The Great Divorce

C.S. Lewis is probably best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity. The Great Divorce was published in 1945. Traditional Protestant theology teaches that after we die we go immediately to either Heaven or Hell. Lewis's novel explores what that might look like. Rob Bell argues in his book "Love Wins" that a good and loving God would not condemn people to eternal torment in hell. However, Bell has been accused of heresy by some evangelical pastors. Lewis presents a middle way. For me, his version also has flaws.

The story starts when a few residents of Hell are taken on a flying-bus trip to Heaven. They are on vacation. Hell is a gray, drab place where it rains a lot, it is the opposite of Dante's Inferno. N.T. Wright argues that images of hellfire and damnation are actually pagan images which were rediscovered in the Middle Ages. On their trip, the vacationers learn that worshipping God for eternity can be hard work. The book's narrator eventually realizes that he’s a ghost who has been living in Hell. The visitors, one by one, come to voice a desire to return to Hell. The damned (the "Ghosts") and the blessed in Heaven (the "Spirits") have become almost a different species. The story suggests that we have free will and through our actions, we get to choose either Heaven or Hell.

The Great Divorce poses questions about who will end up in Hell. Lewis's version of Hell seems a lot like purgatory and the damned can be promoted from Hell to Heaven if they demonstrate the right attitude. Only the godly will be let into Heaven. Those who lead supposedly moral lives but don’t really love God won't make it either. One of the Spirits was a murderer during his mortal life, showing that anything can be forgiven if one truly turns to God.

Lewis was an admirer of George MacDonald, the 19th-century Calvinist preacher, and novelist. MacDonald makes an appearance as a character in the novel. He explains to the narrator that “sinful pleasure” isn’t truly pleasurable at all—all true pleasures come from God. He believes that sinners have deluded themselves into thinking that they’re getting pleasure from sin. I doubt many sinners would agree. The Ghosts who want to return to Hell seem to enjoy their sinful behavior.

MacDonald also informs us that loving others can be a distraction from loving God. This can even put their salvation at risk. A woman Ghost wants to see her son, who is a Spirit. She demands to know why a loving God would deny her access to him. A Spirit's tells her: “You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.” In our secular age, not many people would put their love of God above their love of family. The Spirits appear to lack compassion and have an almost cult-like devotion.

MacDonald believes that the Spirits should not be troubled by the suffering and misery of the damned, because otherwise, they would not be able to enjoy Heaven. The damned have chosen to be damned. Those who make it to Heaven are meant to spend the rest of eternity without a thought for their loved ones trapped in Hell. This does not seem very Christian or particularly plausible. MacDonald believes that we are supposed to spend eternity worshipping God. He implies that in the afterlife we should give up all distractions and act, more or less, like devout monks in a monastery.

How many Old Testament characters would feel comfortable in Lewis's version of Heaven? Many continued to sin and ignore God even when they were in daily contact with him. Abraham marries his half-sister and offers her to Pharaoh as a sex-slave. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, Noah was a drunkard, Moses and David both killed people. Many of the Patriarchs were bad parents and had badly behaved children (e.g., Cain, Ham, Lot). The Patriarchs would often question and argue with God. Professor Amy-Jill Levine teaches Judaism at Vanderbilt University. She argues that the God of the Old Testament was not always good or rational. He could often be cruel, inconsistent and unforgiving. He is quick to smite, rain down plague and do other unpleasant things. Job's children are killed over a bet with Satan. Cain gets off scot-free after killing Abel. Jews like Levine believe that we should have a more argumentative relationship with God. She dislikes Noah because he doesn't question the need to commit genocide. In Lewis's Heaven, Christians are very deferential.

The novel claims that people often place too much stake on earthly fame. Lewis shows that what is honored on earth is unlikely to be what is honored by God. The book suggests that what matters to God is that you love him and all denominations of Christianity are therefore basically the same. To many, Lewis’s story will appear heretical. However, in the preface Lewis makes this disclaimer: “I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy." This is Lewis's his get out of jail free card, his plausible deniability.

Protestants have traditionally believed that Hell is a place of eternal, conscious and irreversible torment. To many modern readers, eternal damnation seems to lack proportion: the endless horror of Hell seems excessive punishment for the unsaved. There is no real punishment in this version of Hell and the damned don't appear to be particularly evil. The unhappy Ghosts display typical human failings. They are nasty, unpleasant, avaricious, narcissistic, arrogant, hedonistic, violent, selfish, and mean-spirited.

References to Hell in the New Testament are infrequent and often ambiguous. The idea of a second chance to repent after death seems fair and will appeal to modern readers, but many will argue it is not biblical. However, Christianity teaches forgiveness. The father in the parable of the prodigal son forgives his son, even though he does not deserve it. In I Timothy 2 it says: “God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

Many typical Christians are unlikely to aspire to the monastic afterlife depicted in the novel. They seem to have more in common with the people in Hell and are unlikely to ever become like Christ. They continue to sin and don't put God first. Lewis suggests that just saying that you believe in Jesus, is not going to be enough to get you into Heaven. The novel does make you ponder what salvation means and why God needs to be worshipped in the unconditional way described in the book. These days, people brought up in a democracy are less willing to blindly obey authority.

All afterlife scenarios are speculative. It can be argued that the hope of Heaven deters too many from trying to fix the world’s current problems. Perhaps we should try to create Heaven on earth. N.T. Wright believes that the Bible teaches that Jesus claimed that he was launching God’s Kingdom “on earth as in heaven.” He also argues that traditional Protestant views on Heaven and Hell are wrong and they have misunderstood Scripture. Wright believes that Heaven is not our home and it was never intended to be our final destination. In classic Judaism and first-century Christianity, believers expected this world would be transformed into God’s Kingdom — a restored Eden where redeemed human beings would be liberated from death, illness, sin, and other corruptions.

A gray man, in a gray city waits with other gray people for a gray bus. This is the opening of C.S. Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE, Lewis' allegory on Heaven and Hell. This isn't the Hell of Dante or Revelations, filled with fire and brimstone; this is a Hell that is the complete and total absence of God. This is a Hell that is of one's own making, the only options are to totally embrace God's love or continue to hold on to those earthly wants and desires that we all possess and remain trapped. According to Lewis, these choices are mutually exclusive; this is not a "cafeteria" relationship where one can pick and choose.

Arriving at a place midway between Heaven and Hell the travelers meet various guides that have come to help move them closer to God and Heaven. Lewis creates a series of dialogues between the travelers and guides to address the questions many have regarding earthly matters and be shown how utterly insignificant they are. Choices are then made to continue to move towards God or turn back to the grayness.

In his other works, Lewis has explored this vision of God, a God who is not indifferent to us but One that expects, at the very least, we make the effort to accept Him and receive the fulfillment that can only be found in His embrace. THE GREAT DIVORCE is a fine work; easily read and very clear in its presentation; this is a book to be read by any age that's ready to explore the relationship of God and man, Heaven and Hell.

This little book is a total joy to read. I know that the author makes it very clear that one should not suppose that he is factually presenting details of the afterlife, yet, in the end he has created a most satisfying image of a plausible afterlife. As for the title, he is referring to the poet-mystic William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. He points out that this is a synthesis that can never be, for to do so would compromise the absolute Goodness of Heaven, thereby making a Hell of both. Perhaps there can one day be a marriage of Heaven and Earth (thereby showing both to really have been Heaven all along), but never of Heaven and Hell.

I loved the imagery of Hell being very much like a never-ending city on Earth where it is always twilight and eternal night always on the verge. Yet, it is not a crowded city for people keep moving apart because they cannot stand each other's presence. That's just it. People dwell in Hell by their own choice. It is the obsessions that separate them from God and the highest Reality that keep them from leaving. It is even shown that such higher impulses as love and pity, if unhealthily indulged in for their own sake and for nothing higher or transcendent, can keep you in Hell. Yet, this Hell is also Purgatory for those who workout their obsessions. In fact, there is a regular bus service to Heaven for fieldtrips that serve just that purpose (I always suspected that the omnibus originated in Hades.)

As for Heaven, it is perpetually just the moment before dawn and eternal day. The idea that Heaven is actually more substantial than Hell, or Earth, is reasonable, since it is after all the more Real of the two being closer to the Creator. Indeed, the visitors from Hell appear as pale and insubstantial deformed ghosts who find the adamantine hardness and density of the higher plane physically painful (even walking upon the grass.) The residents of the realm however are radiant spirits who do everything that they can to point out the mistakes and illusions that the ghostly visitors still cling to- and which are the only thing keeping them from traveling higher up and farther in to the one true goal. The most detailed and believable of these tutelary spirits is Lewis' own spriritual mentor, George Macdonald.

You always hear about people talking about life-changing books. Perhaps I greeted this with a certain degree of incredulity. Surely they were referring to books they simply liked, or maybe even loved?
That was before I happened upon this book. It was recommended to me by a minister and director of a youth organization where I volunteered several years ago. And it isn't until now that I completed it. But I can finally say that I have encountered a book that has truly sparked cause for me to take a look back on my life.
Lewis takes the reader on a bus ride from hell to heaven, or rather the Valley of the Shadow of Heaven. In heaven we see that all who took the bus ride are merely Ghosts here: ethereal figures. They are greeted by Spirits, people of light and substance who have accepted God as their ultimate Love. The Ghosts are given the choice to continue on to Heaven, or take the bus back to Hell. The path to Heaven won't be without pain, as the Ghosts must give up the earthly vices they have made their God.
Lewis' talent is in depicting so well the nature of humans. Don't expect to see the Ghosts' vices being anything so simple as hate for someone. Rather in one instance it is a mother's love for her son that keeps her from choosing Heaven, a love that blinds her from the ultimate love of God. I see so much of myself in these "Ghosts", and Lewis paints a very compassionate picture of the "damned" (they need not be if they choose not to be). Lewis' book in a sense almost helps you to step outside yourself and look with less clouded vision on the person you are. It is for this reason this has become my favorite work.

This brilliant little piece of literature takes only an hour or two to read, but will foster a lifetime of contemplation and thought concerning heaven and hell. What if God gave people in hell (which, in the novel, is a gray, drab, lonely place) a second chance at heaven? Would they take it, or would they desperately hang on to their miserable lives, which is a hell in itself? Lewis, in his "dream", sees a procession of people who are given that chance and, sadly, hardly any take it. That illustrates what I've always believed about hell: God doesn't send you there, you basically send yourself by rejecting His free gift of salvation. To those "ghosts" in hell, heaven is actually a scary place, at least at first. Most don't want to go any further past the "hard part" to the glories that reside up the "mountain". Some may get a little tripped up by the rather unorthodox theological implications, but don't let that hinder you. Just enjoy the ride, and let it speak deeply to your spirit.

If you haven't yet read any theology or Christian apologetics, this novella is a fine place to start. If you already read such, then you know that you just HAVE to read this classic.

C.S. Lewis uses a dream device, ala not only Dante and Bunyan, but also echoing of Isaiah and John, to give us a keyhole glimpse of the afterlife, albeit in more modern terms.

Hell is an endless, shabby, grey city in the rain, where the quarrelsome and disputatious residents are given a chance for a bus ride to Heaven. There they must confront their sins and foibles and make the ultimate choice. Even faced with the reality of God, many are still unable to free themselves from the shackles of vanity, uncertainty, and pride!

Lewis clearly is intending The Great Divorce as a metaphor, for the notion of the damned being given "another chance" and a bit of a day-excursion to Heaven is, of course, not in accord with any Christian doctrine. However, he uses the metaphor to illustrate many telling points of Christian theology, starting with God being the Great `I AM.' The bus ride itself, and the relative sizes of things are also evocative of the extra-spatial nature of the Godhead.

In summary, Divorce is a short, brilliantly-written tract and a wake-up call for many: A thought-provoking read for anyone and worth multiple readings! Get it.

This week in class we read The Great Divorce. It's a great book and if you haven't read it... just... go read it.

The book is about a bus that goes from hell to heaven. People from hell can get on the bus and go to heaven where people are waiting to greet them and convince them to let go of their sins and follow them to the mountains. The people who come from hell, however, are like ghosts against the landscape of heaven which is very hard. It is more real (hello, Plato!). Anyway, the narrator is met by George MacDonald, the Christian writer whose writing helped to convert/inspire C.S. Lewis.

The thing about C.S. Lewis' view of hell is that it is essentially a hell of your own choosing. He takes human freedom so seriously that God's grace can ultimately do nothing about it.

The interesting thing, which can be seen in other works by Lewis, is that all of the sins that keep people from hell are the deep sins that take a person over. Each person is very consumed by themselves. My personal favorite character is the Episcopal theologian who is so obsessed with the questioning and the prestige that he can get from coming up with new questions and theories that he forgets that the questioning should lead to answers.

Interestingly, the one person who made it from hell to heaven was the person who had the sin of lust. The thing that I found interesting about all that is that if you looked at the media or even just what the Church focuses on, you would think that lust is the WORST SIN POSSIBLE. But, it is not all consuming like some of the other sins and, as I said, ultimately the person with the sin of lust is the only person who makes it to heaven.

This is one of my personal C.S. Lewis favorites, the other being "The Screwtape Letters". If you like Lewis, you'll love these and if you haven't read anything by him, "The Great Divorce is a perfect place to start.

I think this is one of Lewis' very best. He attempts in this work to paint a picture of heaven and hell based on his understanding on Christian theology; and what a picture it turns out to be! I found myself captivated from the beginning with the author's depiction of the confines of hell and its inhabitants, which then become a perfect foil for the soul-lifting glory of heaven that he goes on to describe. What makes the work so powerful is the believability of the picture that is painted, despite its speculative nature and imaginative leaps.

The book has something to offer to everyone. Heaven and hell become platforms from which to probe the depths of human morals and motivations. Every reader will find himself/herself identifying with one or more of the caricatures compelling constructed by the author. The picture of heaven itself and what it represents (read and find out for yourself!) is enough to provoke thoughts about purpose of the earthly life. The fictional nature of the book allows Lewis to convey a Christian message about heaven and hell without coming across as preachy or high-handed.

A masterful combination of Christian theology, vivid imagination and excellent prose. I cannot recommend this book more.

I am not a fantasy fan, much to the chagrin of many, and I still don't "get" the magic of the Narnia series (even though I am glad to see it have so much meaning for others). It was with this mindset that i finally picked up The Great Divorce, and I admit to being pleasantly surprised.

As some reviewers have pointed out, this probably shouldn't be used as a theology text. What it is is a thought generator and a conversation starter with those who have questions about eternity. And, beyond that, something that can be read--even thoughtfully--in only a couple of hours.

William Blake wrote of the marriage of heaven and hell and in this splendid fantasy novel Lewis becomes judicator of the divorce. The narrator joins a bus queue in a perpetual sunset kafkaesque town and takes a trip to heaven where any can stay and go to the mountains if they repent and trust. Lewis hits the mark at describing our fallen psychology. As Dante had Virgil as guide so our narrator has Scottish author George MacDonald along on the tour. MacDonald trying to explain the choice of the lost says: "Milton was right,"... "The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, 'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.' ..... There is always something they prefer to joy --- that is, to reality." The people from hell are shades as they all quickly discover on leaving the bus. The grass, trees, and even the water are solid and the shades from hell leave no impression. Conversely the new environment does effect them, one example being that rain drops would blast holes in them like machine gun bullets. The heavenly region they visit is much larger than hell although they don't realize it. "All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World." The reason hell is so small is that it is so full of mostly nothing. The insistence on self will leads eventually to the person becoming more and more unreal. The narrator, who is really Lewis of course, asks MacDonald about his being a Universalist, that he talked in his books as if all men would be saved. Paraphrased MacDonald says something like: Doctrines such as universalism or even predestination may be true in eternity from God's perspective and paradoxically not true in time where freedom operates and the choice of ways is before you. In eternity it may be as our Lord told Lady Julian of Norwich "that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well."