In Acts 2:14-36 there is a most overlooked apologetics passage. Peter supports his conclusion of “therefore know for certain” with three types of evidence: OT prophecy, eyewitness testimony, and a self-evident work of the Spirit.
The book of 1 John also seems to have this threefold witness: the fulfillment of OT prophecy “it is the last hour,” eyewitness testimony “we have seen,” and the Spirit’s self-evident testimony “you have been anointed by the Holy One.”
Or how blessed (anointed?) will be those who have not seen and yet have believed.
Don’t have a huge amount of time to unpack this right now. However, I think that the biggest issue with Lewis’ trichotomy is that it was built for a different era. Most sceptics I’ve spoken to start with the assumption that Jesus is a legend. And so, in my opinion, trichotomy defences leave sceptics behind before they’ve even left the gate.
I would guess that you probably think other religious texts (e.g. Book of Mormon) from religions you don’t belong to are mythical or made up. It may be good practice to ask if the same argument would convince you to believe what is in those texts.
This skeptic would be a bit more charitable and say that the Gospels can’t be verified. I would say that you first have to establish the truth of the Gospels before we can ask questions about the characteristics of the people in the Gospels.
I don’t see how the arguments would work in other religions… I don’t mean to be trivial. For me, the testimony of the Spirit was the conviction of my sin. And other religions don’t adequately account for that the way Jesus did. And then there’s the OT prophecies and historical evidence to back it up.
The trilemma doesn’t have “prophet” as one of the options, though. It is meant to be “Lord”, i.e. God. So I guess this wouldn’t apply to Muhammad who never claimed he was God…??
It’s still evidence, but not very good from where I’m standing. If it’s a good friend who I trust, then I would give it more than a passing consideration.
That’s been my understanding too. It doesn’t take a total Jesus mythicist (one who questions whether Jesus even ever existed) to have a problem with this. [I doubt most unbelieving skeptics are so extreme as to be that sort.] No - all it takes is someone who is a skeptic about the text giving us accurate and complete recordings of what Jesus actually taught and said. Lewis’ trilemma glosses right past that difficulty, ignoring it, before one can even get to the trilemma as stated. It is a reasonable objection for those who want all evidential considerations to be weighed.