One Response to C.S. Lewis's trifecta arguement for Christ.
Offline I'm sure everyone here is famliar with the arguement but I will restate it anyway. C.S. Lewis argues that it is illogical to call Jesus a wise teacher but not the son of god. The reason for this is that a wise teacher teaches truth and not falsehood. He then builds from this to claim that there are now three options in regards to his son of god claim: 1) Jesus is lying 2) Jesus is a lunatic 3) Jesus really is the son of God. He then goes on to say that if one considers jesus a wise teacher, one must also consider him the son of god since a wise teacher niether lies nor is insane.
Obviously there are many problems with this but I will point out just one: this could apply to any wise teacher from socrates to Martin Luther King. This also means that if any wise teacher also had questionable religious beleifs, these beleifs also must be true. For example, Pythagorous, developed the Pythagorean Theorom and tuaght it to his students. It would certainly take a certain amount of wisdom to come up with a mathematrical thoery which is still being tuaght 2500 years later. He also beleived in reicarnation and that the soul resided in the brain (the brain beleif probably making him friends with the materialists but thats another issue 
). So lets apply the trifecta arguement to Pythagorous. In regards to reincarnation and the soul residing in the brain is he 1) Lying 2) Insane 3) Telling the truth? Well, he has accomplished much more than Jesus in terms of coming up with a proved mathematical theory that is still being tuaght today so it is clear that he is wise and teaches truth. So he is not insane and didn't lie, therefore, reincarnation must be real and the soul must reside in the brain.
The only response a strong proponent of C.S. Lewis' arguement could be "it does not work for Pythagorous becuase he is not (whatever quality it is they believe is unique to jesus)". Which is just asinine. As has been shown, all the arguement claims is either everything Jesus said is true or everything he said is false and follows it with, if he said one thing that is true, then everything he said is true and vice versa. That is all the arguement claims. It does not matter what other claims were made by Jesus or how the Bible describes jesus, the arguement is pretty much a clever way of saying "it's either all or nothing". So this can be equally applied to other wise teachers in order to show how their equally questionable claims are true.
Of course, now they will go on "But the claims conflict and only one is right." Really? Either reicarnation is real ot Jesus is the Son of God? Isn't there a more reasonable explanation that can explain why wise teachers like jesus and pythagorous would also make outlandishly dubious claims? Lets suppose Jesus really said he was the son of God, isn't it possible that both Jesus and Pythagorous were just honestly mistaken? Clearly, scientific inquiry was not up to the standards so even wise teachers at either time period time were ignorant (in fact wise teachers and scientists today are also ignorant of certain things so its no insult to call jesus or Pythagorous ignorant) of many things. Furthermore, being that they are both human they are both subject to fellacious beleifs especially since there was no real way to determine the validity either way. This means that pythagorous could have honestly beleived in reincarnation and tuaght it even though it was false. Why would a wise teacher promote a falsity? Beucase there was no way for him to know that it was indeed false. The Greeks beleived in a pantheon of Gods who constatnly intefered with human affairs. His beleif in reicarnation was not totally obscure for the time he was in (of course Greek thinkers before socrates ran the entire gamut of beleifs from nihilism to early forms of monotheism). The same is true for Jesus. The Romans still beleived in a Pantheon of Gods that constantly interfered with human affairs and many other individuals, such as Applonius of Tanzania, also beleived they were the Son of God so Jesus too was in good company and was not teaching or saying anyhting out of the ordinary for that time.
If there is a point to this it is: Jesus is not special and C.S. Lewis' arguemnt only works if you already accept that Jesus is something special or more special than any other wise teacher or great thinker. If you do not, than the faulty logic in the arguement is transparent and obvious such as the fact that Jesus never wrote anything down meaning that the trifecta should be applied to the authors of the gospels and not Jesus if one wants to apply this arguement at all which means it is now perfecltly liekly that one of the authors was insane or lying. Conversly, they also could have simply been honestly mistaken becuase they really did not know any better and this made sense to them at the time.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
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Your argument works only if the other wise teachers claim to be the son of god. The argument of C.S. Lewis was directed towards that specific claim. Logically, Lewis's argument is sound. If Jesus was not a liar and Jesus was not insane then Jesus's claim "I am the Son of God" must be true. But this also assumes that Jesus actually said this and it is not an invention of one of the writers of the New Testament and, even further, that Jesus actually existed.
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So if I went with Apollonius of Tanzania my arguement would be fine? Furthermore, whatever claim being made is irrelevant. C.S. Lewis' arguement is not about specific claims it is about the character of the individual making the claim.
1) You mean logically Valid. And logic validity is cheap and easy. 2) Plato didn't lie and he wasn;t insane. He talked about Atlantis. Atlantis must exist. Same exact princible derived from the Trifecta arguement which is essentially "IF Person P does not perform action l or is not in Questionable brain state i, any questionable claim which has no hard evidence to back it up with must be true." Trying to point out that "well claim G is unique" is totally missing the point of the arguement. Yes, I am aware C.S. Lewis would respond the way you just did which only shows he does not even understand his own arguement.
I'm sure a man like Jesus existed, in fact, there were probably a handful of men that existed that were like Jesus. Messianic preachers are a dime a dozen, not a diamond in the rough. Thats assuming Jesus was a messianic preacher which I don't since the only text which gives any detailed description of him and his character was heavily biased.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
If he claimed to be the Son of God, then yes.
The claim is that Jesus is the Son of God. He invokes the character of Jesus to bolster the claim.
Well. Without logically validity we have nothing. Seems to me that has to be in place or the argument is worthless on the face of it.
Plato's assertion of Atlantis is an error of fact. This is not necessarily attached to character. But were Plato to make an assertion about his own nature, he would have to either be lying or wrong. To make a claim "I am the Son of God" Jesus would have to believe this or he would be lying . So if it's not true he is wrong. But the all encompassing nature of the claim pushes the wrong into the realm of delusion - or as C.S. Lewis puts it, insanity. So Jesus was either a liar, was indeed the Son of God, or was delusional.
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Well he did, so now we have two sons of god according to C.S. Lewis.
That is the claim he is concerned about yes. The arguement, however relies on two key premises
1) Wise teachers don't lie and are not insane
2) Jesus was a wise teacher
Without these two premises, the arguement does not work at all. These two premises, though, are not in reference to any particular claim at all. They only refer to the character of Jesus as well as qualities a wise teacher has.
Very true but validity does not determine truth value. For example:
1) Only homosexuals have beards
2) Jesus had a beard
3) Jesus was homosexual
That is logically valid but the furthest thing from true.
I think I tackled this issue with my notion of "honestly mistaken" but I guess I should clarify. By honestly mistaken, I mean that someone can honestly believe something that is false. For example, Hitler honestly believed that Jews were terrible people and that destroying them was a good thing. This doesn;t mean his beleif was true but it does not mean he was lying when he told people that killing Jews was a good thing. His goal was not to pull a fast one over all of Germany but to help germany become strong. Likewise, Jesus could have honestly believed he was the son of god. This does not mean it was true, but it does mean he was not lying if thats what he taught. As I pointed out in my OP, many wise teachers have flubs and are not perfect but that does not mean that they are lying or insane. It simply means they are human. ANd if you really want to force the issue about "but claiming to be the son of God is a unique claim" then I suggest you read the Illiad or Oddyssey once again to see how many individuals the greeks believed were children of gods. Again, simply becuase they could honestly beleive that there are gods and that they can produce human children, does not mean it is true nor does the act of teaching this falsehood make them liars or lunatics. They were simply products of their times.
Same applies to Jesus' son of God claim. It is possible to show that he had human parents or at least a human father.
Same is true with Jesus and all I am saying is that C.S. Lewis ignores the possibility that Jesus could be wrong on certain issues and that this does not necessitate him being a liar or a lunatic. Just means he's human. I mean, we do not throw out Darwin's theory of evolution becuase he believed that white people were more evolved than black people, which in turn, means that he believed he was more evolved than a black person which is a claim about character as well as a factual claim.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
In general, I agree with you. "Jesus said it so it must be true" or "Plato said it so it must be true" does not guarantee truth. But "I am the Son of God" is substantially different than "Atlantis existed". The implication of claiming divinity is that you are also as knowledgable as god which further implies that you cannot have incorrect knowledge. As soon as Jesus claims he is the Son of God, he also claims that he is correct in all matters. So either he is knowingly lying about his divinity, or is indeed correct, or is so completely delusional that he believes himself correct in all things. Further, if Plato were to have found definitive evidence that Atlantis was a hoax, he could change his opinion without fundamentally altering his own nature and in fact changing his opinion on the matter actually AFFIRMS his nature as a rational person. But for Jesus to recind the claim to divinity so completely alters his nature that it invalidates large swaths of his teachings.
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So now this applies to every emperor, king, and pharoah. That adds abouta few hundred people to the tally of being divine.
This is assuming God is correct in all things which I find very hard to believe. People can believe that God is correct in all things but that does not mean that he is. So if jesus is the son of this same God, he does not neccessarily have to be correct in all things and him believeing he is correct in all things does not make him delusional, just an arrogant jerk. Not to mention that the claim "I am the Son of God" can be shown to be false. Of course the techniques used for determining this did not exist in his time so he really had no reason to believe otherwise if he did call himself the Son of God.
So people would start kicking orphan children in the face and rape mothers if he admitted to being mistaken about being the son of god?
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Sure. So they were either liars, gods,or insane. And many of those were never considered "wise teachers" so they fail one of the conditions.
Uh. Since we are discussing an entity that in your mind doesn't even exist I find this a rather odd statement. You don't believe god has pink warts on his nose either. The god of C.S. Lewis is considered omniscient so it is valid to use this in analyzing his argument.
People can believe anything they want about something that doesn't exist. To discuss Lewis's argument you have to suspend disblief and assume his god exists and accept that his argument is based on the attributes of his god.
Can you direct me towards this proof?
What does torturing children and raping mothers have to do with the validity of C.S. Lewis statements?
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But many were considered wise and benevolent rulers. Surely a wise and benevolent ruler wouldn't lie right? If ONe did they would cease to be wise or benevolent.
I don;t find it odd all at all. I am working with various events that took place in the Bible which C.S. Lewis believed actually occurred. So based on the character and nature of God in the Bible, he is the furthest thing from wise. Sure he might have called himself wise and various other individuals in the text called him wise but considering his kneejerk reaction to many things was to cause it pain and then kill it, he sounds the furthest thing from wise.
That points to the overall problem with the arguement. You have to believe in his conception of God for it to work. If you disagree with his conception, it doesn't. So this arguement would hardly work on Jews or Muslims becuase, guess what, they don't believe Jesus even made the claim so they will probably agree with the general logical structure and then just add "Too bad he never actually said it huh?" So for his arguement to have any real logical validity, it should not only apply to those who already believe in Christianity but to those who do not. And since it cannot, it is faulty logic.
Did I say we have proof. I am just saying it is possible to show the claim to be false making it falsifiable and not reliant on speculation o Jesus' character and an assumption about the nature of God. And this is whats known as a DNA test. If he has certain base pair combinations that could not have come from any human, then we have reason to believe he is more than human. If he doesn;t, then we have good reason to believe that his claim is false. Again, they did not have such techniques or even knowledge of such things at his time so it is perfectly possible for him to be honestly mistaken about this.
You just made it sound like if he was wrong on one thing over here, then something he says over here must also be wrong. So he claimed to be the son of god but also taught that people should help one another and care for the poor. So if he was wrong about being the son of god he must also be wrong about helping others and caring for the poor, according to your view on the "Son of God" claim.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
sidenote: I just came about some information regarding my "honestly mistaken" arguement i.e. Dawkings beat me to it. In all honesty, if I knew he already came up with this noiton in regards to Jesus, I would not have brought it up.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Okay, now I'm laughing
I guess thats an accoplishment
Jesus was atleast smart. I mean, how many other people do you know of that has fooled as many people into believing that they are some sort of supreme being? I can only count a few.
I'm infallible. I don't know why you can't remember that.
I would like to say you don't get crucified for being an idiot but, I think the romans literally crucified idiots (in the technical sense of idiot).
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
It depends on how you are defining "smart".
Some people can be very persuasive but still talk pure bullshit. That's why people join pyramid schemes
That's also why I love comparing religions to pyramid schemes. They both thrive on similar principles! =P
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
Jesus died, in order to gain immortality. The only type of immortality that exists. Everyone knows of Jesus, and will keep on knowing him, till religion dies.
I'm infallible. I don't know why you can't remember that.
Socrates did it first and with class. Only, people will continue to remember him after religion dies since his teachings were niether dogmatic or indoctrinating.
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Well, so did hitler, but for other reasons.
As an agnostic, if this argument was logical, i assure you i would agree, but logical arguments from theists seem to be few and far between (which is a shame).
Firstly, the assumption that the term "wise teacher" requires that said teacher tells only truth is incoherent.
Secondly, to assume that everyone means exactly the same thing when they use the term "wise teacher" is incoherent. Do you for instance suppose that every time someone uses the term dog they are speaking of an animal? i've used it several times to describe women.
the fact is, we don't know if Jesus was a wise teacher, nor that wise teachers never lie.
I would say nostradamus was wise, but correct? hardly.
Let me just destroy this argument once and for all.
Two people i consider wise are Wilson from Home Improvement and The Wise Owl from many TV shows, both of these examples can be considered wise but neither are turned to to give facts, they are turned to for their good judgement, which i think is the criterea for being wise.
Judgement has no bearing on truth, because judgement is subjective. one man might say it's ok to cheat on your wife, another may say it's not, the latter is clearly the wise option but "right" and "wrong" have nothing to do with "true" and "false"
I like your point sam, and I agree. but I don't think it sinks the trifecta argument but rather turns it to a different fashion.
by adding your premise:
wise teachers make good judgements
jesus was a wise teacher
therefore
in jesus' good judgement he 'was son of god'.
good judgement does have a bearing on truth, in general good judgement is relied upon to act as a good substitute for truth when truth is unknown. In this case it's more than reasonable to say that being wise in judgement makes his claim of being 'one' with god and the 'son' of god a good substitute for a truth which is unknown.
this is of course assuming that jesus:
a. existed
b. was a wise teacher (ergo not mad or lying)
the 'honestly mistaken' argument in the OP holds but only to the degree that someone wise in judgement is likely to be honestly mistaken, saying 'wise in judgement' presupposes that there is an ideal measure of truth behind the judgement so an 'honestly mistaken' wise person will be alluding to truths even while being mistaken, and thus the wisdom is still reliable wisdom if not truth.
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I'll conceed that sometimes judgement and truth do correlate but it's like this, it's wise to tell a man to sit under a tree in the rain, but what truth can we extract from that?
we can't say that it is true that a man should sit under a tree in the rain. the man should do whatever he pleases.
and this pincipal is true even in moral things like killing people. we can't say that it is true that a man should not kill another, because a man should do whatever he pleases
Although these are good points, the real problem with the arguement, which I believe has been pointed out in this thread somewhere, is that the real issue of concern, at least for Christians, is the claim of "I am the Son of God". Ultimately, this makes the entire thing circular reasoning since what is essentially being argued is that Jesus could not lie about being the son of god since the son of god does not lie and he is the son of god. The whole wise teacher thing is candy coating to make it seem like a non-circular arguement. They try to make it seem like a real arguement by pointing out to various moral truths, such as judge yourself before others (how they can show matter of factly this is a moral truth I have no idea but people generally accept ithis as such) that Jesus has said (according to the Bible), and then try to lump the "son of god" claim with it but it just doesn't add up. Especially when pretty much every great thinker in the histopru of the world were total dumbasses in certain subjects (*cough* Plato's Ideal city*cough*).
" Why does God always got such wacky shit to say? . . . When was the last time you heard somebody say 'look God told me to get a muffin and a cup tea and cool out man'?" - Dov Davidoff
Of course you will win this argument, you are arguing with a dead person. If you argued with Lewis face-to-face (assuming he is alive) he would be able to respond accordingly.
And, I don't think he meant an intelligent teacher like Pythagoras. If you actually read the book, you will see that he means a moral teacher. If we regard Jesus to be a moral teacher and accept that he actually said what the gospels claim he said (which I doubt most of the responders do), then what Lewis said is true. If he were a moral teacher he wouldn't lie to his followers, etc.
Does anyone take Lewis seriously? That would be sad.
Actually, no, he wouldn't.
You should read a couple of CS Lewis biographies. He lost more then a few arguments when he was alive. For instance, there's one well known incident where he was completely humiliated by a young french (female !) philosopher. She crushed all his god delusions (including that trifecta thing) without even trying, and poor Clive was left speechless.
His response ? Did he come up with a better argument ? Nah. He fictionalised the incident in one of his narnia books, so he could at least win the argument in his fantasy world.
Heh, that's awesome. Yes, the trifecta has been beaten to death. Many Christian theologians cite it as an example of fantastically poor apologetics. Even William Craig, who penned the most recent iteration of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, says it's crap.
The Pythagoreans also believed that one should not eat meat and avoided killing animals. Someone of that moral calibur would not be a liar. So we have ruled out lunatic and liar. The only thing you need to make your argument complete is to find someplace where Pythagoras claimed to be the son of god.
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