by Nathaniel Bluedorn, Copyright December 13, 2007, all rights reserved. 2166 views
Letter from Carter Askren
Hi. A professor of critical thinking was telling me that C.S. Lewis’ comment to the effect of, “either Jesus was who he said he was or he was a liar or a lunatic,“ is a false dichotomy and therefore illogical. I disagree, but can’t really articulate why. Liar or lunatic do seem like reasonable possibilities, but I suppose one could try to make the argument that C.S Lewis was mistaken and that could be another possibility. If false dichotomy is the presentation of conclusions that may not necessarily be all of the possible conclusions, then perhaps that was what the professor was trying to argue? I disagree with the idea that Jesus was mistaken, but I was trying to understand how someone might argue that such a statement from Jesus was illogical. And then, of course, we can remember that we are to be “fools for Christ” and that may mean standing by a position even when it is not popular—or “logical.“ Thank you for your help.
Carter,
In “Mere Christianity” C.S. Lewis says, “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 said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a 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.”
When interpreting what someone ways – like C.S. Lewis – it is best to interpret them in the best possible light. It is likely that Lewis understood that an alternative to “liar or lunatic” was “mistaken.” Lewis’ likely intention in this paragraph from “Mere Christianity” was to point out that this third alternative, “Jesus was a wise but mistaken human being,“ is not reasonable given that Jesus claimed to be God. Lewis wasn’t committing an “either-or” fallacy because he addresses the alternatives, and rejects them. An either-or fallacy ignores the alternatives.
1 • arendtian • June 28, 2008 • 3:43 AM
Ignoring the possibility that the claims of Jesus are grossly misrepresented in the bible or (far more problematically) something like Jesus didn’t exist ... why couldn’t someone who was deluded be a great moral teacher?
If I am not mistaken, Copi uses that particular quote as an example of a false Dichotomy.
2 • Nathaniel Bluedorn • June 28, 2008 • 7:54 AM
You ask “Why couldn’t someone who was deluded be a great moral teacher?“ It might help us out if you could answer this question.
3 • Pop Guru • July 14, 2008 • 4:36 PM
I believe CS Lewis is guilty of a false dichotomy because there are alternatives that are not discussed. One of these is that perhaps Jesus didn’t claim to be the son of god and that the claim was attributed to him when the Gospels were written, which was after his death.
4 • Ron Lopez, RN • July 18, 2008 • 10:21 PM
“deluded” Verb: delude di’lood. 1. Be false to; be dishonest with.
A person who is dishonest or false, is, be their own state of dishonesty or falsity, incapable of moral teaching. No deluded person is capable of being concerned with principles of right and wrong or conforming to standards of behavior and character based on those principles. Moral teaching is concerned with exactly these things. This is why someone who was deluded could not at the same time be any kind of moral teacher, let along a great one.
5 • A Heartthrob in Disguise • August 14, 2008 • 3:15 PM
a) I agree with Pop Guru here. We have NOTHING that was actually written by Jesus himself and PG’s view is a common one.
b)Also, you say that being delusional on one point, however unrelated, disqualifies you from teaching morality. I guess that disqualifies John Calvin and Martin Luther, who were deluded by the antisemitism of the time (read “The Jews and their lies” or John Calvin’s quote “The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves”), from teaching morality at all.
As an afterthought, if this is a Catholic Site, I guess naming two reformers doesn’t do anything for the argument.
6 • rudy diaz • August 15, 2008 • 3:15 PM
In case someone has not replied to 1 and 3 above I’d like to put in my two cents worth.
To claim that Jesus’ claims of deity were added after his death by the gospel writers renders the entire gospel record useless. His claims of deity are embedded throughout his ministry.
If you check the Old Testament, the only Being with the ability to read thoughts, forgive sins against God, alter the weather by His own will, raise the dead by His own will is God. Then the gospel of John is replete with claims of unique access to God the Father.
So if you were to go through and remove all the actions recorded that even hint at Him being divine you’d end up with a meaningless skeleton of a narrative.
So much of it would be false, why would we even believe a Jesus existed in the first place, much less be divine?
Then the challenge becomes to explain how such an obvious lie, obvious to the contemporaries of the apostles who could have disproven it any number of ways, one of which would have been to produce his dead body, how could such a lie tarnsform the whole ancient world?
Yes my argument above is not a proof that He was divine but it simply proves that to argue He was not is simply the same as refusing to believe the evidence for the truth of the record. If you choose to disbelieve the record why argue about its details?
7 • Bo Parker • November 29, 2008 • 11:28 AM
Mark 3:20-22 is interesting because it portrays different groups who did not accept that Jesus was the son of God as concluding exactly Lewis’s alternatives. His family thinks he is out of his mind and the teachers of the law think he is a deceiver who is operating in the power of Satan. So in Mark, Jesus is conducting himself in such a way that these are two alternative conclusions about Him.
8 • Dion • March 10, 2009 • 9:04 PM
Eusebius’ “proof” still stands:
The OT said that the Gentiles would worship a Jewish Messiah.
The gentiles worship Jesus.
Therefore, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.
9 • Dion Sanchez • March 10, 2009 • 9:18 PM
Heartthrob,
Just because we do not have anything written by Jesus does not mean we do not know what He did or said.
The NT has been proven to be a historically reliable document and as such we can rely on the testimony of its authors (John Warwick Montgomery “History and Christianity.“)
Fredrick Kenyon Former Keeper of Maunscripts at the British M, one who knew more about ancient documents said the same thing as Dr. Montgomery!
You ought to do a little research before embarrassing yourself son.
10 • Heartthrob • March 17, 2009 • 9:02 AM
Dion Sanchez (9:18PM): I smell a non sequitur.
What you are saying is: If someone created a “holy book” about my life, and 2000 years later was proven to be historically accurate in every way a historian could reasonably discern, you would believe their testimony that I was the son of God?
If the case you’re making is different, please tell me how.
11 • Amy • March 26, 2009 • 10:36 AM
I feel as though I’m standing at a cross roads. On the one road I have the Bible and how it was taught to me. On the other I have a brain that God gave me. The Bible says we are created in his image so it can’t be wrong to think. It also tells us to not trust man and to not lean to our own understanding. But then we come back to don’t trust man and man interpreted the Bible and teaches us at church. Wow, I’m confused!