Hell in the Writings of C. S. Lewis

“I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.”[1]

A strong belief in heaven calls for serious reflection on hell. For this reason, hell, damnation, and the demonic are prominent themes in the writings of C. S. Lewis; his serious conviction about heaven demands sober consideration about hell. For Lewis, heaven and hell are not simply future destinations. Instead, they are present realities that pervade and shape our lives. Every moment in time bears the weight of eternity, providing another opportunity for us to become more devilish or angelic.

Lewis didactically addresses the topic of hell in Chapter Eight of The Problem of Pain. In four works of fiction (Screwtape Letters, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength, and The Great Divorce) Lewis imaginatively illustrates his beliefs in heaven and hell. In my analysis of Lewis’ thought, I will give his didactic work priority and allow his works of fiction to supply imaginative flesh to the theological framework provided in The Problem of Pain.

Hell is perhaps the least palatable of all Christian doctrines. Many find the topic repulsive and revolting.[2] The philosopher Bertrand Russell believed it demonstrated a defect in Christ’s character: “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that he believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”[3]

Lewis agrees that the doctrine of hell is difficult to stomach. “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power.”[4] However, Lewis finds himself compelled to believe in hell for four reasons: “[1] it has the full support of Scripture and, [2] specially, of Our Lord’s own words; [3] it has always been held by Christendom; and [4] it has the support of reason.”[5]

Lewis readily admits that it is impossible to make the doctrine of hell tolerable or comfortable. But it can be shown to be in accordance with scripture in general and in Jesus’ teachings in particular. Furthermore, it is demonstrably a traditional belief of historic Christianity. Finally, it is reasonable – indeed, moral – taking sin, love, and human freedom seriously.

Scripture

“[1] it has the full support of Scripture and, [2] specially, of Our Lord’s own words…”

Lewis summarizes Jesus’ teaching about hell “under three symbols: first, that of punishment (Matt 25:46); second, that of destruction (Matt 10:28); and thirdly, that of privation, exclusion, or banishment into ‘the outer darkness.’”[6] All three symbols “are intended to suggest something unspeakably horrible, and any interpretation which does not face that fact is, I am afraid, out of court from the beginning.”[7]

The torment is described metaphorically, yet the pain signified is quite real and intense. “The images of Hell in Scripture are not to be taken literally, that is, as something other than images. But they are to be taken seriously, because they point to something more, not less, horrible than the literal images denote.”[8] Just as heaven will be far greater than we can imagine, hell will be far worse.

Jesus spoke more about the reality of hell than any other person in the Bible. Indeed, one of the most popular sayings of Jesus – John 3:16 – refers to hell: “the one who believes in him (Jesus) shall not perish but have everlasting life.” If hell is not real, Christ is a liar. Regis Martin summarizes Jesus’ purpose in teaching on hell: “All that Jesus says on the subject of Hell would appear then to have but one purpose, to persuade man of its existence and of the real possibility that at the end of his life he may take himself there.”[9]

One might object that the images of hell are overwhelmingly disturbing. And they certainly are! By God’s grace, they are intended to be. God loves us so much he spares no expense in his attempt to “scare the hell out of us” or, more appropriately, “scare us out of hell.” “If such metaphors sicken the stomach, that is their intended purpose – to spur to repentance, faith, and holiness. If the rhetoric comforted the hearer, it would not fulfill its intended function.”[10] Therefore, the metaphors are right, appropriate – even good: “The goodness of God guarantees that scripture would not unnecessarily ‘alarm his moral creatures with groundless fears, or to represent the consequences of sin as more dreadful than they really are.’”[11]

Tradition

“[3] it has always been held by Christendom…”

The third reason Lewis gives for believing in hell is the overwhelming witness of Christian tradition. Hell has never been a popular doctrine. Ancient people were no more prone to assent to its horrific reality than are moderns. It has always provoked strong opposition. Yet, in spite of this reaction, for the last 2000 years the church has continually affirmed its existence and the eternal misery awaiting those who go there: “It is hard to think of any Christian teaching that has stronger biblical precedent and greater traditional consensus than the teaching of eternal punishment (Jude 7; 2 Thess. 1:9; Mark 9:43; Matt. 13:42; Ignatius of Antioch, To the Ephesians 16.2; Justin Martyr, Apology II.9; Fourth Lateran Council, DS 429), yet it remains controversial and widely debated.”[12]

Reason

“and [4] it has the support of reason.”

The fourth reason Lewis gives for believing in hell is his contention that it is reasonable, indeed, that it is ultimately moral. Though the doctrine of hell is “not tolerable,” it “can be shown to be moral.”[13]

“Some will not be redeemed.”[14] Hell is proof of God’s respect for human freedom. Hell is freely chosen — the final abuse of the freedom humans have been given. One’s response to God must be freely given, not forced. “If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse… How can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary?”[15]

Ultimately, hell is God giving the wicked what they want. Hell is not simply a penal sentence but the end of a freely chosen path – a monument to human freedom.

But why would somebody choose hell? Nobody chooses hell, they simply reject righteousness. “People seek the benefits of God, while all the while fleeing from God himself. The dilemma is similar to another human phenomenon. Few, if any, would deliberately choose to go to hell. Permanent residence there is not a natural desire. We do not desire hell, but we do desire evil. The problem is that hell is the appointed consequence of evil. We desire evil without hell and heaven without God.”[16]

They damned prefer to be at the center of their own universe at all costs. “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality.”[17]

In hell, one’s state is irremediably fixed, for the will is utterly enslaved to the passions. “To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or ‘damned ghost’ – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centred in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will.”[18]

The tragedy of hell is that there is no hope of change—alienation and despair continue unabated. “[The inhabitants of hell] bear the weight of eternity” (Tertullian). There is a sense of finality to hell that is not paralleled in heaven.[19] Whether this state is eternal is something Lewis questions: “That the lost soul is eternally fixed in its diabolical attitude we cannot doubt: but whether this eternal fixity implies endless duration – or duration at all – we cannot say.”[20]

Those in hell are self-enslaved. They reside in a prison with the lock on the inside. There they make the ultimate “declaration of independence.”

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free.[21]

Many despise hell, rightly reacting against the caricatures of bizarre torture chambers inhabited by demons roasting frightened people over burning pits of sulfur to the twisted glee of God. Furthermore, the way some Christians speak of hell with giddiness over people’s doom does not help matters. Hell is offensive enough apart from these unbiblical caricatures and distortions. The reality is dreadfully simpler. God gives people what they want. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, chose it.”[22]

Objections

In The Problem of Pain, Lewis addresses a number of common objections to the doctrine of hell. The first, how can those in heaven remain blessed while remaining aware that even one human soul was in hell? To this objection, Lewis simply asks “[A]re we more merciful than God?”[23] Furthermore, is it right to believe that one person can extinguish the joy of many by refusing to respond to God’s love? “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”[24]

There must be a time when one’s actions are finally judged.  Some say “that death ought not to be final, that there ought to be a second chance. I believe that if a million chances were likely to do good, they would be given… Finality must come some time, and it does not require a very robust faith to believe that omniscience knows when.”[25]

 But why must the punishment be so long? Must the sentence be eternal even though the crimes are temporal? The degree of just punishment of a crime is not measured by its duration (how long it took to commit the crime), but by how severe the crime is. Rape and murder can occur in only a few minutes. Should the punishment be of the same duration or should it match the crime? We find it reasonable for someone to serve a life sentence here on earth — why not in eternity? “If the consequences of sin extend beyond one’s finite life, then it is not morally scandalous for the punishment of sin also to extend beyond one’s finite life.”[26]

But what if the damned in hell change their mind? “There is no hint in the Bible that there is any repentance in hell... there may be a cry for relief... but no hint of repentance.”[27] As Aslan tells Polly in The Magician’s Nephew, “All get what they want; they do not always like it.”[28]

Finally, though not directly bearing upon the topic of hell, it is important to note Lewis’ answer to the question, “What about the unevangelized – those who have never heard the gospel?” Lewis’ careful and balanced answer should not be gleaned from his fiction, but from his straightforward didactic comments in Mere Christianity:

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. Christians are Christ’s body, the organism through which He works. Every addition to that body enables Him to do more. If you want to help those outside you must add your own little cell to the body of Christ who alone can help them. Cutting off a man’s fingers would be an odd way of getting him to do more work.[29]

Lewis was not a universalist. “Universalism, like predestination, would seem to destroy freedom.”[30] He cautiously refuses to speak dogmatically where the Scriptures remain silent. Instead he calls upon all people to do their part to further God’s work of bringing new life in Christ to all people.

With this didactic foundation, we now consider two of Lewis’ most popular fictional works on hell, damnation, and the demonic.

The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters consists of a series of letters written from an arch-demon, Screwtape, to a junior-demon named Wormwood in regard to securing the damnation of a newly converted Christian man. In his story, Lewis portrays hell as the vast bureaucracy of a police state or aggressive business rather than as a medieval torture chamber. Competition rules the office. “‘Dog eat dog’ is the principle of the whole organization. Everyone wishes everyone else’s discrediting, demotion, and ruin.”[31]

Every gain by one being in hell is a loss to another resulting in a mad scramble for advancement. “We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned with his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”[32] This austerity allows for no laughter, fun, or music in hell.[33]  “Laughter… the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.”[34] “Fun is closely related to Joy… in itself is has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.”[35]

The demons who populate hell have two primary motives in seeking the damnation of souls – both selfish and self-centered:

Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. The first is fear of punishment: for as totalitarian countries have their camps for torture, so my Hell contains deeper Hells, its “houses of correction.” Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign the devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one’s fellow; to make his whole intellectual and emotional life merely an extension of one’s own.[36]

Damned individuals become food for the devils.  “the justice of Hell is purely realistic, and concerned only with results. Bring us back food, or be food yourself.”[37] This “spiritual cannibalism”[38] is contrasted with God’s design for individuals.

To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself – creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.[39]

Because the demons are completely unable to love, they are completely unable to understand God’s intentions for humanity. “A being which can still love is not yet a devil.”[40] By drawing such a vast contrast between the demon’s and God’s intentions, Lewis is able to demonstrate how God’s wooing and giving love is far superior to the demon’s lust to dominate, control, and devour.

The most important task of the demons is to draw people away from “the Enemy” – God. They can do this through materialism or occultism. The means used are really not important. Disbelief in devils and excessive interest in them are both useful to the demons’ cause.

But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy… Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.[41]

The secret the demons understand is that human rebellion, like human virtue, is the culmination of a lifetime of small decisions. The more we are aware of this vital truth, the more we can make every effort to perform small acts of virtue. Because heaven and hell are present realities, every human being and every human act is of utmost significance.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare. All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities it is with awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal, Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or ever lasting splendours.[42]

The Great Divorce

In The Great Divorce we see hell, not from the perspective of the demons, but from the perspective of its inhabitants who are allowed an opportunity to take a bus-ride from hell to heaven. Hell is portrayed “as a dismal twilight city in which people, consumed with self, moved light years away from each other… No one has joy, but all can have possessions galore by wishing for them.”[43] Hell is populated by empty shells of selfish individuals who want nothing to do with reality. “The trouble is they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it.”[44] The damned receive God’s ultimate judgment of “giving them over to their desires” (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). God allows them to have what they want, but what they want is only imagined. It is not real.[45]

When the visitors from hell arrive in heaven, they are “all unsubstantial ghosts, human-shaped stains on the bright air, whitish or grey, transparent and fragile. The inhabitants of heaven, in contrast, have become Solid People. They all shine with love and joy, but they are all very much themselves.”[46]

Through a number of vignettes Lewis proves why it is that people reject heaven and thus choose hell. In the end, most choose to return to hell. On their journey back to hell, we discover that hell is utterly insignificant. “All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.”[47] Heaven is real. Hell is emptiness – an embrace of the unreal. “Hell is a state of mind… But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”[48] The inhabitants of hell are nearly nothing – human ruins. “For a damned soul is nearly nothing; it is shrunk, shut up in itself.”[49] Hell is not a place of punishment as much as it is the only place (hardly a place at all) left for those who desire their way over God.

In The Great Divorce, Lewis illustrates his belief that heaven and hell are future realities that are presently experienced. “Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell; and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”[50] For Christians, this is as bad as it gets. For unbelievers, this is as good as it gets.

That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it, not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death… And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.[51]

Conclusion

Hell may be intolerable, but it is taught in Scripture, most notably by Jesus. It accords with Christian tradition and, contrary to expectation, it can be demonstrated to be moral. Indeed, the alternative is far more frightening than hell.

Eternal punishment is not the ultimate terror. The ultimate terror is a life that has no ultimate meaning, significance, and purpose. T. S. Elliot put it well, “I had far rather walk, as I do, in daily terror of eternity, than feel that this was only a children’s game in which all the contestants would get equally worthless prizes in the end.”

If there is no hell, then all roads lead to the same place. If all roads lead to the same place, it makes no ultimate difference which road we take – the way we live our lives is of no ultimate significance. If there is a hell, there are great consequences to our decisions. The present bears the weight of eternity. We stand every moment at the gate of eternity. Our exercise of freedom is real, with real consequences—with eternal consequences!

Our ultimate choice resides between two possibilities: The godless love of self or the self-less love of God. The choice we make is the difference between heaven and hell, good and evil, the angelic and demonic, Reality or emptiness.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2004