Over at First Things, I explore the origin of the “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” quote so often attributed to C.S. Lewis online. Spoilers: It’s much older and much less Christian than many people seem to realize. A selection follows. See it all in“The Spiritualist Origins of “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul.'”
About a year and a half ago, Mere Orthodoxy published a piece by Hannah Peckham on the oft-quoted expression: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” It’s frequently attributed online (and in print) to C.S. Lewis, but he never actually said it. In fact, as Mere Orthodoxy makes clear, the expression comes much earlier than Lewis. Their post traces it back to an 1892 Quaker periodical, in which it is attributed (second-hand and unsourced) to George MacDonald. [UPDATE: Thanks to Jeremy Rios who in the comments identifies MacDonald’s Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood as the source of this reference.] The author at Mere Orthodoxy suggests this reference to MacDonald might be the reason Lewis has been associated with the phrase, given the latter’s open admiration for the former. But as the post also makes clear, Lewis himself never wrote anything even close to these words.
This 1892 reference is not, of course, the expression’s first occurrence; we find similar phrases throughout the late 19th century. But perhaps one of the most significant early instances of its use—at least for understanding what the phrase originally meant—comes just over a decade earlier. In early October 1881, Rev. Dr. R. Thornton presented a paper at the Church of England’s Church Congress in New Castle, during which he said: “We should have taught more carefully than we have done, not that men are bodies and have souls, but that they are souls and have bodies.” His lecture was apparently printed in The Guardian shortly thereafter, from which it was reproduced in other publications over the next few weeks: in Light: A Journal Devoted to the Highest Interests of Humanity, both Here and Hereafter, in The Medium and Daybreak, and (partially) in Morning Light.
While Thornton is not the first to use language of this sort, his paper nevertheless helps explain why Christians today should be wary of it: namely, because the terminology arises out of a Spiritualist, not Christian, framework.
Read the rest at First Things.
