Sorry for the delay! This is the episode where Matt and I sit back and reflect on this past season going through The Great Divorce chapter by chapter.
S2E23: The Great Divorce Retrospective (Download)
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Time Stamps
In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.
01:53 – The Quote-of-the-week
03:17 – The Kilmer Letters
05:03 – My appearance of Reason and Theology
07:10 – Book discussion begins…
07:16 – What did you think of this Season?
11:53 – How has this Season changed you?
16:34 – What are the main themes you’ve seen?
30:28 – What kind of ghost would you be?
44:40 – The “Last Call” Bell
Show Notes
• Our quote-of-the-week wasn’t from Lewis, but from his master, George MacDonald:
“No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it – no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather”
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons (“The Last Farthing”)
• Matt was out of alcohol so he was drinking a Lemon Ginger Zinger Tea. I was drinking Irish Breakfast Tea and, since we knew this was going to be a slightly longer episode, I also had another Bundaberg Ginger Beer on standby.
• I spoke about The Kilmer Letters. These are 29 letters were sent by C.S. Lewis between 1954 and 1963 to an American family of eight siblings who had written to him. They are on sale for sale for $110,000.
In previous episodes, I had spoken about my friend Meg Hunter-Kilmer (“Hobo for Christ”), who is the niece of the boys and girls to whom Lewis wrote. Not only did Lewis write to them, he dedicated The Magician’s Nephew to them.
• I spoke about my appearance on Reason & Theology to talk about the Christian life. They also have a website that tells you about future guests.
• We then began the episode proper. We talked about what it was like taking a Season to discuss The Great Divorce chapter by chapter.
Matt said that the thing which really jumped out at him this time was the sanctification/purging/theosis theme.
We both said that going through a book slowly offered us more opportunity to see connections with Lewis’ other works. I said it also allowed us to wrestle with the more difficult passages and look up the obscure references.
Matt commented that he had originally wanted to take a few chapters per episode, but that he was grateful that I had slowed us down and adopted the usual chapter-by-chapter format. However, we’ll be grouping chapters when we read Till We Have Faces in Season 3…
I said that I had also really liked how much listener interaction we had this Season. A listener whom I had mentioned on a previous episode (“rss1179”) messaged us to say that he has a local C.S. Lewis bookclub and use our podcast in their group. I sent him my discussion notes for The Great Divorce.
• Matt asked me how this Season has changed me…
I said that it pushed many more Lewis quotations into my brain, but more importantly, I felt that it had given me a much better way to explain the doctrine of Hell. I pointed out that Lewis himself had also struggled with the Hell:
There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it.
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.
I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully “All will be saved.” But my reason retorts, “Without their will, or with it?” If I say “Without their will” I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say “With their will,” my reason replies “How if they will not give in?”…
The doors of Hell are locked on the inside… 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.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I said that this book had also provided me with a great litmus test when making a moral decision: am I willing to let THIS keep me out of Heaven?
Matt spoke about the “compound interest” of small sinful decisions and the need to think “long term”.
• Matt asked me what main themes I saw during this Season…
I said the main theme I saw was “Heavenly and Hellish Creatures”, something which we were introduced to in Mere Christianity.
Matt said the primary theme he sees in the book is about the choice, the difference between saying “Thy will be done” and “MY will be done”. We have to give 100% to God and nothing less and Matt referred to this point as articulated in David Clark’s book C.S. Lewis goes to Heaven. Matt quoted from one of Lewis’ letters:
“But though freedom is real it is no infinite. Every choice reduces a little ones freedom to choose the next time. There therefore becomes a time when the creature is fully built, irrevocably attached either to God or to itself.
C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters
I spoke about the Augustinian idea that evil is just twisted good.
I referenced Lewis’ explanation in Mere Christianity regarding what Jesus means when He says “Be ye perfect”.
In reference to freedom and choice, I referenced this letter from Screwtape:
All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 12)
We encouraged everyone to confess their sins and bring them out into the light.
I suggested that Sarah Smith was a perfect description of what Lewis described in The Weight of Glory:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
I quoted Lewis, explaining that much of our suffering comes from our attempts to find joy in something other than God:
And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book II, Chapter 3)
• Matt and I then discussed what kind of ghosts we might be if we had to write ourselves into The Great Divorce.
• Matt ended the episode with the following quotation from David Clark:
“Beneath all the landscapes, characters, and dialogues lies a simple, complicated message. The only hope of salvation, complete purification, and resurrection lies in God. He cannot change his holy character to suit each person’s demands, but he will change those who allow him, and he will welcome those he has changed into fellowship with one another and with him. And then, at last, what humans were created for, including the individuality of each person, will find its fullest expression, to our highest joy and to His eternal Glory…
The ‘Sociology’ part ends on a glorious note, with Sarah Smith portraying what a cleansed and glorified human will become…
The ‘Geography’ part climaxes with the revelation of just how small Hell really is, how enormous Heaven is, how Hell cannot affect Heaven, and the good news that One has descended into Hades and now has authority over it.”
David Clark, C.S. Lewis goes to Heaven
• We reminded the listeners to write us a review on iTunes, Podbean etc. At the end of the Season we will be choosing one review at random and the winner will receive a signed copy of Peter Kreeft’s latest book on C.S. Lewis!
• I had bought Matt a copy of Between Heaven and Hell, a book by Peter Kreeft which I got signed for Matt..
