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Is C. S. Lewis Right About Hell?

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One of the most influential writers on Christianity in the 20th century was an Oxford English professor who experienced a remarkable conversion from atheism: C. S. Lewis. He is perhaps best known for his books for children The Chronicles of Narnia, but he also wrote profound and influential books like Mere Christianity, in which he deploys his masterful understanding of language and ideas to make perceptive and persuasive points.

Lewis looked squarely at the questions of heaven and hell in the last of the Narnia books, The Last Battle, but spelled these ideas out in a fascinating work of imaginative fiction called The Great Divorce. It is a remarkable and fascinating story that recounts a day trip from hell to heaven by a diverse group of people in a London bus. It is packed with powerful images and fascinating insights. He imagines hell to be a gray and nondescript rainy slum where people can’t bear to live close to each other, and so are endlessly moving further and further away from each other. When the “tourists” arrive in heaven, they do not understand it and hate being there, longing to be back “home” in the other place. Brilliantly, Lewis depicts hell, not as a place of equal or greater size to heaven, but as a small crack in the ground, which the travelers must shrink to go back in.

The book and Lewis’s ideas in this area have the effect of toning down the difficulties with judgment and hell. He presents a hell that is not torment, but just sad and dreary. He shows its inhabitants as continuing in their mindset of rejecting God, rather than being suddenly aware of the truth about God and the gospel, and being appalled at their stupidity in rejecting him. More controversially, he suggests that God is willing, in his grace, to accept the devotion of some people to other “gods” as worship of himself.

Despite the illuminating and intriguing ideas in the book, it is clear that Lewis has searched literature and philosophy for answers to these difficulties, rather than the Scriptures and the teaching of Christ.

Lewis is always worthwhile reading—but the powerful and poetic way he presents his ideas can sometimes blind us to the fact that he may be, and sometimes is, just plain wrong.

(Note: this is an excerpt from my book Is Hell for Real? p. 91)

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