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The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It Robert Moore-Jumonville Spring Arbor University

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The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It Robert Moore-Jumonville Spring Arbor University Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 16 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference 5-31-2012 The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It Robert Moore-Jumonville Spring Arbor University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Moore-Jumonville, Robert (2012) "The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 16. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/16 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It Robert Moore-Jumonville Spring Arbor University Moore-Jumonville, Robert. “The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1 The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis: Why Spiritual Formation Makes Less Sense Without It Robert Moore-Jumonville Spring Arbor University Spiritual Formation, for C. S. creatures, and with itself, or else Lewis, relates primarily to what we as into one that is in a state of war and human beings are becoming; and to that hatred with God, and with its fundamental goal God has in mind for fellow-creatures, and with itself. To us—“the end for which we are formed.”1 be the one kind of creature is Lewis asserts that God intends to make us heaven: that is joy and peace and into “little Christs.” God, he insists, will knowledge and power. To be the “be satisfied with nothing less than other means madness, horror, absolute perfection.” “The only help I will idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal give you,” God says, “is help to become loneliness. Each of us at each perfect. You may want something less: moment is progressing to the one but I will give you nothing less.” 2 state or the other”3 Moreover, we must cooperate with God in Let me assure you that this formation. Such a high human calling eschatological geography does not can appear daunting. It requires purging interest me in this paper; I do not hope to of the soul, the sometimes painful work as convince you of purgatory as a place.4 the potter bends His clay. Yet the The formation of our souls is what ramifications of our choices are eternal. concerns me (what sort of creatures What we becoming? are we’re becoming) and so I hope you Every time you make a choice you consider what follows as an invitation— are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into 3 Ibid. 86-87. something a little different from 4 Jacque Le Goff’s study, The Birth of Purgatory, what it was before. And taking your indicates that the notion of Purgatory developed life as a whole, with all your first in popular piety connected to the early Christian practice of praying for the dead and only innumerable choices, all your life developed later, in the Middle Ages, into the notion long you are slowly turning this that Purgatory was a place. See William Crockett, central thing either into a heavenly Four Views on Hell. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996: creature or into a hellish creature: 98-99, 108-111. either into a creature that is in “I believe in Purgatory,” Lewis asserted plainly, though he never argued for Purgatory as a location, harmony with God, and with other but instead, more as a process of purification, some of which occurred in this life (C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcom Chiefly on Prayer. San Diego: Harcourt, 1 C. S. Lewis, “A Slip of the Tongue,” The Weight of 1991: 108; The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. Glory and Other Addresses. New York: Touchstone, III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963, ed. by 1996: 142. Walter Hooper New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. New York: 2007; Letters To Mary Willis Shelburne 28/7/60 Macmillan, 1960: 171, 169, 172. p.1203; 9/1/61 p.1225-26; and 31/7/62, p.1361. 2 The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis · Robert Moore-Jumonville an invitation to grow into a more necessary for Lewis if we genuinely heavenly creature, no matter how consider both the holiness of God and purgatorial and painful that process may human freedom. Put simply, if our sin become for you. One of the Solid People cannot abide eternally with God, it must in The Great Divorce beckons to a ghost be purged from us; but, if God truly takes who on earth was a painter: “Come and our human freedom seriously, we must see. He is endless. Come and feed.” let go of sin on our own. First, sin cannot I say “no matter how painful” it coexist eternally with God. As Zachary may become because normally we do not Hayes argues, Purgatory “is a symbolism want to face our shadow side. It hurts. that reflects a sense of distance between The light of heaven first dawns on human creatures and God.” Indeed, the uninitiated eyes as “cruel light,” the grass, pain of purgatory “is intrinsic to the “hard as diamonds to [the narrator’s] encounter between the holy love of God unsubstantial feet,” cause pain. “I did not and the still imperfect human being.”8 So, entirely like it,” confesses the narrator of second, God calls us to surrender our sin. The Great Divorce. 5 And our shadow With Lewis, Hayes stresses the embarrasses us. Like the transparent importance of human freedom ghosts in The Great Divorce, we want “to cooperating with God’s grace, insisting, avoid open places;” we don’t want to “that without a human response, God’s “have everyone staring through [us].”6 initiative remains inefficacious and that That’s why when God asks us, “Where are God never overrides or suppresses you?” often we’re found hiding human freedom.” A magic wand of somewhere in the garden, ashamed of our cleansing grace waved over us at the nakedness. Our species seems to have an moment of our death bypasses our uncanny knack for self-deception and choosing altogether. denial, which makes it easier to hide This invitation to freely let go of (even from ourselves); so when we hear the sin that clings to us is, of course, a Screwtape’s counsel to Wormwood, we primary point in The Great Divorce. Lewis cringe: “You must bring him to a states in the Preface: condition in which he can practice self- I do not think that all who choose examination for an hour without wrong roads perish; but their discovering any of those facts about rescue consists in being put back on himself which are perfectly clear to the right road. A wrong sum can be anyone who has ever lived in the same put right: but only by going back till house with him or worked in the same you find the error and working it office.”7 Spiritual Formation, we should afresh from that point, never by admit, does not always taste pleasant. simply going on. Evil can be Healing sin often means something in us undone, but it cannot “develop” into must die, or something must be cut out good ….The spell must be unwound, like a malignant tumor. bit by bit, “with backward mutters After we appreciate the of dissevering power”—or else not. seriousness of human sin, though, It is still “either-or.” If we insist on Purgatory (the purgatorial, or the keeping Hell (or even earth) we purifying of our loves) becomes logically shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to 5 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce. New York: Touchstone, 1996: 26, 32, 31. 6 Ibid. 59, 61. 8 Zachary J. Hayes, “The Purgatorial View,” in 7 C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. New York: William Crockett, Four Views on Hell. Grand Rapids: HarperCollins, 1996: 12. Zondervan, 1996: 95,101,115. 3 The Logic of Purgatory in C.S. Lewis · Robert Moore-Jumonville retain even the smallest and most night. He knew that if he went to his intimate souvenirs of Hell.”9 mother, she would give him something to deaden the pain; but that soon she would Story after story in The Great follow up this temporary solution with a Divorce pictures just this—human beings visit to the dentist, where, thankfully, the arriving at heaven, refusing to let go of rotten tooth would be pulled, but where, hell’s trinkets, characters desiring to unfortunately, Lewis would be in for more “extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they painful prodding: “I knew those dentists. I could, into Heaven.”10 Hell smuggled into knew they started fiddling about with all heaven would contradict heaven; heaven sorts of other teeth which had not yet would not be heaven with residues of hell.
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