The Problem with the Trilemma

We’re an age that likes shortcuts. We want “three simple steps to get rich” and “eating this one vegetable will make you lose weight.” That goes for what passes as discourse in our society, too. We don’t want nuance or careful reasoning. What’s popular is “this one argument will own [the other party]” and “watch this Christian/skeptic destroy skeptics/Christians.”

These titles are clickbait because people want to see things like that. Yes, this afflicts Christians. We find what sounds like a knock-down argument, grab on, and don’t give it another moment of reflection.

The famous trilemma, that Jesus must be “Lord, liar, or lunatic”, popularized by CS Lewis falls prey to that. It has its place, but too many see it as a cure-all, an answer to all skeptics. The reality is that it has its weaknesses and is not appropriate for every situation. I think Lewis, were he still here, would be shaking his head at our misuse of his words.

Here’s how Lewis explains this argument in Mere Christianity:

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 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

William Lane Craig put it in the form of a syllogism for us:

1) If Jesus were not Lord, he would be a liar or a lunatic.
2) Jesus was neither a liar nor a lunatic.
3) Therefore, Jesus is Lord.

The problem with this argument is that the choices listed in the first premise aren’t the only options. Over the years people have suggested several silly options I won’t mention, but one very real possibility remains, that Jesus never said what is attributed to him. People add a fourth “L”: legend.

Some have suggested Lewis was unaware of this weakness. I disagree. His broadcast talks were aimed at cultural Christians who accepted the New Testament as true enough but thought they could demote Jesus to “just a good moral teacher.” He was aware that some people question the historicity of the gospels, but he wasn’t talking to those people. And he expected us to have the good sense to recognize that.

So how should we use the trilemma? If you’re speaking to a person who accepts the gospels as more or less historically reliable, then they need to face the truth of what Jesus said about himself. Give them the trilemma. 

If they do not believe the gospels are reliable, we need to be able to show them that they are,

• That we can be reasonably sure we have the actual gospels,
• That the authors intended to tell the truth — not conveniently adding or subtracting things,
• That the gospels contain eyewitness testimony, and
• That the story in the gospels accord with history and archaeology.

Then we can tell them what Jesus claimed about himself, as well as how he died for our sins and rose from the dead. Then we can challenge them to acknowledge the truth about Jesus with their lives.

So listen carefully to people and find out where they are. It’d be great to have a magic cure all for all who doubt Christianity, but if we’re going to help people to Jesus, we’ll need to answer the questions they actually have, not the ones we wish they’d ask.


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