Eh, brainwashing isn’t creepy. We all do that to ourselves all the time for many different reasons. It’s fairly common place.
Creepy is the fact that an EZ Bake oven will apparently be used to do so. How long will a 39 watt bulb take to cook a soul, I wonder?
No, we don’t do anything like that. We can’t; if we could, there’d be no such thing as dissidents in authoritarian countries; there’d all be remade into loyal slaves.
No, we - as in individuals - do that to ourselves all the time. How many people believe in their heart of hearts that the climate change debate is some sort of giant conspiracy? That the moon landing was staged? That Elvis is still alive? That JFk was killed by the Illuminati? That 9-11 deserves some kind of truthing? That Obama was born in a clam shell at the bottom of the pacific ocean? (Okay, that last one I never paid much attention to-Where was he supposed to be born?)
None of that is the same as being forcibly reshaped by someone else into a slave.
Well, to be fair - they are all good examples of delusions and irrational thinking -
500 to 700? Even if one pushed back the 500 date to include writers who addressed the issue, such as Augustine of Hippo who died in 426 and John Chrysostom who died in 407, one is still left with the words of Ignatius of Antioch, (died early in the second century), who wrote in Chapter 16 of his letter to the Ephesians that those who corrupted others would be punished in everlasting fire, Justin Martyr, (c. 151), who wrote of punishment in everlasting fire in chapter 12 of his First Apologia, Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote of everlasting fire in the first chapter of his letter to Autolycus, (c, 181), and several others.
But I think what Lewis is saying that some folks HAVE gotten through. The people they run into, as their guides, aren’t exactly saints in their Earthly life, but are obviously guides in this new plane of existence. Now, one could argue (and I could see their point) that these people found out what they were doing wrong prior to death and thus ended up in mountain land, rather than grey land. And grey land people never make it to mountain land due to the obstacles in their way.
Though it seems evident to me that the protagonist is a grey land person who moves towards the mountain land, indicating that anyone may move from one plane to another, but there is something that is keeping them from that leap - there is something holding them back. Now some of that may be something they need to give up or believe differently because in mountain land you have to change your view somewhat (ie, the guy who decided to go back because in mountain land, you’d have to forgive some guy he hated on Earth).
Is that an obstacle put in their path? Or is it unwilling-ness? Perhaps that just in the eye of beholder. I admit, after reading your posts on the matter, I can see it the other way as well (and I didn’t really do so before). However, I do think that Lewis writes it as unwillingness due to the differences between mountain and grey lands (I’ll go further into this below).
Though every one of those people had a spirit guide. These guides saying, hey, you can’t bring your Earthly crap in here. You have to let it go, but it’ll be ok. Is it an obstacle, or a necessarily cleansing required to enter into the mountain land.
It isn’t like the grey land is hellfire and damnation. People can create whatever they want from their minds - that is the reason they keep moving away and away from each other. Social unrest happens due to some of the crap we all have, but if you can create something away from those folks, maybe we would choose to be more and more isolated. Mountain land seems to be far more of a community - therefore you have to give up some of our own crap in order to live in the community, and I think that’s Lewis’s point of the spirit guides indicating some things will have to be given up to come further.
Lewis, being an Anglican, did believe in free will, which is why I think he did consider it to be a free will choice rather than unfair obstacles.
One thing I’m amused is how Evangelicals seem to be crazy about Lewis, but in the Great Divorce he appears somewhat to be a soft universalist.
I readily confess I’m operating on the basis of my own moral views, and am thus likely to be projecting unfairly.
But here’s the deal the way I see it: if it is possible to make moral progress in the afterlife – if one can move from a worse part of hell to a less nasty part, or to move from hell to purgatory, or to move from either of those places to heaven – then some people would make that moral pilgrimage and arrive in the better place.
The afterlife would thus be a place of opportunity for self-betterment via moral and spiritual growth, just as this life is.
If, however, one’s place after final judgement is fixed and unchanged, and moral growth is prevented by obstacles – then no such growth is possible.
If that’s the case, then the “bus trip” affair would be a fraud, just a part of the punishment, a tantalizing view of heaven that is yanked away again, just as an evil jailer might lead a prisoner past an open door…that only leads back into the prison again.
But…if growth is possible, and people can make moral progress after death, this is in violation of nearly all interpretations of scripture by Christian sects. It doesn’t seem like an interpretation Lewis could have made, as it contradicts the conventional wisdom of hell as a place of inescapable punishment.
So… Which is Lewis telling us? There is a way out of hell, if one seeks diligently for moral growth and the spiritual good? Or hell is a final destination, and you can’t get out, no matter how you might want to try?
The impression I got from the story was that there were obstacles that could simply never be gotten past. They might be external or internal, but, in either case, the guy never does decide to forgive some guy he hated. But if no one finds that forgiveness, ever, then I can no longer believe that the flaw is internal. Surely some of us, sinners though we may be, would find that forgiveness and move on. I just can’t believe that nobody would make that leap.
So, if nobody actually ever does – it forces me to believe they’re being blocked from moral growth by some external obstacle, and not by their own intransigence.
How many people do you know? Surely you must have known of people who were terribly stubborn, or hate-filled, or cruel, or sinful – but who outgrew it. We all know people who have made strides of moral growth. We know it’s possible in this world.
So – is it possible in Lewis’ hell? If so, great! It’s an afterlife that will slowly, slowly empty out, as a tiny trickle of people – maybe only one in a decade! – grow up, find forgiveness, and move upward.
If not – then they aren’t “people” any more by any definition I can see, and their punishment is imposed upon them from outside. The notion that they are pent in hell by their own refusal to leave violates too many properties of the human spirit.
All I can say is that I would have written it differently!
(I’m fond of Niven and Pournelle’s “Inferno” because of the implication that a small trickle of people are making their way out!)
I could only judge this by results. Again, is anyone making that journey successfully? Then, yay! Is no one making it? Then I think this contradicts the idea of free will.
I can respect this. I like Sartre’s “No Exit” vision of hell. I accept the traditional notion that hell is merely “separation from God.” I like the approach taken in (of all places!) DC Comics, where hell is pretty much what you expected it to be. If you thought it was gonna be tar-pits and red devils…it is! If you thought it was gonna be dung-pits and black devils…it is! If you thought it was gonna be a cold wasteland…it is!
Was he willing to extend free will into the afterlife? Do people have free will even in hell?
This may be the element I read wrong. I was reading it as if he were a more hard-core orthodox “hell is a place of eternal punishment,” but that he was playing a “blame the victim” game, saying, “You’re only here because you want to be.” If someone says, “Uh, no, I really don’t,” then he played the bus-trip game on them, they end up back in the grey place, and he crowed, “See? You’re back. You must not really have wanted to leave!”
I was judging the story as a harsh, nasty, cruel joke against free will.
If, instead, you think he meant it to say that hell is hard to leave, but that a small, steady trickle of people who were ready to forgive, actually thereby earned forgiveness – as you say, a soft Universalism – then I would be very glad, because that’s a moral view I can respect. If Lewis meant it that way, bravo to him, and oops on my part for misreading the book!
Oh, not at all. After all, Scripture (in one of the letters of the NT, I believe) speaks of Jesus preaching to the dead after death. And the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is the obvious moral progress after death example (though they don’t let those folks in Hell advance, but Lewis wasn’t a Catholic, no matter how much his friend Tolkein wanted him to be ;)).
Lewis is, of course, speaking this as a parable. I think his point is that Hell isn’t a place of fire and physical torture, but people who don’t want to accept God’s love, even though its readily available to them. So they are left outside, but can jump on whenever they wish. They can choose to be separated from the love of God if they wish, but the end of Revelation does indicate that in the New Heaven and New Earth, the city has no gates.
Isn’t that what is happening to the protagonist? That is why he becomes more “solid”. And his spirit guide, George McDonald, indicates that it is possible to jump from Hell to Heaven.
Wikipedia states it thus:
I found the description of Heaven working back into the lives of of people (and conversely Hell doing the same) to be immensely powerful, though I had to go reread that passage a few times to fully get what was being said.
I think Lewis was far more “liberal” than many Evangelicals would like him to be. I can see where you could come to your point of view, especially since Lewis couched a lot of his more interesting views in parabolic stories (ah, like someone else pretty famous - tricksy).
The proof is in the spirit guide Lewis chooses for himself. While George MacDonald isn’t all that well known today, he was a Scottish preacher who was highly influential in fantasy literature (he was a mentor to Lewis Carroll, and influenced Tolkein as well as Lewis). George MacDonald was also known for his belief in universal reconciliation.
I think you mean Tartaros. Tartaros is a special inside Hades, a place for torture, reserved for those that committed offensive acts (usually hubris) against the Gods.
Tantalus was one of the residents there, a Lydian King that had served his own son to the Gods to test if they were all knowing.
Hades takes its name from the ruler of the underworld, Hades. Likewise, Hell (the germanic underworld) takes its name from the Godess that ruled there, Hel.
Elysium was not inside Hades, just as Walhalla is not inside Hell.
Those suggestions would be wrong then.
"Underworld"is still the best translation. Maybe “realm of the dead”.
The idea was of it being a dreary shadowy place where the dead just sit and walk about without any memories.
While the idea of a Hell was in various forms between 0 and 500, the actual merging it to the doctrine of the early Church at the time was kicked off as an effort by Augustine, who was a conversion from paganism and was tickled by the ideas of hellfire. Between 400 and 500 it grew into the Church and between 450 and 700 it was persecuting those that had Christian beliefs but didn’t follow the doctrines of the Church, who considered themselves *the *authority. By 700, the basic concept of Hell - along with a lot of the other Church doctrines - was fixed more or less as we know it today (granted, the ideology of Hell expanded significantly over the years).
My bad.
True, but wrong time frame. Originally, Elysium was either not part of Hades’ domain at all, or loosely connected to him at best.
Over time, the tradition became that Elysium not only became the domain of Hades - as it was the afterlife and he was god of that - it was a portion of his estate and connected to him in the underworld. By the time of the life of Jesus, Elysium was all Hades all the time. Tartarus, by comparison, was under his rule, but it never connected to his domain because it’s purpose was to trap the gods and titans that Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades’ overthrew to become dominant and not deal in some form with human souls. It was largely supposed to be inaccessible to us mere mortals, even in immortal spirit form.
“Underworld” or “Realm of the Dead” is still a better translation than “Hell”. And both of these translations more closely matches what we would consider in modern times as the afterlife. When you die you go to the afterlife, whether that’s burning like a tire dump for all eternity or sitting on a cloud with a harp. It encompasses the whole Realm of the Dead.
I would like a cite for that, if you don’t mind.
Even in the Aeneis by Vergilius, written somewhere between 30- 20 B.C., Tartarus is very much part of the underworld, while the Elysian fields are clearly above ground.
It is only insinuated that it is reasonably close by, because the river Lethe, at the exit of Hades, also flows past Elysium.
Neither can I find any mention of Pluto being also in charge of it.
I haven’t studied Greek mythology in a few years, but I think it came from Greek Mythology by Rick Buxton. I’d have to go get my copy and read through it for an appropriate reference and his sources.
ETA It appears that it’s also referenced by Wikipedia as being beneath the earth’s roots using Richard Buxton’s book “The Complete World of Greek Mythology”. - Page 213.
Question, since I haven’t read Virgil for some time: Wasn’t the Fields he spoke of underground, but lit by a sun of it’s own? I seem to recall his mention of it in this way to segregate it from the above-ground (or human) world.
Aeneas doesn’t visit Elysium.
He goes to the underworld, crossing the Styx, sees different parts of the underworld, which here seems to have more compartiments besides tartarus.
It is in a valley that leads up to the outside world where he meets his father.
The river Lethe is close by.
Interrestingly there are ‘shadows’ of dead people drinking from the Lethe in order to forget and be reborn into life on earth (!). Whole tribes of them. Some are even destined to become Aeneas’ own offspring.
So what’s the point here? Farin are you saying you believe in Greek mythology, or that Jesus did, or that you only believe the Greek myths that Jesus did, or something else?
In Aeneid, it says “Night speeds by, And we, Aeneas, lose it in lamenting. Here comes the place where cleaves our way in twain. Thy road, the right, toward Pluto’s dwelling goes, And leads us to Elysium. But the left Speeds sinful souls to doom, and is their path To Tartarus th’ accurst.”
You can go to Hades’ digs (ostensibly in or near Elysium) or you can go to Tartarus. Tartarus, I’ve always assumed belonged to Hades in the Greek dividing of things (Zeus - Overworld/Sky; Poseidon - Oceans; Hades - Underworld), but it certainly appears apart in this. Either it is it’s own domain under no Greek father god, or it belongs to Hades.
You are going to have to explain the difference between what I identified and what you are claiming. I am aware of Augustine’s roll in promoting the concept of Original Sin that became the “standard,” but I see no difference between his ideas of hell and the ideas expressed by Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch or others.
Recall that the point I am addressing is your claim that the ideas of burning hell and eternal punishment only arose between 500 and 700, (beginning eighty years after Augustine), when I have already quoted three much earlier authors who spoke of hell’s fires and eternal punishment in the second century.
I clarified my point to be the catholic adoption of hell as an orthodox statement, and further clarified the timeline.
But, looks to the acts of pilates that was a half-finished Greek work that was completed in the 6th century (renamed to the Gospel of Nicodermus) that goes from a fairly tame version of Christ bringing souls from the waiting room to heaven to an orthodox view of hell with fire that he saves from fire (note that the souls he’s saving are considered righteous, which means even if you are GOOD, you burn for at least a while).
The predominate view of hell by converts at the time wasn’t fiery damnation, but something closr to a place where souls gather and await for the day of judgement. If you were a divine soul during judgement, you would ascend to heaven. If not, you’d be punished similar to the Fields of Punishment in Hades that was befitting your crime. The original writers you attest to took a literal slant on Jesus’s words. The “waiting room” apsect was downplayed and dropped because Jesus was supposed to return within a generation, so, you know, you were going to burn in short order.
Things like the Book of Enoch considered Hell as an actual throne for Satan from which he’d march his armies on the earth. While it was a realm of fire, you, as a bad soul, were going to be conscripted. It downplays the punishment aspect of the damnation, but there was punishment involved.
If you look to something like Eastern Orthodoxy which pulls from similar traditions as our western orthodoxy, but not only considers the final conditions unknowable but also considers both positive and negative versions of an afterlife as being joined to God. God will not only welcome the righteous but will punish the sinners as they join with God.
Yes. Toward the end of the book, there is a soul who chooses to stay. He has some kind of lizard on his shoulder, and he gives an angel permission to burn it. As I recall, the lizard (representing the various temptations which have been enslaving him) transforms into a horse, which he rides off into the sunset. (The idea is that the angel has healed his disordered passions; and now that the man is in control, he can be truly happy.)