THE TRILEMMA
"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 a man who says he is a poached egg – or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool 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."
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
In the words of Kenneth Scott Latourette, historian of Christianity at Yale University: "It is not His teachings which make Jesus so remarkable, although these would be enough to give Him distinction. It is a combination of the teachings with the man Himself. The two cannot be separated."
Jesus claimed to be God. He didn’t leave any other option open. His claim must be either true or false, so it is something that should be given serious consideration. Jesus’ question to His disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" (Matthew 16:15) has several alternatives.
First, suppose that His claim to be God was false. If it was false, then we have only two alternatives. He either knew it was false or He didn’t know it was false. We will consider each one separately and examine the evidence.
If, when Jesus made His claims, He knew that He was not God, then He was lying and deliberately deceiving His followers. But if He was a liar, then He was also a hypocrite because He told others to be honest, whatever the cost, while He himself taught and lived a colossal lie. More than that, He was a demon, because He told others to trust Him for their eternal destiny. If He couldn’t back up His claims and knew it, then He was unspeakably evil. Last, He would also be a fool because it was His claims to being God that led to His crucifixion.
Many will say that Jesus was a good moral teacher. Let’s be realistic. How could He be a great moral teacher and knowingly mislead people at the most important point of His teaching ‑His own identity?
You would have to conclude logically that He was a deliberate liar. This view of Jesus, however doesn’t coincide with what we know either of Him or the results of His life and teachings. Wherever Jesus has been proclaimed, lives have been changed for the good, nations have changed for the better, thieves are made honest, alcoholics are cured, hateful individuals become channels of love, unjust persons become just.
William Lecky, one of Great Britain’s most noted historians and a dedicated opponent of organized Christianity, writes:
It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice…. The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.
Historian Philip Schaff says:
How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an imposter‑that is a deceitful, selfish, depraved man‑have invented, and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could He have conceived and successfully carried out a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed His own life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of His people and age? 70/9495
If Jesus wanted to get people to follow Him and believe in Him as God, why did He go to the Jewish nation? Why go as a Nazarene carpenter to a country so small in size and population and so thoroughly adhering the undivided unity of God? Why didn’t He go to Egypt or, even more, to Greece, where they believed in various gods and various manifestations of them?
Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught, and died as Jesus died could not have been a liar. What other alternatives are there?
Was He a Lunatic?
If it is inconceivable for Jesus to be a liar, then couldn’t He actually have thought Himself to be God, but been mistaken? After all, it’s possible to be both sincere and wrong. But we must remember that for someone to think himself God, especially in a fiercely monotheistic culture, and then to tell others that their eternal destiny depended on believing in him, is no light flight of fantasy but the thoughts of a lunatic in the fullest sense. Was Jesus Christ such a person?
Someone who believes he is God sounds like someone today believing himself Napoleon. He would be deluded and self‑deceived, and probably he would be locked up so he wouldn’t hurt himself or anyone else. Yet in Jesus we don’t observe the abnormalities and imbalance that usually go along with being deranged. His poise and composure would certainly be amazing if He were insane.
Noyes and Kolb, in a medical text, describe the schizophrenic as a person who is more autistic than realistic. The schizophrenic desires to escape from the world of reality. Let’s face it; claiming to be God would certainly be a retreat from reality.
In light of the other things we know about Jesus, it’s hard to imagine that He was mentally disturbed. Here is a man who spoke some of the most profound sayings ever recorded. His instructions have liberated many individuals from mental bondage.
Clark H. Pinnock asks:
Was He deluded about His greatness, a paranoid, an unintentional deceiver, a schizophrenic? Again, the skill and depth of His teachings support the case only for His total mental soundness. If only we were as sane as He!
A student at a Cali
fornia university told me that his psychology professor had said in class that "all he has to do is pick up the Bible and read portions of Christ’s teaching to many of his patients. That’s all the counseling they need."
Psychiatrist J. T. Fisher states:
If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene ‑if you were to combine them and refine them, and cleave out the excess verbiage ‑ if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison. For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here … rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimism, mental health, and contentment.
C. S. Lewis writes:
The historical difficulty of giving for the life, sayings and influence of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity … of His moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind His theological teaching unless He is indeed God has never been satisfactorily explained. Hence the non‑Christian hypotheses succeed one another with the restless fertility of bewilderment.
Philip Schaff reasons:
Is such an intellect ‑clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating as a sword, thoroughly healthy and vigorous, always ready and always self‑possessed ‑liable to a radical and most serious delusion concerning His own character and mission? Preposterous imagination!
Was He Lord?
I cannot personally conclude that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. The only other alternative is that He was the Christ, the Son of God, as He claimed.
When I discuss this with most Jewish people, it’s interesting how they respond. They usually tell me that Jesus was a moral, upright, religious leader, a good man, or some kind of prophet. I then share with them the claims Jesus made about Himself and then the material in this chapter on the trilemma (liar, lunatic, or Lord). When I ask if they believe Jesus was a liar, there is a sharp "No!"
Then I ask, "Do you believe He was a lunatic?"
The reply is, "Of course not."
"Do you believe He is God?"
Before I can get a breath in edgewise, there is a resounding, "Absolutely not."
Yet one has only so many choices.
The issue with these three alternatives is not which is possible, for it is obvious that all three are possible. Rather, the question is, "Which is more probable?" Who you decide Jesus Christ is must not be an idle intellectual exercise. You cannot put Him on the shelf as a great moral teacher. That is not a valid option. He is either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord and God. You must make a choice. "But," as the apostle John wrote, "these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and" ‑more important‑ "that believing you might have life in His name" (John 20:31).
The evidence is clearly in favor of Jesus as Lord. Some people, however, reject this clear evidence because of moral implications involved. They don’t want to face up to the responsibility or implications of calling Him Lord.
Jesus could only have been one of four things: a legend, a liar, a lunatic–or Lord and God. There is so much historical and archeological evidence to support his existence that every reputable historian agrees he was not just a legend. If he were a liar, why would he die for his claim, when he could easily have avoided such a cruel death with a few choice words? And, if he were a lunatic, how did he engage in intelligent debates with his opponents or handle the stress of his betrayal and crucifixion while continuing to show a deep love for his antagonists? He said he was Lord and God. The evidence supports that claim.
YouTube – Jesus- Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?
Here are some of the key claims Jesus made about himself
He claimed to live a sinless life
Jesus could look at a crowd of people angry at his claims to share God’s nature and ask, "Which of you can point to anything wrong in my life?" Even more amazing is that none of them could give a reply! No human being has ever lived a sinless life, except for Jesus.
John 8:28-29 "So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know who I am and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.’"
John 8:46-47 "Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God."
He claimed to be the ONLY way to God
Not one of several ways, but the one and only way. Not to teach the way, but to be the way to God. Nobody has ever made claims like that before and backed them, but Jesus did through his love, balanced life, and miracles.
John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me."
Matthew 11:27 "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
He claimed to have shared the glory of God in Heaven
Jesus claimed to have pre-existed the
people he spoke with. The apostle John–who shared bread with Jesus–wrote that Jesus was with God in the very beginning, and that "all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." (John 1:1-5)
John 17:5 "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began."
He claimed to be able to forgive sins
One of the reasons that the Jewish leaders were so angry with Jesus was his continual practice of forgiving people’s sins. The religious leaders understood clearly that since sins were rebellion against God Himself, only God could forgive sins.
Luke 5:20-21 "When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’ The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, ‘Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’"
Luke 7:48-49 "Then Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ The other guests began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’"
He claimed to be a Heavenly king
Luke 22:69 "But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the mighty God."
Luke 23:1-3 "Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, ‘We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.’ So Pilate asked Jesus, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ ‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied."
John 18:36-37 "Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.’ ‘You are a king, then!’ said Pilate. Jesus answered, ‘You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’"
He claimed to be able to give everlasting life
He didn’t just tell people how they could find everlasting life, or deepen their own life experience. He actually claimed to give life himself.
John 6:40 "For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."
John 6:47 "I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life."
John 10:28-30 "I give [my followers] eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one."
John 11:25 "Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die…’"
He claimed that he would die and come back to life
John 10:17 "Just as the Father knows me and I know the Father–and I lay down my life for the sheep. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life–only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."
John 12:32-33 "’But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.’ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die."
John 16:16 "In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me."
Luke 18:31-33 "Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up into Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.’"
He claimed that he would return again to judge the world
Matthew 24:27-30 "So as the lightening comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man… At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory."
Matthew 25:31-32 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep and the goats."
Mark 14:61-62 "Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?’ ‘I am,’ said Jesus. ‘And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
References:
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/trilemma.html
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
