C.S. Lewis: His Theology and Philosophy - Lesson 31

Dr. Michael Peterson 
C.S. Lewis: His Theology and Philosophy 
ap530-31 
The Great Divorce (Part 1) 
Lesson Transcript

Okay, So we're back. We're back. Transition now to the great divorce. And we have one more example of a book we cannot discuss in detail. I mean, we're just serving these five great books of Louis best we can, picking out important points. And I think the rest is up to your further research or the reading of my notes, which take things into more detail. But let's pick out a kind of narrative line for the great Divorce and see how much we can accomplish in the couple hours we have left. Probably less than a couple hours, really. So in many ways, the Great Divorce as a book by Lois has some background context in William Blake's work, the great poet William Blake, The Marriage of heaven and Hell. The marriage. Marriage is opposite to divorce, so to speak. So Blake suggests that there could be a mixture of heaven and hell. Maybe not a strict dichotomy. So I think what you have in the titling of this book by Louis is saying, Oh, no, heaven and hell are dichotomous. They're either or. And we need to follow that line of thinking through and not accept the idea that they could maybe be mixed a little. Because, you know, if if it's as different as black and white and you mix black and white, you get gray. And the book starts with these people in the gray town. In the gray town. Very interesting. Which could be viewed as a kind of a mixture and a kind of an ambiguous situation, because later, I think we begin to realize as the book goes along, that whether that was the beginning of heaven or whether it was hell depends on your future trajectory. That's really an interesting point.

So I think another background of additional context of the Great Divorce is Lewis's own published work in 1942, Preface to Paradise Lost, Preface to Paradise Lost. And he notes in that work that Milton, the Mel, Tony and Satan of the great epic poem Paradise Lost, that the mill Tony and Satan rants and raves against God and God doesn't, you know, get angry and offended. What does God do? He laughs. He laughs. And some people think that that's an offensive way to picture God laughing at Satan. But I think it's really, really appropriate. The idea that God is not in a struggle with any creature. Leigh Reality, period. There's nothing that even approximates the power of God. And so for God to laugh is, in a sense, to transcend the situation. He is transcendent, you know, but to transcend and say, I don't I'm not getting down on your level. I'm not getting down on your level. I am true reality. I am true reality. And true reality is unalterable. Fixed cannot be changed by forces assaulting it. What happens, for example, with water, which is a reality. And when water meets fire, there's going to be steam. There's just no other way about it. So when some evil meets God, it will have to be destroyed. It's not like God is exerting effort or in a struggle. I mean, metaphorically, you could say there's a struggle, but it doesn't have to exert effort. And it's just what happens in reality, Will. So I think you see this in the great divorce. What is true reality? Of course it's God. And as the people on the bus go to heaven. Oh. They're pictured as being kind of insubstantial. Remember that? And even the blades of grass in heaven are picketers.

Pictured is more substantial. The blades of grass hurt their feet. They just can't be on the way. There's no there's no good choice. Or God could have designed it differently. When you're not substantial, when you're not connected to what is fully real, to true reality, it just is what it is. You're living in all reality. And when unreality meets reality, they're just consequences that are inexorable, unchangeable, really not even subject to God's will. It's about reality, the way things work. So God is reality. Those things, those people who would like to be more real have to be connected to God if they want enduring happiness, enduring joy, enduring meaning. They just have to be connected to the thing that has them enduring happiness, perfect joy and transcending meaning, the life of God, the reality of God. So for Lewis, there is indeed an irreconcilable bility between heaven and hell. They're divorced. You can't have both. You can't have a little mixture of one and the other. Those who try to do that live in a kind of an ambiguous state of affairs. Shades of gray. But it will ultimately be resolved. You can't live there forever. You've got you've got to set your trajectory. You've got to make your decision what you what your direction is. Speaking a little bit about Lewis's methodology in the book. Of course, the book is offered. It's presented as the report of a dream. If you remember that, there's no effort to be literal. So it's a dream. And they're going to be, you know, pictorial images that are not really, really meant to be literal, like grass in heaven. I mean, if they have to mow the yard as much as I do in the summertime here. You know, that would not be heaven.

I thought that was funny. Obviously, you're still tired. Not a bit. That's right. Yes. Yes. Let's hope that's how. So really, there's a kind of of equation going here. The equation would be reality. God, Joy, all those things contained in the life of God. Heaven, really. Then heaven is, even though it's pictorially presented in the book. If you think deeply about what's really going on, plus connected with other writings by Lewis. Heaven is the Trinitarian life of God. What else could it be? It's not a place with harps and clouds. You know, our streets of gold. How could it be a place primarily? It is a state in a relational universe of being in proper relation to the love and joy contained in the Koranic Trinitarian relations. Lewis says, as much as in mere Christianity in that last fourth of Christianity. So that what is heaven really, if you can take away the pictorial images? It's the life of God. Those who would like the love, joy, peace. That's enduring. There's no other way to have it but to be connected to the life of God in many places. Lewis calls this the great dance. The life of God is not a static thing. It's. It's dynamic. It's. It's like a dance, he says. And of course, we know Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. In reflecting on the pair of Koranic passages in John, 14 to 17 sees that Perry and Croesus PERRY We get words like perimeter choruses. We get words like choreograph. So to move around dynamically with some kind of balance and reciprocity. This is kind of the image that's being conjured up about the life of the Trinity, that the mutual deference and love relations of the Trinity are now available. They're opened up.

We're invited into those relations. It's the only way we can have the things for which we were made. We can't be fulfilled apart from that because we're meant to only be fulfilled by joining with that. People would seek fulfillment in false activities and fraudulent activities that seem like they will fulfill, but they won't. So this equation again of reality. God, Joy, The great dance. Heaven or like an equivalency. On the other hand, the other equivalency is hell. Not reality, but profound unreality. Life apart from God. No joy. Instead of relational reality experienced, it would be self absorption. And. And you do see the self-absorption in some of these personalities in the great divorce. Reminds me also of what Lewis does in the Screwtape Letters, where it's a kind of a study of these different personalities, the things that hold them back, the things that keep them from fully allowing themselves to be transformed through God's grace. Screwtape Letters is a lot about that. So that other that other equivalency is. Hill Unreality, separation from God, no joy, self-absorption, that kind of thing. Broken relations, that kind of thing. So the same question is heaven. Primarily a place can be asked about hell. Is it primarily to be understood as a place? It would seem to me no. Where there's fire. And those are pictorial images. How is life apart from God? Heaven is life and God. So that's why you begin to see, I think, as the great divorce develops, as the book goes along. But you realize once you start life in God, you're experiencing heaven and the great town will have been for you like purgatory, he says. At one point, the early refining process leading you more toward life in God, eventually in its totality.

But if you don't move toward God, the very same condition of of being in a in a in a in a gray state, an ambiguous state of affairs spiritually, you will have been in hell all along. So those right now who are not in Christ, in a sense, are already in hell because they have life apart from God and those in Christ now in temporal life are already experiencing heaven. That's really a clear deduction that you can make from what the book is doing. Questions, Comments so far. Just want to get a frame things. Very divorce. Whole question of heaven and hell does bring up this whole idea of oppositions dichotomies, mutually exclusive things. The question is that I would ask is, are we clear on what things are real dualism, really mutually exclusive and what things are not? And I think even popular religion sometimes makes mistakes along these lines. So I spent some time early in the notes here going through lists of what I think are legitimate dual isms that are related to the book. They play in and through the pages of the book. And illegitimate dual isms is very important to kind of go through those, talk our way through those. Here are some legitimate dual isms. Heaven and hell. Reality. I'll put it this way. You know, reality and unreality. You can see the parallelism. Hell is unreality. Heaven is reality. We talked about that a minute ago. Fact or truth and falsehood. So God is the eternal fact. Spirit. I'm skipping a few here on my on my list. Spirit and Ghost. Happiness and unhappiness. Which in my notes. And you can see it more fully how I've worked this out. The the illegitimate dualism in some ways are more interesting to me because the occasion some explanation.

These are not dual isms that Lewis trying to express his classical Christian orthodoxy in everything he does. These are not dual isms that he is teaching or that orthodoxy involves. They're illegitimate. But popular religion sometimes flirts with these or embraces these. Spirit and matter as though the realm of spirit is more important, more spiritual, the realm of matter devalued. So on. Oh, but, you know, just think what it would be like if you would move this pair spirit matter to this other side and try to make the parallelism. It just isn't right. It is incorrect. Particularly in Advent season, we ought to be huge opponents of this. It's about the incarnation. And matter is, no offense, none to God or soul body. Heaven. Earth. One of our speakers in the documentary depends on how you define things. But she does say heaven and earth are dichotomous, kind of, and she really means if you choose earth and earth bound things, temporal things, you're choosing against heaven. I understand that usage of the language. So you'll hear her say that. I think if we can get that far. But just per say, these are not intrinsically divorced. These are not dual isms. Heaven and earth. How about this one? Supernatural and natural. See, the Catholic in me was to say grace uplifts nature. They're not dichotomous. Grace penetrates. Grace goes before. Nature is not not antithetical to super nature is invited into. God's supernatural life. This was the great invitation of the creature not to just have an accounting problem solved. Like you're dead is no longer counted against you. It's much more than that is to be caught up into something higher and transformed and fulfilled and nature is invited. Or how about this? Perfect love and the natural loves.

This does get us into Lewis's book, which we're not reading of the four loves that we mentioned before, you know, and it does have an echo of Augustine ODOI Morris, the the order of the loves that the key is not that our natural loves or an athletic all too perfect love but they're we ordered and arranged and prioritized and lived out according to a framework of perfect love for whatever kind of love they are. Spousal love, brotherly love, friendship, love. But but earthly things are very important and the earthly loves that are natural and normal. And part of God's image in the human race are totally legit. Totally. No. So it'd be illegitimate to say they're somehow antithetical. Since the last one. Mutually exclusive. The last one, Perfect control. It comes to point. I think you talk about the. Oh, you love your son. And then if it's not from God, is say so. That's right. Yeah. Good. Excellent point. That's one of a couple or three examples I think you can find in great divorce that. Occasion this discussion. What it's really saying is her natural love is warped and it's warped and it's not functioning the way it should. So it's not that the net that our natural loves, which are God's creation, are per say, in conflict with perfect love. But like again, Augustine says in Latin. Adore the moiré that the natural loves had to be transformed and guided in a framework of perfect love so they don't become self-absorbed, manipulative, self-serving, actually damaging, and the relational order of the universe. So she was doing damage and she was damaged. But it's not because the natural lobes per say so in a fallen state, in a damaged world. Our natural loves don't need to be surrendered to be eliminated, but to be healed and made whole.

Another thing that. The thing that saying the only God is love. So therefore, you should let me be with my son. So it's really important to connect with the son and go, even though not in love with him in a way that reminded me of the. Yes, I think it was. Andrew said that. Too. Yeah, the best, but. That's right. So that's what she doesn't want to get into with Don. But he recognizes that. And she doesn't want the true best. She wants her idea of what's best for us. Yeah. Yeah. Or so much we could say about these kinds of things. It's just too much fun to know all that we now know about Lewis and be able to bring it to bear on this discussion. It's really how much we know now. All sort of experts in Lewis. There's quite a burden to bear out among common people, you know what I'm saying? So you know where this burden gracefully. I tried to make a list. You'll see in my notes of all of the different ghosts, all the different personalities in the book. And I came up with about, I don't know, 15 or more. And you can see that in one of the pages of the notes. Then there's the driver of the bus. They're the bright people sometimes called the solid people in heaven, because it's a pictorial language for them being truly real because they're connected to what is ultimately real, the life of God. And then those people who are not so connected, their picture is insubstantial, grass hurts their feet, you know, that kind of thing. Oh, so they read if we pick up now the the storyline. That's a little bit of background discussion, but the storyline sort of begins with a bus ride and people are waiting to get on the bus and they're sort of said to be on the outskirts of heaven and they're going to take a bus ride to heaven and check it out, see what they think.

There is a sort of traditional notion of the holiday of the damned. But Lewis, I think, has in mind that once they make the right choices, they're damned. But the whole idea of a holiday of the damned. Is, I think, playing in the background here, you know, in Narnia, too, we hear language like the foothills of Aslan's country, the foothills not the high mountains. But what we get is the encouragement in Narnia many times through the seven volumes go further in and further up into the life of God. But they're in the great town and they take the bus ride and they go to heaven. And what we see then is they're getting off the bus in heaven. They've done some quibbling before they got on the bus. They're not free of quibbling when they get off the bus. All of those conversations are well worth any discussion we'd like to have. But I'm trying to just pick up the the the basic storyline for a minute here. And as they meet different people who are present in heaven, these people are pictured as bright, shining people, solid people for whom that environment is just totally suitable, but it's not suitable for the people who come to visit, look around while they're in their present condition. They find it unpleasant and strange, and a lot of them in their own way, reflect. I'd like to go back. Let's go back to my comfort zone. So if we sort of pick up on the themes that run through the book, I'd like to show you a documentary. I think we've got time, just 2 to 3 clips from this documentary that was made by Brian Marshall. And Brian is a seminary grad a few years ago who I can't tell you how long he's been the director of the Christian Student Fellowship UK and does a superb job.

And my memory tells me this was like 0405 This documentary was made early in the year and then shown in very large audiences multiple times on UK's campus. On the University of Kentucky's campus drew large crowds in the thousands. And I think when people left, they gave them they gave them these things for free. It used to be that you could you could get a hold of one of these from the Christian Student Fellowship. I don't know if that's true now or not. You probably you probably that stuff. Yeah. They would make them up again, would they? Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't be too. But anyway, super, super job. And I think it wouldn't hurt for us just to take a moment and look at this. It's a thematic documentary. And the first theme, I can get that going here.