The submissions for this assignment are posts in the assignment's discussion. Below are the discussion posts for Kyle Panchot, or you can view the full discussion.
from Discussion Thread: The Great Divorce
Jul 31, 2025 3:25PM
Kyle Panchot
Here is your formatted Turabian-style paper based on the draft you provided:
The Great Divorce is a book by C.S. Lewis which explores the nature of the afterlife. It starts with the narrator waiting in line to get on a bus, leaving what seems to be an empty town—empty, that is, of population, not of furnishings. While the town itself seems to have plenty of things in it, the only people the narrator encounters are those waiting for the bus. While he's waiting in line, various people start mumbling to themselves or arguing with others and leave the line. Where the people go when they leave the line, the book does not make clear.
The Grey Town
The town in which the story begins is referred to as the Grey Town. Soon, while on the bus, we learn why the Grey Town is seemingly empty: the inhabitants cannot get along with each other and quickly move further and further away—to the point where one might travel for many years without encountering anyone. It seems the inhabitants are free to leave at any time by traveling to the bus stop and catching the bus to another location. But as time goes on and the inhabitants move further and further away from both the bus stop and each other, this becomes less and less practical—and they seem less likely to want to.
This Grey Town seems to represent Hell—not Hell as in Gehenna or the Lake of Fire, because we have people who are free to move on to the next realm—but Hell like Sheol or Hades: the abode of the dead, where both the evil and the righteous temporarily go, and for each it is a foreshadowing of things to come.
For a biblical reference, we can look at Revelation 20:13–14 describing the Last Judgment:
“The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.”¹
The Next Realm
Upon the bus arriving at a new location, the inhabitants are transformed into something more ghostlike, where they are transparent, and everyday objects seem to hurt them—for instance, the blades of grass cut their feet as they walk.
This is almost the exact opposite of the modern-day cultural perception of ghosts, where nothing can hurt them because things pass right through them. Here, things hurt them precisely because the world is more solid than they are.
Ultimately, the narrator comes to realize that it is not the people who have changed, but the objects in this world have become so much harder that the people themselves are like ghosts in comparison.
Purgatory
The spirits are terrified at this new situation in which even the smallest things can hurt or gravely injure them. As the ghosts are paralyzed with fear, soon beings of glowing light arrive. These are solid, much like the ghosts once were.
They inform the ghosts that if they would make a journey, they would become like the glowing ones. But because of the state of the ghosts in this realm, it is clear the journey will be a long and painful one. The new arrivals offer their assistance to the ghosts, doing whatever they can to make the journey easier for them. But the ghosts that reject them do so with a myriad of excuses that clearly relate to their spiritual state during life and into the afterlife.
This realm of the book seems to have a direct correlation with the idea of Purgatory—which should not be surprising, since C.S. Lewis makes clear his belief in the doctrine. In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, he writes:
“Our souls demand Purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’—‘Even so, sir.’”²
“I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. I am not sure that the suffering of Purgatory is not the joy of being healed.”³
Though there is one important distinction that separates Purgatory as taught by the Catholic Church from that depicted in the book: in the Catholic view, Purgatory is only for those who die in friendship with God and, as such, Heaven is their ultimate destination. That is not to say they couldn't still reject it if they so wanted to, but at that point, no soul would want to—any more than any soul in Heaven would. But in the book, not only are souls able to reject further purification—they often outright do.
Conclusion
Keeping in mind C.S. Lewis’s warning that The Great Divorce is a work of fiction and not theology, after looking at passages from the book as well as his other works, it seems he believes that each individual is given enough grace to respond to God's call—but not forced to answer.
So long as we cooperate with God's grace, He takes us through a process of perfecting, which starts in this life and continues into the next until we are ready and prepared for heavenly glory.
Lewis seems to believe that human free will to choose or reject God is demanded by God's love for us. And that those who end up in Hell do so through their own free will. As Lewis writes:
“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.”⁴
Footnotes
Rev. 20:13–14 (RSVCE).
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 108.
Ibid.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 75.
Bibliography
Lewis, C.S. Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. New York: Harcourt, 1964.
Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. New York: HarperOne, 2001.
The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.
from Discussion Thread: The Great Divorce
Aug 3, 2025 9:48AM
Kyle Panchot
Hello Andrew, thank you for the post.
I agree that today many people, even those who think that they are worshiping the true God in fact are worshiping a false god. A sort of idol of their own making. Because they worship a God they have created in their own minds. As opposed to worshiping him as he truly is.
I too have noticed this about Jordan Peterson. Like a lot of people today there seems to be a lot of intellectual pride there. But he does seem to be searching for the truth. Even if for the time being he can't quite rap his head around it. It goes to show that none of us can grasp the truth of God unless the holy Spirit illuminates their mind.
“Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy Spirit from on high?”
— Wisdom 9:17, RSV-2CE
But it does seem the holy Spirit has planted seeds there. so we should continue to pray for him and others who are seeking. that God might cause the seeds to grow and then it might blum into a full-fledged faith.
from Discussion Thread: The Great Divorce
Aug 3, 2025 11:03AM
Kyle Panchot
Hello Thomas, thank you for this post. It hits kind of close to home for me. Because the big ghost reminds me a lot of my grandfather while he was alive. He was a kind and principled man with a keen sense of right and wrong but he was also very proud. He once asked him about his belief in God, and his basic reply was that he didn't want anything to do with the God that would forgive King David. He was a giant and imposing figure in my life and to my shame that was the last time I had the courage to breach the subject with him. Later on in his life he became terminally ill and the process of the illness noticeably softened him. I hold out hope that he may have come to faith. But one of my greatest regrets is that if he did, that I didn't have the courage to play a greater part in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment