The Imaginative Supposal

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, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
- The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

I am in study mode. My weekend assignment was drinking tea and studying - prepping all my books and references. I am leading a 4 week study on The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. He was a master of imaginative supposals. He didn't aim to lay out some theological arguments (he was by no means a theologian), but rather to set forth a response to an earlier writer (in this case, William Blake and the thought that surrounded him) by way of a story. He had specific points he wanted to make regarding desire, human nature, and choice. 

Lewis brings us into a  refrigerium (a medieval thought that souls in hell get to take a holiday in heaven), where we meet characters he encounters who are dealing with some kind of issue (sinful nature) that keeps them from entering deeper into heaven. Does their issues make them smaller, diminished even? Yes, indeed, we see how Lewis depicts them as transparent, ghostly, and sometimes shrinking into nothingness.

But to enter into reality, they must step into the heavenly realm by letting go of whatever they are holding on to. They cannot take an ounce of hell into heaven. It must be left behind. Most of the characters won't let go of what they hold onto, and would rather choose to dwell in hell than stay in heaven. Those who choose to stay go off into the deep heaven with their desires met in ways they couldn't even imagine before.

Lewis divorces hell and heaven - they cannot be the same, or even overlap (as would suggest William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell where he writes about wholeheartedly pursuing desire, and by continuing on in folly we become wise). But to Lewis, they are separate and distinct, and we cannot bring one trinket or souvenir into the other place.

In this book we learn about the elements of choice, desire, human nature, and creating our own reality. The denial of the realness. Or the acceptance of the more real, true reality. The book parallels Dante's Divine Comedy even from the outset - the narrator suddenly finding himself arriving at a bus stop as if in the middle of a dream. Lewis also includes real-life figures in hell, as Dante did, as well as providing a teacher to guide him (his own Virgil is George MacDonald). 

The book is a literary response to Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Lewis chooses to tell an imaginative supposal in response to Blake. I love how he chooses not just to react to it, but to write a story to show us visually and imaginatively illustrating what he wants to say. Lewis has a masterful way of writing a story to illustrate a deeper thought, which is reflected in his non-fiction, and then he translates the non-fiction into a story that we might be able to relate to in our daily lives. In this case, his sermon "The Weight of Glory" is his non-fiction work that is translated into The Great Divorce.