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In other words, instead of preaching "Justification by Faith," Lewis implicitly taught a very odd and truly unconventional theology of "Deification by Punishment." In this process, Christians have no privileged position—if the liturgy and sacraments of Christianity are not deifying Christians by transforming them into divine love, then they are useless: "[T]he Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time." —''Mere Christianity''
In short, Lewis was a universalist in the way that Orthodox Christianity teaches universalism, believing that God loves all his creatures now and throughout eternity, and we experience hell only insofar as, and so long as, we choose not to conform ourselves to Divine Love. Like the Orthodox, Lewis believed that we could repent beyond the grave and we could all hope for (but not predict with certainty) [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm ''apokatastasis,'', ] universal reconciliation of humanity to divine goodness (see ''The Great Divorce''). According to Lewis, a human is not required to accept any particular religious beliefs or doctrine in order to be "saved," i.e., in order to turn from gloom to joy. In fact, the Western doctrine of "Justification by Faith" can only serve to retard a Christian's salvation by shielding them from God's life-giving wrath. An article on this matter is [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05292002-153921/unrestricted/etd.pdf Reason, Imagination, and Universalism in C. S. Lewis].
===Criticism===
