Lord, Liar, Lunatic...or Legend?

The first time I heard C.S. Lewis' Trilemma challenged was nearly 20 years ago. A local college professor invited Greg to speak to his philosophy class each term. The professor was a skeptic, but was happy to expose his students to good thinking even if he didn't believe what the Bible taught about Jesus. After one class period, he chatted with Greg and presented his challenge to the Trilemma. It was incomplete, he said. There is a fourth possibility: The Gospels are legends.

So there's a "quadlemma" to answer, and Tom Gilson has written an excellent new article in Touchstone. He considers this fourth possibility in an interesting way. It's not only about how a legend about a man called Jesus developed. It's about how four separate legends about a man called Jesus with a uniquely good character and great power developed independently and remarkably similar. It's easy to miscalculate what this would require, and Tom thinks it through very carefully and in an extremely helpful way.

In order for the legend hypothesis to hold water, there must be a plausible explanation for the genesis of the Gospels. Somebody—or more precisely, four somebodies—put the Gospels in writing, and they got their information, or their ideas, from somewhere. And here we encounter a remarkable thing about the story of Christ: that it was placed in its final form not just once but four times, and that each of those four final authors (or author groups) got the crucial aspect of Jesus' character—his perfect power and perfect goodness—exactly right, without flaw.

For the Gospel authors to have produced generally compatible pictures of Jesus would be no surprise: we can certainly assume that they worked interdependently, borrowing sources from each other, relying on common tradition, and so on. In the end, though, they all worked independently to some degree, and yet they all produced a character of unparalleled power and self-sacrifice, with no mar or imperfection of any sort.

The implications of this may be more profound than is commonly recognized. For there seem to be only two plausible explanations for the Gospel writings: either Jesus Christ was a real man, and the Gospel authors painted a consistent picture because they recorded his life faithfully; or he was the stuff of human invention, at least in large part, and all four sources just happened to come up with a character of moral excellence beyond any other in all history or human imagination.

According to the most skeptical scholarship, the character and story of Jesus came about through processes of legendary development. The question is, who would have been involved in that, and what must have been true of them—and is it really likely that they could have accomplished such a feat of moral and literary excellence out of whole cloth? Let's consider what this legend hypothesis calls on us to accept as true.

Read his entire article and add it to your tool kit to answer this increasingly common challenge.

Comments

[Robert]

In "Adding Up to a Bad Sum" he combines the ideas from "Non-Communities of Cognitive Dysfunction,"The Telephone Game,"A Non-Community of Cognitive Deficiency," "A Clarion Call," and "Reducing Cognitive Dissonance." He addresses some of them as "another theory" suggesting separation. Is it a fair argument to address theories presented as separate explanations as a conglomeration to analyze their plausibility? He says that "This, or something like it, is supposed to be the description of the authorial source," but that is his own invention (through synthesis) and is not what any of those he discusses presents.

[e]

This a similar line of argument by Dr. Peter Williams, who conducted a lecture a few years ago and the video was posted by STR. In it, he considers the fourth possibility, that of "legend", and he goes on to show that this is highly unlikely given the overwhelming evidence that the 4 canonical gospels were written as eyewitness accounts. Maybe STR can dig that post up again?

[JBerr]

N.T. Wright has already debunked the legend thing in his book "The Resurrection of the Son of God". If you've never read it, it's a powerful book and a good read from start to finish (especially for those who like ancient history). But to really get the whole understanding, you have to read first "The New Testament and the People of God", and "Jesus and the Victory of God". All good stuff.

[Amy]

e, I think you're referring to this video.

[Erkki S.]

I'm a little bit confused, does the "legend" option here refer to the idea that there never was any historical Jesus at all, or that Jesus did exist but various aspects of his life such as miracles and his general impact and fame are exaggerated and hear-say? There is quite a marked difference between these two claims, we obviously have many individuals who have undoubtedly existed and been claimed to have supernatural powers.

[Ben]

The "legend" option refers to the idea that Jesus did exist but his biography has come down to us in legendary form.

Anyway, I'm not sure I understand Gilson here. He seems to agree that the Gospel writers wrote down legends which had already sprung up around Jesus. As he puts it: "we can certainly assume that they worked interdependently, borrowing sources from each other, relying on common tradition, and so on."

However, then he turns around and expresses incredulity at the idea that they could have produced such similar accounts: "all four sources just happened to come up with a character of moral excellence beyond any other in all history or human imagination."

What gives? Obviously, they didn't just happen to come up with the same kind of character. Rather---as Gilson appears to acknowledge---they wrote down legends which, for the most part, were already circulating.

Also, I totally disagree that Jesus was a morally-excellent character. But that's another topic.

[scbrownlhrm]

The skeptic misses the point of the titanic size of what he is struggling to label as legend: Seamless metaphysical coherence across 5000+ years.

We find no ontological claim on Earth which rivals the following:

The singular ontological metaphysics echoing across 5000+ years in seamless coherence from the Singular-Us of Genesis’ Great I AM through this very day is that of Love purposing in man His Own Image.

Cosmic enormity – the vast universe – is not Power’s delight, end-point, focus, in Scripture’s A to Z, but rather we find that the God Who is love begets yet more love, ad infinitum, and there purposes to fashion man in His Image, and that purposing, that fashioning, is thus the central wellspring, principle, of scripture’s A-Z.

A Man said to a Jewish man that before Abraham was, I AM. The Jew knew precisely what Jesus there stated and he has only one response: death for this Man for His claiming to be the Singular-Us of Genesis Who creates the world. There are about a dozen or so of such blasphemous vectors (reinventing the wheel for the skeptic’s feigned ignorance is unnecessary).

We come here to Omnipotence, the Great I AM of Being and of such in the ontology of both Being and Love’s Motions amid the triune geography of Self, Other, Us.

It is unfortunate that the skeptic feigns a void of the I AM in Christ's Self-Descriptives. Just as it is unfortunate that a primary feature of sheer scope is missed. We find but one story - one ontological metaphysics - echoing across 5000+ years – wherein Omnipotence sums to Being, where Being sums to Love's motions amid the Self-Other-Us of Genesis' Singular-Us, where such Motions sum to Love's Eternally Sacrificed Self actualized to the bitter ends of Time and Physicality as Genesis’ Singular-Us sums to Immutable Love begetting yet more love - Man in His Image - as All-Sufficiency Himself makes of Himself both the Means and the Ends by which In-Sufficiency's painful deficiency of being fades to non-entity.

We find in Genesis’ Singular-Us the ontology found in John’s opening chapter, those three states of affairs of Being. In the Great I AM of Genesis’ Singular-Us we find that Being Is Being, we find that Being is With Being, and we find that Being is Timelessly Begotten within Being as Self-Other in timeless reciprocity beget love’s Singular-Us Who is the Great I AM. Unceasingly it is the case: The Word is God. The Word is with God. The Word is Begotten.

Across 5000+ years Omnipotence merges in Being and Being merges in the timeless motions amid Self-Other-Us as Immutable Love ends all regressions. The OT’s endless stream of promises – prophesies – of a Far Better, an Excellent wherein All Nations, All Men find in and by God their own corporate oneness unfold within the NT and the singular ontological metaphysics of 5000+ years finds Man’s Means and Man’s Ends in seamless coherence from A to Z.

[pentamom]

Lewis would have been familiar with the legend arguments. That he didn't include them in his trilemma suggests that he, as a scholar, found them not worth addressing -- not a credible possibility. The scholarship in this area has not added to the case for the "legend" option; if anything, the "legend" hypothesis has even weaker foundation than it did 60 years ago.

[zoejasmin]

Ray would need already been familiar with a legend reasons. He didn't incorporate to them in his trilemma suggests that he, like a scholar, found them not worth focusing on -- simply not really a reputable possibility. A fund in this aspect hasn't included with the event to the "legend" option; if something, that the "legend" theory has actually weak foundation than working out has worked sixty generations previously