PWJ: S2E1 – TGD P – “Preface”

Today we start a new book! The Great Divorce is my favourite book by Lewis. Through the vehicle of Jack’s story, we get to see more clearly the daily choices which we make which takes us closer to either Heaven or Hell.

Please send any objections, comments or questions, either via email through the new website or tweet us @pintswithjack or message us via Instagram!

S2E1: Preface (Download)

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Time Stamps

In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.

07:40 – Chapter 150-word Summary
08:34 – Chapter Discussion
10:10 – Haikus

Show Notes

• Matt is now doing the intro! He didn’t think that I’d be able to let it go, but I proved him wrong! He does a pretty good job… 😉

•  In this Season, the quote-of-the-week will come from the chapter we’re reading that week:

“If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

•  I was sick with Man Flu this week, so rather than a drink, I ate an Helados ice-cream. Matt was drinking some Lagavulin since he’s in Michigan this week.

•  After our last episode, Matt watched the recent movie adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We read a message sent to us by a listener following our episode on the book:

LOVED and appreciated your LWW podcast. Big fan of chronicles and the spiritual analogies. You brought out even more than I’ve pondered over the decades – thank you. Appreciate your respect of Lewis and where he’s coming from – as background to your commentaries – without going down endless distracting science fiction/fantasy/superheroes movie bunny trails. Thanks so much guys – you’re great. Look forward to Great Divorce – a fave of mine too

Patty

• The guys from The Lamp-post Listener  were guests on the podcast Where did you see God? In it, the host gave a fantastic Biblical example which mimicked Lewis’ skill at sneaking past “watchful dragons”. He compared it to the events of 2 Samuel 12, where the Prophet Nathan comes to King David and tells him a story about a rich man who stole a poor man’s lamb. When David condemned the man in the story, Nathan revealed to him that he was really condemning himself for his mistreatment of Bathsheba and her husband:

And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” Nathan said to David, “You are the man…”

2 Samuel 12:1-7

• I offered a correction on the previous episode where I said that Aslan’s death on the Stone Table was closer to the Substitionary Atonement model, whereas it’s really closer to Ransom Theory. I’d like to get Joe Heschmeyer back on the show at some point to talk about these different atonement models.

• In this season we will also be offering a summary of each chapter at the beginning of the episode, mimicking The Lamp-post Listener by limiting it to 150 words:

With William Blake’s poem, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, as his inspiration, Jack says that we constantly hope to have goodness without renouncing evil. In contrast, Lewis says that attaining Heaven requires that we will let go of evil: “You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys;…If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.” Fortunately, what we must give up will ultimately be utterly insignificant! When we look back, we will see Earth as having been a preliminary region of either Heaven or Hell.

Jack ends by emphasizing that this story is a fantasy, “an imaginative supposal”, which he is using to communicate spiritual truths. It is not a strict theology of what happens to us after death.

Summary of The Preface

• We’re also going to be summarizing the chapter each week in a Haiku, a Japanese form of poetry where the number of syllables in each line follows a strict count: 5-7-5. I stole borrowed this idea from The Tolkien Road podcast.

Souvenirs of Hell

Can’t be taken to Heaven

Leave them all behind

Haiku-of-the-week

• Matt summarizes the book. He explains that we’ll meet many characters who will turn down Heaven. We may be surprised by this, but as he pointed out, we often withhold forgiveness from people, even though it’s the best thing we can do for ourselves!

I re-told the story of how people will capture monkeys in the jungle but placing some food at the bottom of a container. When the monkeys grip the food, their fist is too large to withdraw from the container and they become stuck, forsaking their liberty for some food they can never eat!

• At the start of the Preface, Lewis explains that this is a response to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by the Proto-Romantic, William Blake, in the 18th/19th Century.

The work is impressive, but it’s not always easy to understand exactly what Blake is arguing. Much of the text comes from the mouth of the Devil – are we meant to believe him?

We can say that a central part of Blake’s thought is the idea of “contraries”, that both good and evil are needed and that there is some goodness in evil and some evil in good. This is in sharp contradiction to what Lewis says:

“The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable “either-or”; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

I had read a commentary which suggested that Blake read Paradise Lost and noticed that the devils where the much more exciting characters and that this is informing his thought in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I commented that when I read Dante’s Divine Comedy, that I read The Inferno, his trip through Hell, much more quickly that the sequels which travel through Purgatory and Heaven. I pointed out that this is because writing about Heavenly things is difficult. Lewis had wanted to have an angelic version of The Screwtape Letters, but found it too difficult.

We discuss how it is that we’re attracted to evil. I quoted Joe Heschmeyer from a previous episode where he said that we just try and get away with as much sin as we can, while still attaining Heaven.

• Lewis says that we can’t negotiate with sin as Blake suggests:

“This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

Here Lewis is alluding to Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell

Matthew 5:27-30

We tied all this into the final chapters of Mere Christianity where Lewis speaks about “Be ye perfect”, as well as Heavenly and Hellish creatures. In the Preface of The Great Divorce Lewis emphasizes once again the choices that we make:

“…rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

In order to fix a mistake, you have to go back:

“…all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road… Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

• We then come to the text from the quote-of-the-week. The Augustinian idea of greater and lesser goods:

“If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. “

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

• Jack goes on to explain that he believes that, in the end, we will discover that all we have given up will turn out to be nothing:

“I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries.” In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

Matt and I connected this to things like pornography. People are seeking beauty, but in the wrong place and in the wrong way. What they are really looking for is the beauty of God.

• Lewis alludes to something which will be addressed later in the book, the idea that our choices will work retrospectively, that when we come to Heaven, it will colour our perception of Earth:

“But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Preface

• Lewis gives his thanks to The man who lived backwards by Charles Hall, who inspired the unbreakable nature of his Heaven in The Great Divorce.

• He ends the Preface by emphasizing that this is a work of fiction and not Lewis’ theory of the afterlife.