The
Screwtape Letters with Screwtape Proposes a Toast
The
Screwtape Letters is an epistolary novel: a series of letters from Screwtape,
a senior demon, as he mentors and advises his nephew, junior tempter Wormwood.
It
is commonly referred to as a Christian allegory or apologetic, but I don’t
agree with either designation. I don’t believe Lewis was describing something
unreal to explain something real. I believe he was describing something quite
real, with fictional characters, that occurs very nearly as he describes it.
Oh, I doubt there are physical letters exchanged between demons, but I believe
the methods of deceit, confusion, despair, and temptation they use are very
similar to what takes place in the unseen spiritual realm. Neither does Lewis
seem to be making a defense of Christianity.
Further,
I don’t think of this as a novel even, at least not in intent. I think it is more
of an instructional warning of the intents and wiles of the demonic hordes.
I
don’t feel adequate to synopsize beyond one central point: Screwtape does not
take much satisfaction when Wormwood gets his ‘patient’ to merely sin. The
senior demon is more concerned with getting humans to disbelieve.
Excepts,
all the words of Screwtape to Wormwood:
Do
remember you are there to fuddle him [the patient]. From the way some of you
young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!
Keep
his mind off the plain antithesis between True and False.
Jargon,
not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste
time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is
strong, or stark, or courageous – that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s
the sort of thing he cares about.
It
does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is
to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no
better than cards if cards can do the trick.
Let
him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of
twenty-four hours.
Looking
round your patient’s new friends I find that the best point of attack would be
the borderline between theology and politics.
We
thus distract men’s minds from who He [Jesus] is, and what He did. We first
make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement
between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers.
…you
soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished
character approved by a judicious historian.
…the
strongest and most beautiful of the vices – Spiritual Pride.
What
we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind
I call ‘Christianity and’. You know – Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity
and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith
Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism,
Christianity and Spelling Reform.
So
inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of
attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into
Heaven at some future date by politics or eugenics or ‘science’ or psychology,
or what not.
END
Excerpts
I’ve
wanted to read this for years. It was fascinating. Lewis said of it…
Though
I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment.
I
can understand that. He dedicates it to his friend J. R. R. Tolkien. The
version I read includes the addendum Screwtape Proposes a Toast, added years after
the initial publication.
My
rating: 4 out of 5 stars
This
novel satisfies the “Double Letters” category (title must contain double
letters) in the What’s in a Name 2024 challenge.
.