Eh, wait, Pog, hold up before you add Lewis. The quote from the end of Malcolm, although I typically think of it in regard to his notion of Purgatory, isn’t strictly in that context, but rather on what the resurrection from the dead will be like. (The “eons in the dark” may have been what suggested the link to me.)
Here’s a more salient quote, same book, chapter 20, on the topic of praying for the dead: “I believe in Purgatory. …] I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don’t think suffering is the purpose of purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. ‘No nonsense about merit.’ The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.”
I suspect Lewis was at least a hopeful universalist. We shouldn’t read too much about hell/purgatory etc into The Great Divorce. Lewis himself tells us as much in the preface. In my view, the clue to his private opinion is tucked away in *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. *
Caspian’s crew have mutinied. They don’t want to sail to the Utter East. Caspian replies that most of them were going to be left out anyway, and that only the very best would be chosen to come. Under threat of exclusion, all the crew but one begged to be chosen.
Again, in The Last Battle, all the creatures who hate Aslan disappear into his shadow. Lewis says he doesn’t know what happened to them then, leaving their fate open. Similarly, when Lucy begs Aslan to do something for the Dwarves, he replies, “They are so afraid of being taken in they cannot be taken out.” It is inconceivable that this is the end of their story, that Lucy, so moved by the miserable plight of the Dwarves, simply shrugs and walks off to have a good time farther in and farther up. Lewis knew this as well as anyone, but left it up to us to read between the lines.
There is an entire tradition that rejects ECT: The Seventh Day Adventist. As for Annihilationism, John Stott was said to be a annihilationist. Even to the Ire of many Calvinists. I have just come from a puritan board where they said and I quote “If he really denys the teaching of eternal hell, I find it difficult to believe he’s really a Calvinist”, amongst other things about reading his work with qualification because of his annihilationist view. I have to say that if I were a Calvinist, the idea of an eternal hell would devastate me even more because there are some who will never be able to chose otherwise. There is also John Wenham, Glenn Peoples, who has been on here, Clarke Pinnock, Anabaptist Kurt Wilems has a very interesting view of being a purgatorial conditionalist (patheos.com/blogs/thepangeab … l-cares-7/).
Considering that he’s much more explicit in TGD on the topic than he is in the Narnian portions you mentioned, if I’m going to read much into any of his fantasy work I’ll read more into the more theologically detailed one instead of the less detailed ones.
If anything, his warning at the beginning of TGD is aimed at people reading too much hope into what he’s writing about. His whole stated purpose in the introduction, for writing the book at all, is to answer back against William Blake’s verrrrry radically (even insanely) universalistic Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
This isn’t necessarily a rejection of purgatorial universalism, but it’s at least a rejection of a radically (nearly pantheistic) morally subjective universalism, and may be a rejection of ultra-universalism where evil is wholly cured by God without prior repentant cooperation. When he stops talking in fantastic imagery, however (which is what his warning about details is strictly about) and starts talking directly about the theology of universalism–and in reference to his own Teacher MacDonald, not in reference to his rejection of Blake–he has MacDonald equivocate (which MacD never did) against universalism not in hopeful favor of it maybe being true. “Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it.” That’s absolutely a saying of Lewis, not of MacD, but he puts it in MacD’s mouth, cautioning Lewis against accepting what MacD actually wrote (which Lewis is well aware of the reality about: “In your own books, Sir, you were a Universalist. You talked as if all men would be saved. And St. Paul, too.”)
Lewis rewrites MacD, not to give himself hopeful universalism, but to caution against the hope that Lewis recognized MacD and even the Apostle Paul teaching: universalism (so says pseudo-MacD, and Lewis elsewhere in defending final hopeless perdition–and so the final hopeless loss of free will!) would destroy free will, which is the more important truth.
Notably, this is after the Tragedian has by all narrative appearances completely annihilated himself, and Lewis (in the character of himself) is complaining that this doesn’t seem entirely loving to let him go out like that and his wife not be upset by it. Pseudo-MacD comforts Lewis (sort of) with stern warnings defending the joy of the saved in the face of final loss of their loved ones.
“Gregory of Nyssa offered three reasons why he believed in universalism. First, he believed in it because of the character of God. “Being good, God entertains pity for fallen man; being wise, he is not ignorant of the means for his recovery.” Second, he believed in it because of the nature of evil. Evil must in the end be moved out of existence, “so that the absolutely non-existent should cease to be at all.” Evil is essentially negative and doomed to non-existence. Third, he believed in it because of the purpose of punishment. The purpose of punishment is always remedial. Its aim is “to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.” Punishment will hurt, but it is like the fire which separates the alloy from the gold; it is like the surgery which removes the diseased thing; it is like the cautery which burns out that which cannot be removed any other way.”
“Before he was betrayed, the Lord had rightly said, ‘When I have been lifted up, I shall draw all to myself,’ that is, I will deal with the whole condition of mankind and will call back to integrity the nature lost long ago. In me will all weakness be abolished; in me will all wounds be healed.”
Is Screech hopeful or convinced, Sobornost (and again a big thanks for all your hard work)?
Where I need help:
Confirmation of viewpoint/Categories:
Mark Twain John Wesley
Hans Kung Thomas Keating William Temple
Kevin Miller Brian McLaren Martin Luther King Doug Pagitt
John Polkinghorne Billy Graham
Francis Collins William Wordsworth Fydor Dostoyevsky
Leo Tolstoy Charles Kingsley GB Caird
Theophilus of Antioch Catherine Marshall
Theodoret
Gregory of Nazianzus
Bio and Quotes:
Julie Ferweda
House-Keeping:
Can people de-clutter (so as to make my looking out for new names and info easier) by deleting old posts that have been responded to? Thanks.
Dick, do you know many annihilationist anabaptists? I know that soul-sleep was the majority view amongst the unitarian and/or Italian evangelical rationalists/anabaptists — like Camillo Renato, Michael Servetus, Faustus Socinius and Simon Budny. But it was also recorded as being common amongst mainstream anabaptists too (from both sympathetic and polemical voices). Schiemer affirmed soul sleep. And Dirk probably did too. But that doesn’t mean they were necessarily annihilationists though. I’m hoping you might have more info on this? Unitarian “Mennonite” Adam Pastors and the unitarian Faustus Socinius were annihilationists, if I recall correctly.
