Editing C. S. Lewis (section)

===="Trilemma"====
{{Main|Lewis's trilemma}}
In a much-cited passage from ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:

{{blockquote|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&nbsp;– on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg&nbsp;– 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.{{sfn|Lewis|1997|p=43}}}}

Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by Christian apologist [[Josh McDowell]] in his book ''More Than a Carpenter''.<ref>{{Harvard citation|McDowell|2001}}</ref> It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The incarnation: an interdisciplinary symposium on the incarnation of the Son of God |last=Davis |first=Stephen T. |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-19-927577-9 |editor-last=Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O'Collins |location=Oxford |pages=222–223 |chapter=Was Jesus Mad, Bad, or God? |oclc=56656427 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xLtu0IwjK5oC |access-date=16 October 2015 |archive-date=29 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210529102202/https://books.google.com/books?id=xLtu0IwjK5oC |url-status=live }}</ref>

Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable",<ref>{{Cite book |title=C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion |last=Beversluis |first=John |publisher=[[W. B. Eerdmans]] |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-8028-0046-6 |location=Grand Rapids, Michigan}}</ref> and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of a [[false dilemma]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion |last=Beversluis |first=John |publisher=[[Prometheus Books]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-1-59102-531-3 |location=Buffalo, New York |page=132 |oclc=85899079 |orig-year=1985}}</ref> The [[Anglicanism|Anglican]] New Testament scholar [[N. T. Wright]] criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus's Jewish identity and setting&nbsp;– an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Wright |first=N. T. |author-link=N. T. Wright |date=March 2007 |title=Simply Lewis: Reflections on a Master Apologist After 60 Years |url=http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-02-028-f |magazine=[[Touchstone (magazine)|Touchstone]] |volume=20 |issue=2 |access-date=11 February 2009 |archive-date=31 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200531004731/https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-02-028-f |url-status=live }}</ref>

Lewis used a similar argument in ''[[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]'', when [[Digory Kirke|the old Professor]] advises his young guests that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.<ref name="Reppert 2005 https://books.google.com/books?id=hn1gaNlri1cC&pg=PA266 266" />