 |
|
|
|
Rebuttal to Jury Chapter 7
The Trilemma on Trial
Or, the Identity of Jesus Ignored
J. P. Holding
Jim Perry's "refutation" of the trilemma argument, as presented in The Jury Is In, serves in no way to refute the trilemma, but rather serves to refute only the most simplistic, uninformed version of it. The simple form of the trilemma presents only the Robert-Schullerized trifurcate phrase, "Lord, Liar or Lunatic," without further discussion. Perry's analysis completely ignores better-developed forms of the argument, such as those presented by Peter Kreeft and William Lane Craig(1); it also does not deal with the majority of the relevant data on the matter with any degree of sufficiency. As is typical of the Jury essays, it is only an outline form (as presented by McDowell in ETDAV) of a much stronger argument that is truly attacked - not a cogent form of the argument itself. Furthermore, Perry does no more than muddy the simplified argument by making suggestions that offer little in the way of hard evidence or concrete proof: That Jesus was engaged in "degrees" of lying, or suffered a "degree" of lunacy. The ultimate question the trilemma intends to address - "Who was Jesus?" - he leaves quite directly unanswered. In his words:
Addressing this argument requires some degree of caution:the basic criticism lies in the fact that none of the three horns of the "trilemma" actually represent a single possibility, but rather a broad spectrum of possibilities. (Does this include the "Lord" option?) All that is logically required to refute the trilemma is to show that the decision "Who is Jesus of Nazareth" cannot be reduced to three and only three clear-cut possibilities. It is not necessary to positively answer the question - indeed it may be impossible to conclusively answer it.
We can see in the above an immediate dive into the refuge of the speculation: Perry's profession that "it may be impossible" to conclusively discern Jesus' identity. Now obviously, if speculation is our refuge, we may indeed agree with Perry on this point. Jesus may have been a space alien, or a time traveller, or a prankster; the entire world may have been created five minutes ago, and all of our memories are just carefully-implanted illusions! It is impossible to conclusively prove or disprove any of these ideas, but some ideas have more weight and merit than others. Perry's appeal to a "broad spectrum" of possibilities turns out, as we shall see, to include very few specific possibilities concerning Jesus' identity; and while conjecture is an acceptable means of discussion, we will note that Perry regularly argues from a speculative base, as opposed to merely using theoretical possibilities for the purpose of evaluation. We may also note, as we do in parenthesis above, that there is no "broad spectrum" available in the "Lord" option of the Trilemma. There are no degrees of being the Jewish God of the Universe! The claims of Jesus require our immediate attention, if for no other reason than that.
It should also be pointed out that Perry is at best only partially correct in his methodology. When he argues that the trilemma is refuted by showing the horns not to be clear-cut and distinct possibilities, this is correct ONLY if one can prove ALL of the horns to be such. But, for example, if only two of the horns are 'fuzzy' but the third one 'tight', (the 'Lord' option),then the trilemma has simply converted to a powerful di-lemma and the problem is still in our faces! And, when he (and other skeptics as well) argues that the trilemma is refuted by showing that there are more than three possibilities, he has simply turned it from a bothersome trilemma into a bothersome tetralemma - even if, as some may claim, the 'Lord' option is not that tight at all! To be absolutely correct Perry has to demonstrate sufficiently that (1) the trilemma problem does not even arise (e.g. Jesus never even claimed to be God) or (2) that the terms Lord, Liar, and Lunatic are to a certain degree applicable to the same individual at the same time! And although there ARE skeptics that believe that God is both a lunatic and a liar in His promises of both judgment and grace, it is premature to so label Perry :-) In any event, skeptics who continually say that the trilemma is "refuted" whenever another option is added miss the point. Only the "tri" part is refuted - the "lemma" is still there, whether is a tri-, a quadra-, a quinto-, or whatever number you please! Of course, it is not surprising to find skeptics attempting to lump options onto the 'lemma - but we will see that the attempts put forward are fairly thin!
That said, we note - as usual - that we have moved the majority of our data on this subject to the other articles. Here again is what we have left behind:
|
Jesus, the Misquoted?
Perry and Robert Price alike begin with the simplest suggestion that is quite common to skeptics: that Jesus never made any claims to deity, or that His claims were altered or misunderstood. Let our present host, Perry, carry the floor:
Exactly what Jesus claimed is not known. The gospels are the closest thing we have to an account of his claims, and there is no explicit claim of divinity by Jesus in the gospels, let alone an unambiguous theological statement of what precisely it might mean for a man to claim to be God...A perfectly valid and supportable response to "Jesus claimed to be God" is "No, he didn't."
And Robert Price yells, taking his turn:
An equally serious problem is that the comment tacitly treats the gospel episodes as disinterested, impartial footage shot by someone on the scene, as if Jesus had been caught debating with the scribes on the local Seven Eleven's security camera in the motzah aisle. Again, this only seems to work if you are already a biblical inerrantist. The rest of us might be excused for wondering whether, at a remove of decades from the events, in accounts written to convert people to faith in Jesus as a divine being, we are really dealing with straight reporting. I am not saying we definitely are not dealing with accurate reporting, just that this is really the whole point at issue and McDowell just takes it for granted.
A couple of notes on Price's comment to begin:
Re: the "inerrantist" remark: he is mistaken here; all you have to be is convinced that the data FOR the historical accuracy of the literature is of more weight than the data AGAINST the historical accuracy of the accounts. Theology is NOT the issue here at all. Since we are discussing the accuracy of the reporting details -- which can be checked according to standard historiographical canons -- there is no real place for the discussion of theological beliefs like "inerrancy." Price has confused his categories and concepts here.
Re: the "divine being" line: any intent on the part of the authors (see above) would certainly have been less specific than that. Indeed, the goal of John was "faith" in Jesus -- as a savior, a much broader notion than that of simply deity. Matthew would have been more interested in showing how Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish messianic hope, for example. (This divine being point also contradicts Price's later argument: if the writers were only intent on PROVING the deity of Christ, then WHY ISN'T the explicit data in favor of divinity any "clearer"?! Many of Price's arguments, we shall see, revolve around his position that the deity-position in not even PRESENT in the gospels -- an obvious contradiction to the above position that the gospels are only VEHICLES for the deity position! You sort of can't have it both ways -- it's called "kettle logic," my friends!!)
We have covered the matter of "removed decades from events" in our article on Robert Price, and Glenn Miller has addressed the matter of bias and "straight reporting." Price has made this the implicit REQUIREMENT for truthfulness - as if no one can be passionate about something AND correct about it at the same time! There is logically NO RELATIONSHIP between the two. This requirement is not only arbitrary, but it is against the very nature of communication within society (and especially within science!). One starts by asserting a position one believes in, and then defending it. In most literature, the reason one writes is because one believes that one's words/message is important and of value! For example, is Price to be disqualified before a hearing -- simply because he is passionate enough to write about his subject?! And as to the remark, "written to convert": as happens all too often in Price's essay, he generalizes to the point of distortion, and groups unlike elements together. Only one of the Gospels (John) makes it clear that its intent is to "convert"; Luke's gospel (with its preface being in the form of scientific treatise prefaces!) is explicitly said to be aimed at providing "certainty" to someone ALREADY converted (or at least taught) -- sounds like "straight reporting" to me!; Mark was probably designed as a summary of Peter's preaching; and Matthew is often considered semi-catechetical as well. The genre of the gospels is that of classic biography of a great figure. Price has simply overlooked the complex/hybrid character and recent genre identification of the gospels, in preferring to characterize them as semi-propaganda!
As for Perry's version of the argument, well, of course, speculation may lead us anywhere: Perhaps Jesus really claimed to be King of the Baboons, or the founder of the first mail-order pizzeria! But absent reasonable basis, speculation is without merit. Price provides no reason to doubt that the claims of Jesus were actually made (other than that, apparently, they were not recorded on videotape - a sort of "Did Not, Did NOT!" childlike argument), and what little reasoning Perry provides for his own assertion is worthless, bald assertion.
|
Shifting the Trilemma
Now if we allow that Jesus' claims were manufactured by His followers, or that His claims were misunderstood by them, we do nothing more than create a different sort of trilemma! Jesus' followers were either:
- Telling the truth, and they knew it;
- Telling a lie, and they knew it; or,
- Telling a lie, and they didn't know it because they misunderstood.
If we choose B), we are left to wonder what motivated Jesus' followers to begin lying and maintain that lie. They did not benefit at all by claiming that their Master was God incarnate: They were ostracized, criticized, rejected, persecuted, and in many cases martyred. Nor did they make loads of money by claiming what they did - no Jim Bakkers in this crowd! This being the case, we may ask why none of Jesus' followers cracked under pressure, or got fed up with persecutions and inconveniences, and admitted that the divinity claims by Jesus were a fabrication. We may, of course, speculate that it is possible that Jesus' followers lied, but there are no signed confessions, no counterclaims by the Pharisees trumpeting the recanting of a disciple of Jesus - nothing. To argue this, we must argue from silence. More than that, we must argue AGAINST the data of their lives and the witness of history. To raise it as a MERE possibility does not constitute advancing evidence for the speculation.
Choosing C) offers a slightly more hopeful refuge for the skeptic. But as we have shown in the expanded essays on this subject, it is hardly plausible that Jesus' claims were misunderstood; they are too clear-cut when understood in the context of the time and place they were made. Perry attempts to strengthen this argument, however, by saying:
Given that Jesus spoke in metaphor constantly, indeed in rather cryptic metaphor sometimes, it seems that for no particular claim can it be conclusively ruled as intended literally rather than symbolically.
However, it is a gross exaggeration to say that Jesus spoke in metaphor constantly; moreover, just as Perry claims degrees of lunacy and lying, are there not also degrees of metaphorical difficulty? Some metaphors are easier to understand than others, and some people understand and interpret metaphor better than others! So, how can we be sure that Jesus' followers didn't at some point correctly grasp what He was saying? It is only in our modern-day arrogance that we say that they were incorrect, and we, looking down the tunnel of 2000 years, are better qualified to understand (and contrary to evidence!) what Jesus actually said! Indeed, we are told that Jesus DID explain things to His disciples privately after the crowds were gone: "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything." (Mark 4:34 - this was standard practice for an inner circle of disciples. For a practical example of this, see the Parable of the Sower in Matt. 13.) These, of course, represent the people who wrote (Matthew, John) or else supplied information for (Mark, Luke) the Gospels. And at any rate, many of the claims to divinity are quite direct, and not in the least metaphorical, as we show in the items linked to above.
For more on the trilemma, see here.
|
Conclusions
Perry closes with this observation:
One way to judge the logical quality of an argument like this is to consider a similar argument about someone one feels differently about, for instance Muhammad: liar, lunatic, or prophet of God? One can find muslims (sic) making essentially similar arguments to those cited by McDowell about his sterling honesty and clarity of mind. The same (goes for) other religious figures.
What Perry apparently does not comprehend is that a form of the trilemma is used on every person we meet who makes ANY kind of claim, even if we don't go through the entire formal process! We go to our car in the parking lot and find it has been dinged; the fellow in the car next to it says he didn't do it - is he telling the truth, lying, ignorant or crazy? [Or is the guy in the car maybe a legend? :-) ] Someone says that they have seen a flying saucer; are they telling the truth, lying, or seeing things? The trilemma is merely a framework upon which to place evidence; its validity derives from the quality of the evidence, not from the framework itself, which is quite useful and logical!
Perry writes in closing, "There needs to be an intellectual honesty in consideration" of the trilemma argument. Perry's claims about the trilemma, as we have seen, do not relate to "dishonesty" but are more about its possible misconstruction. To imply that those who use it are somehow "dishonest" is to assume that those who use the trilemma know better, but use it anyway! Perry has in no way shown anything like this, not even for Josh McDowell, and so his slur and slander should be exposed for what it is--a simple ad hominem argument at best, and malicious slander and hypocrisy at worst. It is significant that Jim Perry resorts consistently to speculation and arguments from silence, rather than concrete evidence, to attempt to derail the trilemma. Appealing to possibly corrupted texts, possible false reports, possible events, and possible delusions, without clearly indicating that they are but speculation, while saying or showing awareness of little or nothing about the claims and data at issue, is NOT intellectual honesty; it is obfuscation masquerading as scholarship. All that has been shown is what any apologist would agree with: that the trilemma needs support from data in order to be effective - which is not a disagreeable thing to surmise, for any argument!
|
Notes
- Perry selects two Christian writers as affirmers of the trilemma argument: Josh McDowell, of course, and C. S. Lewis. It is only fair to note clearly - Perry does so only obliquely - that neither of these writers intended for the argument to be used alone. Lewis used the trilemma as part of a radio broadcast to the public at large, and later incorporated it into Mere Christianity, which is a book properly regarded as a brief set of personal observations - rhetorical, as Perry correctly indicates. The broadcasts and the book were not intended to be in-depth treatises.
McDowell, of course, presents more than just the trilemma argument in his Verdict series. He also provides within the chapter on the trilemma a chart offering expansions on the categories of "liar" and "lunatic" which Perry leads the reader to assume are missing. Under "liar" McDowell includes deliberate misrepresentation, hypocrite, demon, fool; under "lunatic" he includes seriously deluded. None of these are expanded upon by McDowell, but they are listed (and quite conspicuous) for consideration. Furthermore, McDowell devotes less than 4 pages of text to the trilemma. These two factors clearly indicate that McDowell did not intend for the trilemma to be accepted in its simplest form. In effect, and in line with the general technique of Jury, Perry has set up a "straw man" by directing our attention to the singularity of the trilemma as presented by Josh McDowell.
Interestingly, Perry cites Christian apologist William Lane Craig's criticism of the trilemma argument, which refers to it as "unsound" because it neglects to address "unmentioned alternatives," such as Jesus being a legendary figure. But Perry lets the cat out of the bag unintentionally: Craig's full quote by Perry indicates that the trilemma "is false as it stands" (italics added). Upon investigation, I found that the Craig book that Perry quotes from is in fact a later edition of a book that I personally own, Apologetics: An Introduction. The following lines from my edition are also in the 1994 edition:
It is naive and outdated to simply trot out the dilemma "liar, lunatic or Lord" and adduce several proof texts where Jesus claims to be the Son of God...(I)f this apologetic is to work we must do the requisite spadework of sorting out those claims of Jesus that can be established as authentic, and then draw out their implications. This will involve not only mastering Greek but also the methods of modern criticism and the criteria of authenticity...
(The argument) is often more effective when used defensively than offensively...used offensively to convince someone that Jesus was divine, this apologetic can become derouted...Many people will say Jesus was a man from outer space...I think that it is more effective to argue that Jesus' claims provide the religio-historical context in which the resurrection becomes significant, as it confirms those claims...
It is also instructive to read the full text of the Craig quote that Perry uses. Following a paragraph on the incorrect use of deductive reasoning, Craig writes (words used by Perry in bold):
On the other hand, an argument can be logically valid but still unsound, because it has false premisses. An example of such an unsound argument would be..(cont.)
So far from agreeing with Perry, who calls the trilemma "logically weak," Craig praises the argument's logic but indicates that it needs adequate information to be useful! Now if Perry had gone on to attack the historical information that the full argument is based upon, this would be quite all right. But he barely scratches the surface of the information aspect, much less indicates a knowledge of Greek or the principles of modern criticism and authenticity! Now since the first writing of this essay, I have been given an explanation for this oddity, which I am not at liberty to reveal; let it only be said that: 1) It turns out not to be because of "intellectual dishonesty" as I first surmised - but it WAS still because of something that I regard as problematic!; 2) In any case, the way that Craig was quoted might lead someone reading Perry's essay to believe that Christian apologists are throwing the trilemma overboard in desperation! But the truth is that no competent Christian apologist uses the trilemma by itself, and never would unless constraints of time or space (as with C. S. Lewis' radio broadcasts) forbade it. In such cases, it is both logical and rhetorical - or more accurately, food for thought!
- McDowell explores a few of Jesus' claims to divinity, including some outside of John's Gospel, in Chapter 6 of his book. Oddly, Lowder and his colleagues had not, as of the initial writing of this essay, formulated a response to McDowell's sixth chapter. Shouldn't the claims of Jesus have been dealt with before the trilemma argument? But even when it was written, the Chapter 6 reply by Robert Price barely delved into Christology and the divinity claims; instead, we are given an essay that is mostly hateful polemic.
|
Sources
- (WB.GJ) Barclay, William. The Gospel of John. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975.
- (WLC.AI) Craig, William Lane. Apologetics: An Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984.
- (PF.GI) Fredriksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of New Testament Images of
Jesus. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1988.
- (RF.FNC) Fuller, Reginald. The Foundations of New Testament Christology. New York:
Charles Scribners' Sons, 1965.
- (JJ.NTT) Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1971.
- (JPM.ScSy) Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.
- (JCO.WD) O'Neill, J. C. Who Did Jesus Think He Was? London: E. J. Brill, 1995.
- (AR.WP) Robertson, Archibald. Word Pictures in the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1932.
- (JRm.T) Romer, John. Testament: The Bible and History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.
Go Home! |
|
|
