{"id":6027,"date":"2012-11-28T16:57:07","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T21:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=6027"},"modified":"2012-11-28T16:57:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T21:57:07","slug":"i-see-your-trilemma-and-raise-you-a-tetralemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/11\/i-see-your-trilemma-and-raise-you-a-tetralemma.html","title":{"rendered":"I see your trilemma, and raise you a tetralemma!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over at Cross Examined, Bob Seidensticker has an objection<\/a> to C.S. Lewis\u2019s Trilemma<\/a>, and John E_o raised the same question over here<\/a>. \u00a0Bob says, why stay stuck in Lewis\u2019s framework that Jesus Christ must be either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord of all Creation? \u00a0Can\u2019t we just pick \u2018legend?\u2019<\/p>\n

We have no problem with wisdom taken from the Koran or the story of Gilgamesh or the Upanishads or any other book of religion or mythology despite its being wrong about the supernatural stuff. Assuming that the Bible\u2019s supernatural claims are false, why must that invalidate its wisdom, too?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lewis\u2019s Trilemma is a very narrowly targeted apologetic argument, and it\u2019s often truncated when quoted, so it\u2019s easy to make Bob\u2019s mistake. Lewis is framing his argument for an interlocutor that concedes that Jesus existed, said the things in the Gospels, but thinks that Jesus is basically a Martin Luther King Jr figure. \u00a0He taught a lot of wonderful things, but he wasn\u2019t God, so why not just ignore all the theological bits?<\/p>\n

And that would work for a fictional character. \u00a0A\u00a0work<\/em> might be thought-provoking and instructive, but you still wouldn\u2019t want its protagonist to walk out of the pages and demand your fealty. \u00a0You take up the teachings as you judge them appropriate, but the character has no authority over you.<\/p>\n

But the \u201cJesus was an amazing, real person, and a great moral teacher\u201d crowd doesn\u2019t have a very coherent place to stand. \u00a0Claiming to be God and to have the power to personally forgive sins on behalf of others is more than just a charming eccentricity like handing out lemon drops at odd moments. \u00a0If you would\u00a0defer<\/em> to this person\u2019s moral\u00a0judgement\u00a0(and isn\u2019t that what we\u2019re saying, when we say we want to put on Christ or pattern our lives after his), then you must trust them.<\/p>\n

Now, since I raised the MLK parallel, I\u2019d like to use it to head off one other objection. \u00a0Martin Luther King Jr was a prophetic voice in the civil rights movement. \u00a0And he cheated on his wife. \u00a0When we say King is a great moral luminary, we\u2019re not obligated to endorse every action he took or say we want to imitate every aspect of his character. \u00a0Why can\u2019t we similarly quarantine Christ\u2019s claims to divinity?<\/p>\n

Well, if you asked King about his infidelity, he would probably tell you not to follow him in that. \u00a0He would own it as a weakness and he certainly wouldn\u2019t argue it was part of a seamless garment with his activism. \u00a0But Christ does<\/em> claim that all of his teaching flows from his Sonship. \u00a0So then, you\u2019re basically trying to follow a teacher who looks a lot like a Chinese room<\/a>; he keeps outputting true statements even though he contradicts them and can\u2019t explain where his insight comes from. \u00a0At that point, you ought to be less interested in this strange epistemological wind-up toy and start getting interested in how it was programmed.<\/p>\n

Finally, if you make the case that you believe everything that Jesus said about ethics, but you think everything related to metaethics and theology was an interpolation, you might be getting closer to the legend out that Bob proposes, but I hope you\u2019re awfully adept in Biblical scholarship to be able to sift the text so finely. \u00a0If you just have a strong intuition that No one so wise would claim something so foolish!<\/em> Lewis has you dead to rights.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Cross Examined, Bob Seidensticker has an objection to C.S. Lewis\u2019s Trilemma, and John E_o raised the same question over here. \u00a0Bob says, why stay stuck in Lewis\u2019s framework that Jesus Christ must be either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord of all Creation? \u00a0Can\u2019t we just pick \u2018legend?\u2019 We have no problem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":6030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[42,39],"class_list":["post-6027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","tag-cs-lewis","tag-freedom-means-choosing-a-master"],"yoast_head":"\nI see your trilemma, and raise you a tetralemma!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over at Cross Examined, Bob Seidensticker has an objection to C.S. 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