I Know a Terrible Argument When I See One
And C.S. Lewis's argument for why it is impossible to consider Christ "just a great teacher" is a terrible argument.
Lewis says, basically, that it's coherent to consider Christ either divine, or a psycho nutjob, but nothing in between. Why? Here's Lewis:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
This is just pitiful. It ignores a variety of alternatives, such as:
1) Jesus claimed "to be God," but meant this in the way a Hindu would, where, if the acolyte says "I am God," the sage says, "You've finally figured this out, hey?"
2) Jesus did not say some of the things attributed to Him in the Bible. Perhaps his followers , who were writing the New Testament two generations after his death, had a distorted view of what he had been preaching.
3) Even in the New Testament, as we have it, Jesus does not claim to be God. And, in fact, #3 is the view of most modern Biblical scholars!
You may like Lewis's conclusion. But if we are truth seekers, we must reject bad arguments, even if they reach a conclusion we like.
UPDATE: Just to clarify, I'm not saying any or all of alternatives 1-3 above are true. I'm just saying Lewis's list of "the only alternatives" is far from complete.
Lewis says, basically, that it's coherent to consider Christ either divine, or a psycho nutjob, but nothing in between. Why? Here's Lewis:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
This is just pitiful. It ignores a variety of alternatives, such as:
1) Jesus claimed "to be God," but meant this in the way a Hindu would, where, if the acolyte says "I am God," the sage says, "You've finally figured this out, hey?"
2) Jesus did not say some of the things attributed to Him in the Bible. Perhaps his followers , who were writing the New Testament two generations after his death, had a distorted view of what he had been preaching.
3) Even in the New Testament, as we have it, Jesus does not claim to be God. And, in fact, #3 is the view of most modern Biblical scholars!
You may like Lewis's conclusion. But if we are truth seekers, we must reject bad arguments, even if they reach a conclusion we like.
UPDATE: Just to clarify, I'm not saying any or all of alternatives 1-3 above are true. I'm just saying Lewis's list of "the only alternatives" is far from complete.
Are you trying to increase web traffic?
ReplyDeleteA couple of quick thoughts that correspond to your numbered points above:
1) Jesus was a Jew and not a Hindu. This is not a legitimate alternative, because God Almighty/Yahweh does not have alternative meanings to a Jew (at least in the first century AD).
2) This is a non-issue. Yes, C.S. Lewis’ argument assumes that the Bible is true. The question of canonicity is a completely different argument. If you want to argue otherwise, then it doesn’t matter who Jesus is, they are just words on a page, whoever wrote them.
3) If you take the time to read through the New Testament, it is completely obvious that Jesus claimed to be God. He talks about the unity between Himself and His Father (God), He accepts worship, and He uses the divine name, “I AM” in reference to Himself. In John 8:58, He says, ”before Abraham was, I AM.” The Pharisees knew what He was claiming. They picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy.
By the way, most modern Biblical scholars are about as reliable as most modern economists.
ReplyDelete1) But Indian religious views, in the wake of Alexander's conquests, had infiltrated the Near East, and Jesus was obviously, whatever else he was, a religious innovator. It is not impossible that he was saying something like "The Upanishads state that whoever becomes fully aware of the ātman as the innermost core of one's own self realizes an identity with Brahman..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism#Beliefs)
ReplyDelete2) Nothing written is "just words on a page" -- all texts are evidence of something. And assuming the Bible is true kind of begs the question, doesn't it? Those who claim Jesus was "a great teacher" obviously don't assume the Bible is literally true, so if Lewis was assuming that, he was making a logical blunder.
3) You obviously are reading English translations written by people who already believed, before doing the translations, that Jesus claimed divinity.
"He talks about the unity between Himself and His Father (God)..."
Hmm, just like a Hindu would!
"The Pharisees knew what He was claiming. They picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy."
Well, their understanding of Jesus, from the Christian point of view, was obviously incomplete. Why assume they got him right in that respect?
By the way, before I made this post, I read an essay by a bishop and Christian theologian who acknowledged that this argument is piss-poor.
Is the "Son of Man"
ReplyDeletethe Son of God, or a fraud?
A doubting Thomas
Gene,
ReplyDeleteI am willing to argue with you on this, but before I get hip deep I want to be clear about something: Does your entire argument rely on the assumption that the English translations of the Bible we have are wrong?
That's fine if that's your argument; maybe you're right. But if that IS your argument, we can stop right here because I am not going to learn Greek in order to argue this point with you. And I think you have no case at all if we accept the Bible as published since King James' time.
"By the way, most modern Biblical scholars are about as reliable as most modern economists."
ReplyDeleteBy the way, David, I bet you:
1) don't read Koine Greek;
2) don't read Aramaic;
3) don't read Hebrew; and that, therefore
4) your opinion about modern Biblical scholars is worth about as much as the piece of chewing gum that got stuck on the bottom of my shoe today.
Also Gene, you said in your post "Even in the New Testament--as we have it..." You need to change that, right? In context, there is no other way to interpret that, except as you saying, "Even if we assume that Jesus' followers didn't distort things, and that the quotes attributed to Jesus in our modern Bibles are accurate, he never claimed to be God."
ReplyDeleteAnd as David pointed out, this is totally wrong, even though non-Christians like to say this a lot. (Even my dad--a believing Catholic--one time told me, "It's interesting that in the Bible, Jesus never claimed to be God." It was years later that I realized my dad didn't know what the h*ll he was talking about.)
"Also Gene, you said in your post "Even in the New Testament--as we have it..." You need to change that, right? In context, there is no other way to interpret that, except as you saying, "Even if we assume that Jesus' followers didn't distort things, and that the quotes attributed to Jesus in our modern Bibles are accurate, he never claimed to be God."
ReplyDeleteNope -- "the New Testament--as we have it..." includes the ancient versions the KJB was translated from. And, Bob, we know the translation is inaccurate -- "the Red Sea" actually should have been "the reed sea," for instance. And of course, one cannot decide the issue of what the New Testament authors meant to say without going to the original text.
Oh, and nothing I've written denies the possibility that the standard Christian interpretation is accurate -- I'm just pointing out that Lewis's argument is rubbish. As I noted, a number of Christian theologians find it an embarrassment.
ReplyDelete"And I think you have no case at all if we accept the Bible as published since King James' time."
ReplyDeleteOh, and "no case at all" must apply only to #3, right? 1 & 2 do not depend on bad translation at all. :Before Abraham was, I AM" would be a very orthodox Indian expression of Atman.
OK Gene, this happens to you a lot, so let me explain why:
ReplyDeleteYou go out of your way to say something provocative, and then when someone calls you on it, you redefine the terms of the argument in a way that no one would possibly have thought you meant in your original statement.
If we showed your blog post to 1000 people who did not have a strong prior opinion on the contents of the New Testament, I would put up $50 to win $10 that at least 980 of them would say, "Gene Callahan is claiming that if I pick up a Bible at Barnes & Noble, I will not find Jesus claiming to be God anywhere in that book. Modern Christians are just making that up; it's not in the book they claim to love."
(If you want another example of you doing this, it was on some other site where you were arguing with atheists. And in that argument, I actually was on your side, but again, you did some weird definitional switch where "God" meant "A is A" or something, and so you were claiming by the end that all you were denying was the possibility of a true contradiction. And the whole time, everyone else thought you were arguing about a personal God.)
As far as your points: (1) No, Jesus says in no uncertain terms that He is the path to salvation. Certain quotes in isolation do not yield the result that people should worship Him (if they think He is not lying and is not insane), but a few choice quotes leave that as the only option. David brought up that "I AM" quote not to prove that Jesus said, "You should declare me your lord," but rather to argue your claim in (3) that Jesus never said He was God. If you want to challenge Lewis' claim that anybody who believes the words of Christ has no choice but to consider Him Lord, then I can point you to such quotes.
But again, if you are just going to say, "It doesn't say that in the Greek" then I can't argue with you. To repeat, you could be right, but I have no way of knowing, and further I have no way of evaluating experts whom you could cite. FWIW I'll email a couple of guys I trust on this stuff and ask them to comment. (I.e. they are both born-again Christians but also read Greek and would be willing to admit if the earlier texts were vague on the point.)
And as for (2), OK sure, but like David said, I think that's a bit weird. By the same token, it's possible that Jesus never said the Sermon on the Mount or anything else in the Bible, but at the same time he really was a great moral teacher even though none of his precepts survived. Thus it would be technically accurate for someone nowadays to say, "Jesus was a great moral teacher."
FWIW, Gene, I thought CS Lewis was way the heck too harsh in that passage, especially since he is attacking people who at least have the decency to say Jesus was a great guy. I think it would have been a lot more effective is Lewis had just said, "If the reader has this view, I encourage him to consider the following quotes...Now then, could a humble, decent fellow utter such statements as these, if he were a man like you or me? Hardly! So I think you need to reconsider your view that Jesus had some very wise things to say, but was just a mortal man."
"You go out of your way to say something provocative, and then when someone calls you on it, you redefine the terms of the argument in a way that no one would possibly have thought you meant in your original statement."
ReplyDeleteDo you know you are calling me a liar? And that you're statement that "no one could have thought" I meant them that way is obvious horseshit? Anyone who thinks like me would have known I meant them that way.
"If we showed your blog post to 1000 people who did not have a strong prior opinion on the contents of the New Testament, I would put up $50 to win $10 that at least 980 of them would say, "Gene Callahan is claiming that if I pick up a Bible at Barnes & Noble, I will not find Jesus claiming to be God anywhere in that book. Modern Christians are just making that up; it's not in the book they claim to love."
Yes, and 999 out of 1000 people are bad at philosophical thought -- so what?
"If you want another example of you doing this, it was on some other site where you were arguing with atheists. And in that argument, I actually was on your side, but again, you did some weird definitional switch where "God" meant "A is A" or something,"
Of course, that "A is A' is just made up from whole cloth, but... of course, what I was arguing was not obvious... why else argue it! But what I was arguing for IS what Collingwood declares to be the central concept of God in Christian philosophy. So, 980 out of 1000 people misunderstand me, but Collingwood gets me -- I'll take that deal any day!
Do you know you are calling me a liar?
ReplyDeleteSorry, you're right, I shouldn't have said "redefine." (I'm not being sarcastic here, I am genuinely apologizing for my word choice.)
I believe you, that when you wrote "as we have them" you meant, "as we have them, as handed down by people from the year 300."
However, I still stand behind my claim that you should realize what you wrote is very confusing, and that most people--even Wittgenstein--could very well have thought "as we have them" meant, "in the modern translation."
I am probably unfairly lumping you in with other people who have made the stronger claim that the Bible, even in its English translation, doesn't say Jesus is God. Like I said, I myself actually believed this for years, until I read the thing and was shocked to see what it contained.
So no, I didn't mean to call you a liar, I rather meant to say that you have no problem using confusing language even when you know the people arguing with you genuinely don't understand what you are saying. And then when they attack positions that aren't yours--but which your word choice could easily have avoided--you swear at them and call them idiots, instead of phrasing your argument in a different way that doesn't lead to confusion and preserves your meaning.
"And then when they attack positions that aren't yours--but which your word choice could easily have avoided--you swear at them and call them idiots..."
ReplyDeleteSo, exactly where did I swear at David and call him an idiot? )no, no, don't cite the bit about his opinion on Biblical scholars -- there I'm just calling him "unqualified," not "idiotic.") Exactly where in the thread on God (on a post of Mona's at UO) did I swear at someone or call them an idiot?
Since things are heating up, I want to also reiterate that I am very open to the idea that even a Bible-thumping, born-again Christian could learn a lot from studying Buddhism and possibly other things too. Even if one thinks that the New Testament is the inspired word of God, there are still other ways of reflecting on His nature that others might have independently discovered. For a completely different example, I think the natural sciences ultimately point to the existence of an intelligent designer (and I'm not even talking about biology).
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, I certainly don't want to come off as saying, "Don't bother learning about Buddha, all you need is the King James."
"I believe you, that when you wrote "as we have them" you meant, "as we have them, as handed down by people from the year 300.""
ReplyDeleteDo we, or do we not, have those versions today?
"(1) No, Jesus says in no uncertain terms that He is the path to salvation."
Just as a good Hindu guru or a Bodhisattva would!
"(2), OK sure, but like David said, I think that's a bit weird. By the same token, it's possible that Jesus never said the Sermon on the Mount or anything else in the Bible, but at the same time he really was a great moral teacher even though none of his precepts survived."
Look, there's a LOT of space between "Everything in the NT is EXACTLY what Jesus said" and "Nothing in the NT is ANYTHING of what Jesus said"! It's ludicrous to pose those as the only alternatives.
Gene,
ReplyDeleteAre you just joking? I can't tell. But anyway, since you asked:
(1) By alleging that you called David an idiot, I meant this:
"your opinion about modern Biblical scholars is worth about as much as the piece of chewing gum that got stuck on the bottom of my shoe today."
and by swearing I was referring to your statement that what I had said was horse poopy.
I tried googling to find the UO thread but I can't. If you can give me the link I'll show you what I meant. It's possible you didn't blow up at those people, but rather just kept defending a definitional choice that quite reasonably (in my mind) exasperated them, and which you hadn't made clear in the beginning of the argument.
Bob said:
ReplyDelete"(1) No, Jesus says in no uncertain terms that He is the path to salvation."
Gene answered:
Just as a good Hindu guru or a Bodhisattva would!
Eh, again, not in the English translation. (I am assuming that each "good Hindu guru" doesn't say, "I am the only guru who can save anyone on earth.")
But I guess your point is, Lewis is making a leap by saying that we necessarily need to fall on our knees and worship Jesus, right? I.e. even if it were true that Jesus is the unique path to salvation, strictly speaking Lewis' conclusions do not follow?
OK I have heard back from my first lifeline:
ReplyDeletePosting on blogs is not really my thing and I prefer to keep a low profile, but feel free to say that you asked a friend who has a PhD in Greek and Aramaic Christianity and he said that yes it is beyond doubt that at least some of the NT authors thought that Jesus was claiming to be God in a Hebrew monotheistic sense. One could argue that this is a later gloss and have a long argument as to whether we can even know anything about what Jesus actually taught without using the NT and related insider documents (to see what that might looklike when neither side is reasonable see Bart Ehrman losing on the Colbert Report).
I think the fact that he doesn't post on blogs proves he is much wiser than Gene and me. QED.
"(1) By alleging that you called David an idiot, I meant this:
ReplyDelete"your opinion about modern Biblical scholars is worth about as much as the piece of chewing gum that got stuck on the bottom of my shoe today."
Well, I specifically pointed out that I was calling him unqualified, not an idiot. David had just denigrated the entire field of modern Biblical scholarship. I was pointing out that he lacks the qualifications to even start to know if their work is any good. That does not make him an idiot, just arrogant.
"and by swearing I was referring to your statement that what I had said was horse poopy."
Uh, yes, that's swearing, but not generally what people mean by "swearing at" someone -- that would be saying "F*ck you!" You're not redefining terms here, are you, Bob?
An interesting Islamic site arguing that Jesus did not claim to be God in the NT.
ReplyDelete"Posting on blogs is not really my thing and I prefer to keep a low profile, but feel free to say that you asked a friend who has a PhD in Greek and Aramaic Christianity and he said that yes it is beyond doubt that at least some of the NT authors thought that Jesus was claiming to be God in a Hebrew monotheistic sense."
ReplyDeleteThe fact he says this is "beyond doubt" leaves me highly doubtful of his opinion, since IT IS doubted, and by serious Biblical scholars!
Gene, while you admirably danced around it, I vividly imagined you swearing that someone was an idiot.
ReplyDeleteThe fact he says this is "beyond doubt" leaves me highly doubtful of his opinion, since IT IS doubted, and by serious Biblical scholars!
ReplyDeleteWell, I think he meant it in the same way that I would have no trouble saying to someone over email, "Beyond doubt, the New Deal hurt the economy."
And I would say this, even though a Nobel Laureate would doubt it, as well as Tyler Cowen (i.e. he would admit there is open debate on the point).
I just added this to the original post:
ReplyDeleteUPDATE: Just to clarify, I'm not saying any or all of alternatives 1-3 above are true. I'm just saying Lewis's list of "the only alternatives" is far from complete."
And to clarify further: I suspect David (and maybe others) took this as an attack on Christianity. It ain't. It's an attack on one bad argument for Christianity, and one that has been recognized as bad by various Christian thinkers.
ReplyDeleteWell, at this point we should just move on, but it doesn't really make sense Gene if you say, "My possibility (3) may not be true, it just shows how dumb Lewis is."
ReplyDeleteYou see what I'm saying? The assertions you make in (3) have to be true, in order for it to trip up Lewis.
"You see what I'm saying? The assertions you make in (3) have to be true, in order for it to trip up Lewis."
ReplyDeleteWHAT???!!! No, no no! Lewis HIMSELF has listed three mutually exclusive alternatives:
1) Christ is God the Son;
2) Christ was a lunatic; or
3) Christ was monstrously evil.
He says those are the ONLY alternatives. He obviously can't think they are ALL true. But he is wrong -- those are NOT the only alternatives. I listed 4, 5, and 6 (my 1, 2, and 3) that Lewis missed. I do not have to assert the truth of any of them to "trip up" Lewis. I only have to assert that they are conceivable possibilities -- just like Lewis's 1, 2, and 3!
I'm not clear why you apparently thought I WAS asserting 4, 5, and 6, when it is clear that Lewis could not possibly have been asserting 1, 2, and 3 -- but I can see why we've talked past each other here -- you're arguing "It's not true that the NT doesn't assert Christ's divinity" while for my case it doesn't matter if it's true or not -- if a reasonable person could reasonably hold the view, then Lewis's argument falls apart.
OK Gene, I see what you are saying. I think when Lewis said "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher," that meant he was taking the Bible "as we have it today" as the reference point. I.e. I think Lewis was trying to separate the miracle stuff from the wise-sayings stuff, to show that even if you just focus on what Jesus says in the New Testament, then you can't get away from the fact that He claimed to be God.
ReplyDeleteSo you're right, if we allow someone to say, "I believe Jesus was a great teacher, but some of his quotations are fabrications" then Lewis' argument falls apart.
But c'mon, reread your original post. You are quite clearly telling us that (3) is true. That's why you italicized some of it, and put the exclamation point after the assertion about Bible scholars. And it's why in the argument we've had, you have been pounding over my head about the Bible scholars who believe in (3), and why you are arguing that my friend's view is doubtful, etc.
Nope, Bob, not at all -- in fact, I am even less qualified than I suspect David is to judge whether or not #3 is true -- I truly have no idea at all if it is! I brought up the "modern Bible scholars" solely to point out that there are some reasonable and intelligent people, well-versed in this area, who think #3 is true -- and that that is enough to collapse Lewis's argument. There just are reasonable alternatives Lewis left out of his list -- such as "Jesus was a great moral teacher, but some of his followers went a little overboard and started thinking he was God, and put some nutty sayings in his mouth" -- and, once again, I'm NOT claiming that is so, I'm saying "Isn't that a plausible possibility (even if it turns out to be false)?" We know, for instance, that Aristotle did not write everything that has come down to us attributed to him -- these things happen. Sometimes a teacher's followers get him wrong -- it's not crazy to think it could have happened with Jesus as well, even if it turns out it didn't.
ReplyDeleteOh, and it's completely invalid for Lewis to start with, "So, let's assume the NT contains an extremely accurate account of what Jesus said and did," because the only reason we'd grant that, in an ancient text, written well after the death of the person being described, in an era without modern historical standards (where, say, Herodotus puts fictional speeches in the mouths of his personae all the time), is that the account was divinely inspired. Otherwise, we have every reason to suspect it is chock full of errors. But, of course, if we grant Lewis that, we've already granted him everything, and he's pulling our legs by bringing up #2 and #3 at all.
ReplyDeleteFolks, if any of you are still reading at this point, I sincerely apologize. But I think Gene and I are almost to the point where we have make-up sex.
ReplyDeleteNope, Bob, not at all -- in fact, I am even less qualified than I suspect David is to judge whether or not #3 is true -- I truly have no idea at all if it is! I brought up the "modern Bible scholars" solely to point out that there are some reasonable and intelligent people, well-versed in this area, who think #3 is true -- and that that is enough to collapse Lewis's argument.
OK now I see that you have misunderstood me. A few posts ago, when I said, "C'mon Gene, your (3) has to be true in order for it to trip up Lewis," I meant your claim that many modern Bible scholars believe it.
So in your prior post, when you said, "Hey everybody, I'm not saying my (1) - (3) are true, I'm just saying they could be, and hence Lewis is full of it," and then I quibbled, what I meant was this:
"C'mon Gene, your point (3) only works if you are truthfully telling us that many modern Bible scholars believe Jesus didn't claim to be God in the original texts. If no Bible scholar in his right mind thinks that, then your point (3) is pretty silly. Yes, strictly speaking Lewis would be missing a logical counterexample to his claims, but let's give the guy a break. And if you are claiming that you personally don't know if modern scholars say the first part of your claim (3), then your initial post was very misleading. You sure sounded like you were confidently telling us that most Bible scholars think that!"
So do you see what I meant, now? I was showing you that your claim in (3) wasn't limited to the first sentence, but also crucially included the last part, about modern scholars' views. So when it looked like you were trying to even back off of that, I cried foul.
OK we really should tend to our academic careers now. At the very least, you should do a ThinkMarkets blog and I should verify if Krugman's neoclassical model of the liquidity trap is internally consistent...
I think Gene and I are almost to the point where we have make-up sex.
ReplyDeleteAre your interests that catholic?
Mr. Callahan, there's also another option I can think of:
ReplyDelete4) Jesus was a great moral teacher who also, nonetheless, had some kooky theological beliefs (trinitarian monotheism) and meta-ethical commitments (divine command theory).
Good for you, jor.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar reaction to Gene when I read Mere Christianity. This struck me as a really bad argument and honestly shot much of Lewis' credibility for me. I liked The Screwtape Letters much more.
ReplyDelete"Are your interests that catholic?"
ReplyDeleteTom, Bob only has Protestant sex -- no visual aids, and the whole thing operates by faith alone.
Did you read the book or did you come across this quote elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteA. 1 only makes sense if you assume 3. If 3 is false it is clear that 1 is not true. His audience was Jewish and he knew they would understand him according to traditional Jewish hermeneutical constructs, and not the way of the Hindu.
B. His followers were not writing two generations after his death. Some claim to be eyewitnesses, and if they were, 2 must assume they were lying or deluded themselves, but in any case, the entire NT was completed before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. If their view was distorted, it wasn't because of the time factor.
C. As we have it Jesus does claim to be God. It is precisely why his enemies sought to put him to death. John 8 Jesus says he proceeded from the Father. Procession, while in strict theological terms is only applied to the Holy Spirit, nonetheless denotes equality with God.
You would be better off reading the ancient Church Fathers for a more complete understanding of the words that make up the biblical text rather than modern "biblical" scholars.