"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 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Also called "Lewis' Trilemma", it is sometimes abbreviated as the "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" argument. Lewis attempts to show that "lord" is the right answer. He did not want people to patronize Christianity by allowing them to content themselves with the "Jesus was not god, but was a great moral teacher and philosopher". He did not want to allow this cop-out: people should either accept Jesus as the savior, or reject him. There was no in-between for Lewis.
Although the argument is popular with non-experts, actual religious scholars don't spend time thinking about it. It is really aimed at the masses because it is so concise and easy to understand. But with its simplicity comes its problems.
Lewis' quote is a three pronged version of the "false dichotomy" logical fallacy. However, instead of being forced into one of two mutually exclusive choices, Lewis requires that we commit to one of three choices. But he doesn't do a good job of showing why lunatic/liar/lord are the only options. There are other options:
- Many religious experts question the reliability of the New Testament scriptures regarding Jesus' claims. There is good reason to believe that intervening interpretations and translations have exaggerated the actual life of Jesus as a hagiography (as was done for Joan of Arc, St Francis, Thomas Aquinas, and many others). The early Christian boosted Jesus reputation to support their newly formed religion, and glorified Jesus beyond what actually happened during his life. Christian scholar, Bart Ehrman, argues that "there could be a fourth option — legend". By this he means that stories have been built up around Jesus in the time since he lived which made claims for him that he never made, himself. The only documentation of his life are the scriptures, which were written decades after Jesus lived, and written by people with an agenda - build a new religion. There is a broad consensus among New Testament scholars that the proclamation of Jesus' status as a god was a development within the earliest Christian communities.
- These same religious experts also have objections to the New Testament claims for Jesus being the "son of god". Neither now nor in the past did this use of "Son of God" refer to a biological father/son relationship. For modern Christians, it means that Jesus is the single pathway to heaven. "Son of god" was not necessarily interpreted that way 2000 years ago. The phrase, "Son of God" was applied to the nation of Israel, to Solomon, and to other men who had a special relationship with God. The Jews of that era did not have exactly the same relationship to their god as modern Christians do today. Even if Jesus had used words of this sort, it could possibly have meant something far less than the one and only savior. For example, the word "messiah" had a very specific political meaning back then that no longer has today (there had been several recognized messiahs before Jesus, such as David, Alexander, and Cyrus). A large number of modern experts do not think that Jesus claimed the kind of unique divinity that modern Christians ascribe to him.
- It is possible that, if indeed Jesus did claim to be the savior, he may have simply been mistaken - not insane or insidious. He may have misinterpreted events in his own life, and ideas that he had as meaning more than they actually did. He may have been making a good-faith mistake resulting from sincere, but flawed efforts at reasoning. This is to say, he was not a lunatic, but just severely mistaken in this one set of claims, as have many other self-proclaimed saviors since Jesus. There are many faith healers and preachers, past and present, who have made the same mistake. They think they can perform miracles, their audiences think they can perform miracles, and so they conclude they have a special relationship with god or the gods.
- Others have argued that if Jesus did claim to be divine, he may have really just been claiming to be what today we would call a "guru", and felt that in some since, everything was touched by the divine, we all are "sons of god". Jesus was not the only prophet claiming to be divine. He just had the most success over the last 2000 years. History is full of teachers and gurus who had inflated and unrealistic views of their connection to god. Jesus may have just been another of these. Or those who interpreted his teachings just didn't quite grasp exactly what his claims were.
- Jesus could have had other problems that don't force him into the liar/lunatic slots. He might have simply been confused about his role as a god, or opportunistic, a good-faith charlatan (pious fraud), or just plain narcistic.
