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Lewis is subtle about revealing the manner in which his theological ideas significantly diverge from the Roman Catholics and the Protestants around him. Much of his theological thought is expressed in allegories and fantasy rather than in religious exposition. Moreover, even in his religious works, he wrote in a colloquial style, avoiding the terminology and jargon of theologians which would be a dead give-away for his Orthodox theology. His work was not to destroy the false, except as it came in the way of building the true. Therefore Lewis sought to speak only what he believed, saying little concerning what he did not believe; trusting in the true to cast out the false, and shunning dispute. But a close reader who is familiar with the fault lines of theological debate will distinctly perceive from what Lewis says and leaves unsaid that Lewis was much more sympathetic to Orthodox theology than he was to standard Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.
In particular, in ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis emphasizes the "Christus Victor" model of Christ's work to the exclusion of the circular Roman Catholic model which holds that Christ was "penalized" by God as a substitute for all those who believe in this theory of penal substitution. Lewis's personal favorite metaphor of the "atonement" was the "Mystical Theory" of the early Greek Fathers which states that what Christ actually did when incarnated was to infuse His deity into humanity, thus giving humanity the thing needed to counteract and overcome the death and impending corruption which were introduced into the human race through Adam. Men who are saved become partakers of this purified humanity. Lewis in ''Mere Christianity'' describes this by saying that Christ brought the "Good Infection" that spreads the "Christ-life."
In that book, Lewis also emphasizes the understanding of salvation as deification to the exclusion of the Roman Catholic and Protestant thought that salvation includes being "pardoned," or "justified" by God. Finally, Lewis did not believe in a penal hell, choosing instead the understanding that "hell" is the unfortunate state of mind of a person who has not developed the capacity for love and joy, regardless of their religion (see ''The Great Divorce'' and ''The Last Battle''). In the entire corpus of Lewis's work, it is impossible to find a statement of belief in "divine vengeance," "penalties against non-believing sinners," "penal atonement" or any such heterodox Roman Catholic ideas. Instead, Lewis agreed with St. Clement of Alexandria that God's punishment of all humans is a "wise fire" that delivers us from evil to good if we would just had the sense to "lay ourselves open" to God's punishment (see ''Problem of Pain'').
In short, Lewis was a universalist in the way that Orthodox Christianity teaches universalism, believing that God loves all his creatures now and throughout eternity, and we experience "hell" only insofar as, and so long as, we choose not to conform ourselves to Divine Love. Like the Orthodox, Lewis believed that we could repent beyond the grave and we could all hope for (but not predict with certainty) ''apokatastasis'', universal reconciliation of humanity to divine goodness (see ''The Great Divorce''). A brilliant article on this matter is is [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05292002-153921/unrestricted/etd.pdf Reason, Imagination, and Universalism in C. S. Lewis]
===Criticism and Church Life===
The late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a respected Calvinist theologian opined in Christianity Today, Dec. 20, 1963, that C.S. Lewis's view of salvation was "defective" because Lewis "was an opponent of the substitutionary and penal theory of the Atonement." Lloyd-Jones would have the very same criticism of Orthodox theology as represented by such theologians as Vladimir Lossky, Christos Yannaras, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Athanasius. The Protestant and Roman Catholic penal theory of the atonement and its associated understanding of a penal hell is denied by the Orthodox and C.S. Lewis. See [http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html "Heaven & Hell in the Afterlife, According to the Bible."] See also the popular lecture [http://www.stnectariospress.com/parish/river_of_fire.htm "The River of Fire."]
Several other evangelicals became cognizant that Lewis's approach was different from theirs: A. N. Wilson asserted: "If the mark of a reborn evangelical is a devotion to the Epistles of Paul and, in particular, to the doctrine of Justification by Faith, then there can have been few Christian converts less evangelical than Lewis." J. I. Packer spoke complained of Lewis’s "failure ever to mention justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins." In short, according to Lewis, a human is not required to accept any particular religious beliefs or doctrine in order to be "saved," (''ie.'' in order to turn from gloom to joy).
Lewis had occasion to visit Greece and visit Orthodox churches there. C.S. Lewis has been quoted as saying that of all the liturgies he'd ever attended, Lewis preferred the Greek Orthodox liturgy to anything that he had seen in the West, Protestant or Roman Catholic. Lewis also claimed that of all the priests and monks that he had ever had the opportunity to meet, the Orthodox priests were the holiest, most spiritual men he had ever met. Lewis was also a sacramentalist, stating in ''Mere Christianity'' that: "There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and that mysterious action which different Christians call by different names -- Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord's Supper."
