You can read Mr. Shore’s unsound theological reflections here. As Lewis puts it in The Problem of Pain: “Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this…[but Hell] has the full support of Scripture and, specifically, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom.”
There is a lot of this going around. I attended the 2013 Boy Scout Jamboree and in some spare time visited the United Methodist’s tent where I was taken aside and told by the enthusiastic spokesman that he was a happy United Methodist because his pastor had revealed to him that there was no Hell.
It increasingly seems to me that Lewis had it right in [i]The Great Divorce[/i], namely that Hell is ultimately chosen by its residents, rather than simply constituting a plane to which the guilty are sentenced (it may be that, too, in effect, but this is probably not what really matters). Surely the line from [i]Paradise Lost[/i] that embodies this is Satan’s grim resolve: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.â€
I wonder, if, to postmodern ears, the argument proffered by Lewis might make more sense. If we can make our own hell in this life, we can certainly choose to embrace it in the hereafter. It remains congruent with Original Sin, however, since avoiding Hell remains dependent on the acceptance of divine grace.