“I am persuaded that the phrase ‘child abuse’ is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of [unconfessed] mortal sins in an eternal hell.”
Those who followed religious trends during the early 2000s might well be familiar with this incendiary quote, made by Richard Dawkins in his 2006 bestseller, The God Delusion. The ‘New Atheism’ of writers like Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens shot to prominence, of course, as a reaction to the infamous September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The sheer popularity of ‘New Atheism’ (not to mention its unashamed hostility towards religion) forced Christians across the Western world to face some uncomfortable questions, not least about the doctrine of hell. One man, it seemed, had the answers to soothe their troubled minds: the legendary British writer and theologian, C. S. Lewis. Appearances, though, can be deceiving. How? Well… it’s a long story.
Present-day Western Protestantism can be understood, I would argue, through the lens of three major historical developments: the Enlightenment, which swept through Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries (and which later spread to America); the First Great Awakening, which took Britain and North America by storm in the 1730s and 1740s; and the Second Great Awakening, which took place around 1795-1835 in the newly-independent USA.
The values of the First and Second Great Awakenings dominate modern American evangelicalism (and, in turn, the many countries which have been culturally colonised by American missionaries). The legacy of the First Great Awakening is a strict loyalty to a specific set of theological beliefs, including concepts such as predestination and original sin, concepts which can be traced back to the writings of Augustine. In the 21st century, popular preachers in the ‘First Great Awakening’ style have included John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and John MacArthur, who seem to have collectively organised themselves under the banner of ‘The Gospel Coalition‘. (Coincidentally, it would seem as though this tradition is also fiercely committed to misogyny ‘complementarianism’, but that’s a tangent for another time).
The legacy of the Second Great Awakening is a single-minded dedication to increasing the number of Christians, often through means of innovations or ‘New Measures’, emotional or ‘relatable’ preaching, business and marketing strategies, and a more generalised (and perhaps ‘crowd-pleasing’) set of beliefs. In its more extreme forms, 20th and 21st century ‘Second Great Awakening’ Christianity takes the shape of exciting-sounding churches like Hillsong, Elevation, Riverlife, Citypointe, Planetshakers, and so on, as well as thrilling literature such as The Secret of Happiness, Activating God’s Power in Your Life, How You Can Be A Fruitful Witness, and If You Need Healing, Do These Things. The view of hell as a never-ending realm of physical torture is, generally speaking, too pessimistic for this style of Christianity; nevertheless, some version of the status quo must be adhered to, resulting in the popular understanding of hell as an “eternal separation from God”.
While they are uncomfortable bedfellows, these two types of ‘Awakened’ Christianity nevertheless share much in common — their commitment to some kind of inescapable, never-ending hell, for example, as well as their firm insistence on ‘faith’ or ‘belief in Jesus’ above all else. It’s not out of the question to see crossover between the two camps, either. Back when I was in the evangelical world, the term ‘Bapticostal’ was used, tongue-in-cheek, to refer to previously straight-laced Baptist congregations who began incorporating the more emotional, experience-based tendencies of Pentecostal ‘megachurches’. Together, these two types of ‘Awakened’ Christianity constitute what I would generally label as modern fundamentalist Protestantism (or, as Richard Dawkins puts it, “honest-to-goodness fundamentalism”).
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Now, I mentioned three major historical movements, not just the two we’ve discussed. This brings us to the most despised enemy of modern fundamentalist Christianity — more hated, I would argue, than Roman Catholicism or even New Atheism. Generally speaking, I would label this third category as ‘Enlightenment‘-style Christianity (‘Enlightened Christianity’ sounds far too pretentious!); fundamentalists might insult it as ‘liberal Christianity’ or ‘progressive Christianity’.
The Enlightenment certainly had its share of ‘raging against the religious machine’. One only has to consider the many razor-sharp quips of Parisian atheist Denis Diderot, including: “The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers”, “From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step”, and, most vividly, “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Back in the 18th century, however, full-blown atheism was not yet a widespread phenomenon. More commonly, the Enlightenment was marked by thinkers unafraid to combine belief in ‘God’ with freedom of thought and ‘dangerous ideas’ — people like David Hume, John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, and Isaac Newton. Controversial religious views were nevertheless often enough to see these figures labelled as an ‘atheists’ (or, alternatively, ‘Socinians’) by their opponents.
Fast-forward to the 20th century, and it shouldn’t be surprising to encounter the combination of ‘free-thinking’ and Christian faith in European heavyweights such as Karl Barth, John Stott, and C. S. Lewis. Admittedly, this type of Christianity has not been altogether absent from modern America; in terms of sheer cultural impact, however, European ‘Enlightenment’-style Christianity cannot be matched. That brings us, at last, to Lewis: World War I veteran, beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and respected theologian.
With the devastating World War II underway, Lewis published one of his most significant books, The Problem of Pain. The spectre of evil and fear hanging across Europe (and particularly the threat posed to Britain by Nazi Germany) no doubt influenced Lewis as he defended belief in a good, all-powerful God in the face of human suffering, animal suffering, and hell. Lewis quickly concluded that hell could not be thought of as a form of “retributive punishment inflicted by God”. Quoting Austrian writer Friedrich von Hugel, Lewis instead argued that hell was a self-chosen condition of existence, the final outcome for a person who rejects “everything that is not simply themselves”. Hell, then, was not a sentence handed down by God, but rather God granting the hopeless wishes of those who refused to love anything aside from themselves. Lewis seems, at least in theory, to have entertained the possibility of a ‘second chance’ to enter heaven after death (“I believe that if a million chances were likely to do good, they would be given”); nevertheless, he concluded that at some point, second chances would become useless, and that “finality” would inevitably occur.
As to what would happen after the point of “finality” was reached, Lewis was vague. ‘Lost souls’, he wrote, would become “remains”, or remnants of humans, permanently locked into self-centred attitudes; however, “whether this… implies endless duration — or duration at all — we cannot say.” So, Lewis was willing to at least welcome speculation on whether souls could be destroyed, even if he didn’t necessarily adopt such a belief himself.
Shortly after the end of World War II, Lewis went on to publish The Great Divorce, an imaginative, allegorical tour of the afterlife in the vein of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Far from Dante’s vast, multi-storied, inescapable prison of torment, The Great Divorce depicted hell as a drab, grey, minuscule place, “smaller than one atom of… the Real World [heaven]”. Everyone in this version of hell has everything they want, although no-one in hell can stand each other. Hell’s most self-centred inhabitants live further and further away from its centre, infinitely distancing themselves from everyone and everything else. Surprisingly, a bus regularly transits between the centre of hell and the edge of paradise, although most of hell’s residents sneer at it. Of those who do choose to visit paradise’s outskirts, some try to bully and manipulate their loved ones; others self-righteously huff and puff at the injustice of murderers being accepted into heaven; others try to steal paradise’s treasures to sell back in hell. Entering heaven is simple and yet monumentally difficult, as it requires the characters in the story to let go of their ego, pride, selfishness, and spite, and so “[begin] all over again like a little child and [enter] into joy”.
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And now, we return to the 21st century and the merciless attacks of Richard Dawkins and others in the New Atheist movement. Protestant fundamentalists needed someone to save them from the New Atheist’s barrage of ridicule; someone with the cultural and intellectual credibility to silence these ferocious critics. They found their talisman in Lewis — so much so that in 2011 (decades after Lewis’s death), his publisher remarked:
“I would say in the last 10 years, C. S. Lewis has sold more books than any other 10-year span since he started publishing… He’s not only not declining, he is in his sweet spot.”
The popularity of Lewis’s theology is perhaps best seen in the late Tim Keller’s 2008 bestseller, The Reason For God. (Back when I was a Christian, this book was everywhere.) Keller referenced Lewis frequently in The Reason for God’s chapter on hell. He repeated Lewis’s central argument that hell had nothing to do with fire, but with “the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centred life, going on and on forever.” Hell was a matter of personal choice and freedom: “All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be hell.” God, Keller argued, could hardly be blamed for simply giving people “what they most want, including freedom from [God] himself.”
On the surface, this rebirth of interest in Lewis seems entirely reasonable. In a way, it helped many fundamentalists and New Atheists find common ground in a mutual rejection of a ‘fiery’ or ‘barbaric’ hell. Looking more carefully, however, Lewis’s true views were quietly put to one side. A cynic might say that Lewis’s words were used and misrepresented, rather than genuinely understood and embraced.
Firstly, we have the destruction of ‘lost souls’ as an alternative to a never-ending ‘hell’. Lewis mentions this concept in The Problem of Pain, and while he ultimately doesn’t seem to have adopted the position himself, he does give a certain ‘intellectual nod’ to it. Plenty of other 20th century Christian theologians rejected the notion that human souls were indestructible, most notably including famed English priest John Stott. Keller would have known all this, having been influenced by both Lewis and Stott; nevertheless, no mention of ‘soul destruction’ appears in The Reason For God (even further, Keller matter-of-factly states that “Christians believe souls don’t die”). The concept of destruction as an alternative to ‘hell’ — despite being supported by many New Testament texts — remains taboo among present-day fundamentalists.
Secondly, we come to the notion of a ‘second chance’ after death. Lewis believed that true freedom of choice in the afterlife meant that some people might theoretically choose to submit to God, leave ‘hell’, and enter heaven. Of course, it might be possible that, after enough time had passed, those in hell would become so twisted that they would lose the ability to ever choose to leave. It might equally be possible that nobody in hell would ever choose to leave. Nevertheless, for Lewis, some sort of opportunity to leave hell must have at least been theoretically available for some amount of time in the afterlife. “The gates of hell are locked from the inside,” as Lewis famously wrote; that being the case, it would be entirely possible for a person in hell to unlock the door and walk out, if they so desired. Once again, such an idea is unacceptable for Christian fundamentalists; their dogma states that ‘second chances’ after death are impossible.
As much as Lewis’s words might appeal to fundamentalist Christians in the 21st century, then, there remains an as-yet-unreconciled divide between them. Where Lewis was open to speculation and reason, Christian fundamentalism has proven itself stubbornly unwilling to budge on (or even to consider) taboos like destruction and ‘second chances’ in the afterlife. The fundamentalist ‘hell’ is not locked from the inside; rather, it is locked in both directions.
This is a modified excerpt from my as-yet-unreleased book, Decoding Gehenna: Hell and the Afterlife in the West. Subscribe or Follow Me for updates and more sneak-peek excerpts!
