Analysis Of Afterlife: The Implications Of The Human Free Will

Afterlife: The Implications of the Human Free Will

Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr writes in his book, “The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life”, that “Soon after we arrive on this earth, we become aware of the most fundamental fact of our existence—that we won't be here very long” (Nicholi 216). The statement is morbid, but truth isn't always so polite. While lecturing at Oxford University on “Wartime”, C.S. Lewis pointed out “one hundred percent of us die and the percentage cannot be increased” (Nicholi 233). If death is inevitable, what about the afterlife? An exquisite example of a philosophical pursuit to this question is “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis. Lewis was a celebrated

Many readers and scholars have noted a fundamental similarity between Dante’s The Divine Comedy and The Great Divorce because each story is set in

Lewis was profoundly interested in the conditions of souls between death and resurrection. He was convinced that the choices that are made on earth, eventually lead to two possible destinations. Christianity, which Lewis was an apologist, holds the doctrine that the afterlife has within it these two possible destinations, namely heaven or hell. According to one theologian hell can be defined as “a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked” (Grudem). Lewis would agree that hell is “the final abode of those who refuse Heaven” (Clark 228). Of heaven, Millard Erickson states, “While heaven is both a place and a state, it is primarily a state” (Erickson 1232). Others, such as famous poet William Blake have suggested that there can be an unorthodox marriage between heaven and hell. The problem is that while The Marriage of Heaven and Hell attacks the orthodox position by arguing that evil is important and necessary, it also seems to argue that “evil” has to be transformed into good (Stewart 43). Lewis mentions in the preface of his novel that “Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell […] But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an unavoidable ‘either-or’” (Lewis VII). He means that there