C.S. Lewis on Salvation
I hear a lot of praise for C.S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. And I think it is well deserved. But many of those who praise it might well find the following passage (from Book II, Chapter 5) highly disagreeable, and perhaps a deal-breaker. My question is, what do you think?
Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him, But in the meantime, if you are worried about the people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can do is to remain outside yourself.
Posted at 11:25 AM
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Lewis was leaving open that Christ could incarnate amongst other peoples, at other times. He also seems at times to border on Universalism and that may be what he is hinting at in this passage.
There are many books I benefit from and recommend to others in which I do not agree with everything stated. This would be case in point. The point he makes is the classic inclusivist/universalist argument, but it's simply not true. God has told us, in John 3, as I have pointed out on my blog. As far as universalism is concerned, the rest of scripture is chock full of explicit teaching that some will be eternally condemned to hell. To cite them all here would be both insulting (to you) and a waste of time.
I actually don't believe that this comment can be considered universalist, although possibly inclusivist. I don't think you're a universalist unless you believe everyone is going to heaven, and that is not what Lewis is proposing. It is clear that he is not making excuses for those who consciously reject Christ.
Isn't it funny, though, how easily people overlook this passage who love C.S. Lewis? Brian McLaren has gotten much more flak for much less than this.
I didn't know enough of Lewis to judge his actual position, but both i's and u's seem to make the statement he made in order justify their position. One person whose fondness of Lewis surprises me in light of this issue is Piper. I could be wrong, but I assume that inclusivism would be appalling to Reformed theologians.
While there are alot of verses which suggest eternal punishment there are also many which suggest universalism. Taking any position requires neglecting the opposing positions' evidence.
Seems like we're bouncing back and forth between two poles, and ignoring the middle. I did some reading on inclusivism, and it is definitely more biblical than universalism. You could easily say that Lewis' comment is inclusivistic, but even then, it would still be considered pretty soft, because he doesn't assert that God has other ways of saying people, he simply proposes that God might have other ways of saving people (though still by the blood of Christ) that we don't know about. Can we really refute that with Scripture?
It makes sense that God would only want us to know about one particular way for people to be saved, so that we can focus on our mission. Any other method is none of our business, however if it helps one to accept the fairness of God to imagine there is another way, so be it. Just so long as it doesn't contradict scripture, and doesn't lead to apathy or disobedience in one's mission.
Attackers of inclusivism (remember... I'm not "including" myself among the inclusivists) will say that their philosophy is catastrophic to the Christian mission, but not nearly so much as universalism, or even Calvinism. In fact, inclusivism need not be destructive at all, as long as one remembers that "broad is the path that leads to destruction, and narrow is the road that leads to salvation."
Seems like our traditional teaching on hell and eternal judgement is like a ship where everyone is standing on one side, making the ship ride off to one side, out of balance, about to tip over. Whenever a storm comes up the ship flips back and forth between strict predestination and sloppy mercy.
Did anyone see Pirates of the Carribean 3 where they made the boat tip completely over by running back and forth across the deck? It was a beautiful scene.
Anyway, we really lean toward cruelty when it comes to hell. People like Calvin, I think, are very stimulated by the idea of those that are outside of the circle being eternally tortured in fire by demons. He liked it so much he upped the stakes so that even persons who confessed and believed in Jesus were liable to not be predestined to be saved.
On the other hand, more tender characters get a knee jerk reaction to this eternal torture compound, and have to somehow break with traditional Christianity so that the teaching is more gentle. My wife's father is like that. He ran a little jazz bar through the sixties, and was one of the first in Kansas City to give a venue to black musicians, until his club had to close down. He has been to Quaker meetings, and today his job is working the prayer lines for Unity Village in KC. He's into the Unity teaching, I think, mostly because he is more comfortable with it, being sort of an artsy outgoing person.
I wrestled with hell and judgement for a while. I couldn't see any difference between the Lord's agenda and Hitler's. One day I heard someone talking about the meaning of the word Eternal, to the effect that the meaning had more to do with quality than length of time. It started me thinking about "Eternal" judgement. From our points of view, being little jailed squirrels thrashing around in our mortality, we tend to think of Eternal as a very very long time where we can finally quit our jobs. And conversely, eternal judgement is simply torture and hell for a very very long time.
From the Holy Spirit's point of view, being not at all worried about longevity, Eternal means something that is finally done right. So, Eternal judgement is a decision that will never be overturned no matter how much feeling or mercy might be invoked. When I read verses like "the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night...", or "and if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire" I think of a process parallel to what goes on in nature. When grass withers, or leaves fall, or animals die, so that there is no longer any possible use for the organism, nature goes to work with bacteria and microscopic tormentors, stripping away all that was valuable in the organism. All the minerals, energy, etc. go into decomposition. When you build a proper compost pile it is recommended that you insert a thermometer into the heart of it because proper decomposition generates heat, like it's burning. When Jesus talks about hell, it was Gehenna, the place of human sacrifice near Jerusalme that was later made a trash dump where they would burn debris. So we get the picture of idolatry and sin leading to a place of destruction.
I imagine myself being put in charge, as a sub-contractor, of dealing with the souls of men who simply would not yield to Christ. God might say, "I simply can't do anything with these, and I need everything valuable that I put into them because it's part of me." It would be my job to somehow cause them to let go of all the personality, desires, heart, intelligence, dreams, skills, abilities, etc. And I know from experience that pain and sorrow cause people to let go of what they hold dear. So it would be necessary to set up a place like hell to extract every bit of God's self out of these persons, and FINISH the work. It would be no advantage to God to see that these persons were being continually roasted. He just wants his goods back.
I think if our teaching about hell were more grounded in the reasonableness of the Creator needing to recycle that which refuses to live, we would be more stable. Folks wouldn't thrash around so much trying out new teachings.
Brent,
You are a very good writer, and I like the imagery of your language. I also like your assessment of the psychology of our doctrines.
But your thoughts on hell seem to be nothing more than extra-biblical conjecture, based on wishful thinking rather than scripture. In fact, for your position to stand, you would have to conclude that much of scripture is erroneous.
I would sincerely like to know perhaps the most central scripture that you feel establishes the continuing nature of hell. My point really only breaks down to a tangiential sliver of the question. I mean, the real question is what exactly will keep a person clear from hell. All I'm feeling about this is that the eternallness of hell is in the permanence of the decision rather than the actual time given to destroying the sinner,
I'm comfortable questioning our teaching about this because it is on the list of things that must be overhauled. In Hebrews 6 the writer breaks up our foundation into seven points that that are liable to be messed up:
repentance from dead works
faith toward God
teachings about baptisms
laying on of hands
ressurection of the dead
eternal judgement.
Our history as a church is getting these questions straightened back out. I feel John Hus brought back in repentance when the church had gotten settled into flagrant living. Luther beyond question brought back in faith when the church had settled on works. The Anabaptists stood up for a true conversion made by adults during water baptism when the church had settled on infant baptism. Daddy Seymour pressed for Spirit Baptism when the church was entirely confident that all such gifts and powers were obsolete. Many healers in America laid their hands on the sick, and also to impart gifts, after about 1948, and largely had to do so in travelling tents because the churches didn't accept their "new" way. Next on the list is resurrection and eternal judgement. So I think it's safe to say that a revolution will eventually come in how we think of these two questions.
I think we are both looking at the same scriptures, Brent. I just don't think we should be interpreting "eternal" or "everlasting" as anything but an infinite amount of time. If indeed there is no such thing as time in heaven or hell, that seems to imply their permanence even more strongly.
This is not a debate of your-scriptures-vs-my-scriptures. This is a matter of "playing it as it lays". We should not doubt that Scripture means what it appears to mean, unless we have very solid hermeneutical support for such a conclusion. And I feel like your opinions did not carry the weight of such support, and that is why I referred to them as conjecture.
And although the Hebrews 6 list is interesting, I think your conclusions drawn from it are equally shaky. I don't believe the Reformists, the Anabaptists, the Pentecostals, etc, were "leaving behind the elementary teachings" as stated in Hebrews 6. Rather, these groups were correcting errors and falsehoods. Therefore, I don't think you can safely draw your conclusions from Hebrews 6.
I may be missing something, but in the many times I have read the book I never read this passage as a rationalization for softening our image of Hell. From how I read it, Lewis is simply conceding that we don't know enough to say who will be given or has been given grace.
My understanding of Universalism is that the doctrines are much looser than this.
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