Lewis responds to a liberal critic

C.S. Lewis’ “Rejoinder to Pittenger” was published in a November 1958 issue of Christian Century. Lewis was responding to the October article, “A Critique of C.S. Lewis” by Dr. Norman Pittenger who was an Anglican professor of apologetics, a liberal known for writing about process theology. It’s quite interesting how Lewis responds to his critic who holds to vastly differently beliefs about Christianity.

One of the charges Dr. Norman Pittenger makes in his ‘Critique’ in the October 1 [1958]Christian Century, I must with shame plead guilty. He has caught me using the word ‘literally’ where I did not really mean it, a vile journalistic cliché which he cannot reprobate more severely than I now do myself.*

*In Broadcast Talks (London. 1942), Part II, ch. 5, p. 60, Lewis had written that “the whole mass of Christians are literally the physical organism, through which Christ acts— that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body.” The word ‘literally’, however, was deleted when Broadcast Talks was reprinted with two other short books as Mere Christianity (London, 1952).

C.S. Lewis, “Rejoinder to Dr Pittinger,” God in the Dock (Eerdmans: 1970) 177.

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