[Preface: This is my third time around, perhaps 18 year intervals, at which I've read this book. Great Divorce is longer than a short story, but shorter than most of the novels I've read. A novella perhaps? Perhaps because the Tabernacle is to Christianity an artifact of an older covenant, we seldom ponder it as a verb form, although the verb, "to tabernacle" is translated in our New Testament as the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit; also, within the title, the Hebrew feast of "booths" or "tabernacles." It's kind of a big deal in old and new testaments that G_d won't dwell in a construction of human hands(.) Therefore, even if you don't believe in ghosts, and if you don't believe in Purgatory, my review, my 15th chapter appendage to Great Divorce, offers some perspective from the Shakespearean ghost of Hamlet's father. Also quotes from what Professor C.S. Lewis thought and wrote about that state of death and Purgatory as a literary device. Just like Rapture, I believe Purgatory the topic belongs to the canon of Biblical literature. I hope you'll enjoy the ride.]
(A1.) Because The Great Divorce is rejected by some Christians as if it were a narrative about Purgatory, I'd like to disassociate that particular legend from the broader scope of those dimensions which are parallels of heaven & hell, actually mentioned in the Bible. Besides the absence of Purgatory in any canonized book, fundamental Protestant objections are rooted in the model of arbitrary judgement upon death, and I believe reflect a shallow perception of either death or this judgement.
Judgement is too vast a scope to address with a review. (Independently, one might open a chain reference Bible or a concordance to prove the logic of that verse from Deuteronomy, "...He is the Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are judgement" - Deuteronomy 32: 3-4, KJV). That Hebrew word is equally consistent with justice, selection, and discernment. The English word, 'all' as a starburst fawcet of the infinitely discerning character of G_d might yield some depth through the study of Psalm 119.
The New Testament epistle to Hebrews stands out as a model of deliberately designed or consciously constructed doctrine. It's 9th chapter, besides discussing the in-depth logistics of blood atonement, sets forth the following linkage of death and judgement with a specter of finality.
[Hebrews 9: 27-28, RSV]
27.) And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment,
28.) so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
(A2.) Purgatorial Fire, A Phenomenon With No Distinctive Space Time.
About the same time as I learned to read from my parents, they introduced myself and my sibling to BMA, a Bible Memory Association, which was a fundamentalist Congregational church ministry back in the 60's. They also sponsored a Summer Camp for family devotions which I perceive has not carried over into the 21st century. The desired outcome of the purge(-atorial) fire from I Corinthians chp-3 upon the foundations and works which build up a life, is that it ought not to become minimalized to a mere "salvation as if by fire." They didn't believe in the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, as did some of my ancestors & relatives. I don't feel cheated that my mother told me more than one perspective on this, since the doctrine as I learned it includes substantive Old Testament & New Testament ideas from the whole counsel of G_d.
[I-Peter 1: 6-7, ASV]
6.) "Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,"
7.) "that the proof [or proving] of your faith, [being] more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved [or purified] by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ:"
Peter used the (koinonia) generic word 'pur' or fire, from Hellenistic Greek. This is a simile with trials, not an analogy or metaphor. No, the linguistic root carry-over with Purgatory, purge & purify isn't coincidence. It's simply more durable language, having crossed a bridge from Greek to Latin, and in this case to English.
[I Corinthians 3: 11-17]
11.) "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."
12.) "Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw--"
13.) "each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done."
14.) "If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward."
15.) "If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."
16.) "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?"
17.) "If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are."
St Paul's building metaphor is mirrored by Lewis in the Great Divorce. Here the soulish yearnings are likened to either the fleshly, or to spiritual. It is unclear to me from the English Bibles whether St. Paul's grammar asserts that entering into the presence of G_d is that entrance of a consuming fire which is how G_d is identified in the epistle to the Hebrews. Consider Hebrews 12: 26-29, of enduring things, and that Christ is the only fire-proof foundation. This is one of those places where a Greek Orthodox 1st language speaker is likely the only person who could ferret out if Paul's florid verbiage and page-long, run-on sentences offer a clue as to whether he meant G_d is the fire of the Day of the Lord.
(A3.) The Conundrum of a Lively Deadness.
[Ephesians 2:4-5]
(4) "but God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,"
(5) "even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved);"
While the story of Great Divorce mentions ghosts (and some historical, deceased, non-player-characters), C.S. Lewis' Elementary P.O.V. (point of view) proffers an analogy to a metaphorical bus ride between a dimension (Hell-like) and another dimension (Elysium-like); Though, in point of factual description the embarkation points of the journey stand out as two dimensions (quantums) co-existing restlessly in a single plane of physicality, (physicality which in itself either adheres to solid physics or else suffers varying degrees of cognitive dissolution of it's substance, depending on degrees of separation from the celestial city). The shadow physicality is gradually decaying away from photonic particulate substance, as the habitable plane tears apart. His degree of nuance is not a bad thing to the millions of ordinary creatures who Christ came to redeem. If you've ever listened to or read Chuck Missler or Hugh Ross, who are both Christian physicists, you might encounter an allusion to C.S. Lewis, besides 23 or more mathematically definable alternate planes of real dimension. Anyone can google search further publications which substantiate parallel dimensions. Subsequently, the perhaps '6' dimensions other than Terra/Earth alluded to by scripture, are not directly contradicted by sciences. Because the Purgatory legend involves a dimension aligned to Biblical dimensions, here are some others:
(A4.) Highest? Heaven? St. Paul hinted at seeing & hearing his vision of a '3rd' heaven, a "paradise."
[II Corinthians 12: 2-4, ASV]
2.) "I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I know not; or whether out of the body, I know not; God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third heaven."
3.) "And I know such a man (whether in the body, or apart from the body, I know not; God knoweth),"
4.) "how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter."
While Paul decides to be a bit cagey about what he saw, the Apocalypse/Revelation of Jesus by St John describes numerous scenes of heaven that one ought to read for one's self. Lewis' Great Divorce somewhat probes the loss of fleshly things to obtain what refined/tested things belong to those who progress towards the celestial city. So, let's place a little more emphasis upon the issue of refinement/purification:
[Revelation 3:18]
18.) "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich..."
[Malachi 3:2]
2.) "But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap."
[Zechariah 13: 6-9]
8.) "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein."
9.) "And I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people; and they shall say, Jehovah is my God."
It came about that when I was a youth, I participated with an adult college class where lost-wax investment casting was being taught. The instructor would set up the kiln before class so that students could bring their plaster-cast molds and casting metals to pre-heat in the kiln, up to a point where an acetylene torch was engaged to total heat the metals to a red-hot liquid state and the mold and crucible were clamped into a centrifugal device to force the liquid metal to the extremities of the casting. As the gold or silver or brass was heated into plasticity, the oxides and impurities (dross) would burn out from the top of the crucible before setting the assembly to spin outwards the molten metals.
The Zechariah verses above correspond with preaching to the people of Judah or southern kingdom who had opportunity to return from captivity during the Persian repatriation of peoples taken captive by Babylon. The people in the prophecy ostensibly represent the survivors of the later Maccabean wars and subsequent Roman invasion who were still dwelling in the land when Jesus walked the earth. Jesus told none of his Jewish disciples to become Christian(.) In fact many who were drawn to John Baptizer's teshuva message were later attracted to the mission of that Jesus addressing the 7 churches above.
~*~
(B1.) The Dark Side - All Creatures Here Below
The (liturgical) doxology alludes to an elementary perspective of domains heavenly, earthy and sub earthly. "Praise G_d from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above you heavenly hosts, Praise Father, son and Holy Ghost." - Remember Hannah & Simeon, the saintly elders who encountered the infant Jesus, as he is brought to the Jerusalem temple for circumcision. Like David's 23rd Psalm mentioning the valley of the shadow of death, an earthly estate, these righteous people identified in the gospel narrative recalled Isaiah's prophecy that now the Gentile Goyhim who (spiritually) walked in darkness have seen a great light. The Three Kings Day celebration called Epiphany on the liturgical calendar marks that day when Jesus' ministry to the Gentiles became acknowledged. We the "nations", not the globalist's playas sin frontieras were welcomed in this moment to the city of light wherein the Lamb is their light.
(B2.) Sheol/Hades/Hel(-la's) province hath greater depths than the paths of Abraham's bosom, or the torturous paths of Sisyphus.
a.) Humanity didn't just begin to ponder these aspects of being, of non-being a couple of days ago. Shakespeare wrote the torments of the ghost of Hamlet's father which reflect the purging fires of a Catholic purgatory, although in Elizabethan England, in the counsels of her Majesty's Protestant ministers, holding such a belief could buy you a quick enough trip through the flame to a like destination. It's just another of those shadowy aspects of the William Shakespeare personality, to ponder this seeming peculiar dispensation from her Majesty to retain his head in her domain. One might discover as much of the theology and eschatology of the church through exploring the art and art history of the renaissance & medieval world besides reading church history books. Shakespeare breathes life into the pictures that adorned church walls & windows of Europe, as do some of the creatures of C.S. Lewis.
b.) [From Act-I, scene five] How the ghost thus explains to Hamlet his restless death:
"When I to sulph'rous and tormenting flames Must render up myself." [...] "I am thy father's spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And for the day confined to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid [-den] to tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand an end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine." [excerpt lines 4-20]
c.) From a C.S. Lewis essay he wrote about the preponderance of death in the Bard's master tragedy, which, I believe somewhat fleshes out the shades in Lewis' own story. Consider the following abbreviated commentary from a Norton textbook about Hamlet. Here C.S. Lewis muses about anthropomorphic Death, the apparition posing as Hamlet's father and it's binding Hamlet to swear an oath of revenge.
[C.S. Lewis voice:] "Shakespeare does not take the concept of Ghost for granted..." And, "The subject of Hamlet is death." "I do not mean by this that most of the characters die, nor even that life and death are the stakes they play for..." And, "For all these, as for their author while he writes and the audience while they watch, death is the end: it is almost the frame of the picture." "They think of dying: no one thinks, in these plays, of being dead." "In Hamlet we are kept thinking about it all the time, whether in terms of the soul's destiny or of the body's." "Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, the wounded name, the rights--or wrongs--of Ophelia's burial, and the staying-power of a tanners corpse: and beyond this, beyond all Christian and all Pagan maps of the hereafter, comes a curious groping and tapping of thoughts, about 'what dreams may come'." "It is this that gives to the whole play it's quality of darkness and of misgiving."
https://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Critical-Editions-William-Shakespeare/dp/0393956636
Contrasted with the apparition that Shakespeare presents to us, not all Lewis' ghosts from Great Divorce are arbitrarily deceased, per se. In a sense they, like all mortals are in a process of dying. But to expand on that, consider the 82cnd Psalm, also quoted in St. John's gospel by Jesus, about the judgment, (and commissions) of divine beings in the mortal world. The creator called them 'gods'. He also said that as men they would die, and like one of the Princes they would fall. (A more common use of the word 'fallen' as a translation into the English is to be slain, i.e. in battle. Emphasis J.R.R Tolkien for this.) I offer my reflection as a former Dungeons & Dragons player, that one of the baddest of boss monsters always was an undead dragon liche. We're talking progenitor of Hella levels & fallen from Biblical proportions.
The 21st century fascination with zombies and undead seldom acknowledges that G_d's creatures were not originally designed for death, and like the immediate descendants of Adam, to whom are ascribed lives of multiple hundreds of years, like some of those angels we think of as fallen, or like the great dragon of Revelation, (who says there's only one dragon?) We have no earthly concept of what aspect is taken on by 'old' death of a Biblical sort. Scriptural remarks about the condition of those sleeping, (i.e. the dead) are not consistent with merely 'quiet', or 'still'. From the apparition of Samuel conjured by the witch of Endor, to the spirits of the martyred saints in Revelation who petition G_d to avenge them, to the 'shades' in Sheol who rise up and taunt the fallen King of Babylon, in a simile with the fall of the Satan from Isaiah's visions in chapter 14. Remember how the Dickens classic, horrifying Christmas Carol begins with the open-ended statement that Bob Marely was certainly dead? (But by no means at rest). Until the time that Jesus creates a new heaven and new earth, I suspect nothing is entirely settled, in more ways than one.
(B3.) Despite a modern Christian tendency to gravitate towards a (non-canonized, with, I believe, good reason) book of Enoch, there is one reference in the epistle of Jude alluding to the spirits (4-delta, of them), angels bound in chains of darkness, which is a translated phrase for being imprisoned in the Greek Tartarus. That's a deeper darker dimension of Hell from Greek mythology, if you've not heard of it before. The Apocalypse/Revelation also alludes to a bottomless-pit-abyss, and elsewhere to the second death which is called the lake of fire. It's reserved for the devil and his angels/messengers. You DON'T want to venture there. Whatever it takes, guard your heart against becoming that kind of a messenger.
(B4.) A last note about ultimate, purifying, refining, purge(-atorial) fire. The Great Divorce is a well told story, truly a good read in it's own right. It's metaphor and pre-suppositions have been narrowly dissected by study guides, in some cases wielding nowhere near the faculty of Lewis' classical education, nor his critical resistance to faith throughout most of his life. He was a theology connoisseur among theology professors, and he doesn't disappoint.
A review cannot really expound the dimensions of a seed falling and dying first, to spring up with greater life. This prophetic dream within a dream aspect infuses the entire plot of Great Divorce. It is also integral to the mystery of baptism. So, without confusing the tongues of fire visual aid from the Holy Spirit manifestation in the book of Acts, it is worth contemplating, that two synoptic gospels (Matt. 3:11, and Luke 3:16) both record the Baptizer, Yochanon teaching that Jesus' baptizing would be in water and in spirit and in fire. The lesson in that thought may foreshadow this, that a new quality of life in Christ must necessarily erupt like conflagration itself. By no means may any human procedure or ritual affect this. Yet the ultimate effect has to parallel Moses' experience, being told in Exodus 33 by the Almighty, "no man sees my face and lives." But, only a few verses later (vs.-11) we are told G_d spoke with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. If this isn't our expectation, what hope do we long for? If you are the dungeon master of your own dream, aim not to be trapped, always redressing the same old dream. Don't settle for the penultimate.
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C.S. Lewis Signature Classic: The Great Divorce
Reviewed in Australia on July 28, 2023
