I first heard of John Beversluis via John Loftus, who had recommended his material on his own blog. I found a rather intemperate remarks by Beversluis on such matters as textual criticism, and determined that his work would warrant a review at a later date. That date has now arrived as I interact with, comment on, and as required, rebut material from current books of interest in apologetics. Our subject is his book C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion.
Beversluis is a professor of philosophy at Butler University, and by his own confession, an apostate from Christianity. Appropriate to that, this book has had two editions – one by a Christian publisher, one by an atheist publisher. There are a few chapters of CSRR we will discuss, although we will also skip many that are outside my scope of knowledge.
Preface and Introduction
In addressing this portion of CSRR, I should begin with some reflections on my own perceptions of Lewis, which offer a rather strong dichotomy, even as Beversluis does. On the one hand, I cannot help but feel a deep kinship with Lewis, not just as an apologist, but as someone who evidently shared the same unique (and unusual) personality profile. Even on the surface, one can see plenty of similarities between Lewis and I otherwise. He had his creative side with the Narnia series and his sci-fi trilogy; I have mine with the Annals of Hearthstone. He was, as Beversluis indicates, forthright in his opinions; obviously, I am as well. These and other things Beversluis notes as characteristics of Lewis – his forthright honesty, his practices of answering mail personally, his indications that one should believe based on evidence, his assumption of the role of a translator, his independence from authority – are quite typical of the "INTJ" personality. Even his disinclination to provide a “personal testimony” for the Billy Graham organization [26-7] fits in with this, as it does with me (though I have come up with further, more rational and contextual reasons for rejecting the practice than Lewis did).
On the other hand, I long ago recognized that Lewis was, as Beversluis says, a popularizer. [17] To that extent, I would regard him in the same vein as Josh McDowell, not someone who could be regarded as a “last word” on any argument. I would perhaps recommend Lewis’ works as food for thought for the reader, a place to get started, though these days I would prefer to recommend other authors instead. I would not use Lewis’ books as sources. And like McDowell, Lewis has unfortunately gotten a reputation as a “finisher” when he is not (though unlike McDowell, he would want to make it clear, I think, that he was not one). To that extent, I think Beversluis is aiming at a static target 10 feet in front of him with a Gatling gun. As I said of The Jury Is In some time ago, they’re not addressing the best arguments, and they need to do so.
Beversluis claims that “even when Lewis’s arguments are formulated more rigourously…they still fail” [11] but after seeing his comments on things like textual criticism, I have serious doubts that Beversluis would be able to distinguish what a “more rigorously formulated” argument would be in certain subject areas. However, to determine whether this is so will be one of the points of this review. In sum, however, I count myself neither an admirer nor a detractor of Lewis. He served a purpose in his time and place, but his apologetics works, in my view, reflect something from which we have rightly moved on.
The Basis of Critique
Beversluis indicates that a chief characteristic of Lewis is that his rhetoric is much stronger than his arguments, and that is what makes him seem more persuasive to readers. I can neither agree nor disagree. I consider myself immune to rhetoric; the selection from “The Weight of Glory” that Beversluis offers as an example [21], and which others, as he says, described as “the best sermon” they have ever heard or read, is the sort of thing that would have me rapidly scanning the text looking for the point, if not moving on entirely to something else. I suppose it could be said that the typical INTJ is like this -- fully capable of delivering acres of seasoned prose while not being able to stand it much from others. It is the “ham actor” quality in us that does this. In any event, we will also be on the lookout for whether Beversluis is correct in his evaluation, at least in the chapters we will discuss.
Chapter One: Lewis as Christian Apologist
Lewis was an evidentialist apologist, of course. But to be quite frank, he was often outside his field of knowledge unawares. This was not entirely his fault. Many of the insights now available would have been unavailable to him in his time and place. Not surprisingly, then, some of the reputed faults of Christianity which Lewis acknowledged, and which Beversluis highlights (27), reflect this: Lewis was particularly embarrassed by Jesus’ reputedly erroneous predictions of his own return. I might well have been too, had I not discovered the preterist alternative. Lewis called the Gospels ”episodic, clumsily written,” and lacking “in all sense of climax.” Perhaps that is so as they are written in modern English; but that is for good reason. The Gospels were the product of an oral culture, and in that regard, as scholars like Shiner have shown, the Gospels are well suited to their tasks. All except perhaps Luke, initially, were intended to be presented to an audience that was largely illiterate. The “episodic” nature of the Gospels – which is also characteristic of Greco-Roman biography, a genre into which the Gospels fall – is a reflection of the oral nature of that social world. What Lewis finds clumsy in print was quite graceful when presented by mouth by a competent narrator. (For more on this, please see my material on oral tradition in Trusting the New Testament.)
Lewis answered the “pagan copycat” claims of his day by agreeing with them, in essence, and saying that God set out early signs of what would come via the pagans. This line of argument, however, is fruitless, and should be abandoned, as the alleged “anticipations” offer no real parallels. (See on this portions of Shattering the Christ Myth.) Additionally, Lewis’ conceptions of “faith” [29] are quite anachronistic. There is no “Faith-B” in reality (“a religious state of mind”). “Faith –A” (“a settled intellectual assent”) comes closer to the real definition, but still fails to capture the essence of loyalty that pistis communicates. These flaws are one of the reasons I think Lewis has outlived a good chunk of his usefulness, even as a popularizer. They would also be examples of things that there are more “rigorous formulations” of available, that a critic like Beversluis would be obliged to address if his critique veered into one more of Christianity than of simply Lewis himself.
Chapters 2-4 are about Lewis’ theistic proofs, and that subject is beyond my scope. In noting this, however, I am not saying that a more competent party might not be able to mount a more rigorous defense of Lewis’ basic arguments. I also discovered that most of what was left (beyond Ch 5) involved subjects beyond my scope. That said, Ch 5 has so many errors in it that I may be busy for a while. Ch 5 is about the famous “Trilemma” argument, and regular readers will remember that this is a topic I have gone into some depth on. I will be the first to say that most formulations of it are not detailed enough, and that includes Lewis’ version, and even the Kreeft-Tacelli adaption. This is clearly one of those areas where Beversluis isn’t going after the “rigorous” stuff. Indeed, he devotes rather too much time – which would have been any amount of time – to ransacking Lewis for having what he reads as several different versions of the Trilemma argument he presented over the years. [111f]
Beversluis frequently adopts a tone of scolding triumphalism whenever he finds Lewis in a perceived inconsistency; in this way I can understand why other Lewis biographers and hagiographers found him wanting. But the tone itself would be fine, in my view, if Beversluis’ ducks were in a row. They aren’t. For example, he makes much over Lewis arguing in one case for Jesus as “God” but in another version as “Son of God,” as though these were two entirely different arguments (in his words, “two very different claims”). In reality, they are not. Lewis was speaking in popular terms, using the popular language in which addressing Jesus as either “God” or “Son of God” would have been regarded as correct. I am not saying this language is actually, technically correct, of course: it is too imprecise for that, and rests in the main on modern confusion which has turned theos (God) into a proper name, when it was not (rather, it was an abstract noun, like “deity”). Jesus is properly called theos is that sense. In addition, “Son of God” has by popular usage come to be a divine title that means much the same thing. In the NT, however, it refers only to the incarnate Jesus. Lewis’ dual use of the designations is flawed to the extent that it is imprecise; but that imprecision reflected concepts and ideas his audience, and many churchgoers today, still have. It is all the more remarkable, then, that Beversluis is apparently unaware of this and thinks they are “very different” claims: In popular, modern parlance, they are not.
(In that vein, Beversluis is also in error to object to Lewis’ use of the word “precisely” [114] to describe the nature of Jesus’ claims. Jesus’ claims were indeed precise; popular usage, however, is not.)
Further compounding this error, Beversluis professes to find yet another difference in Lewis’ designation of Jesus being “one with God” or the Son of Man. [114] Both of these claims are essentially the same as what is claimed of Jesus as “God”, the former reflecting Wisdom Christology, and the latter reflecting the unique identity of the Danielic Son of Man figure. Apparently Beversluis’ study of Chrstological terms was severely limited. All this preemptory posturing by Beversluis aside, we move now to Beversluis’ attempts to actually defuse the Trilemma as an argument.
His first move is as predictable as it is pedantic: Beversluis raises the objection that Lewis merely took for granted that the Gospels accurately recorded Jesus’ words and intentions. Well, of course he did. “Jesus said X and Y” is an entirely separate argument from “Jesus was Lord/Liar/Lunatic when he said X and Y.” Lewis would undoubtedly freely admit that he took the Gospels for granted, but that has nothing to do with the Trilemma argument in and of itself. It is rather like the YouTube atheist who began to address my arguments on the doctrine of the Atonement by remarking that I was taking for granted that God existed. Well – yes. I could hardly be arguing about the Atonement otherwise. Lewis’ argument was never intended to be a journey from point A to point Z; it is a journey from point Q to point T, and it is pointless carping to object that he didn’t start at point A when that was not his intention.
Relatedly, Beversluis objects that we do not have most of the actual words of Jesus anyway, since Jesus spoke Aramaic and the NT Is written in Koine Greek. [117] This too is a pointless objection. For this to be a problem, Beversluis would need to demonstrate that there was serious lack of skill in the NT authors when it came to translating Aramaic into Greek; or he would need to show that there was some ambiguity inherent in one or both languages that made it likely that Jesus’ words would be rendered incorrectly, allowing, his request for a cheese sandwich in Aramaic to be mistranslated into a claim to be the Son of Man in Greek. Beversluis, however, makes little effort to argue for any such confusion; in a note he switches over to an objection that no one could have known what Jesus said to Pilate, an argument we have answered before here. Beversluis then goes on to rely upon the assessments of John Hick for an argument that the Gospel documents are not reliable reports, nor are any from eyewitnesses. He is content to rest in this view as “mainstream New Testament scholarship” speaking and so makes no effort to interact with contrary views, much less set up an epistemology for determining who has written and ancient document. In other words, Beversluis is content to rest on his (or Hick’s) laurels and will not offer any serious arguments to show that the Gospels relate inauthentic material. (Though again, blaming Lewis for not engaging this issue is itself misguided.)
Kreeft and Tacelli’s arguments for lack of fabrication are then engaged [118f]. I will say that I do not find their arguments persuasive either; rather, I simply say that the burden is on those like Beversluis and Hick who would deny authenticity to formulate and defend an argument against it. Beversluis does not do this, and so has not fulfilled the burden of the critic, nor thereby required an answer. He only vaguely offers suggestions of words being “embellished” or “misunderstood” and a broad parallel to cult figures who have been revered by followers (and that in answer to one of Kreeft and Tacelli’s arguments, which I disagree with). There is absolutely no effort by Beversluis to offer an epistemology for determining whether indeed some specific words of Jesus were “embellished” or “misunderstood.” For someone who criticized Lewis for not dealing with the issue, and taking some position for granted, this seems a remarkable hypocrisy. In the end, Beversluis only offers three vague, unsupported reasons for thinking such things may have happened. [120] One is that he merely (and barely) denies that the Gospels were by authentic eyewitnesses, or informed by them, with, as noted, no argument to speak of. Second, he wonders why the claims were related so “various and ambiguously.” But as we have noted, the ambiguity rests in Beversluis’ own lack of familiarity with the subject, and he says very little to show otherwise, not even knowing how such titles as “Son of Man” operated. Finally, he points to the relative ignorance of the disciples as portrayed in the Gospels, as they are “always saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, asking obtuse questions,” etc. From this he claims it is “high comedy” to suggest that such men would “arrive at a reasonably clear grasp of Trinitarian theology.” [121] However, this rather bigoted assessment merely reflects Beversluis’ own poor grasp, as a modern, of Trinitarian theology; the basis for it – Jewish Wisdom theology – was part of the “mental furniture” of the day, and would have been as familiar to the disciples as the Aramaic language. Moreover, blunders in one area do not equate with blunders in all: If that were the case, Beversluis’ many unqualified remarks on textual criticism and Christology – as well as many more to come – would lead us to suggest that he could not possibly understand philosophy, even as a professor of philosophy.
Further, what can then be said of educated men like Matthew, Luke, and Paul, whose own affirmations are of what Jesus’ identity was are no different? The depth of Beversluis’ ineptness here is shown in that he relies not on serious scholarship, but the assessments of Thomas Paine(!) regarding the Gospels. Paine is quoted in notes regarding such things as differences in the Resurrection accounts; even more damning to Beversluis is that he admits that Paine’s comments on this subject have made an “indelible” impression on him – such that he apparently thought Paine, who had no serious qualifications on the subject, ought to have been the “last word.” Paine is further quoted in notes as saying that it is a simple matter to hypothesize how the truth could “progress” into becoming untruth. Paine’s simplistic hypothesizing, however, is not an argument, much less one that can or is applied to any particular passage in the Gospels. Paine is also relied upon for “argument from incredulity” in which Beversluis merely lists Biblical miracles and deems them incredible, but provides no argument for why other than alluding to a classic “silence” argument.
We pick up where Beversluis tackles Lewis for his evaluations as a literary specialist. Lewis, as a seasoned expert in literature, had properly rebuked Biblical scholars for designating the Gospels as myth or legend, pointing out that as one who had himself read countless myths and legends, he was well acquainted with them and knew that the Gospels were not of that genre.
Beversluis disdainfully dismisses this as a “question based on the false assumption that wide reading in a particular genre necessarily makes one’s judgment more reliable than narrow intensive reading in the same genre.” [121] The assumption, however, is not to be deemed so recklessly false on such short notice: It is based on the principle, indisputable, that more experience generally trumps lesser experience.
This may beg exceptions, of course, which is what is being done here: In essence, Beversluis is arguing that perhaps some Biblical scholars achieved sensitivity equal to or greater than Lewis’ in a shorter period of time, and with a less generous data set. But that in itself is an assumption that requires proving by Beversluis, not merely assertion; indeed, it requires a heavier burden of proof, since Beverlsuis himself is not an expert in myths and legends. His objection here is merely a posture.
In any event, this ignores the more “rigorous” study done since and apart from Lewis, which designates the Gospels in the genre of Greco-Roman bioi. There is no authorial intent of myth or legend. Designating them as such is based, in general, on their reporting of events that critics personally find incredible, which is merely Hume’s defeated premises all over again.
Hereafter, Beversluis egregiously nitpicks a generalization of Lewis on “liberal” Biblical scholarship, which he supposes Lewis seldom or never read. He goes as far as to take Lewis’ “all” description of such theology with highly fundamentalist intent, as though Lewis were claiming to have done an exhaustive survey of every single liberal. In all this, Beversluis is again unfairly demanding of a popularizer the precision of a scholar.
All that said, though, in the end the problem with Lewis is not that he generalized, but that he was not right enough. Despite Beversluis’ bewilderment that Lewis thought to dismiss “the life’s work of a great New Testament scholar like Bultmann” with a citation of John 8:8, it remains that Bultmann’s work has been discovered as highly anachronistic by further and more sophisticated scholarship, and he is no longer regarded as an authoritative voice, save my those on the fringe of lunacy in scholarship themselves (eg, Robert Price).
A section follows in which Beversluis takes particular pains to rebut Lewis’ arguments regarding how Jesus’ profession to forgive sins indicates his divinity. I will say here that I think Lewis offered too heavy a concentration of the relevant passages. Although I agree they offer strong indications that Jesus harbored a divine self-identity, there are much more direct claims that would have provided better argumentation.
That said, Beversluis is not immune from criticism for his own rebuttal. He pinions Lewis for saying that in these passages, Jesus “unhesitatingly” behaved as if he were the offended party. Beversluis appeals to the reputedly “fragmentary, episodic,” [123] etc. nature of the Gospels – repeating his prior arguments in summary, which we have shown to be lacking – as a reason why Lewis could not possibly know that Jesus behaved in an “unhesitating” way.
The appeal to the condition of the Gospels is mere rhetoric. Beyond that, though Lewis might not be expected to know this, the claim of honor implied by Jesus in these passages does indicate a serious lack of hesitation and a bold confidence: To have made such a claim before a crowd, which would stand ready to challenge (as they did) any exceptional claim of honor, would have required either the boldness of certainty or the insanity of one so certified -- or else a serious death wish.
As a bonus, Beversluis also fails to understand how Jesus was acting as the offended party. He further fails in wondering how this interpretation of Jesus’ actions could be right, if he also gave his disciples the power to forgive sins. [124] The answer would be quite obvious to one schooled in the social strictures of the period: Jesus is thus acting as an authorized broker of forgiveness, able to delegate the privilege of forgiving sins to others. It is merely a further example of Jesus asserting his divine prerogative. Beversluis speculates that perhaps Jesus too believed he had been delegated to forgive sin, but in so doing he merely adds what he wants to the story in order to reach a desired conclusion.
I would remark upon an opinion Beversluis solicited from a psychiatrist [127]. It offers the highly decontextualized suggestion that Jesus’ claims of divinity reflected some mystical sense of the “divine within him” in the same sense that being divine is “open to all of us...” In essence, this psychiatrist has suggested that Jesus believed something akin to pantheism, which is historically nonsensical, and requires a great deal more to be proven (eg, that such thought lines existed or emerged in monolatrous Jewish Palestine, and would earn any sort of following).
Beversluis offers a listing of texts which he believes shows that Jesus was delusional, or had the right “profile” to be delusional. What we find, however, is that Beversluis is anachronistically psychoanalyzing Jesus according to modern, Western values. He also indicates various behaviors without explaining why they indicate a “delusional” profile. His analyses is poor and requires much unentangling.
Luke 2:41-9 Mary and Joseph are “so distraught” over Jesus’ behavior as a youth.
It is hard to believe that Beversluis is serious here. Children wandering away from parents in public places is so common as to be a stereotype, and we would hardly be surprised if parents express concern (where he gets “distraught” is hard to say, too).
Beversluis does not bother to explain why he thinks this fits a “delusional” profile, so not much more can be said; however, we might note that at the age Jesus is portrayed, young boys were expected to show themselves able and willing to cut the apron strings, so to speak.
Matt. 12:46-50 Jesus “fail[ed] to recognize his own mother and brothers”.
Beversluis is being far too creative here; there is no sign of any such failure. He also has no understanding of the language of collectivist ingroups, as he apparently thinks that Jesus is literally identifying his disciples as his mother and brothers. On the contrary, familial terminology was characteristic on ingroup relationships, so that, for example, rabbis could be called “father,” as was the Roman Emperor.
Mark 3:21 Jesus’ family thinks Jesus is beside himself and demon possessed.
I have answered this before when another critic used the same passage: One may note that the family of Jesus apparently did not make this judgment following observation of Jesus himself, as they come from outside looking for him…
The meaning ascribed is not correct. Jesus violated the norms of his culture in a variety of ways, for example by associating with tax collectors and prostitutes, he was violating the accepted social norms and purity codes. In so doing he brought dishonor on his family in the eyes of his contemporaries -- and the "madness" line of reasoning not only does not represent the evaluation of a trained psychologist, but also amounts to no more than a makeshift accusation designed to a) explain away and mute the dishonor of the situation; b)get others to move away from Jesus by describing him as ritually impure.
The "madness" reasoning is functionally equivalent to saying Jesus was a leper, but had the advantage of not being visibly testable.
Mark 3:11-12 Jesus has conversations with demons.
Of course, here Beversluis merely begs the question that such beings do not exist.
Mark 5:12-14 Jesus allows demons to enter into pigs and destroy them.
How this is evidence of delusion is not explained; Beversluis apparently felt the need to insert this objection here as topical, though it is notable that he comes up with no better an authority than David Strauss (!) to comment on it.
Strauss objected to the alleged “injury to the owners,” but this is doubtful: If these swine were monitored in such a remote place, there were no “owners”; this was a herd of wild pigs who were fed (as are modern deer sometimes) to make them suitable as food, but no one would be regarded as “owners” as such.
Mark 11:2-4 Jesus borrows a colt without permission.
We have discussed this charge in detail here.
Mark 11:13-15 and par. Jesus cursed a fig tree wrongly.
And this one, in detail here. Beversluis is doing a very poor job thinking that Strauss offers anything worthwhile on this subject.
Matthew 11:20-24 Jesus curses three villages for not accepting his message. cf also Mark 6:11.
Here again, Beversluis merely begs the question that Jesus does not have the authority to pronounce such judgments. Additionally, he adapts a rather “fundamentalist” reading of the text as he objects to the reputed unfairness of “babies, the elderly, deaf,” etc in the villages who would not have a chance to hear the message. This is merely language of collective representation, which does not at all mean there are not potential exceptions; here Jesus is speaking in the normal mode of the day, on which “all or nothing” language was the norm. (It still is today, in some cases: If someone said, “People in New York City are rude,” would Beversluis take that as a universal classification of all 7 million people in the city? Or would he recognize it for what it is – an extremist expression intended to indicate that the speaker had had extended experiences with rude people in New York City?)
Relatedly, Beversluis later objects to Jesus' strong condemnatory language towards the Pharisees. However, Jesus' language is nothing out of the ordinary for challenge-riposte in an agonistic society. Perhaps Beversluis wishes to suggest then that all members of such societies are delusional.
Jesus expects people to simply accept his authority. He doesn’t give people reasons for his beliefs or reply to their objections.
Beversluis is merely misinformed as to the nature of ancient teaching, which was very much based in authoritarian pronouncements, and less often involved give and take of the sort found in modern classrooms. The teachings of Confucius, for example, indicate a highly authoritarian background.
Matthew 5:27-8 Jesus makes wanting to commit adultery as bad as actually doing it.
Beversluis’ reaction to this is rather strange. He first says that this means there is “no longer any point in trying to resist temptation”. So it is. So what? Is Beversluis trying to justify lustful gazing upon other people’s wives? Does he consider that a virtue? (But he is wrong anyway; see next reason.)
Second, Beversluis supposes that by “parity of reasoning wanting to donate” money to an organization is the same as actually doing it. But he has misread the analogy. Jesus has not called the two acts exactly the same; he has distinguished between physical adultery and “heart adultery” and called both sins. It is clear that Beversluis does not have any awareness of the context which governed Jesus warning: As Keener reports in his Matthew commentary [186f], Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries would likely have agreed with his teaching here, for lust was frequently regarded as “visual fornication or adultery.” However, the blame was placed on women for being alluring, rather than on men for being lustful.
Presumably Beverluis recognize the parallel to be found in modern Islamic societies, so unless he happens to agree with Islam that the real problem is that women are too alluring, we cannot understand why he would find a problem here with Jesus’ teaching.
In any event, the teaching would not regard thinking of donating and actually donating as precise equivalents, but as relatedly virtuous.
Jesus never gives reasons for being virtuous that aren’t self-seeking, like rewards in heaven, or hell fire.
It is hard to believe that Beversluis is serious here either, since every law code in the world works on a basic premise of punishment for bad behavior, and rewards and punishments form the basis for basic moral training. Since Beversluis does not bother to explain what he thinks Jesus ought to have offered in place of this, it is hard to answer further.
Jesus makes it hard to understand what he teaches; he teaches in parables.
Once again Beversluis is merely running afoul of normal educational methods in the ancient world; students were expected to reason out the puzzles given them. This provided a greater impact (“teaching them to fish”) than merely offering explanations straight out (“giving them a fish”).
Beyond that, Beversluis also misses on the fact that such oblique methods were intended to dissuade outgroup persons with no serious interest in joining the group; to his own ingroup, as the Gospels note, Jesus explained the meaning of his parables. This too was a normal method of teaching at the time: And thus, in teaching the “multitudes” this way, Jesus would be able to rake off the cream of the crop, so to speak, for those who would be most effective in his ministry efforts.
(Note as well that this is not the same thing as the post-Resurrection scenario, in which widespread evangelism all groups and classes was performed, with no parables; Beversluis is apparently thinking of Jesus’ ministry in the same terms as a post-resurrection evangelism scenario.)
In the end, Beversluis says he is not using these passages to try to argue that Jesus was delusional, and that seems to be true: Rather, he is merely hoping the reader will read that conclusion into his listing of them implicitly. He is correct that these passages do warrant explanation, rather than being “explained away or ignored.” [130] However, given how little effort he made to find out more about their informing contexts (eg, thinking Strauss’ early 1800s material was the best and last word on a subject!) it is clear that Beversluis’ own interest in arriving at the truth of the matter is marginal.