Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

I watched The Chronicles of Narnia on cable Saturday night. I thought the movie rather mediocre, the Christian allegory rather obvious and the level of violence rather surprising.

I noticed that even C.S. Lewis’s famous argument, mistakenly labeled “The Trilemma,” got into the movie. When the Professor is considering the youngest girl’s story about a world through the wardrobe he says that since she’s not lying, and she’s not mad, then she must be telling the truth.

The argument was first expounded by Lewis to counter the position that Jesus was simply an inspired moral teacher. Amateur Christian Apologists are attracted to the argument due to its air of elegance and simplicity but better educated Apologists realize that it has serious flaws and isn’t going to impress anyone that isn’t either already a committed believer or not too bright.

The argument goes something like this. Jesus claimed to be God and Jesus claimed the authority to instruct people how to achieve salvation. If his claims were false then either he was delusional, and therefore a lunatic, or he was lying, and therefore committing an evil of immense proportions. In either case it wouldn’t be rational to consider him a great moral teacher. Since Jesus was obviously a great moral teacher, he could not have been either lying or a lunatic therefore his claims must be true and he must be the Lord.

Like I said, simple and elegant, and at first glance it looks like a pretty good argument. Unfortunately if you think about it for a couple of seconds the flaws become rather obvious.

The first problem is how do we know Jesus claimed any such thing? That, based upon the gospels, he instructed people about how to achieve salvation I’ll have to admit is pretty obvious but his teaching was standard first century Judaism with a twist of apocalyptic fervor. There is nothing in his game plan for salvation in the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew and Luke) that is very radical other than some very liberal interpretations of some parts of the law such as concluding that it’s acceptable to heal on the Sabbath.

Nowhere in the Synoptics does Jesus claim to be divine. To the contrary, in Mark 8, Matthew 16 and Luke 9 Peter identifies him as the Messiah, or Christ, and Jesus accepts the identification to various degrees. In Mark he simply tells Peter not to tell anyone which could be interpreted as either a confirmation or a denial. In Matthew he clearly confirms the identification and then utters the famous play on words about establishing his church upon this rock (Peter = Petros = Rock). In Luke he appears to confirm it and then makes two very interesting statements.

Luke 9: 26 “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”

This statement seems to indicate that Jesus, the Son of Man and the Father are three distinct entities doesn’t it? Without getting into the whole mess related to the Trinity this statement could be interpreted as a denial of divinity.

Luke 9:27 “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

Was this a bad prediction? While there are all kinds of spins that apologists put on this passage to demonstrate why it’s really not a failed prophesy, I’ve yet to see one that would impress anyone who wasn’t either already a believer or a complete idiot.

The funny part about it is no explanation is necessary. Jesus often speaks in metaphors and this could easily be a metaphoric statement that simply means that some will understand his teaching which will allow them to “see” the kingdom of God. One of the reasons I suspect that the gospels are fairly accurate is the consistency of the metaphoric language of Jesus. It's only the insistance on a simple literal interpretation that requires a defense.

Even accepting that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, or the Christ, the Jewish Messiah was mortal, not divine and certainly not on a par with God the Father.

It’s not until the Gospel of John that Jesus makes statements that can clearly be interpreted as claiming divinity.

John 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

John 10:30 “I and the Father are one."

John 10:38 “…believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father."

The author of John certainly appears to think that Jesus claimed to be God and he reports the Pharisees arguing with Jesus as coming to that conclusion as well. So, what’s the deal here?

There are several possibilities. The obvious one is that the author of John, or some future modifier of the Gospel of John, put words into Jesus’s mouth that he never actually said either because he thought they were said or as a pious fiction to support the Christological position that Jesus was divine. In other words an editor made the gospel more clearly reflect what he already knew to be true. There is considerable evidence that this occured in other passages although none to my knowledge that these particular passages have been tampered with.

If you accept on faith that the bible is the inerrant word of God then this isn’t a possibility that you need to contend with. For those of us that accept the more likely definition that the bible is simply the output of pious well meaning men, with all the fallibilities of men, then it is a possibility that must be contended with.

Even if you accept the accuracy of the report that Jesus said these things, the interpretation that this is a claim to be God isn’t necessarily correct. Jesus consistently claims that he speaks with the authority of God, he equates his words with God’s words and his motives with God’s motives. In John 8:58 and John 10:30 we may simply be seeing the strongest affirmation of this claim that Jesus is speaking words that are synonomous with what God would say.

I also think it’s important to keep in mind that in John 10:34 Jesus quotes Psalm 82.

John 10: 34 Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'”

Psalm 82:6 "I said, 'You are "gods"; you are all sons of the Most High.'”

In other words we are ALL sons of God so claiming to be a son of God is no blasphemy. In Psalm 82 God is chastising man.

Psalm 82:1 God presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the "gods":

Psalm 82:2 How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?

Psalm 82:3 Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

Psalm 82:4 Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

So the entire exercise could simply be an incredibly subtle criticism of the Pharisees that Jesus is arguing with. Anyone familiar with Psalm 82 couldn’t miss the implication that God’s chastisement in the Psalm applies to those rejecting the message of Jesus. Of course to think something like that up on the fly, in the middle of a rather heated discussion, would be the mark of a man whose mental agility ranks with that of Leonardo DiVinci.

On the other hand, Jesus could simply have been delusional. We have a number of cases down through history of mere mortals confusing themselves with divinity often with tragic results. Does this by definition render everything else they say or believe reprehensible? Not at all, men are complex entities and rarely is one all good or all bad. A man can have a delusion about one thing while still being lucid and insightful, even inspired, about another.

Most of the moral teachings of Jesus were not original but positions well established in either Jewish Theology or Greek Philosophy so inspiration wasn't even necessarily required, simply the ability to recognize a good idea when he saw one. The delusion of a religious experience as the source of the sudden recognition of a moral or philosophical truth isn't all that unknown. As a matter of fact it happens all the time to believers when it's really simply the subconscious mind intruding abruptly on the conscious mind.

So the argument that one has to either discard everything Jesus said and did or accept him as God is an oversimplification. Men, and events, are much more complicated than that.