Synopsis of Chapter 8: Hell Lewis begins by reinforcing his abhorrence of the idea of Hell. It is one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous, and the goodness of God impugned. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the reality of this final judgment and, therefore, the necessity of discussing it. Pain, we acknowledge, is beneficial when it leads to repentance and/or sanctification. But even pain that does not lead to conversion may be considered beneficial when we consider that Hell is retributive justice and leads to the revelation to the condemned creature that he existed in a sinful condition. We must remember that Hell is not a sentence imposed on bad men, but it is chosen by them because men prefer darkness to light. And the characteristic of lost souls is their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves. Therefore the only place a lost man may turn to for comfort is himself and what he finds there is Hell. He refutes the ideas that eternal damnation might seem to be a disproportionate punishment for what he calls transitory sin (sin in one part destroys the whole) and also the idea of second chances (I believe that if a million chances were likely to do good, they would be given.). He then discusses the actual experience of Hell (the frightful intensity of the pains of Hell). Jesus described Hell in three ways: punishment, destruction, and privation, exclusion, or banishment. He warns us not to focus on one description and not the others in an unbalanced way: Hell must contain elements of all three symbols. He also mentions the idea that those in Heaven could not be happy knowing that others were suffering in Hell. He suggests that its possible that the suffering of the damned does not last for eternity (he is not adamant about this, saying that the Bible speaks much more of Heaven than of Hell so there is much we dont know about the latter). Lewis also addresses the idea that a single damned soul means the defeat of omnipotence. He expands this idea by claiming that the creation of beings with free will is actually a miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. Finally, Lewis asks those to object to the doctrine of Hell what they are asking God to do: To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 18:03:54 +0000
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