Predecessor Trilemmas to the C. S. Lewis Trilemma

C. S. Lewis is widely known for many reasons. One is that he died the same day that John F. Kennedy died. Another is that he wrote a famous apologetic trilemma about Jesus Christ. It reads as follows:

“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.”

– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), in Mere Christianity, originally delivered as radio addresses

This argument has been quoted, referenced, and argued countless time in print and in person since Lewis first made it in his radio presentations about Christianity during World War II. What’s less widely known than what I have told you so far is that Lewis did not formulate this argument, and never claimed to have done so. He was recounting for his BBC radio audience a Christian apologetic argument that had been in existence for at least the previous hundred years. The following quotes bear witness of this fact. They’re ordered from the oldest I’ve found down to those most recent to Lewis. (It does appear that Lewis’ rhetorical flourish – “on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg” – was entirely his own, as there is no trace of it in any of these quotations.)

“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.”

– John Duncan (1796–1870)

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“[Jesus of Nazareth] claimed to be a perfect, sinless teacher of moral and spiritual truth—the Guide, the Lord, and Saviour—the life, light, and hope of all the world. He calls upon all men to believe in and honour Him, even as they believe in and honour the Father. He demands their love and obedience as His right.”

“‘What,’ it has been observed, ‘would have been thought of Socrates or Plato, if they had not merely taught mankind, but if they and their disciples had set up a claim that they should be loved by the whole human race with an affection exceeding that which should be felt for parents, children, and friends?’”

“These claims were either well founded, or they were not. If they were not, then Christ either knew that they were not, or he did not know it. If he knew they were not, he was an impostor; if he did not know it, and yet imagined them to be well founded, he was the subject of a hopeless insanity.”

– Mark Hopkins (1802-1887)

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“Jesus Christ was beyond peradventure one of three things. He was either the Son of God in a unique sense, a divine person incarnate in human form or else he was the most daring impostor that ever lived or else one of the most hopeless lunatics… Not an impostor. Not a lunatic. We have only one alternative left. He was what he claimed to be, the Son of God, God the Son.”

– R. A. Torrey (1856-1928)

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“Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine.”

– G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

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“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.”

– J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)

***

“Jesus Christ was… either the son of God… a divine person… or else he was the most daring imposter that ever lived or else one of the most hopeless lunatics… Not an impostor. Not a lunatic. We have only one alternative left. He was… the Son of God, God the Son”.

– W. E. Biederwolf (1867-1939)

***

What these quotes collectively demonstrate is that in presenting his “lunatic, liar, or lord” argument, C. S. Lewis was drawing on what would have been common knowledge to evangelists and apologists of his time. Therefore, as he popularized it to his audience, he knew that it would find reinforcement to his hearers should they pursue whatever curiosity about Jesus Christ that he had provoked within them. He was neither attempting to be original nor pretending to be original. He was spreading to the masses an argument that had previously only been known in Christian circles.

I first came across Lewis’ argument when I was flipping through a copy of Mere Christianity loaned to me in 1978. My entire life pivoted on that moment…because I followed the curiosity about Jesus Christ that it provoked in me.

Essay: Toward a Faith in Jesus: My Pivotal Moment (7 min read)