Can the "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" argument be made to work?

Surely… and as someone who has dipped their toes into systematic theology, I walked away simply affirming that Jesus, as truly God and truly man, could do things that only God could do, and do things that only man can do. Any further explanation is beyond me.

And with the Trinity, it is an absolute assurance to me that God would not have to know what it was to be alone… that is, and this is where it gets dicey, he became that in the person of Jesus when he became sin.

Hi @heymike3,

First of all, let me say that I appreciate your attempt to grapple with the central mysteries of the Christian faith. I don’t think it’s at all a bad thing that you seek to explain them in simple language. Indeed, I would argue that we need to do this, because whatever explanation we adopt, it needs to be translatable into every language in the planet, since the Gospel of Matthew records that Christ commanded his followers to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I live in Japan, and I can tell you that Japanese doesn’t even have a word for “person.” “Human being,” yes, but “person,” no. The Japanese words for “Trinity” (三位一体) and “hypostatic union” (位格的結合) translate literally as “three ranks one body” and “rank [grammatical case] union.” We need to do better than that.

Re the Incarnation, you explain it thus: “Jesus, as truly God and truly man, could do things that only God could do, and do things that only man can do.” Fine, but that leaves out Jesus’ mind(s) and says nothing about his consciousness(es). Jesus was someone. What does it even mean to say that someone has two minds, one divine and one human, as orthodox Christians have traditionally believed? (And if you’re asking me what I mean by “mind,” here’s my answer: where thoughts come from.)

Re the Trinity, you say that God is not alone. I can understand where you’re coming from: the Trinity is commonly spoken of as a Divine family. And yet there are Bible verses that refer to “God alone” or “You alone.” And there is only one divine Mind: what Scripture refers to as “the mind of God.”

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that Jesus “became sin,” but I understand your reference to Jesus being alone. I appreciate your honesty in acknowledging the difficulty here.

Hi Tim,

The Trilemma rests on acceptance of the veracity of (at least some of) the Gospels. Those who accept the veracity of the Gospels are, by and large, already believing Christians. Skeptics have no particular reason to accept the veracity of the Gospels. Therefore the Trilemma seems to lack a meaningful audience.

You make an excellent point, but there’s no denying that Paul is an early source. In Philippians 2, Paul speaks of Jesus being raised to divine status and being given God’s name. However you interpret that, it’s a pretty tall claim.

Jesus was a single person with two natures, how the two came together without separation, confusion, change or division, is about as close as you can get to a contradiction without it being one.

2 minds? What’s even more astounding is the number of people saying they don’t have one!

Why is it that they are so unobservable, like an uncaused cause… and yet that is what a person is when they can act without being acted upon.

Whilst Paul’s epistles may form the basis of other arguments for Jesus’ divinity, I would suggest that they are irrelevant to the Trilemma. Paul does not appear to have had contact with Jesus other than through visions. Therefore Paul being incorrect in calling Jesus “Lord” does not render Jesus a “Liar” or a “Lunatic”. For the Trilemma to work, the claim to be “Lord” needs to be from Jesus himself. Jesus cannot be considered to be a “Liar” or a “Lunatic” because others (and especially those who did not interact with him during his worldly existence) mistakenly or dishonestly call him “Lord”.

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However, Paul did (claim to) have contact with Jesus’ brother and his closest disciple, and they would undoubtedly have knowledge about what he taught during his ministry. So while it’s possible that Paul could have taught that Jesus was something drastically different than he and his closest followers originally believed, that scenario seems unlikely to me. Paul’s authentic epistles are probably fairly true to what the historical Jesus taught about himself.

Firstly, even if Paul had written that “James/Peter told me that Jesus said that he was Lord”, it still leaves open the possibility that James, Peter and/or Paul is the “Liar” or the “Lunatic” rather than Jesus himself. So Paul’s epistles are still irrelevant to the Trilemma.

But Paul never wrote this.

Paul seems to have written very little about Jesus’ biography and teachings (beyond the bare claims of his death and resurrection), so he is a fairly pauce source for these topics. Also, it is unclear which parts of Paul’s beliefs about Jesus (if any) are due to what he heard from James/Peter, as opposed to his interpretation of his vision.

In fact the very phrase “Jesus taught about himself” contains the implicit assumption of a well-documented ministry of Jesus’, that Paul makes no mention of. How much of the contents of the Gospels was Paul aware of, and how much of it was post-Paulian elaborations? We cannot know, but from Paul’s own writings the lower bounds for what he was aware of is very low – little more than the witnessing of Jesus’ resurrection. Therefore this is again an argument that skeptics might, perfectly reasonably, dismiss out of hand.

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I do recall being really shocked to find how little Paul had to say about Jesus. It’s quite natural to read Paul with the gospels in mind, and when one tries instead to read Paul without the not-yet-written gospels in mind, it all looks very different.

The whole process by which the tales grew and were elaborated is, of course, not clear, but we certainly see this sort of thing again and again in folklore; John Frum comes straight to mind as a modern analogue.

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colewd

Hi Andrew
I agree Paul had a very strong understanding of the theology the gospels were based on.

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Or alternately, the gospels were an elaboration on the bare bones of the theology expressed in Paul’s epistles.

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Paul himself disagrees with you, in Galatians 1.

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

14 And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.

15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace,

16 To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

17 Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.

18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.

19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.

20 Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.

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That would be quite the elaboration!!

All these years later and that kind of skepticism is still hard for me to put down.

Once I was convinced Jesus was a total myth, but I still thought I could know God through a philosophical argument.

Guess what happened…

I stumbled upon a real philosophical singularity

But hardly an unprecedented one. Take the Pacific Cargo Cults during WWII and QAnon as examples of elaborate myths that grew in a relatively short period of time.

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Hi @Tim,

So, I gather you don’t think Jesus made claims about himself which were anywhere near as exalted as the impressive claims made about him by Paul in Philippians 2. I’d like to ask you, then: what about the startlingly forthright saying of Jesus, found in Luke 14:26 (NASB), where Jesus declares, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Do you doubt the authenticity of this saying, too? Just curious.

We appear to be going around in circles. This is already covered by what I said back here:

  1. This is, at best, a translation (from Greek) of a translation (from Aramaic) of what Jesus is purported to have said, decades before Luke was written.

  2. It contains no unambiguous claim from Jesus to be “Lord”.

  3. I would further point out that as this is Luke we’re talking about, it is the same author that wrote (Luke 2:3-6) " And all the people were on their way to register for the census, each to his own city. Now Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was betrothed to him, and was pregnant" – when (i) Luke misdates the census, (ii) there is no record of the Romans ever requiring people to go to their ancestral city to register, and (iii) there is no reason for the Romans to do so (they were interested in taxation and the like, not thousand-year-old genealogy). This does somewhat impeach Luke’s credibility.

On the basis of this, of course I doubt the probative value of this saying! What skeptic wouldn’t?

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You’re asking about a single sentence that some guy is reported to have said over 2000 years ago, It is absurd to think there is anyway to answer this question with even the slightest degree of confidence, one way or another.

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The problem with folkloric sources is that even if one imagines that SOMETHING in them is genuine, there truly is no good way to tell what part, if any, that is. It’s not that particular passages are particularly suspect; it’s that there’s no good evidence for any particular passage at all.

…and, what’s more, one which nobody apparently wrote down for decades after the event. There’s bad evidence, and then there’s bad evidence.

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I’d also add that that saying tends to support the (mislabelled) “Liar” fork of the trilemma. It makes Jesus look like a cult leader (as well the fact that it obviously falls short of claiming to be God). So even accepting it would be of little help.

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Yes. Likewise we can’t tell with any degree of certainty that Julius Caesar actually spoke the words “veni vidi vici” or “alea iacta est” (both phrases being attributed to him by later Roman historians). It’s just that there aren’t a bunch of worshipers of that JC, attempting to parse his purported statements, in an attempt to come up with arguments with no hope of convincing skeptics, so nobody really worries exactly what it was that he may, or may not, have said.

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Oh yes, quite relevant are these examples to the capability of human beliefs.

If I said there is an infinite being, but not an infinite number of things, are you able to consider the philosophy behind this statement?

As far as we know, at least. I mean, it is just possible that Jesus was followed his every waking moment by a very diligent and accurate stenographer who was sure to record his every utterance. But we have no records of this, and it is not very likely, particularly given the low level of literacy at that time.

I think you have said something like this before: If Jesus was, indeed, God and Christianity was true, it would of utmost importance that we know this.

The importance of answering the question, however, does not lower the evidentiary threshold required to support a particular answer. Regardless of whether Jesus was God, the evidence for us to know that is true simply does not exist.

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