priemier
Rookie
- Joined
- May 22, 2018
- Messages
- 35
As I was reading the Great Divorce, a lot of red flags came up but I ignored them..Your response raises some complex issues...
C.S. Lewis was indeed friends with Tolkein as well as G.K. Chesterton. Both were Catholics but we're also genuine Christians. The literary device of purgatory in the Great Divorce was inspired by George McDonald, but, rather like his Space Trilogy with its alien life-forms or Narnia with its mythical creatures drawn from possibly pagan folklore, these are literary devices that form a mere backcloth to the story.
As a lover of allegory, the skill is to create a story that lies alongside reality to set the scene for the main question of the text. If you find it hard not to take allegory literally, C.S. Lewis is not an author who will bless you.
As to it being required occult reading, I presume the Bible is also on the reading list...
Hush," said he sternly. "Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind-ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind-is, in the end, Hell. 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 unshakable remains." "But there is a real choice after death? My Roman Catholic friends would be surprised, for to them souls in Purgatory are already saved. And my Protestant friends would like it no better, for they'd say that the tree lies as it falls."
"They're both right, maybe. Do not fash yourself with such questions. Ye cannot fully understand the relations of choice and Time till you are beyond both. And ye were not brought here to study such curiosities. What concerns you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them making."
Okay, the bible says nothing about purgatory being real or Hell being a "state of mind"..Hell is a place, and yes you can have a hell-like mindset without jesus..but really? This all sounds true but also Jesus mentions none of this stuff (Hell being small as a blade of grass, lust demon turning into a stallion? really?) in the bible, this is not biblical at all..
"The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time's lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?" (Ch.13)
Uh, yeah this raised a big flag...CS Lewis/Satan is extremely clever, I was deceived until actually seeing this. He mixes christian theology (eternal life and God's promises) with some falsehoods(Our greatness, being gods??)...so we overlook the fact that he is blaspheming.