I’ve always thought of it this way:
Christ was the only perfect manifestation of the divine Logos- God’s wisdom, His continuing revelation with man, itself made man.
From there I tend to think that the divine Logos continues to be made known to man through other manifestations, all dispensed by the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that what Scripture is? A dissertation on the nature of God & creation prompted by the Holy Spirit? But it wasn’t written miraculously by the hand of the Holy Spirit itself; it was written by the hand of man. The Holy Spirit reveals the nature of things to the children of God, the children of God record this revelation. The revelation is inerrant, but the minds of the scribes receiving and recording it are fallible.

As to questions of Lewis and universalism/purgatory etc, I think he often maintained a due agnosticism about such details. The concept of purgatory features in The Great Divorce, but that was a dream recorded. Lewis would only sell the contents of that book as a speculation or meditation- not a revelation.
Again in Divorce, when the dreaming man asks MacDonald about universalism, MacDonald replies that it may be that “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.” But he says that it is ill to talk of such things, because the answers to such questions always deceive. For us, within a temporal world, looking upon Eternity, we *necessarily* follow specific revelation. Because it was provided for our use in this world. But who know knows? Perhaps if we were able to stand and look from a less restricted vantage point, we might find that the answers are much more complex and glorious than we expected.

Dan

What seems to be missing here is the knowledge that Lewis believing that ‘a person could belong to Jesus Christ and be saved without necessarily knowing Him specifically’ is frankly perfectly in-line with traditional Christianity. The Catholics and Anglicans call it ‘baptism by desire’. It’s a concept that’s been around for a long time. (You see a fine example of the idea in The Last Battle, btw.)

And, how odd that many people who proclaim God’s absolute sovereignty have a hard time honoring that sovereignty by humbly admitting that God can save whomever He pleases based on whatever criteria He chooses. Why it is so hard to wrap the mind around the idea that God, Who knows our hearts, knows who is following Him no matter what religious label that person may be wearing? And Lewis’ belief here, and that of his fellow Anglo-Catholic Christians, just simply leave the final judgement to God. On the whole, I find that the far less hereticl position (but then I’m an Anglican).

Michael, I am not sure how you get this out of what Lewis has said about scripture. It is not an either or proposition.

“all Holy Scripture is in some sense — though not all parts of it in the same sense — the word of God.”

Here Lewis is saying that all Holy Scripture is the word of God. It is not that in some sense part is not the word of God but that it all is the word of God just in differenct senses. A historical narrative is not carrying spiritual truth in the same way as a parable or the direct words of a prophet. It is like saying a biography, a portrait and a poem may all carry the truth of George Washington in some sense, though not all in the same sense.

For many evangelicals, inerrancy goes right along with rapture theology when it comes to deciding who is part of the elect, or as I’m hearing more and more of these days, part of the remnant.

As far as they’re concerned, if you don’t worship inerrancy and the rapture, you aren’t in the remnant!

So, Michael, what do you think of this statement?

Taken as a whole, the Bible does not affirm anything that is not true.

I went through a time of extreme doubt in my faith. I grew very skeptical of Christianity, my church, and my family. For the past several years I have been sitting on the fence as to what I really believed. Funnily enough it started through evangelism. I a newly baptized, all knowing, high school junior took it upon myself to convert my agnostic and atheist friends to Christianity with apologetics. I began to do lots of research and found the very foundations of my faith flung out from beneath me. There was a lot of evidence against the “inerrant” bible. I can no longer believe in a lack of error within the bible. I naturally found myself gravitating toward the same conclusion as Lewis. I just don’t see any other way. The bible does not hold up as a science textbook or a History book. Its much more than that. Its a description of God’s relation to humanity.

As for Lewis’ “universalism”, it has seemed to me that there is a small amount of support for salvation through ignorance. Those who have not come into contact with the gospel and live according to the law on their hearts. l John 9:41, Romans 2:12-14. I’d love to hear your thoughts on those verses, as I’ve found them a bit of an enigma myself.

Anyways thanks for this blog, God bless.

Not universalism mabye, but not exclusivism

What the author calls universalism is clearly not universalism, but salvation by faith outside of the knowledge of the historical Jesus, a totally different matter.

Lewis was never a universalist.

I find it interesting that reformed Baptists and other Calvinists routinely will cite Lewis (ex: Piper) and then discover these facts, which in their opinion generally mean you are not a Christian.

“He also believed in the existence of purgatory, though he did not consider it to be a place of punishment. Lewis, rather, believed saved people were purified of their sins in purgatory before entering heaven itself. Another controversial belief he held was that a person could belong to Jesus Christ and be saved without necessarily knowing Him specifically. This is not exactly universalism, but it goes beyond the clear teaching of Scripture.”

Quoted off equip.org, not the most scholarly site, but it will do for half a minute of search…