Lewis's trilemma is an apologetic argument traditionally used to argue for the divinity of Jesus by postulating that the only alternatives are that he was evil or mad.Lewis, C. S. (1970). "Christian Apologetics", God in the Dock. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. pp. 100–101. From a paper read to an assembly of Anglican priests and youth leaders during Easter 1945. One version was popularised by University of Oxford literary scholar and writer C. S. Lewis in a BBC radio talk and in his writings. It is sometimes described as the "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord", or "Mad, Bad, or God" argument. It takes the form of a trilemma—a choice among three options, each of which is in some way difficult to accept.
A form of the argument can be found as early as 1846, and many other versions of the argument preceded Lewis's formulation in the 1940s. The argument has played an important part in Christian apologetics. Criticisms of the argument have included that it assumes that Jesus claimed to be God, while biblical scholars who wrote books about the historical Jesus agree that "Jesus did not spend his ministry declaring himself to be divine", and that it is logically unsound since it presents an incomplete set of options.
History This argument has been used in various forms throughout church history. It was used by the American preacher Mark Hopkins in Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity (1846), a book based on lectures delivered in 1844.Hopkins, Mark (1846). Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity. Lecture VIII. "... either ... those claims were well-founded, or of a hopeless insanity. ... No impostor of common sense could have had the folly to prefer such claims." Another early use of this approach was by the Scottish preacher "Rabbi" John Duncan (1796–1870), around 1859–1860. He stated:
"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."Knight, William (1870). Colloquia Peripatetica. p. 109. Knight explains that the conversations quoted took place during the summers of 1859 and 1860.
J. Gresham Machen used a similar line of argument in fifth chapter of his famous work Christianity and Liberalism (1923). There, Machen says:
"The real trouble is that the lofty claim of Jesus, if ... the claim was unjustified, places a moral stain upon Jesus' character. What shall be thought of a human being who lapsed so far from the path of humility and sanity as to believe the eternal destinies of the world were committed into his hands? The truth is that if Jesus be merely an example, he is not a worthy example for he claimed to be far more."
Among others who used this approach were N. P. Williams,Williams, N. P. (1923). "The Deity of Christ". Transcribed by Kempton, Wayne (2013). The Congress Books: No. 4. Retrieved 10 May 2024 – via Project Canterbury. R. A. Torrey, and W. E. Biederwolf. The writer G. K. Chesterton used something similar to the trilemma in his book, The Everlasting Man (1925), which Lewis cited in 1962 as the second book that most influenced him.
Lewis's formulation Lewis was an Oxford medieval literature scholar, popular writer, Christian apologist, and former atheist. He used the argument outlined below in a series of BBC radio talks later published as the book Mere Christianity. There, he states:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan. pp. 40–41. In all editions, this is Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative".
Lewis, who had spoken extensively on Christianity to Royal Air Force personnel, was aware that many ordinary people did not believe Jesus was God but saw him rather as "a 'great human teacher' who was deified by his superstitious followers"; his argument is intended to overcome this. It is based on a traditional assumption that, in his words and deeds, Jesus was asserting a claim to be God. For example, in Mere Christianity, Lewis refers to what he says are Jesus's claims:
to have authority to forgive sins—behaving as if "He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences"Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. New York: Macmillan. p. 40. to have always existed; and to intend to come back to judge the world at the end of time.
Lewis implies that these amount to a claim to be God and argues that they logically exclude the possibility that Jesus was merely "a great moral teacher", because he believes no ordinary human making such claims could possibly be rationally or morally reliable. Elsewhere, he refers to this argument as "the " ("either God or a bad man"),Lewis, C. S. (1945). God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Eerdmans. p. 101. Letter to Owen Barfield, c. August 1939, printed in Hooper, Walter Hooper ed. (2004). The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 2. Harper Collins. p. 269. a reference to an earlier version of the argument used by Henry Parry Liddon in his 1866 Bampton Lectures, in which Liddon argued for the divinity of Jesus based on a number of grounds, including the claims he believed Jesus made.Liddon, Henry Parry (1867). The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Lecture IV. London. Liddon's version was "Christus si non Deus non bonus". According to Charles Gore (The Incarnation of the Son of God, 1890), Liddon could not recall the source of the epigram but Gore thought the argument went back to Victorinus Afer. Appendices, p. 238.
In Narnia A version of this argument appears in Lewis's fantasy novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When Lucy and Edmund return from Narnia (her second visit and his first), Edmund tells Peter and Susan that he was playing along with Lucy and pretending they went to Narnia. Peter and Susan believe Edmund and are worried that Lucy might be mentally ill, so they seek out the Professor whose house they are living in. After listening to them explain the situation and asking them some questions, he responds:
"Logic!' said the Professor half to himself. 'Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious she is not mad. For the moment then, and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume she is telling the truth."Lewis, C. S. (1950). The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. HarperCollins.
Influence Christian The trilemma has continued to be used in Christian apologetics since Lewis, notably by writers like Josh McDowell. Philosopher Peter Kreeft describes the trilemma as "the most important argument in Christian apologetics",Kreeft, Peter (1988). "The Divinity of Christ". Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. p. 59. . Retrieved 13 April 2007. and it forms a major part of the first talk in the Alpha Course and the book based on it, Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel, an English Anglican priest. Ronald Reagan used this argument in 1978, in a written reply to a liberal Methodist minister who said that he did not believe Jesus was the son of God.Von Damm, Helene, ed. (1980). Sincerely, Ronald Reagan. New York: Berkley. p. 90. A variant has also been quoted by Bono.Michka Assayas, Bono in Conversation, (Riverhead Hardcover, 2005) page 205. The Lewis version was cited by Charles Colson as the basis of his conversion to Christianity.Aitken, Jonathan (2005). Charles Colson. Continuum International. pp. 210–211. Stephen Davis, a supporter of Lewis and of this argument,Davis, Stephen T. (2006). "Was Jesus Mad, Bad, or God?". Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. Abstract, Chapter 9, pp. 149f. "In this chapter, C. S. Lewis'[s] famous trilemma argument in favor of the divinity of Christ (Jesus was either mad, bad, or God) is developed, and a version of it is defended." argues that it can show belief in the incarnation as rational.Davis, Stephen T. (2006). Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. p. 150. "I ... claim that the MBG argument, properly understood, can establish the rationality of belief in the incarnation of Jesus." The biblical scholar Bruce M. Metzger argued: "It has often been pointed out that Jesus' claim to be the only Son of God is either true or false. If it is false, he either knew the claim was false or he did not know that it was false. In the former case (2) he was a liar; in the latter case (3) he was a lunatic. No other conclusion beside these three is possible."Metzger, Bruce M. (2003) [1964). The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Content (revised ed.). Abingdon. p. 157. .
Non-Christian The atheist writer Christopher Hitchens accepts Lewis's analysis of the options but reaches the opposite conclusion that Jesus was not good. He writes: "I am bound to say that Lewis is more honest here. Absent a direct line to the Almighty and a conviction that the last days are upon us, how is it 'moral' ... to claim a monopoly on access to heaven, or to threaten waverers with everlasting fire, let alone to condemn fig trees and persuade devils to infest the bodies of pigs? Such a person if not divine would be a sorcerer and a fanatic."
Criticism Writing of the argument's "almost total absence from discussions about the status of Jesus by professional theologians and biblical scholars",Davis, Stephen T. (2006). Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. p. 151 Stephen T. Davis comments that it is "often severely criticized, both by people who do and by people who do not believe in the divinity of Jesus".Davis, Stephen T. (2006). Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford University Press. p. 150.
Jesus' claims to divinity