Readings:
Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. New York: New York, HarperOne, Later Printing edition, 2009.
Book Description: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is a classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment, Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’ The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil.
Sotak, Max. Damning Assumptions: What Advocates of Endless Torment Take for Granted. Max Sotak, 2013.
Book Description: The Bible's teaching on eternal judgment has often shocked those inside the Christian community and scandalized many without. Belief in damnation as endless torment has been viewed by many Christians as the obvious biblical view. But many respected scholars and theologians question this interpretation on the basis of the words of Jesus who said that God is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28). Dr. Sotak is a scholar who recognizes that immortality is ultimately found in Jesus Christ, which means that final judgment--while it may have eternal consequences and results--is not to be understood in terms of endless suffering. Providing a tract for the times on final judgment, this book supplies a sound argument for those who suspect that something is not quite right among the followers of Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." If you want to know where the bodies are buried in centuries of argument in favor of endless torment, this book provides the map--and the shovel.
Walls, Jerry L., The Logic of Eternal Joy. Oxford: New York, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Book Description: The Christian doctrine of heaven has been a moral source of enormous power in western culture. It has provided a striking account of the ultimate good in life and has for two millennia animated the hope that our lives can be fully meaningful. Recently, however, the doctrine of heaven has lost much of its grip on the western imagination and has become a vague and largely ignored part of the Christian creed. Not only have our hopes been redefined as a result, but our very identity as human beings has been altered.
In this book, Jerry L. Walls argues that the doctrine of heaven is ripe for serious reconsideration. He contends not only that the orthodox view of heaven can be defended from objections commonly raised against it, but also that heaven is a powerful resource for addressing persistent philosophical problems, not the least of which concern the
ground of morality and the meaning of life. Walls shows how heaven is integrally related to central Christian doctrines, particularly those concerning salvation, and tackles the difficult problem of why faith in Christ is necessary to save us from our sins. In addition, heaven is shown to illumine thorny problems of personal identity and to be an
essential component of a satisfactory theodicy. Walls goes on to examine data from near-death experiences from the standpoint of some important recent work in epistemology and argues that they offer positive evidence for heaven. He concludes that we profoundly need to recover the hope of heaven in order to recover our very humanity.
______. Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation. Oxford: New York, Oxford University Press, 2011.
Book Description: Jerry L. Walls, the author of books on hell and heaven, completes his tour of the afterlife with a philosophical and theological exploration and defense of purgatory, the traditional teaching that most Christians require a period of postmortem cleansing and purging of their sinful dispositions and imperfections before they will be fully made ready for heaven. He examines Protestant objections to the doctrine and shows that the doctrine of purgatory has been construed in different ways, some of which are fully compatible with Protestant theology. In particular, while purgatory has often been understood as matter of punishment in order to make satisfaction for sins that have not been fully remitted, it can also be seen as the completion of the sanctification process, an account of the doctrine that is fully consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Purgatory assumes not only continuity of personal identity but also gradual moral and spiritual growth between death and resurrection. Different theories of personal identity are examined and assessed in light of these assumptions. Walls also shows that the traditional doctrine of purgatory is not understood as a second chance for salvation, but goes on to argue that it should be modified to allow for postmortem repentance. He concludes with an examination of C.S. Lewis's writings on purgatory, and suggests that Lewis can be a model for evangelicals and other Protestants to engage the doctrine of purgatory in a way that is true to their theology.