However, despite professing herself a Christian, L'Engle (1918-2007) was a figure of some controversy among many of those whom she might have claimed as co-religionists. She certainly held to some beliefs that were not accepted by many orthodox Christians. For one thing, she was apparently a believer in theistic evolution, as evidenced by this quote from her 1963 speech accepting the Newberry Medal for children's literature: "The extraordinary, the marvelous thing about Genesis is not how unscientific it is, but how amazingly accurate it is. How could the ancient Israelites have known the exact order of an evolution that wasn't to be formulated for thousands of years?" (A Wrinkle in Time, pp. 244-245, Square Fish Edition).
However, perhaps most controversially, L'Engle was an advocate of "Christian universalism," the belief that in the end all shall be saved, regardless of whether they put their faith in Christ or not. As she said, "All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones" (as quoted by John Wilson in "A Distorted Predestination," Christianity Today, Sept. 3, 2003; cited in Wikipedia). Apparently, she did believe in punishment for nonbelievers after death, but argued it would not be eternal: "I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love" (as quoted by Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson in Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reivents Eternal Punishment, p. 171; cited in Wikipedia).
To be fair, L'Engle was hardly unique among professed Christians in her embrace of universalism. For example, the church father Origen (ca. 185-254) was a universalist, as was the modern theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968). Like L'Engle, Origen argued for a reformatory view of God's justice. claiming that "The fury of God's vengeance [in Hell] is profitable for the purgation of souls. That the punishment, also, which is said to be applied by fire, is understood to be applied with the object of healing" (as quoted in The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, by Norman L. Geisler, p. 747). In other words, both L'Engle and Origen rejected the idea that God's justice is penal. However, as Norman L. Geisler points out in The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, "God's absolute justice and holiness demand that a penalty be paid for sin" (p. 747). Moreover, "the reformatory view of justice...is contrary to the substitutionary death of Christ...Why did Christ have to pay the awful price for sin if sin is not an infinite crime and does not have be punished?" (p. 747). L'Engle asserted that "the lesson" of God's punishment is "love," and yet, as Geisler notes, "for everyone to be saved, those who refuse to love God would be forced to love him against their will...Forced love is not love, but a kind of rape" (p. 749). Furthermore, with regard to those who have not heard the Gospel (who have not "been given the grace to know and accept Christ"--although one might argue that those who truly seek Him will find Him), it can be argued that they will be judged fairly, according to "the requirements of the law [that] are written on their hearts," as the Apostle Paul says (Romans 2:15, New International Version).
Interestingly, both L'Engle and C. S. Lewis were influenced by the Scottish minister and fantasy writer George McDonald (1824-1905). However, while L'Engle followed MacDonald in her advocacy of universalism, Lewis did not. Unlike L'Engle, Lewis believed that ultimately God would respect the choices that people make. As he wrote in his novel about Hell, The Great Divorce, "there are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done" (as cited in Geisler, p. 746). As much as I admire L'Engle, I think Lewis had the better argument in this matter, as much as we might wish otherwise.
Image of Madeleine L'Engle from Wikipedia.org