Not very strong rebuttals, also based on assumptions of their own.
One question - do you believe yourself to be God? I suspect not.
What facts?
How strong does a logical, rational rebuttal have to be for the rhetorical trilemma to be weak?
I don’t know anyone to be. Do you?
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I’ll add a 4th that is weaker rationally, but nevertheless potent, particularly at Lewis’ time. The trilemma relies on loaded dice.
Typical people in Europe and the US are culturally predisposed to have a soft spot for Jesus, even if they don’t believe he is anything more than a man. To present the case using terms “Lunatic” and “Liar” immediately makes those options unacceptable to the hearer, if not rationally, then psychologically.
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I plan on making a new thread soon. Just need to gather my thoughts. I will put forward an argument for the trilemma as still being valid for the forum’s evaluation.
It won’t work Thom! Well it will if you have the right axioms…
At the Vineyard church I attended in Columbus they used to do it all the time (not sure if they still do - I don’t live there anymore!). I attended a few times and enjoyed it! I was there as a member of the church/staff and I really liked having the meal and then having the breakout groups. Mostly with these kinds of things I’ve noticed that it’s just other Christians getting together to discuss their already agreed upon beliefs but in the groups that I was in, we had a few people who weren’t Christians and wanted to discuss it.
I’m in a different place these days and tend to shy away from apologetics-adjacent stuff so I’m not sure if I would enjoy it the same, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t go for it!
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Well, and the trilemma also avoids the fourth option of “legend.” Maybe the stuff we know about Jesus is exaggerated or even fabricated.
Who is the “they”?
And if someone isn’t allowed to have a conversation sharing their opinions at an Alpha session, then it’s being done wrong.
Yeah… I was going to a Vineyard church when I attended that alpha course I talked about above. And yes there was plenty of discussion.
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They are Holy Trinity Brompton, an awesome church building, where the Charismatic movement infected the CoE. Scratch any but truly liberal evangelicals, post-evangelicals, post-Baptists; the emergent, and they are all damnationists. All.
I’m sure I would fit somewhere in the cracks of “truly liberal evangelicals, post-evangelicals, post-Baptists, the emergent,” and actually identify with a fairly conservative pentecostal denomination. Like…”hard-identity”–card-carrying member. And yet I don’t think I am a “damnationist.” I guess it might depend on what you mean by “damnationist.” What do you mean by “damnationist”?
Anyone (from their God on down) who consigns anyone to Hell, who does not believe in competent Love.
What do you mean by “competent love”? A kind of universalism? God “gets what he wants” and he loves all people? What do you mean by “Hell”?
Aye, universalism. Love cannot fail, love wins. God loves period. For God is transcendent, unfailing Love, not mere love, as claimed in the Bible. Way beyond that. That would be my God. Hell, is anything less.
So…not to push too hard, but what kind of love eliminates free will? The inability to choose, to “respond freely”?
I had a hard time wooing the girl that became my wife. What if I kidnapped her, and with a particularly selective combination of sodium pentathol, heroin, and hypnotism, convinced her that she loved me? Is that…”legitimate”?
Ah go on, as they say in Ireland. Push. Hard as yer like. I haven’t the faintest idea what free will could possibly be. Does God have it? Can anyone point to an instance of it? Let alone how or why God should take it in to account
And no. That would be sin. Abuse of power. It would be a trivial exercise for a competent God to love anyone and everyone better. To metamorphose us maggots.
I don’t disagree. I am of the free-will opinion ilk (as opposed to some of our more Calvinist brethren). Why? Well, mostly because I choose to believe in free will. I could be wrong, but if I am, then God must have predestined me to believe in free will because I do.
In the context of a relationship, free will is the ability of refusal. We can’t “make friends”; we can just offer an overture of friendship. Anything else would be an abuse of power.
I believe God reveals his highest characteristic to be that of love (over, say, sovereignty or glory). How do we know this? Because the Christian idea of his highest, most profound revelation, is self-sacrifice on a shameful cross…for love.
As for an “instance of free will,” how about you deciding to respond to my post? Was that the result of a concatenation of quantum probabilities that accrued since the Big Bang to precisely this point in time. Could be. Is it the result of God unfolding the preordained manifestation of the universe across time, and you had no choice but to respond? Again, could be.
At the very least, we can’t live that way. (see above)
More metaphysically, we are created for relationship (again, see above), which precludes coercion.
So…what’s the “refusal option” when it comes to the Creator of the Universe whose ultimate overture is life and love? What happens when you reject that?
I think that was a large part of the spirit behind the “trilemma” - to force a hard choice on all those who want to admire Jesus (at theological arms-length, as it were) without fully buying into miracles, Deity, resurrection, and all that. It’s like calling for a vote on the chamber floor - and for the vote to happen strictly on the prescribed, starkly dichotomous terms. Nobody (from either fundamentalist side) likes the wishy-washy fence sitters.
You get to … reject it. Indefinitely. Love is on offer, but (by definition) will not force itself on you. So you can live outside of love for as long as you want. How long can you last?