Heaven, Hell and the Great Choice

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. DEUTERONOMY 30:19

Lewis believed in heaven and hell, and he believed that every human being is moving, day by day, towards one or the other. He wrote about this most memorably in The Great Divorce, published in 1945, a dream-story in which a group of people from a grey and dreary town take a bus journey to the outskirts of heaven. The title is a reply to William Blake, who had written of the marriage of heaven and hell. Lewis’s point was that the two can never be married. They must be divorced, finally and for ever, and every soul must choose between them.

What the book is

The Great Divorce is not a map of the afterlife. Lewis said plainly that it was an imaginative fantasy, and he did not want readers to take its details as a guess about what happens after death. The visitors from the grey town find heaven’s outskirts so solid and real that they themselves seem ghostly; even the grass hurts their feet. They are met by bright figures who invite them to stay and to go on into the mountains. But almost all of them refuse. Each clings to something — a grievance, a pride, a possessive love, a theological opinion, a habit of self-pity — that he will not let go, and each would rather keep it than enter joy. The narrator’s guide on this visit is George MacDonald, the writer whose book had first touched Lewis’s imagination in his youth.

Hell is chosen

The central teaching of the book is one that Lewis had already set out in The Problem of Pain. Hell, he believed, is not a place to which God sends people against their will. It is the final state of those who have refused God to the end. The final division, as Lewis saw it, runs between those who in the end surrender their will to God and those whom God in the end leaves to their own. God does not force anyone into heaven. He offers it, again and again, and those who refuse it finally receive what they have chosen.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. JOHN 3:19

Lewis did not soften the reality of hell. He believed it was real, terrible and permanent. But he insisted that it is not the expression of God’s cruelty but of His respect for the choices of His creatures.

Heaven is real

The other side of the book’s teaching is that heaven is not thinner or less real than earth, but more real. Our world, compared with heaven, is like a shadow compared with the solid object. Heaven is not a vague, misty place of disembodied spirits, but a world of overwhelming solidity, beauty and joy. Everything good in this world will be found there, perfected. Everything we have loved rightly will be given back to us.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

Weighing it

The Great Divorce is a profound book, and its teaching on the reality of choice, the seriousness of sin and the glory of heaven is of great value. Many readers have found in its portraits of the ghosts an uncomfortable mirror of their own hearts.

Two points of Lewis’s teaching on the last things must be weighed, and it is right to be plain about both.

The first is purgatory. In The Great Divorce, the grey town is presented as something that may be either hell or purgatory, depending on whether its inhabitants leave it. In Letters to Malcolm, Lewis wrote plainly that he believed in purgatory — not the system of punishments, payments and indulgences that the Reformers rightly attacked, but a process of purification after death, which he thought the redeemed would themselves want, so as to be made clean before entering God’s presence. He also prayed for the dead. Evangelical readers will hold that Christ’s work is finished and sufficient, that those who die in Him are made perfect and are at once with the Lord, and that there is no need of further cleansing after death.

For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. HEBREWS 10:14

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:8

The second is the question of those who never heard of Christ. In Mere Christianity Lewis held that Christ is the only way of salvation, yet thought it possible that His saving work reaches some who have never consciously known Him. He suggested that God may be at work in some adherents of other faiths, drawing them towards whatever in their religion is true, so that they are in fact His without having learned His name. In The Last Battle, the final Narnia story, a sincere soldier who had served a false god all his life is welcomed by Aslan, who tells him that his sincere service was in fact accepted as service to Aslan himself. This passage has been much discussed. Lewis’s view is sometimes called inclusivism: the belief that Christ is the only Saviour, but that His saving work may reach some who do not consciously know Him.

Evangelical readers will want to hold firmly to what Scripture plainly teaches: that there is salvation in no other name, that faith comes by hearing the word of God, and that the church is sent into all the world precisely because those who have not heard must hear in order to be saved. Lewis did not intend to weaken the call to mission; he believed in it. But his speculation, however charitably meant, goes beyond what Scripture warrants, and it should not be allowed to dull the urgency of the gospel.

Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. ACTS 4:12

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? ROMANS 10:14

It should be added, in fairness, that Lewis was firm that the Christian is not to speculate about others’ salvation but to attend to his own, and to the task of making Christ known. On that, at least, all readers can agree with him.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there something in your life — a grievance, a pride, a possessive love — that you would rather keep than let go for the sake of God? Name it.

2. Read Deuteronomy 30:15–20. Consider the seriousness of the choice set before every person.

3. Thank God that heaven is more real, not less real, than this world, and let that hope shape how you live.

4. Read Hebrews 10:10–18 and rest in the finished work of Christ.

5. Pray for someone who has never heard the gospel, and ask how you might help to make Christ known.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have set before me life and death, and You call me to choose life.

Forgive me for the things I cling to that would keep me from You — my grievances, my pride, my self-pity. Help me to let them go.

Thank You for the finished work of Christ, by which You have perfected for ever those who are sanctified.

Make me faithful in making Him known, so that others may hear and believe and call on His name. And bring me at last into the joy of Your presence, where there is fulness of joy for evermore. Amen.