Lewis's trilemma

Mad: title page of Charles Binet-Sanglé's The Madness of Jesus
Bad: Jesus depicted as a warmonger by Bezbozhnik u Stanka
God: Christ In Glory by Antonio da Correggio

Lewis's trilemma is an apologetic argument traditionally used to argue for the divinity of Jesus by postulating that the only alternatives are that he was evil or mad. One version was popularised by University of Oxford literary scholar and writer C. S. Lewis in a BBC radio talk and in his writings. It is sometimes described as the "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord", or "Mad, Bad, or God" argument. It takes the form of a trilemma — a choice among three options, each of which is in some way difficult to accept.

A form of the argument can be found as early as 1846, and many other versions of the argument preceded Lewis's formulation in the 1940s. The argument has played an important part in Christian apologetics. Criticisms of the argument have included that it assumes that Jesus claimed to be God, while biblical scholars who wrote books about the historical Jesus agree that "Jesus did not spend his ministry declaring himself to be divine", and that it is logically unsound since it presents an incomplete set of options.

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