E.L. Mascall and the Great Divorce: Human Agency and the Eschaton

Abstract This article argues that E.L. Mascall develops the eschatology of C.S. Lewis to answer three common critiques of the consensual doctrine of hell. First, Mascall argues that human persons are capable of refusing the love of God because their potential reciprocal love depends on a freedom to give the self, or refuse to do so, in an indissoluble union. Second, the perfection of the new heavens and new earth is not a numerical perfection, and the numerical imperfection of finite creation demonstrates that this is not God’s goal in creation. Third, human nature and Christian revelation reveal that persons are made with the capacity to receive grace and participate in glory, but this reception and participation cannot be coerced. In order to test the plausibility of this position, I present David Bentley Hart’s critique of Lewis’s particularism and Mascall’s answer to such objections.