The Fourth Possibility C.S. Lewis Missed in His Infamous “Trilemma”…

Last updated on: April 30, 2018 at 3:40 pm by Andy Gill

The Fourth Possibility C.S. Lewis Missed in His Infamous “Trilemma”… 2018-04-30T15:40:57-05:00 Andy Gill

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“Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord…”

“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 the 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. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (Mere Christianity, 55-56)”

The Fourth Possibility C.S. Lewis Missed in His Infamous “Trilemma”…

In “researching” this short post, I noticed that on the Gospel Coalitions website (in 2016) they felt the need to address whether or not this is “unsound” explaining that “Jesus did not really say these things.” Oof…

Jesus didn’t say these things… and, also, it’s good to mention that Lewis wasn’t the first guy to even echo these sentiments; after all, nothing new is under the sun…

Here’s the thing, now that we’re all on the same page and know that C.S. Lewis wasn’t actually quoting Jesus here (or, the Bible for this matter). Let’s take this a step further and also acknowledge the fourth possibility Lewis missed…

The Fourth Possibility Lewis Missed…

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