By doing what John Beversluis also does, suggesting that if Jesus claimed to be God, and wasn't, the delusion could be, and likely was what I would call a local delusion, not necessarily affecting his overall moral character or his moral teaching.
HT: Eric Thomson.
3 comments:
I guess from a purely hypothetical standpoint, such questions might be interesting. But since there's no good evidence that Jesus implicitly or explicitly claimed to be God, the point seems moot, no?
VR: Peter Smith of Cambridge attacks the LLL argument "By doing what John Beversluis also does, suggesting that if Jesus claimed to be God, and wasn't, the delusion could be, and likely was what I would call a local delusion, not necessarily affecting his overall moral character or his moral teaching."
What *is* it with these over-educated people in your profession?
Neither Lewis nor anyone else who has presented the "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument says that had Jesus been delusionally claiming to be God that fact would necessarily falsify any other simgle thing he'd said ... however, it would most certainly affect the overall character of his moral teaching.
As the adage has it: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
A man who wants to know the time does not look to a stopped clock. And a man who wants moral insight(s) ... or much of anything, really, except lunacy ... does not look to a lunatic.
That *some* specific things a lunatic may say might also be said by a sane man does not change the fact that the "overall message" of the lunatic is not sanity, but lunacy.
And, as we all know, the point of the the "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument is not at all to establish that Jesus is the Christ/Lord, but rather to point out the absurdity of patronizing Jesus as a "good moral teacher" ... who can be patronizingly ignored.
Anonymous: "But since there's no good evidence that Jesus implicitly or explicitly claimed to be God, the point seems moot, no?"
This is exactly the sort of "argument" that deserves nothing but scorn.
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