In 2025 Donald Williams, Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College, brilliantly explored CS Lewis’ view on Hell here.

“He mounted a brilliant and often insightful defense of traditional, supernatural Christianity that fully justifies his continuing popularity among the faithful. . . . Because Lewis was a popular and influential defender of classical orthodoxy, it is worthwhile taking a fresh look at his defense of the classical doctrine of eternal punishment. Lewis did not deal directly with annihilationism or conditional immortality because in his lifetime those doctrines were mainly confined to cults, and Lewis concentrated on what he called “mere Christianity.” Nevertheless, he does speak of hell and of the nature of the soul in ways that lend themselves to a defense of eternal conscious punishment. He addresses universalism only indirectly, but clearly denies it, defending the idea that there is a hell and there will be people in it . . .

Lewis is always clear that the great business of life is to choose between God and anything else, with eternal consequences (heaven or hell) depending on that choice . . . There are but two paths, two destinations, and there is a final and irrevocable separation between them . . . Hell, in other words, is not just an arbitrary judgment on our sins; it is the revelation of what they are in their essence, what they will become and make of us if unchecked by grace. 

Lewis labors long and hard to make sure his readers understand that there is an unavoidable fork in the road of life, that we have to choose one path or the other, that we do so choose whether we realize it or not, and, finally, that the stakes of those choices are nothing less than cosmic . . . Heaven—or hell—does not have to wait for eternity. Foretastes of each begin already in this world. 

Consistent with Lewis’s emphasis on the Great Divorce is his view that people are in hell because that is what they have chosen. They might not have realized they were choosing it; they might have thought they were choosing something else; but hell is precisely the grand summation of all they have chosen . . . Hell, then, really is God saying, after all his offers to reclaim us have been refused, “All right, fine, thy will be done.” He will not redeem us by simply overriding our wills. That is why Lewis says, “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside” (The Problem of Pain).

People who object to the doctrine of eternal punishment are understandably horrified by it. But in their objection, they often do not realize what they are asking. What would they have God do with those who persist in their rebellion? 

The answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell is a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start? . . . But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? But they will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. (The Problem of Pain)“

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Augustine used the epression incurvatus in se to describe what sin does. Incurvatus in se is a Latin phrase meaning “turned inward on oneself,” describing a state where individuals focus on themselves rather than on God and others.