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In short, Lewis was an felt comfortable belonging to the Anglican church because Anglicans, like the Orthodox, but unlike the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, are allowed to affirm Christus Victor notions of the atonement and to deny that the atonement or hell has penal aspects: . As Lewis explains, "Theories about Christ's death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works. Christians would not all agree as to how important these theories are. My own church -- the Church of England -- does not lay down any one of them as the right one. The Church of Rome goes a bit further." (''Mere Christianity''.) Of course, after Lewis's death, the Roman Catholics have begun to shift their theology of atonement and hell in ways that would have made Lewis more comfortable. See Pope John Paul II's [http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=1183 Homily on the Nature of Hell] where he states that "We are saved from going to hell by Jesus who conquered Satan." See also [http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_scandalcross.html Pope John Paul II on the "scandal of the cross"] where Pope John Paul II states that the atonement is a justification of God to man, and not a justification of man to God.
→An Anonymous Orthodox?
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. To get a general sense of these differences, please see [http://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/2004-hughes-sin.php Ancestral Versus Original Sin].
In particular, in ''Mere Christianity'', Lewis emphasizes the "Christus Victor" model of Christ's work to the ''exclusion'' of the standard 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 St. Athanasius's "Mystical Theory" 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." This book also describes the operation of St. Maximos's "Vicarious Repentance Theory" of the atonement. In ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'', we see Lewis's adaptation of St. Gregory of Nyssa's "Fishhook Theory" of the atonement whereby Christ conquers Satan by a divine ruse. Lewis constructed his "Space Trilogy" around Irenaeus's "Recapitulation Theory" of the work of Christ. Throughout his writing career, Lewis illustrated and affirmed each ancient theory of atonement, while conspicuously ignoring the modern western theory which he described as "immoral" and "very silly" in ''Mere Christianity''. [http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_lewisatone.html C.S. Lewis Explains the Atonement]
In ''Mere Christianity'', 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 Problem of Pain''). In a parallel fashion, Lewis believed in heaven as the experience of having a heavenly kind of character: "To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." (''Mere Christianity'') In the entire corpus of Lewis's work, it is impossible to find a statement of belief in "penalties against non-believing sinners" or "penal atonement."
===Divine Wrath as Heaven===
Instead of a belief in divine penalties, Lewis agreed with [http://www.stathanasius.miss.on.coptorthodox.ca/Menu/Patrology/SchoolOfAlexandria/DeansClement.htm St. Clement of Alexandria] that God's punishment of all humans sinners is a "wise fire" that delivers us sinners from death to life, evil to good, gloom to joy, if only we the sinners had the sense and trust to "lay ourselves open" to God's infinite justice. St. Clement of Alexandria comforts us, speaks the comforting words: "The punishment that God imposes is due not to anger, but to justice, for the neglect of justice contributes nothing to our improvement." In ''Problem of Pain,'' Lewis describes divine retribution in similar terms as the painful but ''salutary '' process by which God exposes our souls to divine truth. God's justice is "a truly ethical demand that, soon or late, the right should be asserted, the flag planted in this horribly rebellious soul." According to Lewis, we a sinner will not be saved from the hell that he is trapped in until we permit he yields himself to God to render this 's infinite wrath upon us. This is a very radical notion that Lewis adopts directly from the central thought of his "master" George MacDonald. (See Lewis's book: ''George MacDonald, An Anthology''.)
This paradoxical theology is totally contrary to what most of his modern western audience understands to be the "Christian Gospel" -- to them, the good news is that we can ''avoid'' God's punishment by believing that Christ was our penal subsitute. To Lewis, the good news includes the idea that we never needed to be "justified" before our Glad Creator in the first place and the imposition of his wrath brings us heavenly joy. Thus Lewis dares speak directly of this surprising conclusion only in his fantasy literature:
*I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much. My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed. Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the 'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that Romish doctrine had then become. (''Letters to Malcolm.'')
In other words, instead of preaching "Justification by Faith," Lewis implicitly taught a very odd and truly unconventional theology of "Deification by Punishment." In this process, Christians have no privileged position; and if the external aspects of the religion are not deifying Christians by bringing them joy, peace, and love, then they are useless: "[T]he Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time." (''Mere Christianity'')
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''). 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). In fact, the Western doctrines of "Justification by Faith" can only serve to retard a Christian's salvation. 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]
===Sum===
In short, it is very fair to describe Lewis as a "stealth Orthodox" -- his official allegiance lay with the Church of England, but his sympathies lay with the Orthodox because : (a) it conformed conforms nicely to the visionary theology of the universalist George MacDonald(b) it has a beautiful and mystical liturgy, and (c) it is the church that "sings the song of the resurrection. " The most thoughtful study of Lewis' relationship to Orthodoxy was written by Bishop [[Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia|Kallistos Ware]] of Diokleia, who also teaches at Oxford. In an article published in ''Sobornost'' (an Anglican-Orthodox Ecumenical magazine) entitled "C.S. Lewis: an 'Anonymous Orthodox'?" he explores this fascinating question. He humbly relates that Lewis has a tendency to "idealize us Orthodox," and affirms that "even though C.S. Lewis' personal contacts with the Orthodox Church were not extensive at the same time his thinking is often profoundly in harmony with the Orthodox standpoint."
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