Sunday, September 17, 2006
C.S. Loser
Alpha Courses run by various Christian churches have done a great service to North American society by fostering popular, informal spiritual discussion. I've often been tempted to sign up for one, but I'm afraid I would end up being too much of a bull in a china shop.
I'm told that a common lesson taught in the classes is the famous C.S. Lewis Trilemma. Lewis first stated it in the book Mere Christianity:
"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."The Trilemma was later restated as a sort of logical equation in which we have three and only three choices:
- Jesus was telling falsehoods and knew it, and so he was a liar.
- Jesus was telling falsehoods but believed he was telling the truth, and so he was insane.
- Jesus was telling the truth, and so he was divine.
The whole notion of the Trilemma is, in my opinion, an embarrassment to honest spiritual discussion. I can't believe they are still teaching this nonsense.
Obviously, there are a great many choices beyond the ones Lewis offers:
4. Jesus believed many things, was right about some of them and wrong about others, and so he was a human being.
5. Jesus attracted a group of devout hero-worshippers and so what he said may have been exaggerated.
6. The New Testament was constructed and heavily edited by the Council of Nicea four hundred years after the death of Jesus. There was a lot of politics in the Council. Even at that time, a substantial chunk of Christianity believed Jesus was only a great human teacher. Through a political battle, these Christians were kicked out of the Council and therefore their views were not reflected in the final edit.
7. The single most important passage regarding Christ's divinity was when Caiaphas point-blank asked Him whether He thought He was divine. The four Gospels have Jesus giving four radically different answers, ranging from "Yes" to "It's you that say I am."
Perhaps Jesus intended the answer to be vague. It is certainly not as definitive as Lewis suggests. In fact, quite contrary to what Lewis states, Jesus seems quite plainly to have left us the option of seeing him as a purely human teacher.
What is more, Lewis's logic sets the stage for broad-ranging religious intolerance. Mohammud said he had spoken to God. Buddha said that he had acquired perfect knowledge of the nature of the universe, that he was beyond life and death and that he represented the path to true enlightenment. If we hold to Lewis's logic, then faithful Christians can only believe that those men were insane or liars, worthy only to be spit at and suppressed.
Personally, I feel the entire notion of Christ as a demi-god weakens his teachings. In theory, the main thing we should gain from Christianity is that universal love and forgiveness are good ideas. This idea has spiritual integrity on its own. There is no reason why an atheist could not believe that universal love and forgiveness was a good way to live. But Christianity implicitly teaches us that the concept of universal love and forgiveness does not have value on its own but only has value because an alleged demi-god said it.
I also think the frenetic worship of Jesus as a demi-god - the constant singing of "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords" - destroys the great message of the life of Jesus. In an age of kings and emperors, when even membership in the priesthood was based on one's hereditary class, a poor carpenter, possibly of illegitimate birth, the lowest of the lower classes, was inspired to speak some of the greatest spiritual truths of all time.
The life of Jesus shows us that spiritual truth can come from anywhere. The gap-toothed greasy mechanic or the middle-aged McDonald's fry-cook might be the next vessel of sublime knowledge. Instead, the Christian establishment, like C.S. Lewis, condition us to expect spiritual truth to come only from a halo-ringed figure clad in white flowing garments and floating down from the crowds.
The degree to which Christianity has been wrecked by the Christians is downright depressing sometimes.
posted by The Propagandist @ 8:56 AM,
