Identity Check
Are C. S. Lewis’s Critics Right, or Is His “Trilemma” Valid?
by Donald T. Williams
No argument that C. S. Lewis ever made is more well known—or more controversial—than his famous “Trilemma” (not his word), or “Lord/Liar/Lunatic” (not his phrase) argument for the deity of Christ. N. T. Wright observed accurately in these pages that “this argument has worn well in some circles and extremely badly in others” (“Simply Lewis,” March 2007). Indeed, some of the sharpest critiques have come from within the believing community.
It is ironic that an argument that has become a staple of Christian apologetics should be rejected as fallacious by many who nonetheless presumably accept its conclusion. At stake is not only the validity of a much used argument but also the competence of arguably the greatest apologist of the twentieth century. Are the critics of Lewis’s argument correct? Can we still use the Trilemma? If so, in what way?
Lewis presents the argument in Mere Christianity, in response to a person who says, “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.”
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. (Bk. II, ch. 3)
The Trilemma is presented not so much as an argument for the deity of Christ as a refutation, a heading off at the pass, of a popular way of evading the claims of Christ. Many non-Christians willingly say Jesus is a great moral teacher; this, Lewis argues, is the one thing we cannot say.
Lewis’s critics contend that his argument commits the fallacy of False Dilemma, the premature closure of options. Marvin D. Hinten alleges that Lewis “overlimits choices.” If it can be shown that there are other legitimate possibilities for how to understand the claims of Christ, it is urged, the argument fails.
These other suggested possibilities fall into two categories. First is the possibility that either Jesus did not actually make the claims attributed to him or, even if he did, he did not mean them as the bald claims to deity for which conservative Christians have taken them.
The second is the possibility that someone could be sincerely mistaken about his identity without being insane in a way that would compromise his views of ethics or his status and authority as a moral teacher.
What Did Jesus Say?
Donald T. Williams Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College and the author of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis (Square Halo Books, 2016) and Ninety-Five Theses for a New Reformation: A Road Map for Post-Evangelical Christianity (Semper Reformanda Publications, 2021).
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more on C. S. Lewis from the online archives
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on C. S. Lewis, Brideshead Revisited & the Middle Things by Ben Reinhard
22.5—June 2009
C. S. Lewis on Civilization & the Natural Order by Timothy L. Hall
19.6—July/August 2006
The Three-Fold Cord of Imagination, Reason & Will in C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward
more from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
The Secular State Without the Decalogue by James M. Kushiner
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
33.2—March/April 2020
Lewis, Chesterton, et al. Against the Frauds, Experts & Revisionists by Vigen Guroian
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