by William O'Flaherty
C.S. Lewis Goes to Heaven: A Reader's Guide to The Great Divorce is a book by Dr. David Clark that was released earlier this year. Dr. Clark is a retired professor of New Testament and Greek, who has taught on the Bible school, liberal arts college, seminary and graduate school levels. I recently spoke with him about his new book.
O'Flaherty: What lead to your deciding to write about The Great Divorce?
Clark: I think it started with all the questions the students had about this book in my classes. They began to see the difference between justification and sanctification and that was important. Forgiveness is one thing, but the soul must be cleansed of all sin and Lewis really came down hard on that point. To even hold on to one sin and not let God remove it was to eventually choose Hell.
And that leads to the next point: Lewis emphasized that people choose Heaven or Hell. No matter who you are or when and where you lived, there will come a time when the ultimate choice must be made. There is no escape. And since Lewis believed that the spirit world was not limited by time or space as we are in the natural world, all of humanity was somehow present when Jesus descended into Hades after the crucifixion and before his resurrection.
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