"The Packed Reality of Heaven": C.S. Lewis's Imaginative Re-education of the Modern Pilgrim

Abstract

How to think of Heaven then, which Lewis says “is, by definition, outside our experience,” when the fact is that “all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience” is a question that Lewis took seriously, especially since the scriptural imagery “[a]t first sight . . . chill[ed], rather than awake[ned], [his] desire.” He asked how a “typical modern” like himself might interpret the heavenly concept of glory. The first idea of fame suggested to him hellish competition; the second idea of brightness suggested the “ridiculous” image of becoming “a kind of living electric light bulb.” Indeed, he contends that the “disease” of the “discrepancy” between “Spirit and Nature” within us makes it difficult for Christians themselves to reconcile the idea of eternal life in Christ and bodily life. He emphasizes, “The destiny of redeemed man is not less but more unimaginable than mysticism would lead us to suppose—because it is full of semi-imaginables which we cannot at present admit without destroying its essential character.” In part then, the burden of unbelief is tied to a failure of the imagination.