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C.S. Lewis on the Need to Translate Theology for Lay Poeple

William Norman Pittenger (1905-1997) was a liberal Anglican theologian known for his defense of process theology and offered an early Christian defense of homosexual relationships among Christians. 

In October of 1958 he published a piece entitled “Apologist Versus Apologist: A Critique of C. S. Lewis as ‘Defender of the Faith,'” The Christian Century LXXV (October, 1958): 1104-1107.

The following month Lewis penned a response in the November 1958 issue.  It is a delightful response in many ways as Lewis acknowledges error, chides misinterpretation, muses about the sledgehammer of the Sermon on the Mount, and closes with a lament about the lack of theological translation in our day.

Here are the closing paragraphs:


He judges my books, in vacuo, with no consideration of the audience to whom they were addressed or the prevalent errors they were trying to combat. The Naturalist becomes a straw man because he is not found among ‘first-rate scientists’ and readers of Einstein. But I was writing ad populum, not ad clerum. This is relevant to my manner as well as my matter

It is true, I do not understand why it is vulgar or offensive, in speaking of the Holy Trinity, to illustrate from plane and solid geometry the conception that what is self-contradictory on one level may be consistent on another. I could have understood the Doctor’s being shocked if I had compared God to an unjust judge or Christ to a thief in the night; but mathematical objects seem to me as free from sordid associations as any the mind can entertain.

But let all that pass. Suppose the image is vulgar. If it gets across to the unbeliever what the unbeliever desperately needs to know, the vulgarity must be endured. Indeed, the image’s very vulgarity may be an advantage; for there is much sense in the reasons advanced by Aquinas (following Pseudo-Dionysius) for preferring to present truths sub figuris vilium coporum. . . .

When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional form offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of highly cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither. My task was therefore simply that of a translator—one turning Christian doctrine, or what he believed to be such, into the vernacular, into language that unscholarly people would attend to and could understand. For this purpose a style more guarded, more nuancé, finelier shaded, more rich in fruitful ambiguities — in fact, a style more like Dr Pittenger’s own—would have been worse than useless. It would not only have failed to enlighten the common reader’s understanding; it would have aroused his suspicion. He would have thought, poor soul, that I was facing both ways, sitting on the fence, offering at one moment what I withdrew the next, and generally trying to trick him. I may have made theological errors. My manner may have been defective. Others may do better hereafter. I am ready, if I am young enough, to learn. Dr Pittenger would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policemen and artisans who surround him in his own city?

One thing at least is sure. If the real theologians had tackled this laborious work of translation about a hundred years ago, when they began to lose touch with the people (for whom Christ died), there would have been no place for me.

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