"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

Matthew Lee Anderson asked me to write on Mere Orthodoxy about the C.S. Lewis quote that I got angry about a few weeks ago. Here is an excerpt:

In the nearly fifty years since C.S. Lewis’ death, his writing has profoundly influenced the way many Christians understand their faith. In an odd twist, however, one of his most famous quotations is not even his.

The statement “You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body” makes the rounds, in a seemingly cyclical pattern, on the internet and in print. John Piper tweeted it last year; Ravi Zacharias included the quotation in at least one of his books. It can also be found in several New Age handbooks, a guide for psychics, and a devotional for fathers. This pithy summation of the distinction between body and soul is almost exclusively attributed to Lewis, although a few recent authors baldly claim it as their own.

Go read the rest! I’ll probably write a follow-up post this evening.

I reviewed Matt’s book Earthen Vessels last summer.

Update: I wrote a follow-up post.