made the same mistake. Mahomedans did not misunderstand Mahomet and suppose he was Allah. Jews did not misinterpret Moses and identify him with Jehovah. Why was this claim alone exaggerated unless this alone was made? Even if Christianity was one vast universal blunder, it is still a blunder as solitary as the Incarnation.”

G.K. Chesteron, The Everlasting Man

The trilemma is sound. Truth always is. 

Application

Lewis never contended as far as I know to be the first person to articulate the trilemma. Maybe Lewis was simply restating what he read in The Everlasting Man, or maybe he was expanding on what he read about the argument in a more succinct form in a compilation of the sayings of the Scottish minister, John Duncan, published in an 1889 book, Colloquia Peripatetica: Deep Sea Soundings (“Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.”). 

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter who first thought of the trilemma. As Augustine said, “Truth belongs to all in common, but he who utters what is false utters what is his alone.”  

And now, this truth belongs to you. Share it with others.

Prayer

Pray for an opportunity this week to ask someone in casual conversation, “Who do you think Jesus is?”