C.S. Lewis on Evil (and Hell)
With so much evil being witnessed today due to social media and 24/7 news coverage, I thought it would be vital to discuss the essence of evil and its just end–the reality of hell.
Two people died in the “insurrection” in Minneapolis and at least 40,000 have been murdered in the freedom protests in Iran. Evil is awash in our world even as God is redeeming multitudes through salvation in Jesus.
What is evil? And is hell justified for evildoers?
Maybe C.S. Lewis can enlighten us.
C.S. Lewis on Evil (and Hell)
I saw an article recently in “The Culturist” which gave a summary of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. I read the book some years ago.
Put on your thinking cap for this one. I’ll let The Culturist summarize Lewis’ thoughts: (A second insightful article on this subject can be found here.)
Imagine if people in hell could take a bus ride to heaven. You might think that sounds somewhat cruel, but what if the visitors could stay if they wanted to?
And what if almost all of them chose to return to hell afterwards?
In his lesser-known masterpiece, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis uses a busload of visitors from hell to peel back the layers of human choice. It’s not a tale about the actual afterlife, but rather, a parable about why people choose evil over good.
And yet, one of the greatest lessons of The Great Divorce is not demonstrated by a choice at all — but by the blades of grass in heaven.
Lewis takes a deceptively simple story and uses it to demonstrate a profound theological idea: that the choices we make shape the very reality (or unreality) of who we are.
When the visitors from hell disembark the bus and enter into heaven, they notice something peculiar: they are transparent. Lewis describes them like a smudge on a window, or a living shadow. In contrast, the heaven around them is brilliant in color and lucidity, and very much solid.
The “smudges” attempt to walk among this celestial garden, but soon find that it hurts them to do so. They cannot so much as bend the grass or disturb the dew drops, as they have no weight or substance; instead, the grass bends them like a thousand diamond spikes digging into their feet. They cannot pick up apples or bathe in the inviting river, but a falling leaf or swaying branch could easily crush them.
Lewis presents a deeply strange contrast, but what is he trying to imply about good and evil?
You may think of good and evil as equal opposites, or two distinct forces in an endless spiritual war, as many people do. Lewis, however, asserted that good and evil are far from equals — in fact, evil is not real.
You might push back here by pointing out that evil must be real in some manner, because it is intelligible — you can know it. It has a name. But Lewis encourages us to think of it this way: evil is real in the same sense that a hole in the ground is real. It is an absence.
In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas taught that “evil is the privation of the good.” In other words, evil is an absence; like darkness to light or cold to heat. Lewis demonstrates this by having the citizens of hell appear less real than even a single blade of heavenly grass.
Just as all the darkness of the cosmos could not snuff out a single candle flame, so too would all of hell struggle to move a single blade of grass in heaven. Evil is a privation, an unreality.
But if the visitors from hell aren’t real, you might ask, how do they exist at all?
A hole in the ground is only a hole because the ground exists. Without the ground, a hole simply could not exist — it cannot exist on its own.
Evil exists in much the same way: nothing can be purely evil, because if it was, it would not exist. Put simply, the good is real, and evil is unreal. To the degree that something is evil, it is also unreal, for it suffers a kind of privation.
Nothing then, according to Lewis, can be purely evil — not even Satan himself. In Christian theology, Satan is a creature of God, and all that God has made is good. Creation is inherently good and God does not make evil, but through free will, a being can embrace evil and become something less than what God had intended. The true purpose of free will, then, is to choose the good and participate in what is real.
In biblical doctrine, souls cannot leave hell to visit heaven, and they certainly cannot stay. But much like Dante in his Divine Comedy, Lewis is not presenting a story to articulate the details of heaven and hell — it’s to show why humans choose evil over the good, and a large part of understanding that choice is knowing the difference between the two.
The simple lesson of The Great Divorce is to see moral choices for what they really are. They are not, as many suppose, about adhering to a list of arbitrary, cosmic rules. Instead, they are about shaping the very reality (or unreality) of who you are.
Every time you choose pride, resentment, or lust, you are choosing to become less real. You are thinning yourself out. Every time you choose humility, gratitude, or love, you are choosing to become more real, or more fully the person you were meant to be.
Why? Because these are the things, says Lewis, that align with the ultimate reality.
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You might want to read that summary multiple times to let it sink in.
C.S. Lewis describes evil as an “unreality,” the absence of good. In that sense, evil people would never fit in the robust heavenly world infused with the virtue of God and redeemed people. Choosing evil (not giving God his rightful place) would make heaven hellish to the unbeliever.
Thus, another abode is necessary for evildoers.
The Bible teaches these truths about hell:
- All moral beings (humans and angels) are immortal. Life does not end at physical death.
- To die to to “separate” from your body. Eternal death is to be separated from God forever.
- Jesus said the most about eternal punishment. He called it eternal fire (Matthew 25:41), where “worm does not dies and fire is not quenched (Mark 9:47,48). His parable of the rich man and Lazarus taught both the separation of heaven and hell and the eternal duration of both (Luke 16:19-31).
- Hell is a place far away from the presence of God and his glory (2 Thessalonians 1:6-9).
- It is an abode of darkness–outer darkness (Matthew 8:12, Jude 13).
I liken it to eternal solitary confinement (away from heavenly “life”).
People who reject God’s grace make themselves an “empty hole” of evil. They couldn’t “exist” in heaven.
But is eternal separation from God necessary and just? Yes. Rejecting God is an infinite sin. The penalty for a crime must reflect the value of the object abused (God’s infinite glory). Nothing but the penalty of eternal punishment for the wicked would be just (Revelation 16:6) and protect the redeemed in God’s Kingdom.
C.S. Lewis reminds us that evil makes us unfit for paradise. Hell is simply the necessary end of those who refuse God.
But the GOOD NEWS is that all who believe in Jesus will be saved from evil/hell because God is gracious and loving.
Jesus died so that all people could choose the real world of eternal life.
