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C. S. Lewis

24 bytes removed, 14:52, August 6, 2005
Divine Wrath as Heaven
When the reader contrasts these two dialogues, the reader sees that Lewis had the greatest admiration for those to whom the doctrines of penal hell and penal atonement are immediately perceived to be palpably untrue and who instead cry exultant to God with a child-heart: ‘Do with me as thou wilt!’ Lewis did not believe that it was possible for Christians to be saved from hell so long as they are successful in their scheme to evade God's justice and wrath. Thus, Lewis believed that Western Christians will be ''the very last ones'' to be saved, after the pagans and the , atheists, the Wiccans and the agnostics. The last sin that will dissolve as Western Christans enter into the consuming fire of divine love is the sadly misguided theories of penal atonement and penal hell. In the words of Lewis's "master," MacDonald, "He who is true, out and out, will know at once an untruth; and to that vision we must all come. [As for believers in penal atonement,] when they see the glory of God, they will see the eternal difference between the false and the true, and not till then."
Fully half of the quotes that Lewis selected to include in his anthology of George MacDonald's theology were on this very point -- that God's wrath delivers us from death to life. Lewis tells us in the antroduction to the anthology: "This collection, as I have said, was designed not to revive MacDonald's literary reputation but to spread his religious teaching." "My own debt to this book is almost as great as one man can owe to another: and nearly all serious inquirers to whom I have introduced it acknowledge that it has given them great help-sometimes indispensable help toward the very acceptance of the Christian faith." Lewis then proceeds to quote the theology of MacDonald that he admired:

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