Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?

Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis was a British writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian. He was likely most famous for being the author of the Chronicles of Narnia series, but was also well-known for his theological works such as Mere Christianity.

On top of his writing, Lewis was also known for the now-famous, but often-disputed apologetic argument known as Lewis's trilemma. Different forms of the argument have been in use since at least the mid-19th century, but the particular formulation devised by Lewis in a series of BBC radio talks in the 1940s and later published in Mere Christianity in 1952 is arguably the most famous, hence the name of the argument.

As Lewis put it, "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 patronizing 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."

Before we address the validity of this argument, we must first establish the most important related fact of all: Did Jesus even exist? Not only is Jesus mentioned and His works described in detail on countless occasions in the New Testament, but ancient historians Josephus, Tacitus and Celsus all mention the man, His crucifixion and/or His ministry in one way or another. Given those factors, it's hard to dispute that someone by the name of Jesus of Nazareth did, indeed, exist.

As for what we know from the text of the Bible, Jesus was a Jewish teacher who led a three-year ministry in which He claimed to be one with the Father (John 10:30), eternally existent (John 8:58), the Son of God (Luke 22:70, John 5:17, John 10:29-30), the only way to God and Heaven (John 14:6, John 6:40, John 11:25) and even claimed to be God outright (Luke 5:20). On top of the claims made by Jesus, the Bible tells us He lived a sinless life (Hebrews 4:1, 15; 2 Corinthians 2:21), among many other things that obviously point to divinity. But is any of this accurate, or is it all just the ramblings of brainwashed cult members who fell victim to either a madman or a cunning liar?

To answer that question, we'll address each option individually. Was Jesus a liar? This option is arguably the easiest to write off almost immediately. For starters, the Greek philosopher and opponent of Christianity Celsus called Jesus a magician in his writings, at the very least strongly implying the accounts of miracles and prophecy attributed to Jesus in the Bible are reliable.

The crucifixion itself is probably even better evidence, however. If Jesus were simply a liar, one would think that wouldn't have been difficult for his contemporaries to prove and much like His followers, when threatened with death, logic dictates there's no reason to believe a liar wouldn't recant any problem statements that were made fictitiously. Thus, we can pretty much immediately throw out the idea of lies being a viable explanation.

Lunatic is the option that starts to get a bit more complicated. If Jesus were a madman, or His claims were genuinely rooted in some sort of hallucination or mental problem of some other sort, there's no reason to believe He wouldn't have believed what He was claiming, even unto death. Throughout the world and throughout history, it isn't hard to find proof of this concept, since many mentally ill people have believed even more seemingly outlandish things with even more fervor than Jesus.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that if a person is simply spouting nonsense as a result of mental illness, it becomes impossible to demonstrate the stated claims and anyone who lives in the presence of the madman can easily see the reality of the situation. Yes, manipulation is possible and a talent for it is a symptom of some mental illnesses, but it's highly unlikely, at best, that a mentally ill person can keep up a viable facade of believability for nearly as long as was required for Jesus to complete His ministry. On top of that, it's highly doubtful that even a mentally ill person would be able to maintain such a story long or well enough to even gain any real followers.

With those two options out of contention, that only leaves one that, therefore, must be the truth. Since it can't be believed that Jesus would have kept up a lie in such a way as we see in the Bible and a madman would likely never even get a ministry like that of Jesus off the ground, we must concede that He was, indeed, everything He claimed. As hard as it can be to accept and as uncomfortable as such a confession might make a person, for anyone with a truly analytical mind that's open to following the evidence where it leads, the reality that Jesus truly is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind is inescapable.

As Lewis said, "Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth."