As some of you may know I work part-time with an organization called Power to Change, which attempts to help people change their lives by realizing the transforming power of knowing Jesus Christ. Today it was brought to my attention that one of the many links to PowerToChange.com includes a blog post titled ""Lord, Liar, or Lunatic"? Or, I dunno, something in between." I disagree with several points made in that post, and it gives me an opportunity to discuss Lewis' famous argument, which I think was left somewhat undeveloped in its original form but can be redeemed.

The basics of Lewis' "Trilemma" argument can be found at the following Wikipedia entry: Lewis' Trilemma Argument. Unfortunately, it is only quoted in part, and reading the full chapter from Mere Christianity (full text here, see chapter 8) and the preceding material in the book might make things clearer. Nevertheless …

The Wikipedia entry describes the trilemma as below … Asylum Seeker, the author of the blog post linked above, takes issue with every part of the argument. (Hereafter I'll refer to Asylum Seeker as "Asylum", since his real name is not given; and although I am unsure of their gender I will refer to Asylum as "he" for the sake of ease.):

(P) Jesus claimed to be God.
(Q) One of the following must be true.
1. Lunatic: Jesus was not God, but he believed that he was.
2. Liar: Jesus was not God, and he knew it, but he said so anyway.
3. Lord: Jesus is God.
From these premises it follows logically that,
(C) If not God, Jesus is either not great or not moral.

I have edited (Q)1) to remove the word "mistakenly" since, as I explain later and Lewis himself made clear, Jesus' claim is not the sort of thing a person can make an "oopsie" about.

Re (P), Asylum claims that "that Jesus did not necessarily refer to himself as the "Son of God" and he was only claimed to be after the fact by followers" and later claims that "As mentioned above, Premise P is suspect". However, no reason is presented for denying that Jesus thought of Himself as God. Even if Jesus never referred to Himself as "Son of God", the name "Son of Man" still carried similar connotations for his first century listeners. The Wikipedia article contains several suggested reasons that might be given for concluding Jesus didn't consider Himself to be divine, but also presents equally forceful reasons (I would say, better) for believing Jesus did in fact claim to be God. See for example Glenn Miller's summary or more comprehensive articles (on the synoptics and John) on the subject. If we take the biblical texts seriously, I don't see how a case could be made that Jesus considered himself to be anything less than divine.

That's IF we take the biblical texts seriously, of course. What if, however, as several commenters to Asylum's original post suggest, that we should not take the biblical text seriously because they are not trustworthy? This is a more popular was of avoiding the conclusion (C) of Lewis' argument: By positing a fourth way, a fourth "L", namely Legend. Asylum suggests early in his post that "Jesus could be fictional [and/or] the Gospel could be inaccurate".

Regarding Jesus being fictional (ie the "Jesus never existed" hypothesis) this hypothesis is dismissed by nearly all serious scholars on the subject, G. A. Wells being the main notable exception. For more details on this topic, see Dr Gary Habermas' article commenting directly upon Wells' hypothesis A Summary Critique: Questioning the Existence of Jesus, or a more general article Christ Myth Refuted. Whether the New Testament is accurate, however, is more open for debate. This is certainly a worthy objection to Lewis' original argument. Of course, Lewis was operating under the assumption that the New Testament is trustworthy. If that assumption is removed, it must be argued for, as I believe I have done in my free ebook on this subject, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament. I encourage you to download a copy and check it out.

There are, in fact, good reasons to believe the New Testament is trustworthy; especially in contrast to some of the other works commonly mentioned by skeptics of the New Testament such as non-canonical documents written in the second century AD and later. In the comments section of Asylum's post one of the commenters Richelle says "it would have been nice to know what all the other stories of jesus were before they all got destroyed by the church once they decided jesus was going down in history as a superhuman." Here she is referring to another commenter's mention of the Council of Nicaea. Of course, the Council of Nicaea did not discuss which books would be included in the New Testament at all, and we have plenty of information about what the earliest Christians thought about Jesus, first from the New Testament documents themselves, and then from the early Christian letters (some from the first century). Larry Hurtado's recent book argues that in fact "perhaps within only a few days or weeks of his crucifixion, Jesus' followers were circulating the astonishing claim that God had raised him from death and had installed him in heavenly glory as Messiah and the appointed vehicle of redemption." So such ideas are hardly inventions by a church council in the 4th century!

Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that the New Testament is generally untrustworthy and contains numerous errors, Jesus' divinity is proclaimed or assumed throughout, so it still would be difficult to escape the conclusion that the authors believed Jesus claimed to be God unless we were to discount the entirety of the New Testament as being totally and utterly untrustworthy; as even most ardent skeptics won't do, for good reason.

This leads us to (Q)1): "Lunatic: Jesus was not God, but he mistakenly believed that he was." This is a major point of contention for Asylum, who says: "A "lunatic" is hardly crazy about everything. People who have such a delusion can still have insight." This is true. A person may be perfectly sane in one regard, and completely delusional in another regard.

Yet think for a moment what you might say if someone you know, let's call him Joe, claimed to be God. Not just for a laugh, but seriously and continuously. He seemed normal in certain other respects (he was able to dress himself and engage in normal social conventions) yet he claimed he was in fact God. Now what if a group of people got sick of Joe's ranting and decided they'd kidnap him and, if he didn't stop with this God nonsense, that they would kill him in the most painful way imaginable. What would you say about him if he steadfastly refused to recant and was killed in the most excruciating manner for his claims? I, personally, would not call him sane. Would you?

When Lewis wryly remarks that "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" he is saying, with his 'poached egg' remark, that Jesus' self-claims are not trivial, they are entirely foundational. A person calling themselves God is either true, or, if false, akin with claiming to be a poached egg! This is not the sort of thing a person could make an "oopsie" about and we would still call "sane".

Asylum notes in the comments that he is "not sure if Jesus's behavior is inconsistent" with Schizophrenia, though he is careful to note he does not think it is per se. It's worth noting that to be able to suggest that Jesus was Schizophrenic, a person would have to get their information from … the New Testament, so they must be claiming that it is essentially reliable. You can't have your cake and eat it too. But is there evidence within the New Testament that Jesus had some kinda of mental illness? In fact there doesn't seem to be anything about Jesus' behavior which suggests mental illness, let alone Schizophrenia. (Compare for example with what is know about Muhammad, where, while far from conclusive, there are at least suggestions that he suffered from epilepsy or a similar mental illness.)

Gary R. Collins, PhD in psychology from Purdue University, concludes that "I don't see any signs that Jesus was suffering from mental illness." Asylum's point prior in his post is that a person may be sane in some areas of life and insane in others, but as noted above claiming to be God (and willing to be put to death for that conviction) is not the sort of claim that is distinct from a person being sane.

So, if we take the New Testament seriously and Jesus' words seriously when he claims to be God, and if Jesus shows no signs of mental illness, we are ruling out the Legend argument, (Q)1), the lunatic argument, and (Q)2) the liar argument. Are there other possible alternatives? Kreeft and Tacelli note at least one additional option in their book (available here BTW, with a much nicer cover than my copy has): Maybe Jesus didn't mean he was literally God, maybe he was just being really mystical and symbolic. They call this the Guru objection. This is rejected, in part, because of the context in which Jesus spoke and lived: He was Jewish, and directed his own ministry primarily to the Jews, no doubt because they (perhaps unlike some of the non-Jewish people around) would not have understood his claims to be mystical. (Certainly those who committed Jesus to death for His perceived heresy did not see the claims as being mystical!) For more on the "mythical Jesus" see for example here: The Persistent New Age Jesus (and other articles on the CAFA site).

All that said, I don't see Lewis' argument as an iron-clad proof that Jesus was who he said he was. It is, I think, a more powerful argument than Lewis is given credit for, especially since he was not a philosopher by trade. And the version put forth by Kreeft and Tacelli is I think a definite improvement (expansion) of Lewis' original. But it is not airtight by any means. When I first read of it, before I was a Christian, I did not drop to my knees and become a Christian immediately afterward.

What's the point, then? It is one of several arguments that I believe suggest that Jesus, and the Gospel message, are actually true. No one will be convinced to become a Christian by rational arguments alone (because the nature of the trust of faith is not merely rational, but also volitional and emotional) but they may at least convince us that such ideas are worth thinking about.

Related reading:
– A better article on one of our sites than the testimony linked by Asylum's blog post: Who did Jesus think He was anyways?
– Peter Kreeft's brief article on the topic on his website: The Divinity of Christ
– Stand to Reason: Christianity worth thinking about

The following is an excerpt from one of the essays I wrote for the Biola Certificate in Christian Apologetics program, which I highly recommend. (I'm almost done now, just have to finish up part 3!)

The Moral Argument is an argument for the existence of God. This argument could be proposed like this:

#1 Objective moral laws exist.
#2 A moral lawgiver, God, is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral laws.
#3 Therefore God exists.

An important distinction that should be made at the outset is that the argument does not claim that a person who does not believe in God cannot be moral, but instead claims that non-theistic explanations of morality can describe what is moral but cannot explain why it is moral. If this argument is true, a non-theist may still live a better life than a theist, but would not be able to explain how a moral obligation could exist merely by observing how things are.

Regarding premise #1, there can be only two possible options with regard to moral values: they are either objective or subjective. A synonym for subjective morality is moral relativism, and there are many serious problems with this view of morality. Besides the fact that  practically speaking, when pressed, few people honestly hold to true subjective morality , if there is no objective right and wrong, many concepts such as fairness, guilt, tolerance, altruism, and shame become meaningless.  There are many other serious logical and practical problems with relativism.  Therefore, almost no one accepts the idea that morality is relative.

Where then did moral absolutes (laws) come from? Premise #2 above posits that the best explanation for this source is God. Since these moral laws remain valid and true whether anyone believes in them or not, they could not come from evolution, social consensus, or personal preference. These laws are standards that exist independently of our own human existence and must have a source in something that exists outside of our material universe (since they are immaterial). This "something" is God, a personal being who provides both the nature upon which the laws are based and the volition through which they have been instituted.

Further reading:
Why can't morality have just evolved? – Read Monkey Morality by Greg Koukl.
A longer discussion of the argument – Read The Moral Argument for God's Existence by Paul Copan.

One of the front-page stories on Digg.com earlier today was a blog post titled "Pro-Life..Pro-Choice…Both?". The author argues that they are pro-life in the sense that they "respect and cherish all life" but pro-choice in the sense that they "support the existing life and the choice she makes over a possibility of life". So the argument being made is that the unborn is not a "life", it is not a separate human being, and therefore it can be aborted. (At first I typed "can be killed" but if it's not a "life" its life can't be taken from it.)

Before examining this argument further, there are some other peripheral arguments made in the post that I'd like to briefly comment on:

Does that mean someone should force me to continue getting pregnant since I seem to be biologically capable of producing healthy life? No, that does not seem right either. So, I cannot in good conscience support forcing another woman to give birth if she is not ready or willing.

When discussing abortion, the last thing I want to do is come off as being uncaring and insensitive about what is a very emotionally charged issue (for good reason). Especially as a man, who will never directly face this issue on a personal level (only, at most, secondhand), I need to be careful to state that I am aware of these issues and want to be sensitive to them. These caveats do not, however, make my opinions themselves on the matter any less valid than anyone else's.

I've found that from reading pro-choice literature, the word "force" or "forcing" is usually used. I think this is a bit misleading. Let's say for the sake of argument for the remainder of this post that abortions for those who are the victims of the heinous crimes of rape and incest may due to these extraneous circumstances have abortions freely. (For the sake of argument.) Approximately 1% of abortions currently occur because of rape or incest. This means that using "force" language to describe the other 99% of abortions is not accurate. Certainly the pregnancies may not be wanted, they may be accidental, but they are not forced. Being pregnant is the natural progression of getting pregnant, and given that we are discussing the 99% of pregnancies that are not forced, this should not really be an issue.

What is the issue? As I've suggested before in some of my other posts on abortion, I don't think that, ultimately, the abortion question is as complicated as it often seems. Greg Koukl sums up the dichotomy well:

– If the unborn is not a human being, then no justification for abortion is necessary.

– If the unborn IS a human being, then no justification for abortion is adequate.

The question is, "What is the unborn?" If it is a human being, it should not be killed, because killing any human being (let alone one unable to defend itself) merely because it is unwanted is immoral. However, if it is not a human being, then why should any justification to remove it be needed?

This all serves to lay foundation in advance of the blog author's main argument, which is as follows:

To me, being pro-life means that I respect and cherish all life. There are times when the sacrifice of life is necessary in order for another life to survive and that is how nature works. Problems arise when I try to respect and cherish two conflicting lives – the life of a pregnant woman and the potential life she carries. That is where I have to take a step back and support the existing life and the choice she makes over a possibility of life. [Original post]

If I understand the argument correctly, the unborn is not a life, it is a potential life (I'll henceforth reword this term as pre-life for the sake of brevity). Therefore, given that the pregnant woman is life not pre-life (a fact which no one disputes) then her life takes precedence over the pre-life she carries. If I accept that the unborn is pre-life, then I would entirely agree with this reasoning. But this brings us back to the original "main question" suggested above: What is the unborn?

Here is why I think this is such an important question. The zygote, formed at conception, is human. It could not be anything else. It is genetically distinct from its parents. It possesses the same DNA that it will possess all its life; human DNA, since it came from human parents. Some pro-choice defenders even concede this point, one noting that "Pro Choice defenders stick their feet in their mouths when they defend abortion by claiming the zygote-embryo-fetus isn't human. It is human." [as quoted here, unfortunately I couldn't find an online copy of the essay cited]

It is not a "potential life" or "potential human", it is a developing human with great potential. This unbroken stream of development begins at conception (when it becomes genetically distinct from its parents), proceeds in a continuous and unbroken stream of development throughout pregnancy, and continues to develop and grow after birth. What is this … "thing" if it is not human? And if it is human, we should not kill it. As stated previously, killing any human being (let alone one unable to defend itself) merely because it is unwanted is immoral.

Someone suggesting that the unborn is not "life" but instead somehow "pre-life" will need to demonstrate some sort of non-arbitrary and fundamental difference which occurs at a specific time during the unborn's life at which the unborn turns from pre-life into life. By non-arbitrary, I mean it must be one that can be readily agreed upon, and by fundamental I mean non-trivial, a criteria that is centrally important. Because if we are at all not sure whether, at point "A" in development, whether this thing is "life" or not, we should not dispose of it, lest we run the risk of killing an innocent human being.

What is the unborn? I see no reason to suggest that the unborn that is readily aborted during the first trimester (the first, second, third trimesters being also somewhat arbitrary) would not be allowed to be aborted during the third trimester, or even in a partial-birth abortion, or for that matter after birth. The unborn, in fact, is fully human at its conception, albeit at an earlier stage in its development, but fully human, and fully worthy of protection.

Although I am a Christian, I have not based any of these arguments on religious principles per se, although moral principles (which I think can be shared by both sides of this discussion) have been used where appropriate. I don't consider myself a right-winger either, for what it's worth.

Further resources:
– Stand to Reason: Bio-ethics articles – A collection of excellent articles by Greg Koukl and other STR authors
– Pro-Life Training articles – A second collection of great articles by former STR-er Scott Klustendorf

I think we need to be careful anytime we suggest that God cannot do something. When we're thinking about God, the last thing we'd want to so is "put God in a box" so to speak based on our own limited human understanding. As I noted in my previous post Thinking in the right direction:

God is not like us. We are like God. Not in the New Age sense of being gods or even “god-like”, but instead being made in God’s image so we reflect a portion (albeit sometimes a tiny portion) of His glory. If we were to say that God is like us, we would be anthropomorphizing God, making Him like us. We should try to think in the right direction (top-down rather than bottom-up) regarding God.

So, we should be hesitant about naming things that God cannot do. However, many philosophers like William Lane Craig would say that there are in fact things that God cannot do. They suggest that God doing something that contradicts Himself, which contradicts His own nature, is impossible. Also, many suggest that God would not do things that are nonsensical, or that are logically impossible.

It's interesting to note that the Bible does clearly list certain things that God cannot do. For example, it says that "God cannot be tempted by evil" (James 1:13) and "it is impossible for God to lie" (Hebrews 6:18). So there does seem to be some things that God cannot do.

This, I'll suggest, is not because there is any limit to His power, but rather because God is not just powerful, but also possesses other attributes (like goodness, or love) which won't contradict one-another. For God to do contradictory things would essentially mean that God would do things that are nonsense, and a God who would do things that are nonsensical would be a lesser God, not a greater one.