“Identity Check” by Donald T. Williams — opens: “No argument that
C.S. Lewis ever made is more well known – or more controversial –
than his famous ‘Trilemma’ (not his word), or ‘Lord/Liar/Lunatic’
(not his phrase) argument for the deity of Christ” found in Mere
Christianity, book II, chapter 3 [1]. Williams summarizes that “the
attempts to show that the Trilemma omits valid but unconsidered
options all fail. In order to reject Lewis’s argument, you have to
affirm that a person in his right mind can sincerely but mistakenly
believe, not simply that he has been visited by an angel, but that
he is Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe, and still retain
any credibility on anything else he might say. Since very few people
are prepared to accept that conclusion, Lewis’s critics are forced
to try to undermine his argument by sneakily substituting a straw
man for it. Refuting that weak substitution, they then pretend to
have refuted the Trilemma.”
Williams observes that “Lewis’s critics contend that his argument
commits the fallacy of False Dilemma, the premature closure of
options. … If it can be shown that there are other legitimate
possibilities for how to understand the claims of Christ, it is
urged, that argument fails.
“These other suggested possibilities fall into two categories.
First is the possibility that either Jesus did not actually make the
claims attributed to him or, even if he did, he did not mean them as
the bald claims to deity for which conservative Christians have
taken them.
“The second is the possibility that someone could be sincerely
mistaken about his identity without being insane in a way that would
compromise his views of ethics or his status and authority as a
moral teacher.”
Williams reviews the critics’ speculations about what Jesus both
said and meant. As many of them would have it, “You can in theory be
mistaken about your identity without being insane *and* without
having false views of ethics.” Williams explains how this amounts to
“a clever sleight of hand known as the fallacy of Equivocation.”
Touchstone, May/Jun ’10, pp25-29. [2]

1 – Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001,
paperback, 227 pages) (tinyurl.com/2exlzjz)

2 – Touchstone, (www.touchstonemag.com)

Apologia Report
July 8, 2010