C.S. Lewis - The Great Divorce

One of the things I am hoping to do with my spare time post-grad school is to read some theology.  I hope to review the books I read here.  The first book I have read is The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.

In his exploration of heaven and hell, C.S. Lewis writes an allegory of his imagined trip to the afterlife, where he visits both heaven and hell and talks with George MacDonald, a theologian that Lewis greatly admired.

Lewis' background as a scholar comes through immediately.  He writes:

When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the supernatural might not in fact occur?  When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith? (Lewis, 37)

One of the first topics that Lewis addresses in The Great Divorce is directed toward what he views as the religious: theologians, intellectuals and questioners.

I have nothing to do with any generality.  Nor with any man but you and me.  Oh, as you love your own soul, remember.  You know that you and I were playing with loaded dice.  We didn't want the other to be true.  We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes. (37)

I am a questioner, an intellectual.  At times I prefer the process to the result.  And I ask myself: Why do I ask questions?  Am I in love with the process of asking, never satisfied with answers, or am I truly searching for the truth at the end of all this?  After all, inquiry is for answers.

You think that, because hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect.  I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom.  Your thirst shall be quenched. (40)

Lewis continues:

'Listen!' said the White Spirit. 'Once you were a child.  Once you knew what inquiry was for.  There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you found them.  Become that child again: even now.' 

'Ah, but when I became a man I put away childish things.' 

'You have gone far wrong.  Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.  What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.' (41)

When Lewis references the putting away of childish things, he is making an allusion to 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV).  Here I quote verses 8-13.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

"Now I know in part; then I shall know fully."  It seems that it is not so much about putting childhood behind us, but about the simple truth that "we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face."  In heaven, where true love conquers all, only faith, hope and love will remain.


Lewis makes a clear distinction between religion, which he seems to identify as the philosophical pursuit of speculation and reasoning - endless questions with no answers; and Christ, who is Truth, end of speculation, Fact.  For Lewis, religion means hell:

Hell is a state of mind...And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own  mind - is, in the end, Hell.  But heaven is not a state of mind.  Heaven is reality itself. (70)

Lewis sees time in a very unique way.  For Lewis, time is merely a lens through which humanity sees things during our time on earth.  In heaven, that limitation is removed.  In this way, Lewis is able to represent choice between heaven and hell as continuing beyond one's earthly life.  He writes that those who choose to stay in hell will in the end see even their lives on earth as hell, and those who choose heaven will see their earthly lives as mere extensions of this life.

Ye cannot fully understand the relations of choice and Time till you are beyond both.  And ye were not brought here to study such curiosities.  What concerns you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them making. (71)

This choice is not always clear for those who have not yet made it.

There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery.  There is always something they prefer to joy - that is, to reality. (71)

This concept changes everything.  Our choices in this life reflect the same sort of choices we would make in Lewis' afterlife.  Choices like not being willing to sacrifice oneself, not being willing to let go of desire.

Lewis and his guide, MacDonald, walk through Heaven and observe souls from Hell interacting with those in heaven.  Some choose life, while others are for various reasons unable to choose joy and love.  They choose hell, not knowing that dying to their desires will bring the pure joy of Heaven.

...it must be one way or the other.  Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.  I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside.  But watch that sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the Universe. (136)