Section 14
Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend
A man who claimed what Jesus claimed was either Lord, liar, lunatic, or his claim was a later legend. The "great teacher" option is foreclosed.
Liar: requires a motive. The standard motives (money, power, sex, fame) do not match Jesus’s life pattern. Liars abandon the lie under pressure. Jesus did not.
Lunatic: his teaching is not the teaching of a clinically delusional man. Even Hindu, Jewish, and atheist commentators have called him among the greatest moral teachers in history.
Legend: the claims are not late. The 1 Cor 15 creed within 5 years. Pliny on Christians "singing hymns to Christ as to a god" within 80 years. Hurtado and Bauckham documented worship of Jesus as divine within years.
That leaves Lord.
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 or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952, pp. 54 to 55.
By the numbers
- Options
- Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend
- Earliest creed
- within 5 years
- Hurtado on early devotion
- binitarian within years
Strongest counter position
A skeptic can hold a "complex" position: a charismatic teacher whose claims were exaggerated by the early church. Engaged in section 5 and section 11.
What this does not prove
The trilemma works as a clarifying frame, ruling out the popular middle ground. It does not by itself prove Lord; the case rests on the historical claims and the resurrection.
Citations
- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952.
- 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 8.
- Philippians 2:6 to 11.
- Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96.
- Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 2003.
Goes deeper