The Trilemma of Lord, Liar, or Lunatic. has been used for over 50 years. C.S Lewis popularized this argument as his answer to those who would say that Jesus was a good teacher but deny that He is God. As I examined both the logic in favor of and its criticisms, I noticed that the same logic that support the Lord’s Trilemma can be applied even more rigorously to the Trilemma of the Church: The apostles were either faithful witnesses, frauds, or fools.
This article will have three points. I will first introduce people to the Lord’s Trilemma as presented by C.S. Lewis. I will then discuss the criticisms of this argument. finally I will make the case for the Church’s Trilemma.
The Lord’s Trilemma
C.S. Lewis made the following argument to show the folly of making Jesus out to be a good teacher but not Lord.
Jesus [. . .] told people that their sins were forgiven. [. . .] This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. [. . .] I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You 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 to1.
Criticism of The Lord’s Trilemma
Critics of this apologetic argument counter by going through the horns. They would respond that this was legend. In other words, they are saying that the apostles were not reliable witnesses and that Jesus never claimed to be God. This was the premise of the film The Man From Earth.
I believe that the reliability of the apostles is impeccable here, and that this trilemma is valid. It does, however, need to be recognized that the validity of the trilemma depends upon accepting the reliability of the apostles testimony. Those who do not accept that will conclude that the trilemma is not valid. Keep in mind that C.S. Lewis was using this to answer a common but misinformed response to Christ – that He was a good teacher. This response recognizes the sublime nature of Christ’s moral teaching and assumes that the apostles reliably communicated that much. Thus, it is valid to embed the assumption that the apostles were reliable witnesses in the context in which that trilemma was first deployed.
There is one more assumption that gives the Lord’s trilemma its power: The moral greatness of Jesus and His movement. If Jesus was not morally great, then the trilemma has no power as it would be easy to peg Him as a liar or lunatic and easy to impugn the veracity of the apostles to the level of urban legend tellers. How do we know that Jesus is good? It is through the advent and influence of the message presented to this world in his name. What does the record say?
A more complete answer can be found in Dr D. James Kennedy’s book,What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?: The Positive Impact of Christianity in History (Here is video documentary on YouTube based on the book.)
For the purposes of space in this article I will list just a few of the consequences of the rise of Christianity that show its moral robustness:
Jesus Christ brought humanitarianism to the world. The Pagan worldview was very harsh on women, the poor, and the disabled and had no concept of human rights as we know them today. Jesus elevated marginalized classes and taught compassion. It was within the context of the Judeo-Christian teaching concerning the nobility of humanity, both collectively and individually, as the image of God that became the foundation of compassion and benevolence. On the other hand, the ethics of the Pagan world throughout much of history bear a closer resemblance of Nazism than to the Classical Liberal traditions that flourished in the West. These traditions were birthed in Christian thought that had its origins in the worldview and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ brought liberty to the world. Paganism has as its premise the idea that the state is god on earth, with no shortage of myths that exalted the king as a god. The Pagan world-view had little room for human freedom. It was within the context of the Judeo-Christian teaching concerning the nobility of humanity, both collectively and individually, as the image of God that became the foundation of Paleo-Libertarian thought that emerged in the West, influencing such thinkers as John Milton, Samuel Rutherford, and John Locke.
Jesus Christ brought light to the world. While the Pagan world has magnificent accomplishments, it fell short of creating anything that could have resembled modern science. The question of how do we know has been one of the great questions of philosophy. It was within the context of the Judeo-Christian teaching concerning the nobility of humanity, both collectively and individually, as the image of God that became the foundation of a framework that justified belief that our subjective categories of knowing corresponded to the objexctively existing cate gories of the external world. God created us in His image so that we can navigate the world He created. Christian thinkers preserved the Greeco-Roman classic throughout the middle ages and laid the foundation for modern science.
Jesus Christ brought light to YOU and ME. There are millions of testimonies of lives changed through the gospel. Murderer, rapists, slaver-traders, drug lords, etc had their lives transformed from evil to good, and from death to life, by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Church’s Trilemma:Faithful witnesses, Frauds, or Fools.
How did Jesus transform the world when He wrote no books and travelled no more than 100 miles from His birthplace, and made disciples in a backwater Roman province. He did this through the actions and writings of those who followed him. Any trilemma that 21st century people might apply to Jesus must be applied to His apostles and early followers.
Were the Apostles reliable witnesses when they claimed to be eye-witnesses to the resurrection of Christ? Just like Jesus, let no one say that they were good people and good teachers who were sincerely wrong. Let us first consider the possibility that they are not.
If the apostles were not faithful eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ, they either (1) did not know they were not reliable, or (2) They knew they were not reliable.
If the apostles were not faithful eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ and did not know they were not reliable, then they had a complete psychotic break from reality. This is made worse when you consider the testimony of group sighting of the resurrected Christ. The Ascension of Christ i this case would be among the most pernicious episodes of a mass psychotic break from reality in the history of the world. In this case the apostles would be fit for a mental institution rather than leadership of a new religion or of anything worthwhile.
If the apostles were not faithful eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ and knew they were not reliable, then they perpetrated the most massive fraud ever perpetrated in the history of the world. The apostles would be consummate liars whose big lie killed large numbers of people, including themselves. No reasonable person would die for a lie, knowing it was a lie, with no apparent pathway for any good to be accomplished. If this be the case, such men are moral and intellectual reprobates.
If the apostles were faithful eye-witnesses of the resurrection of Christ; then Christ is indeed resurrected from the dead, and He is who the apostles claimed that He is. The resurrection of Christ establishes that He is the God-Man – the Son of God. As God He has access to every divine resource and made these available to the Church. As Man he lived a perfect life and taught others to follow his example.
Conclusion
As I conclude this article, it should be noted that it is absolutely impossible to go either through the horn s of the Church’s Trilemma or grab multiple horns. Christianity, as we know it, can have exactly one of these three possible explanations. Christianity is either (1) the result of faithful testimony of its founders, (2) the result of a mass psychotic break on the part of the founders, or (3) The fabrication of the greatest hoax of all time. Which hypothesis has the best explanatory power here.
The idea that fabrication of the greatest hoax of all time could produce the moral and intellectual goods of Christianity is simply not feasible. Hoaxsters do not inspire sublimely ethical behavior to the extent that its original practitioners practiced it at great cost and produced revolutions of ethics and compassion throughout the world. Hoaxsters do not produce environments conducive to philosophical and scientific revolutions. Hoaxsters do not create stable regimes as hoaxes are inherently unstable, lasting only as long as people are fooled by the big lie.
The idea that a mass psychotic break on the part of the founders could produce the moral and intellectual goods of Christianity is simply not feasible. People who suffer from a psychotic break can not inspire sublimely ethical behavior to the extent that its original practitioners practiced it at great cost and produced revolutions of ethics and compassion throughout the world. People who suffer from a psychotic break cannot produce environments conducive to philosophical and scientific revolutions. People who suffer from a psychotic break can not create stable regimes as they are inherently unstable.
The idea that the faithful testimony of the Apostles could produce the moral and intellectual goods of Christianity is the only feasible hypothesis. The resurrection of Jesus provided the anointing to power moral and intellectual transformation. The gospel of Jesus Christ provided not only robust foundations for religious truth, but the intellectual and social foundations necessary to create stable movements and social structures in which these moral and intellectual goods can flourish. The Church’s Trilemma has found that the apostles are indeed Faithful Witnesses of the Resurrection.