(When people call some thing non-clinical a delusion they are basically saying, this is so outrageous it must be a product of mental illness - so either simile or metaphor really and mildly ableist.)
I should have read this as strictly defintional,
Wiki: A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:
"The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity."
But, as we can't use it here in that colloquial sense, is there a safe word for a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, which is not delusional? The thing that Jesus had?
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
Certainly someone can "carry on" in daily life with quite a lot of illness, delusion, or error; but what I see in the Gospels goes far beyond simply "carrying on." That is function in the highest degree--health so strong that it makes the people around him more functional, if you see what I mean. And I'm not referring to the miraculous healing stuff. I mean that just hanging around him and listening (which I grant you, not everybody did) is sufficient to make one healthier mentally, emotionally, and so forth. Like standing in the sun after a long, cold winter.
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
Thing is, we only have the 'Jesus of faith', as it were. As one wag said, 'The Quest for the Historical Jesus' invariably ended with 19th century German theologians peering down a well and seeing reflections of themselves at the bottom of it.
Of course, we could argue that the early Christians redacted what the historical Jesus taught and believed and developed the whole 'Myth of God Incarnate' after his death.
This doesn't take us to the 'trilemma' but it does take us close to it. Either we accept what the Church came to believe or we don't.
I don't believe the early disciples were part of some kind of Jonestown style suicide cult. But people under duress do accept and practice some whacky things, even to the point of martyrdom and death.
But 'something' must have happened to convince these early, and largely Jewish, Christians to believe that Jesus was God Incarnate and to suffer and die for that belief.
I am prepared to accept that some of the early martyrdom stories are the stuff of hagiography and pious legend, but those legends themselves indicate that it could be a dangerous thing to follow Christ.
Hence 'the doors! The doors! In wisdom let us attend!' in Orthodox liturgies to this day.
I'm sticking with the traditional narrative. Here I stand. I can do no other. As someone once said ...
That doesn't mean that faith isn't a struggle at times or that we switch our brains off. 'Lord I believe. Help thou mine unbelief!'
Our parish priest observed in his sermon yesterday that people coming to him for confession start by saying, 'Father, I have no faith ...'
He wonders why they are coming to him (or God rather) for confession, if they don't believe that God forgives sins. Why not go away and enjoy themselves?
I think the 'trilemma' is flawed and questionable on a number of levels. There are all sorts of alternative 'explanations' beyond the three that Lewis rhetorically crystallised. Or borrowed from earlier versions.
But it does boil things down to the essential question.
'What think ye of Christ?
Whose son is he?'
We can come at that in any number of ways. Through the teachings of the Church as reflected in mainstream historic Trinitarian Christianity, or with our own individual perspectives and ideas to whatever extent they are based on Big T or small Tradition / tradition or otherwise.
Of course, we may all 'wake up dead' and find we got it wrong. We can't 'prove' any of this or stick it in a test-tube.
At best, I think the 'trilemma' can help focus our attention or steer us towards the 'big questions'. But I don't think it provides us with a neat sound-bite answer or apologetic 'gotcha!'
I must admit, I did find it impressive when I first encountered it. But then I was a kind of mild agnostic with a conventional Anglican background and not prepared to dismiss Christ or the faith that bears his name (or title rather) out of hand.
You could say I was probably a 'soft touch' and I wouldn't disagree with that.
Believe it or not I'm most moved by everyone's expressions of faith here, your testimonies as it were. You are all Prosperos to my Caliban. Humble, gracious, intellectually honest believers. A powerful witness.
@Gamaliel:@MPaul has fallen into the first trap. He's imbibed the popular mythology and the idea that Lewis was some selfless Saint
No, that is overthinking it.
He wrote many words but his actions speak beyond them.
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Originality doesn’t matter. Lewis’s rep doesn’t matter. What i come back to again and again is the issue of Jesus’ mental health (and yes, i have my own problems, including cPTSD and a form of OCD.)
If Jesus was convinced he was God in that culture, and was wrong, the delusion cannot be called anything but all-pervasive and life threatening. It clearly impacted every area of his life, and it appears to have been there from the beginning—no change or growth can be seen over the three years of records we have. He related to people in public teaching and in private healing and comfort as if he were God and the son of God the Father. He made public challenges like “Who of you accused me of any sin?” Of he is deluded, this is not an isolated delusion in an otherwise healthy life. This is clearly the master delusion of his whole existence.
I do not believe it is possible for any person to be that thoroughly deluded on a subject of such pervasive and overwhelming importance without showing signs of illness in the rest of good life—his teaching, his interactions with others, his actions. Specifically i consider it impossible to imagine a mere man who was at once so ill that he thought he was God (in first century Judaism) and at the same time conceived of his role as God as being consistently that of servant, caregiver, healer, and rescuer of others at the cost of his own life. That is a degree of light I wouldn’t expect to find in a perfectly healthy person, let alone one so intensely deluded—so wrong—as some of you are postulating.
And I, too, have worked with people under delusion. Obviously not to the extent a professional has. Their delusions never left them more functional than the rest of humankind.
@KoF Talking of the influence of Plato, it's unlikely that Jesus would have had any concept of people dying and going to heaven. To the Hebrews, body and soul were inseparable in life. That's why if anyone were ever to return from the dead, it would have to be a new body reunited with their soul on earth. This idea, which appears in Maccabees, was what the Pharisees believed and taught. Prior to that, there was little belief in an afterlife.
I did say that belief in the resurrection goes back at least as far as the Maccabees, and was a commonly held belief of the Pharisees of Jesus' time. But it was an earthly resurrection. I apologise if I worded that badly. What I meant is that the idea of our souls going to heaven when we die was a Greek idea that got incorporated into Christianity.
The beliefs of the ancient Hebrews and the beliefs found in Second Temple Judaism were not the same. Influences, including those about the soul and an afterlife, came in during the exile in Babylon as well as from the Greeks.
The concept of Abraham’s Bosom as a place where the righteous dead await judgment could be found in Second Temple Judaism. That concept is mentioned in Jesus’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In that parable, Lazarus is described as being taken by the angels to Abraham’s Bosom, even though his body presumably remained to be buried. It is perhaps worth noting that it is Lazarus’s possible return from Abraham’s Bosom to the world of the living that is described as “rising from the dead.”
Influences from Babylonian, Greek and other cultures were definitely at play in Second Temple Judaism. And even before that, there is the story of the woman of Endor, who summoned Samuel from the dead for Saul. Given that Saul cannot see Samuel, it seems clear that Samuel appears as a spirit, not as a resurrected body.
So I think the claim that it's unlikely that Jesus would have had any concept of people dying and going to heaven, because to the Hebrews, body and soul were inseparable, is itself an unlikely claim. Such ideas could be found both in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Jewish understandings of his time.
That said, and going back to how this started, I agree with @Lamb Chopped that it seems to me to be highly unlikely that a First Century Jew who, by all accounts, was observant and a student of the Torah and the prophets would claim to be divine as a result of some kind of syncretism.
All of this. I’d also throw in that Jesus had to prove He wasn’t a ghost after the Resurrection.
Thing is, we only have the 'Jesus of faith', as it were. As one wag said, 'The Quest for the Historical Jesus' invariably ended with 19th century German theologians peering down a well and seeing reflections of themselves at the bottom of it.
Of course, we could argue that the early Christians redacted what the historical Jesus taught and believed and developed the whole 'Myth of God Incarnate' after his death.
This doesn't take us to the 'trilemma' but it does take us close to it. Either we accept what the Church came to believe or we don't.
I don't believe the early disciples were part of some kind of Jonestown style suicide cult. But people under duress do accept and practice some whacky things, even to the point of martyrdom and death.
But 'something' must have happened to convince these early, and largely Jewish, Christians to believe that Jesus was God Incarnate and to suffer and die for that belief.
I am prepared to accept that some of the early martyrdom stories are the stuff of hagiography and pious legend, but those legends themselves indicate that it could be a dangerous thing to follow Christ.
Hence 'the doors! The doors! In wisdom let us attend!' in Orthodox liturgies to this day.
I'm sticking with the traditional narrative. Here I stand. I can do no other. As someone once said ...
That doesn't mean that faith isn't a struggle at times or that we switch our brains off. 'Lord I believe. Help thou mine unbelief!'
Our parish priest observed in his sermon yesterday that people coming to him for confession start by saying, 'Father, I have no faith ...'
He wonders why they are coming to him (or God rather) for confession, if they don't believe that God forgives sins. Why not go away and enjoy themselves?
I think the 'trilemma' is flawed and questionable on a number of levels. There are all sorts of alternative 'explanations' beyond the three that Lewis rhetorically crystallised. Or borrowed from earlier versions.
But it does boil things down to the essential question.
'What think ye of Christ?
Whose son is he?'
We can come at that in any number of ways. Through the teachings of the Church as reflected in mainstream historic Trinitarian Christianity, or with our own individual perspectives and ideas to whatever extent they are based on Big T or small Tradition / tradition or otherwise.
Of course, we may all 'wake up dead' and find we got it wrong. We can't 'prove' any of this or stick it in a test-tube.
At best, I think the 'trilemma' can help focus our attention or steer us towards the 'big questions'. But I don't think it provides us with a neat sound-bite answer or apologetic 'gotcha!'
I must admit, I did find it impressive when I first encountered it. But then I was a kind of mild agnostic with a conventional Anglican background and not prepared to dismiss Christ or the faith that bears his name (or title rather) out of hand.
You could say I was probably a 'soft touch' and I wouldn't disagree with that.
@Gamaliel:@MPaul has fallen into the first trap. He's imbibed the popular mythology and the idea that Lewis was some selfless Saint
No, that is overthinking it.
He wrote many words but his actions speak beyond them.
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Er… “woke”? A lot of us who are faithful Christians and take Scripture as authoritative are called “woke.” Indeed, some of us are called that because of what we believe some of the implications of the Scriptures are.
Here in the US, “woke” has become an attack word by the nastier members of the far right.
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Do you even know what “woke” actually means, or are you just tossing it around as some kind of dismissal of “those liberals”? And what do “woke sensitivities” have to do with Lewis’s trilemma?
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Do you even know what “woke” actually means, or are you just tossing it around as some kind of dismissal of “those liberals”? And what do “woke sensitivities” have to do with Lewis’s trilemma?
Hi Nick and Chastmstr
No offence was intended by using that term.
I didn’t realise it would push hot buttons. I meant merely that current sensitivities were not relevant to the trilemmer discussion in my opinion.. viz the discussion of mental illness above.
The kind of liberal 'Higher Criticism' you seem to have in mind is hardly 'current'. It's been around for 150 years at least.
Besides, Lewis wasn't some kind of biblical literalist in the way you seem to want him to be, any more than he was the kind of squeaky-clean moral exemplar you seem to have envisage him to have been.
You appear to be trying to construct a Lewis in your own image, one who took the same approach to scripture as you do and who behaved as impeccably as a chapel deacon in Prim & Proper Chapel, Respectability Street.
Real life is a lot messier than that.
Scripture and theology is messier than that.
Quite a number of us here have a relatively conservative approach to theology. Hence my 'here I stand' when it comes to accepting the truth claims of traditional creedal Christianity - as Lewis did.
Heck, Lewis was squeamish about penal substitutionary atonement, a central plank in conservative evangelical theology. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones apparently expressed doubts about Lewis's 'salvation' on the basis of that.
Sure, Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame, opined that Lewis was a 'converted man' despite a propensity for smoking and drinking rather more ale than was good for him.
So that's alright then ...
Whether Lewis's trilemma is 'adequate' or not isn't an issue of 'current concerns' - whatever they are - but whether it stacks up as a 'model' given that it doesn't cover all the bases or possibilities.
Yes, it can act as a focus and 'distils' some of the issues but like all analogies - and there is a somewhat flippant analogical element in the 'man who thinks he's a poached egg' quip - it will only take us so far.
It's not a 'stand-alone' sound-bite. As @Lamb Chopped says, there are other 'phenomena' and other reasons to accept the Gospel and not just Lewis's recycled bon-mot.
That's not to disparage Lewis as an apologist, but it is to try to lift the debate beyond the level of Young Earth Creationism and a kind of woodenly literal fundamentalism, or the kind of starry-eyed hagiography that portrays Lewis as some kind of unblemished super-Saint.
The kind of liberal 'Higher Criticism' you seem to have in mind is hardly 'current'. It's been around for 150 years at least.
Besides, Lewis wasn't some kind of biblical literalist in the way you seem to want him to be, any more than he was the kind of squeaky-clean moral exemplar you seem to have envisage him to have been.
You appear to be trying to construct a Lewis in your own image, one who took the same approach to scripture as you do and who behaved as impeccably as a chapel deacon in Prim & Proper Chapel, Respectability Street.
Real life is a lot messier than that.
Scripture and theology is messier than that.
Quite a number of us here have a relatively conservative approach to theology. Hence my 'here I stand' when it comes to accepting the truth claims of traditional creedal Christianity - as Lewis did.
Heck, Lewis was squeamish about penal substitutionary atonement, a central plank in conservative evangelical theology. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones apparently expressed doubts about Lewis's 'salvation' on the basis of that.
Sure, Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame, opined that Lewis was a 'converted man' despite a propensity for smoking and drinking rather more ale than was good for him.
So that's alright then ...
Whether Lewis's trilemma is 'adequate' or not isn't an issue of 'current concerns' - whatever they are - but whether it stacks up as a 'model' given that it doesn't cover all the bases or possibilities.
Yes, it can act as a focus and 'distils' some of the issues but like all analogies - and there is a somewhat flippant analogical element in the 'man who thinks he's a poached egg' quip - it will only take us so far.
It's not a 'stand-alone' sound-bite. As @Lamb Chopped says, there are other 'phenomena' and other reasons to accept the Gospel and not just Lewis's recycled bon-mot.
That's not to disparage Lewis as an apologist, but it is to try to lift the debate beyond the level of Young Earth Creationism and a kind of woodenly literal fundamentalism, or the kind of starry-eyed hagiography that portrays Lewis as some kind of unblemished super-Saint.
To be fair, @MPaul explained just now that he was specifically talking about how we discuss mental illness issues currently, which was mentioned in prior comments. (For what it’s worth, I have my own array of issues, and I have no problem with the way Lewis talks about insanity and/or delusions in the trilemma or elsewhere.)
@Gamaliel:@MPaul has fallen into the first trap. He's imbibed the popular mythology and the idea that Lewis was some selfless Saint
No, that is overthinking it.
He wrote many words but his actions speak beyond them.
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
It's convincing if you're already convinced? Round here we call that cognitive bias.
The kind of liberal 'Higher Criticism' you seem to have in mind is hardly 'current'. It's been around for 150 years at least.
Besides, Lewis wasn't some kind of biblical literalist in the way you seem to want him to be, any more than he was the kind of squeaky-clean moral exemplar you seem to have envisage him to have been.
You appear to be trying to construct a Lewis in your own image, one who took the same approach to scripture as you do and who behaved as impeccably as a chapel deacon in Prim & Proper Chapel, Respectability Street.
Real life is a lot messier than that.
Scripture and theology is messier than that.
Quite a number of us here have a relatively conservative approach to theology. Hence my 'here I stand' when it comes to accepting the truth claims of traditional creedal Christianity - as Lewis did.
Heck, Lewis was squeamish about penal substitutionary atonement, a central plank in conservative evangelical theology. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones apparently expressed doubts about Lewis's 'salvation' on the basis of that.
Sure, Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame, opined that Lewis was a 'converted man' despite a propensity for smoking and drinking rather more ale than was good for him.
So that's alright then ...
Whether Lewis's trilemma is 'adequate' or not isn't an issue of 'current concerns' - whatever they are - but whether it stacks up as a 'model' given that it doesn't cover all the bases or possibilities.
Yes, it can act as a focus and 'distils' some of the issues but like all analogies - and there is a somewhat flippant analogical element in the 'man who thinks he's a poached egg' quip - it will only take us so far.
It's not a 'stand-alone' sound-bite. As @Lamb Chopped says, there are other 'phenomena' and other reasons to accept the Gospel and not just Lewis's recycled bon-mot.
That's not to disparage Lewis as an apologist, but it is to try to lift the debate beyond the level of Young Earth Creationism and a kind of woodenly literal fundamentalism, or the kind of starry-eyed hagiography that portrays Lewis as some kind of unblemished super-Saint.
To be fair, @MPaul explained just now that he was specifically talking about how we discuss mental illness issues currently, which was mentioned in prior comments. (For what it’s worth, I have my own array of issues, and I have no problem with the way Lewis talks about insanity and/or delusions in the trilemma or elsewhere.)
Why don’t you? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Are you saying that one must have a severe mental illness to think of yourself as God which means isn’t possible to also offer an interesting/complex ethical and moral code?
The kind of liberal 'Higher Criticism' you seem to have in mind is hardly 'current'. It's been around for 150 years at least.
Besides, Lewis wasn't some kind of biblical literalist in the way you seem to want him to be, any more than he was the kind of squeaky-clean moral exemplar you seem to have envisage him to have been.
You appear to be trying to construct a Lewis in your own image, one who took the same approach to scripture as you do and who behaved as impeccably as a chapel deacon in Prim & Proper Chapel, Respectability Street.
Real life is a lot messier than that.
Scripture and theology is messier than that.
Quite a number of us here have a relatively conservative approach to theology. Hence my 'here I stand' when it comes to accepting the truth claims of traditional creedal Christianity - as Lewis did.
Heck, Lewis was squeamish about penal substitutionary atonement, a central plank in conservative evangelical theology. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones apparently expressed doubts about Lewis's 'salvation' on the basis of that.
Sure, Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame, opined that Lewis was a 'converted man' despite a propensity for smoking and drinking rather more ale than was good for him.
So that's alright then ...
Whether Lewis's trilemma is 'adequate' or not isn't an issue of 'current concerns' - whatever they are - but whether it stacks up as a 'model' given that it doesn't cover all the bases or possibilities.
Yes, it can act as a focus and 'distils' some of the issues but like all analogies - and there is a somewhat flippant analogical element in the 'man who thinks he's a poached egg' quip - it will only take us so far.
It's not a 'stand-alone' sound-bite. As @Lamb Chopped says, there are other 'phenomena' and other reasons to accept the Gospel and not just Lewis's recycled bon-mot.
That's not to disparage Lewis as an apologist, but it is to try to lift the debate beyond the level of Young Earth Creationism and a kind of woodenly literal fundamentalism, or the kind of starry-eyed hagiography that portrays Lewis as some kind of unblemished super-Saint.
To be fair, @MPaul explained just now that he was specifically talking about how we discuss mental illness issues currently, which was mentioned in prior comments. (For what it’s worth, I have my own array of issues, and I have no problem with the way Lewis talks about insanity and/or delusions in the trilemma or elsewhere.)
Why don’t you? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Are you saying that one must have a severe mental illness to think of yourself as God which means isn’t possible to also offer an interesting/complex ethical and moral code?
Er, no, I’m talking about whether I find the language in question (about insanity), even with our greater understanding of how mental illness works, offensive. (And I’m extremely grateful for my own meds.)
(I’m not particularly convinced that a madman with literal, ongoing delusions of actual godhood —and not like a pagan god, but THE God Who made absolutely everything, the entire universe, to Whom something like Zeus would be smaller than a flea— could also be a great moral teacher either, but that wasn’t my point in my comment above. Of course, something being an interesting/complex ethical and moral code doesn’t make it a *better* moral code either, or even a good one…)
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Do you even know what “woke” actually means, or are you just tossing it around as some kind of dismissal of “those liberals”? And what do “woke sensitivities” have to do with Lewis’s trilemma?
Hi Nick and Chastmstr
No offence was intended by using that term.
I didn’t realise it would push hot buttons. I meant merely that current sensitivities were not relevant to the trilemmer discussion in my opinion.. viz the discussion of mental illness above.
Thank you, @MPaul. If you’d like to learn about the meaning of “woke”—its long-standing meaning in the African American community, more expanded meanings from the last 10 years or so as the word became more widely known and adopted (particularly by some American whites), and how the right latched onto it as a pejorative—the Wikipedia article is a pretty good starting place.
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
What's terrible about it?
Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
What's terrible about it?
Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Could you also add to that that his chief family are shown in the gospels as thinking precisely about him as you describe here?They thought he was deluded and attempted to rescue him. Add to that the disciples whom he told his fate to and who refused to accept it.. (the messiah who dies makes no sense right?) so in the ultimate sense he was entirely alone in his journey to the cross. As you say, the only way this makes sense given the qualities you described is that he was God incarnated.
Actually, what I said was that the only way this is non-TERRIBLE given the qualities I described is if he is God incarnated (and on a mission from, er, himself).
Then the cost is worth it.
Otherwise, it sucks like a really, really sucky thing.
Sure, and I'm not disagreeing but all that is predicated on a belief that the Gospel accounts are historically accurate and reflect exactly what Jesus taught and how his family and disciples reacted at the time.
The trilemma only makes sense if we assume or accept that.
This is what I mean about there being more than three options.
Lewis didn't put a caveat on his 'mad, bad or God' argument- that the idea of Christ's divinity may have developed after his death as his followers tried to make sense of it all, for instance.
I'm not saying it did. There must at least have been some grounds for their believing that, even in some kind of 'seed form' from Christ's ministry and teachings. Otherwise they wouldn't have developed the idea in the first place or out of thin air - notwithstanding that various ideas about incarnations or human/divine 'hybrid' interaction were becoming a 'thing' at that time.
I accept the traditional Christian teaching.
What I am saying is that trilemma doesn't cover all the bases or close down all options in the way its proponents claim.
What I am saying is that trilemma doesn't cover all the bases or close down all options in the way its proponents claim.
I think I can see that. I do think that it requires context (such as that the gospels were in fact written down accurately, etc.) and I still think that it has merit. (It’s also just part of one chapter in one book to the best of my knowledge, rather than the only possible way one could reach the conclusion that Jesus was and is God.)
As far as the Gospels (on the accuracy of which the trilemma relies) go, from Wikipedia:
Lewis used his own literary expertise in a 1950 essay, "What Are We to Make of Jesus?", to disagree with the possibility that the Gospels are legends.
There, Lewis writes:
"Now, as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. From an imaginative point of view they are clumsy, they don't work up to things properly. Most of the life of Jesus is totally unknown to us, as is the life of anyone else who lived at that time, and no people building up a legend would allow that to be so. Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there is no conversation that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence."[40]
So the trilemma may be flaky, but an inadequate proof of the Divinity of Jesus does not rule out the case that the Divinity of Jesus is true.
This much is true. A bad argument for X does not prove not-X.
OK, before I get in to delusion again... does any case stand up to the brute facts of Bart Denton Ehrman's superb, surgical, forensic approach? He 'lacks' my degree of good will. For perfectly sound intellectual reasons.
Ehrman criticizes the trilemma himself,
...it is historically inaccurate that Jesus called himself God, so Lewis's premise of accepting that very claim is problematic. Ehrman stated that it is a mere legend that the historical Jesus called himself God, and that this was unknown to Lewis since he never was a professional Bible scholar.
Although in my good will, Jesus demonstrated that's what he believed.
If we go with Ehrman, and we should..., all is lost.
Back to delusion. As I sit corrected by @Doublethink, in that delusion is always clinical, which = 'mad' in Lewis's day, then, Jesus was delusional.
William Lane Craig (of all people!),
Philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig also believes that the trilemma is an unsound argument for Christianity. Craig gives several other logically possible alternatives: Jesus' claims as to his divinity were merely good-faith mistakes resulting from his sincere efforts at reasoning, Jesus was deluded with respect to the specific issue of his own divinity while his faculties of moral reasoning remained intact, or Jesus did not understand the claims he made about himself as amounting to a claim to divinity.
I would say that, assuming we accept the Gospels as accurate records, Ehrman, for whom I have great respect, is wrong if he says Jesus didn’t call himself God.* He may never have said “I am God,” but there are numerous occurrences where he said things that can be understood as making such a claim, and where his hearers clearly understood him to be making such a claim.
* I have no idea what you’re quoting there—it’s not the Wikipedia article to which you linked, as that article doesn’t mention Lewis or the trilemma—so I have no idea whether it accurately conveys what Ehrman has written. But my recollection is Ehrman starts from a position that the Gospels do not accurately report what Jesus said.
I would say that, assuming we accept the Gospels as accurate records, Ehrman, for whom I have great respect, is wrong if he says Jesus didn’t call himself God.* He may never have said “I am God,” but there are numerous occurrences where he said things that can be understood as making such a claim, and where his hearers clearly understood him to be making such a claim.
* I have no idea what you’re quoting there—it’s not the Wikipedia article to which you linked, as that article doesn’t mention Lewis or the trilemma—so I have no idea whether it accurately conveys what Ehrman has written. But my recollection is Ehrman starts from a position that the Gospels do not accurately report what Jesus said.
I'd have to agree, as I allueded.
My apologies for the confusion, the quote is from the trilemma link.
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
What's terrible about it?
(a) Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
(b) When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Actually, what I said was that the only way this is non-TERRIBLE given the qualities I described is if he is God incarnated (and on a mission from, er, himself).
Then the cost is worth it.
Otherwise, it sucks like a really, really sucky thing.
(a) Never a problem with such fast flowing streams, we all do it, and it can be taken, wrongly, for ignoring people. And rightly! : )
(b) It was of truly massive proportions for him, certainly, life consuming. Literally. And the history of the planet for the next 2000 years, the biggest single cultural impactor of all time in all its effects. I question my own metaphor there. He and Christianity didn't just fall out of the sky after all... He was the nucleation point in a phase change in European civilization. And terrible? His was a life most well spent. Well worth it for one human. Although the positive effects in the long run barely arguably outweigh the negative.
And, even if he were the Son of God, and if there were anything anachronistic in the attested text, I would know; we all would, furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins. But there isn't, there is only the Jesus of faith, and that irrelevant obsession, delusion, for which he died.
No big deal for one human out over one hundred billion, most of whose lives have been nasty, brutish and short.
If he were God incarnate the obsession becomes more important. And most problematic. As does the truly absurd scandal of particularity that his followers made up.
I'm intrigued by the phrase *absurd scandal of particularity* - could you unpack this a bit, please?
Apologies if it's already been mentioned/covered/explained in this thread, but I've not really been following it thus far...
: ) don't blame you. Know it's the first mention here. But I have previous...
What ChatGPT 4 'thinks', The "scandal of particularity" refers to the theological concept that God's revelation and incarnation are specific and concrete, rather than universal. It is the idea that God became man at a particular point in history and revealed himself to a specific people, such as the Jews. This concept is often debated and considered a challenge for Christians in the postmodern age.
In its extreme, but common form, including here historically, and still I'm sure, it translates to the incarnation being The Incarnation, the only one, in the entire universe (of infinity, which is rarely realised) of trillions of sapient species. Furthermore it backs up in to God and creates the superfluous Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Justified if The Incarnation is singular for the cosmos. Which is utterly absurd.
Many of the more liberal, intellectually open minded believers here don't go with the scandal, but still go with God the Son.
New to me, thank you. Superb. Love would have always incarnated everywhere, in parallel and overlapping series, in the eternal infinity of universes. Therefore it couldn't also be a Person in any meaningful sense.
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
What's terrible about it?
(a) Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
(b) When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Actually, what I said was that the only way this is non-TERRIBLE given the qualities I described is if he is God incarnated (and on a mission from, er, himself).
Then the cost is worth it.
Otherwise, it sucks like a really, really sucky thing.
(a) Never a problem with such fast flowing streams, we all do it, and it can be taken, wrongly, for ignoring people. And rightly! : )
(b) It was of truly massive proportions for him, certainly, life consuming. Literally. And the history of the planet for the next 2000 years, the biggest single cultural impactor of all time in all its effects. I question my own metaphor there. He and Christianity didn't just fall out of the sky after all... He was the nucleation point in a phase change in European civilization. And terrible? His was a life most well spent. Well worth it for one human. Although the positive effects in the long run barely arguably outweigh the negative.
And, even if he were the Son of God, and if there were anything anachronistic in the attested text, I would know; we all would, furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins. But there isn't, there is only the Jesus of faith, and that irrelevant obsession, delusion, for which he died.
No big deal for one human out over one hundred billion, most of whose lives have been nasty, brutish and short.
If he were God incarnate the obsession becomes more important. And most problematic. As does the truly absurd scandal of particularity that his followers made up.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by your interest in him being anachronistic. My reading is that he doesn't fit particularly well in any century; if he had dropped down in the twentieth or the tenth, he'd had been just as out of place as he was in the first.
I'm very interested in this: "furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins." As you know, we (my family) HAVE had to get serious about that particular obsession of his, and though it's meant a complete disruption of our life, what with him moving so many really odd people into our life!, it's also been a delight and a joy. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.
If his obsession is, as you say, "irrelevent," it's the best irrelevent thing that has ever happened to me and mine, and worth every hour and every penny that we've spent passing it along to others. And how is it possible that an irrelevancy could have the effect of completely revolutionizing and enriching not just my life, but the life of this particular refugee community?
If that's irrelevency, I'd love to see what relevency can do.
As for the trilemma, is there a fourth option, making a quadrilemma, which would fill in the gaps and make (almost) everyone happy? How about "misquoted" as the fourth option?
Jesus didn't tick any of them or any other. He was one of the sanest people who ever lived. One of the best. One of the most emotionally intelligent. The best, the most we know of in fact. If he was for real, which I grant in all good will.
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
What's terrible about it?
(a) Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
(b) When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Actually, what I said was that the only way this is non-TERRIBLE given the qualities I described is if he is God incarnated (and on a mission from, er, himself).
Then the cost is worth it.
Otherwise, it sucks like a really, really sucky thing.
(a) Never a problem with such fast flowing streams, we all do it, and it can be taken, wrongly, for ignoring people. And rightly! : )
(b) It was of truly massive proportions for him, certainly, life consuming. Literally. And the history of the planet for the next 2000 years, the biggest single cultural impactor of all time in all its effects. I question my own metaphor there. He and Christianity didn't just fall out of the sky after all... He was the nucleation point in a phase change in European civilization. And terrible? His was a life most well spent. Well worth it for one human. Although the positive effects in the long run barely arguably outweigh the negative.
And, even if he were the Son of God, and if there were anything anachronistic in the attested text, I would know; we all would, furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins. But there isn't, there is only the Jesus of faith, and that irrelevant obsession, delusion, for which he died.
No big deal for one human out over one hundred billion, most of whose lives have been nasty, brutish and short.
If he were God incarnate the obsession becomes more important. And most problematic. As does the truly absurd scandal of particularity that his followers made up.
(a) I'm not sure I understand what you mean by your interest in him being anachronistic. My reading is that he doesn't fit particularly well in any century; if he had dropped down in the twentieth or the tenth, he'd had been just as out of place as he was in the first.
(b) I'm very interested in this: "furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins." As you know, we (my family) HAVE had to get serious about that particular obsession of his, and though it's meant a complete disruption of our life, what with him moving so many really odd people into our life!, it's also been a delight and a joy. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.
If his obsession is, as you say, "irrelevent," it's the best irrelevent thing that has ever happened to me and mine, and worth every hour and every penny that we've spent passing it along to others. And how is it possible that an irrelevancy could have the effect of completely revolutionizing and enriching not just my life, but the life of this particular refugee community?
If that's irrelevency, I'd love to see what relevency can do.
(a) Sorry for being unclear. For me there is nothing anachronistic about the character in the synoptic gospels, there is nothing in them from the setting of 30-40 years previously that's unnatural for and from the culture of the time. His emphasis on kindness is a natural progression from the Hebrew prophets and all the way back to the Babylonian Counsels of Wisdom well over a thousand years before him via the unbelievable beauty of Aeschylus' tragedies half way back. With the Pericope Adulterae (PA) as a back projection, a loop of cognitive dissonance in itself, refined for centuries in the future, not as what happened in 30 AD, nothing stands out, nothing is impossibly anachronistic about the Jesus of the 60-70s gospels. The Jesus of the later Johannine school is very different. But still not anachronistic of 70-110 as it evolved.
(b) Again forgiveness, mercy, kindness even to enemies is entirely human, natural. What isn't (although of course it is) is the bizarre proposition that above all things we need forgiveness from God and that is obtained through penal substitutionary atonement in the plain reading of the gospels. It's fine as shock therapy to make us more forgiving, anciently and for a lot of us now, but it totally misses the target, doesn't even aim at it, of revealing Love. God as love. Love as the ground of eternal infinite being would reveal itself clearly, unnaturally. Where does it, do They, do that in the gospels? In Jesus? It's a distraction and an extremely toxic one, regardless of that marginal shock value. The cure is nearly as bad as the disease. Worse.
What we need above all things is the fact, the truth, the proof of Love. For me the PA was it. And now, walking home upriver, for the first time ever, due to @Nick Tamen and @Dafyd on the 'Could...' thread, I'm wondering if it isn't there either, that despite being the most beautiful, moving Biblical account, even if it happened as writ, in 30 AD, not 400-500 years later, is it that good? It's exceptionally good compared with anything else in the gospels. But would that have been good enough if it were attested to 30AD?
Why do we need the gospel to be decent human beings? We were before it, and we aren't that much better after it. It just takes a lot of time on the long arc of human progress.
I think you're making a mistake by imagining that human nature changed over time--certainly over the course of only a few thousand years. If it was "anachronistic" in 30 AD, it was equally so in 3000 BC--and in 2024 AD.
I'll have to wait to address the other issues, I'm making lunch and picking up my son.
I think you're making a mistake by imagining that human nature changed over time--certainly over the course of only a few thousand years. If it was "anachronistic" in 30 AD, it was equally so in 3000 BC--and in 2024 AD.
I'll have to wait to address the other issues, I'm making lunch and picking up my son.
Sure, and I'm not disagreeing but all that is predicated on a belief that the Gospel accounts are historically accurate and reflect exactly what Jesus taught and how his family and disciples reacted at the time.
The trilemma only makes sense if we assume or accept that.
This is what I mean about there being more than three options.
Lewis didn't put a caveat on his 'mad, bad or God' argument- that the idea of Christ's divinity may have developed after his death as his followers tried to make sense of it all, for instance.
I'm not saying it did. There must at least have been some grounds for their believing that, even in some kind of 'seed form' from Christ's ministry and teachings. Otherwise they wouldn't have developed the idea in the first place or out of thin air - notwithstanding that various ideas about incarnations or human/divine 'hybrid' interaction were becoming a 'thing' at that time.
I accept the traditional Christian teaching.
What I am saying is that trilemma doesn't cover all the bases or close down all options in the way its proponents claim.
It's too neat a formula.
It's too 'TA-DAH!'
Quite. When I came back to Anglicanism after 53 years, in the same church of my infant baptism, I very much enjoyed going through Alpha to formalize my belief. Lewis just seemed charmingly dated in saying the truth. (Sorry for the bad form double post!)
I am hung up on a specific number of possibilities, as if ALL possibilities have been established and covered in those three. Are there only three? Why? What possibilities am I not aware of? What isn't coming to mind or is beyond my ken?
What possibilities will I overlook by having my thinking guided into the three given scenerios? This part concerns me a great deal about any form of apologetics that presents a set of options and claims those are the ONLY ones.
Are they, really? What has been left out? Has this claim undegone a serious examination by people from various cultures and beliefs? How do they rate it? What did they say was missing?
I find the three possibilities in the trilemma guiding as well. This isn't like Paper-Scissors-Rock, where there is a perfect balance of power and weakness in each choice.
In Western cultures and at that time, few would feel comfortable -- even if they were not Christians -- in classifiying Jesus as a liar or a nut. The trilemma relies on an emotional reaction to the options as well.
I have been down most of the last week and didn't have the brain power for following this thread and some of the others. So i skimmed it all this morning. I didn't see much actual defense for the trilemma itself.
And I really didn't answer @Martin54 's OP question, because I can't. Sorry, sir.
@Kendal:And I really didn't answer @Martin54 's OP question, because I can't. Sorry, sir.
Well To be frank I doubt that was expected .. I think the OP was rhetorical.
It may have been, but, thanks to @Doublethink's expert differentiation of delusion, from casual use, as clinical, I have had to change my mind. Still nowhere near Lewis's crude depiction of hatstand surreal madness. But in William Lane Craig's above.
Comments
I should have read this as strictly defintional,
Wiki: A delusion is a false fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence. However:
"The distinction between a delusion and a strongly held idea is sometimes difficult to make and depends in part on the degree of conviction with which the belief is held despite clear or reasonable contradictory evidence regarding its veracity."
But, as we can't use it here in that colloquial sense, is there a safe word for a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, which is not delusional? The thing that Jesus had?
They would fit, even for Jesus. But what about for his core belief, as a sane and good person, that he was God incarnate?
You see, this is exactly the impression I have of him, and it grows stronger every time I read the Gospels. I know nobody who is healthier. And that's why I simply can't reconcile that with the idea that the guiding belief of his whole life was an error. This (waves hands toward the Gospels)... this is not the life of a man who is the victim of a terrible huge error. It just isn't.
Who can argue with that? Many of the brightest and best do. I envy them.
What's terrible about it?
Of course, we could argue that the early Christians redacted what the historical Jesus taught and believed and developed the whole 'Myth of God Incarnate' after his death.
This doesn't take us to the 'trilemma' but it does take us close to it. Either we accept what the Church came to believe or we don't.
I don't believe the early disciples were part of some kind of Jonestown style suicide cult. But people under duress do accept and practice some whacky things, even to the point of martyrdom and death.
But 'something' must have happened to convince these early, and largely Jewish, Christians to believe that Jesus was God Incarnate and to suffer and die for that belief.
I am prepared to accept that some of the early martyrdom stories are the stuff of hagiography and pious legend, but those legends themselves indicate that it could be a dangerous thing to follow Christ.
Hence 'the doors! The doors! In wisdom let us attend!' in Orthodox liturgies to this day.
I'm sticking with the traditional narrative. Here I stand. I can do no other. As someone once said ...
That doesn't mean that faith isn't a struggle at times or that we switch our brains off. 'Lord I believe. Help thou mine unbelief!'
Our parish priest observed in his sermon yesterday that people coming to him for confession start by saying, 'Father, I have no faith ...'
He wonders why they are coming to him (or God rather) for confession, if they don't believe that God forgives sins. Why not go away and enjoy themselves?
I think the 'trilemma' is flawed and questionable on a number of levels. There are all sorts of alternative 'explanations' beyond the three that Lewis rhetorically crystallised. Or borrowed from earlier versions.
But it does boil things down to the essential question.
'What think ye of Christ?
Whose son is he?'
We can come at that in any number of ways. Through the teachings of the Church as reflected in mainstream historic Trinitarian Christianity, or with our own individual perspectives and ideas to whatever extent they are based on Big T or small Tradition / tradition or otherwise.
Of course, we may all 'wake up dead' and find we got it wrong. We can't 'prove' any of this or stick it in a test-tube.
At best, I think the 'trilemma' can help focus our attention or steer us towards the 'big questions'. But I don't think it provides us with a neat sound-bite answer or apologetic 'gotcha!'
I must admit, I did find it impressive when I first encountered it. But then I was a kind of mild agnostic with a conventional Anglican background and not prepared to dismiss Christ or the faith that bears his name (or title rather) out of hand.
You could say I was probably a 'soft touch' and I wouldn't disagree with that.
But here I stand ...
Your opening line says it all @Gamma Gamaliel, as does @Doublethink's statement of faith.
Thank you all.
He wrote many words but his actions speak beyond them.
Re the trilemma, the logic is convincing for anyone who does not want to argue about the authority of scripture, woke sensitivities notwithstanding.
Agreed.
All of this. I’d also throw in that Jesus had to prove He wasn’t a ghost after the Resurrection.
https://biblehub.com/luke/24-39.htm
Me too. ❤️
Er… “woke”? A lot of us who are faithful Christians and take Scripture as authoritative are called “woke.” Indeed, some of us are called that because of what we believe some of the implications of the Scriptures are.
Here in the US, “woke” has become an attack word by the nastier members of the far right.
Hi Nick and Chastmstr
No offence was intended by using that term.
I didn’t realise it would push hot buttons. I meant merely that current sensitivities were not relevant to the trilemmer discussion in my opinion.. viz the discussion of mental illness above.
The kind of liberal 'Higher Criticism' you seem to have in mind is hardly 'current'. It's been around for 150 years at least.
Besides, Lewis wasn't some kind of biblical literalist in the way you seem to want him to be, any more than he was the kind of squeaky-clean moral exemplar you seem to have envisage him to have been.
You appear to be trying to construct a Lewis in your own image, one who took the same approach to scripture as you do and who behaved as impeccably as a chapel deacon in Prim & Proper Chapel, Respectability Street.
Real life is a lot messier than that.
Scripture and theology is messier than that.
Quite a number of us here have a relatively conservative approach to theology. Hence my 'here I stand' when it comes to accepting the truth claims of traditional creedal Christianity - as Lewis did.
Heck, Lewis was squeamish about penal substitutionary atonement, a central plank in conservative evangelical theology. Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones apparently expressed doubts about Lewis's 'salvation' on the basis of that.
Sure, Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame, opined that Lewis was a 'converted man' despite a propensity for smoking and drinking rather more ale than was good for him.
So that's alright then ...
Whether Lewis's trilemma is 'adequate' or not isn't an issue of 'current concerns' - whatever they are - but whether it stacks up as a 'model' given that it doesn't cover all the bases or possibilities.
Yes, it can act as a focus and 'distils' some of the issues but like all analogies - and there is a somewhat flippant analogical element in the 'man who thinks he's a poached egg' quip - it will only take us so far.
It's not a 'stand-alone' sound-bite. As @Lamb Chopped says, there are other 'phenomena' and other reasons to accept the Gospel and not just Lewis's recycled bon-mot.
That's not to disparage Lewis as an apologist, but it is to try to lift the debate beyond the level of Young Earth Creationism and a kind of woodenly literal fundamentalism, or the kind of starry-eyed hagiography that portrays Lewis as some kind of unblemished super-Saint.
To be fair, @MPaul explained just now that he was specifically talking about how we discuss mental illness issues currently, which was mentioned in prior comments. (For what it’s worth, I have my own array of issues, and I have no problem with the way Lewis talks about insanity and/or delusions in the trilemma or elsewhere.)
It's convincing if you're already convinced? Round here we call that cognitive bias.
Clearly opinions differ.
For me there are also other possibilities, all unprovable.
1. The records written about this character have not accurately recorded what he said about himself for purely innocent reasons
2. The records were written for nefarious reasons to obscure the original message
3. Several people were merged together in the story; one was a moral teacher, another was ill, another was formenting unrest and so on
And yes, I appreciate this is all about faith, I’m not denying anyone’s right to believe anything.
Why don’t you? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Are you saying that one must have a severe mental illness to think of yourself as God which means isn’t possible to also offer an interesting/complex ethical and moral code?
Er, no, I’m talking about whether I find the language in question (about insanity), even with our greater understanding of how mental illness works, offensive. (And I’m extremely grateful for my own meds.)
(I’m not particularly convinced that a madman with literal, ongoing delusions of actual godhood —and not like a pagan god, but THE God Who made absolutely everything, the entire universe, to Whom something like Zeus would be smaller than a flea— could also be a great moral teacher either, but that wasn’t my point in my comment above. Of course, something being an interesting/complex ethical and moral code doesn’t make it a *better* moral code either, or even a good one…)
Okay, this must be the post you said I didn't respond to. I'm sorry, I overlooked it. Let me try now.
When I say "a terrible huge error," I mean an error of truly massive proportions, that affected every aspect of the man's life--that undermined (if it WAS an error) his own self-concept, the ways he related to everyone around him, and the choices he made as he moved through an all-too-short life. I cannot imagine a more fundamental belief Jesus could have had than this one--that he was God and came to save us. It was literally the belief that governed everything he did.
By "terrible" I also mean an error that had deadly effects, that cut short a life that should not have been cut short--an error that robbed the world of the wisest and most loving person to ever walk the face of the earth. (Assuming, of course, that it WAS an error.)
To have someone like Jesus--a living, walking treasure of a human being--cut off at the age of 33 for no damn reason besides being wrongly convinced that he was God and had come into the world to save people--well, the word "terrible" might have been invented for it. Such a person ought to live as long as possible, to influence as many people as possible--to continue to teach, to set an example, all that good stuff. And that is what did not happen. And for no damn decent reason--unless, of course he was right.
Because the only thing that could justify the premature death of such a person would be if he were right--if he were in fact God, come down to save God's people, in precisely this way. That would justify it. That only.
Could you also add to that that his chief family are shown in the gospels as thinking precisely about him as you describe here?They thought he was deluded and attempted to rescue him. Add to that the disciples whom he told his fate to and who refused to accept it.. (the messiah who dies makes no sense right?) so in the ultimate sense he was entirely alone in his journey to the cross. As you say, the only way this makes sense given the qualities you described is that he was God incarnated.
Then the cost is worth it.
Otherwise, it sucks like a really, really sucky thing.
The trilemma only makes sense if we assume or accept that.
This is what I mean about there being more than three options.
Lewis didn't put a caveat on his 'mad, bad or God' argument- that the idea of Christ's divinity may have developed after his death as his followers tried to make sense of it all, for instance.
I'm not saying it did. There must at least have been some grounds for their believing that, even in some kind of 'seed form' from Christ's ministry and teachings. Otherwise they wouldn't have developed the idea in the first place or out of thin air - notwithstanding that various ideas about incarnations or human/divine 'hybrid' interaction were becoming a 'thing' at that time.
I accept the traditional Christian teaching.
What I am saying is that trilemma doesn't cover all the bases or close down all options in the way its proponents claim.
It's too neat a formula.
It's too 'TA-DAH!'
I think I can see that. I do think that it requires context (such as that the gospels were in fact written down accurately, etc.) and I still think that it has merit. (It’s also just part of one chapter in one book to the best of my knowledge, rather than the only possible way one could reach the conclusion that Jesus was and is God.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma
Make of it what you will…
http://https//forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/5659/the-boring-thread-on-how-we-know-what-we-know-about-what-jesus-said-and-did#latest
This much is true. A bad argument for X does not prove not-X.
OK, before I get in to delusion again... does any case stand up to the brute facts of Bart Denton Ehrman's superb, surgical, forensic approach? He 'lacks' my degree of good will. For perfectly sound intellectual reasons.
Ehrman criticizes the trilemma himself,
Although in my good will, Jesus demonstrated that's what he believed.
If we go with Ehrman, and we should..., all is lost.
Back to delusion. As I sit corrected by @Doublethink, in that delusion is always clinical, which = 'mad' in Lewis's day, then, Jesus was delusional.
William Lane Craig (of all people!),
says what I'm saying now.
* I have no idea what you’re quoting there—it’s not the Wikipedia article to which you linked, as that article doesn’t mention Lewis or the trilemma—so I have no idea whether it accurately conveys what Ehrman has written. But my recollection is Ehrman starts from a position that the Gospels do not accurately report what Jesus said.
I'd have to agree, as I allueded.
My apologies for the confusion, the quote is from the trilemma link.
(a) Never a problem with such fast flowing streams, we all do it, and it can be taken, wrongly, for ignoring people. And rightly! : )
(b) It was of truly massive proportions for him, certainly, life consuming. Literally. And the history of the planet for the next 2000 years, the biggest single cultural impactor of all time in all its effects. I question my own metaphor there. He and Christianity didn't just fall out of the sky after all... He was the nucleation point in a phase change in European civilization. And terrible? His was a life most well spent. Well worth it for one human. Although the positive effects in the long run barely arguably outweigh the negative.
And, even if he were the Son of God, and if there were anything anachronistic in the attested text, I would know; we all would, furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins. But there isn't, there is only the Jesus of faith, and that irrelevant obsession, delusion, for which he died.
No big deal for one human out over one hundred billion, most of whose lives have been nasty, brutish and short.
If he were God incarnate the obsession becomes more important. And most problematic. As does the truly absurd scandal of particularity that his followers made up.
Apologies if it's already been mentioned/covered/explained in this thread, but I've not really been following it thus far...
: ) don't blame you. Know it's the first mention here. But I have previous...
What ChatGPT 4 'thinks', The "scandal of particularity" refers to the theological concept that God's revelation and incarnation are specific and concrete, rather than universal. It is the idea that God became man at a particular point in history and revealed himself to a specific people, such as the Jews. This concept is often debated and considered a challenge for Christians in the postmodern age.
In its extreme, but common form, including here historically, and still I'm sure, it translates to the incarnation being The Incarnation, the only one, in the entire universe (of infinity, which is rarely realised) of trillions of sapient species. Furthermore it backs up in to God and creates the superfluous Second Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Justified if The Incarnation is singular for the cosmos. Which is utterly absurd.
Many of the more liberal, intellectually open minded believers here don't go with the scandal, but still go with God the Son.
I'm reminded of this well-known poem by Alice Meynell:
https://www.semicolonblog.com/?p=8979
New to me, thank you. Superb. Love would have always incarnated everywhere, in parallel and overlapping series, in the eternal infinity of universes. Therefore it couldn't also be a Person in any meaningful sense.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by your interest in him being anachronistic. My reading is that he doesn't fit particularly well in any century; if he had dropped down in the twentieth or the tenth, he'd had been just as out of place as he was in the first.
I'm very interested in this: "furthermore if there were I'd have to get serious about his mission; his obsession with forgiving sins." As you know, we (my family) HAVE had to get serious about that particular obsession of his, and though it's meant a complete disruption of our life, what with him moving so many really odd people into our life!, it's also been a delight and a joy. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds.
If his obsession is, as you say, "irrelevent," it's the best irrelevent thing that has ever happened to me and mine, and worth every hour and every penny that we've spent passing it along to others. And how is it possible that an irrelevancy could have the effect of completely revolutionizing and enriching not just my life, but the life of this particular refugee community?
If that's irrelevency, I'd love to see what relevency can do.
(a) Sorry for being unclear. For me there is nothing anachronistic about the character in the synoptic gospels, there is nothing in them from the setting of 30-40 years previously that's unnatural for and from the culture of the time. His emphasis on kindness is a natural progression from the Hebrew prophets and all the way back to the Babylonian Counsels of Wisdom well over a thousand years before him via the unbelievable beauty of Aeschylus' tragedies half way back. With the Pericope Adulterae (PA) as a back projection, a loop of cognitive dissonance in itself, refined for centuries in the future, not as what happened in 30 AD, nothing stands out, nothing is impossibly anachronistic about the Jesus of the 60-70s gospels. The Jesus of the later Johannine school is very different. But still not anachronistic of 70-110 as it evolved.
(b) Again forgiveness, mercy, kindness even to enemies is entirely human, natural. What isn't (although of course it is) is the bizarre proposition that above all things we need forgiveness from God and that is obtained through penal substitutionary atonement in the plain reading of the gospels. It's fine as shock therapy to make us more forgiving, anciently and for a lot of us now, but it totally misses the target, doesn't even aim at it, of revealing Love. God as love. Love as the ground of eternal infinite being would reveal itself clearly, unnaturally. Where does it, do They, do that in the gospels? In Jesus? It's a distraction and an extremely toxic one, regardless of that marginal shock value. The cure is nearly as bad as the disease. Worse.
What we need above all things is the fact, the truth, the proof of Love. For me the PA was it. And now, walking home upriver, for the first time ever, due to @Nick Tamen and @Dafyd on the 'Could...' thread, I'm wondering if it isn't there either, that despite being the most beautiful, moving Biblical account, even if it happened as writ, in 30 AD, not 400-500 years later, is it that good? It's exceptionally good compared with anything else in the gospels. But would that have been good enough if it were attested to 30AD?
Why do we need the gospel to be decent human beings? We were before it, and we aren't that much better after it. It just takes a lot of time on the long arc of human progress.
I'll have to wait to address the other issues, I'm making lunch and picking up my son.
Culture changed, not human nature.
Quite. When I came back to Anglicanism after 53 years, in the same church of my infant baptism, I very much enjoyed going through Alpha to formalize my belief. Lewis just seemed charmingly dated in saying the truth. (Sorry for the bad form double post!)
What possibilities will I overlook by having my thinking guided into the three given scenerios? This part concerns me a great deal about any form of apologetics that presents a set of options and claims those are the ONLY ones.
Are they, really? What has been left out? Has this claim undegone a serious examination by people from various cultures and beliefs? How do they rate it? What did they say was missing?
I find the three possibilities in the trilemma guiding as well. This isn't like Paper-Scissors-Rock, where there is a perfect balance of power and weakness in each choice.
In Western cultures and at that time, few would feel comfortable -- even if they were not Christians -- in classifiying Jesus as a liar or a nut. The trilemma relies on an emotional reaction to the options as well.
I have been down most of the last week and didn't have the brain power for following this thread and some of the others. So i skimmed it all this morning. I didn't see much actual defense for the trilemma itself.
And I really didn't answer @Martin54 's OP question, because I can't. Sorry, sir.
It may have been, but, thanks to @Doublethink's expert differentiation of delusion, from casual use, as clinical, I have had to change my mind. Still nowhere near Lewis's crude depiction of hatstand surreal madness. But in William Lane Craig's above.