The History of the Liar, Lunatic, Lord Trilemma

Saying these things he was God, if he did not lie; if however he lied, he was not the work of God perfect in all ways.^[1]

Sir Thomas More, 1534

For surely if Christ was not God, he was not a good man either, since he plainly said he was God.^[2]

John Leland, 1773

There is no room therefore for charging what He did on the reveries of His own imagination. And there is as little pretense for supposing that He had a design to impose upon others, or to put a solemn cheat upon mankind, as there is for imagining that He Himself was imposed on… In a word, there was nothing either in His own temper or conduct, or in the scheme of religion He introduced, that had the least marks of sensuality, avarice, or ambition, or of any base selfish views, or of the maxims and subtleties of a worldly policy; so that it may be justly affirmed that there never was a character in the world more remote from that of an impostor than His.^[3]

Mark Hopkins, 1844

Either … those claims were well-founded, or of a hopeless insanity. … No impostor of common sense could have had the folly to prefer such claims.^[4]

‘Rabbi’ John Duncan, 1860

Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.^[5]

Henry Parry Liddon, 1866

‘Christus, si non Deus, non bonus’

If He is not God, He is not a humble or an unselfish man. Nay, He is not even sincere; unless indeed we have recourse to a supposition upon which the most desperate of His modern opponents have not yet ventured, and say with His jealous kinsmen in the early days of His ministry, that He was beside Himself. Certainly it would seem that there must have been strange method in a madness which could command the adoration of the civilized world; nor would any such supposition be seriously entertained by those who know under what conditions the very lowest forms of moral influence are at all possible. The choice really lies between the hypothesis of conscious and culpable insincerity, and the belief that Jesus speaks literal truth and must be taken at His word.^[6]

R. A. Torrey, ∼1918

Jesus Christ was beyond peradventure one of three things. He was either the son of God in a unique sense, a divine person incarnate in human form or else he was the most daring imposter that ever lived or else one of the most hopeless lunatics… Was his influence upon subsequent history the influence of a lunatic? No one but a lunatic would say so. Was his influence upon subsequent history the influence of an impostor? No one but one whose own heart was thoroughly tainted with deceit and fraud would think of saying so. Not an impostor. Not a lunatic. We have only one alternative left. He was what he claimed to be, the Son of God, God the Son.^[7]

W. E. Biederwolf, early 2oth century

If, as the English poet says, the Syrian stars look down every night upon His grave, how are you going to explain His repeated claim that He would rise on the third day, except that He was a liar or a lunatic? He asked the Jews why they were stoning Him and they said, “Because you, being a man, claim to be God, and you are a blasphemer.” Well, He did claim it; and if He was in His right mind, it was either so or it was the rankest blasphemy.^[8]

G. K. Chesterton, 1925

This impossibility of letting in daylight on a delusion does sometimes cover and conceal a delusion of divinity. It can be found, not among prophets and sages and founders of religions, but only among a low set of lunatics. But this is exactly where the argument becomes in tensely interesting; because the argument proves too much. For nobody supposes that Jesus of Nazareth was that sort of person. No modem critic in his five wits thinks that the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount was a horrible half witted imbecile that might be scrawling stars on the walls of a cell. No atheist or blasphemer believes that the author of the Parable of the Prodigal Son was a monster with one mad idea like a Cyclops with one eye. Upon any possible historical criticism, he must be put higher in the scale of human beings than that. Yet by all analogy we have really to put him there or else in the highest place of all.^[9]

Watchman Nee, 1936

How can Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God? Before going on, we have to pause for a moment to seriously consider the matter. It is not a light thing to claim to be God. A person who makes such a claim falls into one of three categories. He must belong to one of these three categories; he cannot belong to all three. First, if he claims to be God and yet in fact is not, he has to be a madman or a lunatic. Second, if he is neither God nor a lunatic, he has to be a liar, deceiving others by his lie. Third, if he is neither of these, he must be God. You can only choose one of the three possibilities. If you do not believe that he is God, you have to consider him a madman. If you cannot take him for either of the two, you have to take him for a liar. There is no need for us to prove if Jesus of Nazareth is God or not. All we have to do is find out if He is a lunatic or a liar. If He is neither, He must be the Son of God… Was Jesus insane? Did He speak pure nonsense just to cause people to kill Him? Or was He a swindler setting up some kind of a scheme? If so, what was He trying to gain? Was He trying to gain death?^[10]