It has often been said that the kind of claims Jesus made force his hearers to choose among three options. What exactly was Jesus claiming about Himself? He was surely not claiming to be just another philosopher or prophet, but something far greater—greater than the Temple, and, in the Transfiguration, implying the kinds of things only God could imply standing alongside Moses and Elijah who, lest we forget, saw the face of God. In the famous words of C.S. Lewis, Jesus, while claiming to be God, is therefore either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Most readers will have heard of Lewis’s famous trilemma by now, but let’s recap it briefly. The argument is as straightforward as it is obvious: either Jesus was lying when he claimed equality with God, or he was a lunatic who delusionally believed he was God, or—he really is who he says he is, and he is Lord of all. Those are really the only options we have.
I have heard this trilemma presented by Christian apologists many times over the years, and I believe it works powerfully. It forces readers of the Gospels to decide definitively about Jesus identity. The point of Lewis’ trilemma is that you cannot remain neutral with regard to Jesus. He offers no such comfort to his audience. As Lewis and modern thinkers like Bishop Robert Barron have pointed out, he demands a choice. For the better part of the last fifteen years, I have tried to encourage Catholics to see the world as it truly is. When we say and profess certain truths about the world, there is a sense in which that worldview ought to be lived out. There has always been a sense—a strong sense as of recent decades—that Catholics often don’t always link up what they believe with how they act. What is often not noticed is how this phenomenon also and in particular applies to Catholics in politics, both their views about politics and what the expectations are with regard to a truly just social order.
To press this a bit more, I am fond of saying: “Of course Jesus is King and ought to be proclaimed King of the United States of America—and of every government in the world… that is, if this whole Catholic thing is actually true.” The point I try to drive home with that final phrase is simple: the world really does exist the way we Catholics claim it does. Asking ourselves and those around us this question What if this whole Catholic thing is true?—allows us to imagine what it really would look like if we lived out what we say we believe.
This all may sound strange at one level. After all, we say we believe the Catholic faith, which is why we go to Mass, pray, and read our Catechism. Yet the world we imagine exists today existed in a radically different shape for early and medieval Catholics. They could not keep Christ out of politics, because they truly believed the world had changed on Easter Sunday. The essential message of that first Easter being those all important words spoken by Christ himself: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).
All of this came together for me in a recent meditation several days ago. I heard someone either in passing or on a podcast, I can’t recall—bring up Lewis’s trilemma once more. This time, however, something new struck me. The trilemma must now be taken up anew but with a fresh presentation to make it’s most radical form come to life.
Here’s how, Jesus claims to hold all earthly authority in his hands. That claim must mean something. Given two thousand years of Church teaching and fifteen hundred years of Christendom, we Christians must ask ourselves a hard question: are we telling the truth, or are we lying? And if we aren’t lying, then are we lunatics?
Some Catholics publicly confess that Jesus Christ is King of the universe, yet openly deny him any sovereign political and social rights whatsoever. They refuse to acknowledge that the Church he founded should be named, supported, promoted, and favored in the public square and in society at large. They believe these things in their hearts, yet they deceive others—and perhaps themselves—by saying he is the Creator God to whom all these things belong, while simultaneously denying him the rights that flow from that very belief. As harsh as it sounds, such Christians are, in effect, liars. They do not truly believe that the earth and everything in it belongs to him.
But these Christians may not be thinking clearly enough to be all that culpable. Instead of being liars, they might simply be lunatics. I often say that the modern notion of “separation of church and state”—and the accompanying denial of Christ’s rights—forces Catholics into a schizophrenic state of mind; believing one thing and denying that same thing simultaneously.
On the one hand, they proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ—his nature, his identity, and the kingdom he founded—because they truly believe it. They are not lying. Yet, like someone living in two different worlds with two different personalities, they go on to deny him the public and social rights that belong to him. They imagine they, precisely as Americans, have a legal right to this land, while Christ does not. Though they sincerely believe Jesus Christ is who he says he is, that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be, and that Christ possesses all authority in heaven and on earth, they live their social and political lives as if none of it were true. They have no problem with the U.S. Constitution—or state constitutions—remaining entirely or partially neutral toward Christ and his Church. In fact, their schizophrenia runs so deep that they do not even recognize anything is wrong with this view.
They are lunatics looking at the world one way and then five minutes later looking at the world in a whole other way that denies the previous picture they were telling themselves about the world. They will sing songs like God Beyond All Praising and call God their king. But it will never amount to much.
There are then those who are neither liars nor lunatics. These people are those that believe Jesus Christ really is Lord in all that that means, and in all that that requires. For those who really mean what they say, and wish to live what they believe, this third category belongs to them. They believe things are the way they are according to the Catholic worldview, and high was definitely shaped by Easter Sunday (not to mention what occurred just forty days later!).
This is now the new trilemma, reworked a bit to press further and deeper into what C.S. Louis originally thought was the initial layer of this still deeper surface of what in fact is involved in choosing to follow Jesus. It is not enough to just call Jesus Lord. There is still another final trilemma. One must, as St. Paul puts it, profess it publicly and live it politically. It means appealing to Caesar, as he did, to tell Cesar that Jesus is Lord, and that the empire in which he reigns over must be subject to Christ, to honor him, to adore him, to advance his cause, and to do all things in and through Jesus Christ.
The reader then has a choice to make, and I suspect that if they are reading it here on this website they understand this better than others. I don’t imagine that many of the readers of this article will have trouble understanding this trilemma. Instead, what I would propose is for those of us who really call him Lord and believe him to be Lord, those who are neither liars nor lunatics, that we put this trilemma before our fellow Catholics.
