The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

The “Body of Christ” is a traditional way of describing the church in Christian theology, derived from the letters of St. Paul. St. Paul saw the church as the continuation of Christ’s work on Earth—Christ’s spiritual “body,” in which each Christian is a “member,” or part. In Chapter 7, Lewis uses the image to argue that membership in the church is more humanly fulfilling than either secular collectivism or individualism; it is thus central to the theme of Forgiveness and the Challenges of Living Faith in Community.

Collectivism has various meanings but broadly refers to an ideology that emphasizes group identity, needs, goals, etc., over those of individuals; it can be an organizing principle for political or economic systems, but it can also operate more loosely on the level of culture. In Chapter 7, “Membership,” Lewis comes down hard on 20th-century collectivism, characterizing it as reducing human beings to interchangeable “units” in a way that is incompatible with their spiritual worth and purpose.

For Lewis, glory is an aspect of heavenly happiness in Christian belief, associated in scripture with various positive images. Lewis sums up glory as denoting both divine approval and “brightness, splendour, luminosity” (42).