The bookstore stocks the edition with both prefaces (1941, 1960) as well as \u201cScrewtape Proposes a Toast.\u201d It\u2019s important that you use that one. For several years, the publisher was leaving out the"},"modified":"2012-09-17T22:25:46","modified_gmt":"2012-09-18T03:25:46","slug":"the-screwtape-letters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/the-screwtape-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Screwtape Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"
The bookstore stocks the edition with both prefaces (1941, 1960) as well as \u201cScrewtape Proposes a Toast.\u201d It\u2019s important that you use that one. For several years, the publisher was leaving out the 1960 preface, and your well-thumbed favorite copy might be deficient like that.<\/p>\n
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Reading Group Guide<\/a>. 12 thoughtful topics. Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n Analysis of the Screwtape Letters<\/a>. Blog series that\u2019s a good model of connecting a work of fiction to scripture and modern application. (Unknown author)<\/p>\n CONTEXT: C. S. Lewis<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong>CSL Wikipedia article<\/a>, a fine brief biography and list of critical studies. Good starting point if you\u2019ve not studied CSL\u2019s life.<\/p>\n \u201cScrewtape\u201d Wikipedia article<\/a>. Concise and accurate. See the sections on audio, stage, and film versions for anecdotes for your class. The article mentions a film version due for release in 2012, but it\u2019s evidently on hold (http:\/\/www.waldenfans.com\/?s=screwtape).<\/p>\n Into the Wardrobe<\/a>\u2014a C. S. Lewis web site. Comprehensive, long-established (1994), dependable. The \u201cbiography\u201d tab has enough detail for quick reference in class. The \u201cpapers\u201d tab has academic papers, most not pertinent to Screwtape. \u201cMultimedia\u201d has a handy collection of CSL photos.<\/p>\n The C. S. Lewis Review<\/a>. Dr. Bruce Edwards ran the best CSL site on the web for years, and this is its digitally-savvy successor (podcasts, etc.). (We interviewed Edwards for an ACU job years ago, but he made his career at Bowling Green. He\u2019s done five books on Lewis including a four-volume biography and critical study.)<\/p>\n MEDIA RESOURCES<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Screwtape Letters reading<\/a>,\u00a0audio performance by John Cleese, in convenient segments.<\/p>\n The Screwtape Letters play<\/a>, 3-minute clip from New York stage production, 2007-2008 with Max McLean as Screwtape. Official site<\/a> for the touring production. Coming back to Dallas in November.<\/p>\n Sales site for the audio drama<\/a> version of Screwtape produced for Focus on the Family and starring Andy Serkis (Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films). The free samples<\/a> on the site are excellent.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.ovguide.com\/the-screwtape-letters-9202a8c04000641f800000000dead930#, Scroll past the ads (it\u2019s a nasty page) and click the images for clips. The TV interview with actor Max McLean, 4 minutes, is lively. The 7-minute film, a contemporary treatment with cell phones and coffee shop, is stiff but might interest some students.<\/p>\n Why use The Screwtape Letters<\/em> in a course on Ways of Knowing (or perspectives on knowing)? How can a satire relate to the Syllabus questions \u201cHow do we know? How do we and our culture come to understand the world?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer is that \u201cknowing\u201d is the basis of all conversion and refusal to convert. Lewis shows that people get to Heaven or Hell because of HOW they know, not just what they know. If a human \u201cknows\u201d that the world of the senses is the \u201creal\u201d one, \u201cknows\u201d that science has made religion obsolete, or \u201cknows\u201d that the churches are full of ruffians, he\u2019s a candidate for Screwtape and Wormwood to lure to Hell. They don\u2019t have to persuade him, just keep him muddled. \u201cDo remember,\u201d writes Screwtape, \u201cyou are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!\u201d (21). The devils\u2019 \u201cpatient\u201d can damn himself with his spiritual pride or self-delusion. Logic and doctrine and submission to Christ are brushed away because he \u201cknows\u201d better.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing\u201d can be your umbrella theme, then, in reading and teaching the book. Under your umbrella, I suggest these three baskets:<\/p>\n 1. Knowing or Misknowing Yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n Self-delusion means opportunity for the devils. Letter 1 describes \u201ca sound atheist\u201d whose thoughts drifted toward God as he sat reading in the British Museum. Screwtape\u2019s countermove was to remind this thinker of lunch. Stepping into the \u201creality\u201d of a busy street, he regained his atheism\u2014\u201call \u2018that sort of thing\u2019 just couldn\u2019t be true\u201d (20). His self-delusion consisted in thinking that he was unprejudiced and rational. In fact he was just swayed by physical experience. He thought he was thinking. Screwtape reports smugly that, \u201cHe is now safe in Our Father\u2019s house,\u201d Hell.<\/p>\n The patient\u2019s mother (Letter 17) deludes herself that she is selfless. Her \u201cAll I want is . . .\u201d routine with food is actually a kind of bullying. She is finicky. And when her son prays for her soul (Letter 3), his prayer is so lofty that he is really \u201cpraying for an imaginary person\u201d rather than \u201cthe real mother\u2014the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table\u201d (26).<\/p>\n Another way to misknow yourself is to believe in your own consistency. The law of Undulation (Letter 8) is one of the most popular discoveries in the book for my students. I like it, too. It explains a lot about our up-and-down experience as believers. \u201cHumans are amphibians\u2014half spirit and half animal,\u201d says Screwtape, and can\u2019t be constant. Peaks of liveliness and joy alternate with troughs of weariness. Devils can use the troughs for sexual temptation and loss of religious enthusiasm in a recent convert (Letter 9). So don\u2019t let the patient know himself, says Screwtape. Not knowing the law of Undulation, the patient will assume that his first enthusiasm is gone for good, a phase he has passed through. Keep the patient \u201cout of the way of experienced Christians,\u201d says Screwtape, who could reassure him that the troughs will pass (44).<\/p>\n 2. Knowing or Misknowing God and the Church<\/strong><\/p>\n Misknowing God is sometimes evident in the way we pray. We may pray to a hazy figure we\u2019ve invented, and that makes us pray in a hazy way. Screwtape hopes that when the patient prays, he will \u201caim at something entirely spontaneous, inward, informal, and unregularised,\u201d thinking he ought to achieve \u201ca vaguely devotional mood in which real concentration of will and intelligence have no part\u201d (Letter 4, p. 28). What sort of God would rather not be bothered with \u201cwill and intelligence\u201d in prayers? The kind of God we might make up. \u201cKeep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills,\u201d says Screwtape. Humans try to generate their own feelings because they pray to \u201ca composite object containing many quite ridiculous elements\u201d including images from Sunday school pictures (29).<\/p>\n Misknowing God can also take the form of rejecting God as a kill-joy. Screwtape and other devils, who have no joy but cruelty, know better. One reason they can\u2019t beat \u201cthe Enemy\u201d is that God creates joy. See letters 2, 8, 13, 22. All pleasures are created by God. The kingdom of Hell cannot invent pleasures, only corrupt them. Screwtape tells his nephew to keep the patient sold on the \u201cvanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium\u201d that \u201cthe World\u201d believes are pleasure. Real pleasures have \u201ca sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness\u201d that draw people to love others and to love God (56, 57).<\/p>\n A third way humans misknow God is to claim He hates human freedom. The fact is, God wants humans to be themselves by choosing to be His. Here are Screwtape\u2019s grouchy descriptions of God\u2019s method:<\/p>\n The Enemy . . . has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His \u201cfree\u201d lovers and servants\u2014\u201csons\u201d is the word He uses, with His inveterate love of degrading the whole spiritual world by unnatural liaisons with the two-legged animals. Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to \u201cdo it on their own.\u201d (23)<\/p>\n Remember, always, that He really likes the little vermin, and sets an absurd value on the distinctness of every one of them. When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever. (56)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Misknowing the Church is another issue important to The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape himself says, \u201cOne of our great allies at present is the Church himself.\u201d He doesn\u2019t mean the eternal Church, \u201cspread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners,\u201d but the human, visible part of the Church, with shabby songs and your most irritating neighbors sitting in the pews with you (23). Screwtape\u2019s nephew Wormwood is told to keep the irritation going until the patient becomes \u201ca taster or connoisseur of churches,\u201d looking for \u201cthe church that \u2018suits\u2019 him\u201d (Letter 16, p. 64). The two nearest churches for him to visit are eaten up with party spirit, one dominated by a vicar who waters down the faith and the other by a combative minister who preaches to shock. Either one could help undermine the patient\u2019s faith, thinks Screwtape. And if Wormwood can\u2019t keep the patient out of the Church, he should at least get him attached to some faction. Naturally, Screwtape picks the examples that would please a demon, but ACU readers can add their own. People misknow the Church when they think its purpose it to \u201csuit\u201d them or be a boxing ring for factions or an extension of a minister\u2019s personality.<\/p>\n Screwtape does give one example of a wholehearted Christian and her family, and his rage at her goodness accidentally turns him into a centipede.<\/p>\n The little brute! She makes me vomit. . . . We\u2019d have had her to the arena in the old days. That\u2019s what her sort is made for. Not that she\u2019d do much good there, either. A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she\u2019d faint at the sight of blood, and then dies with a smile. . . . Looks as if butter wouldn\u2019t melt in her mouth, and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who\u2019d find ME funny!\u201d (Letter 22, p. 82)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The patient has fallen in love with this young woman. Her whole family and circle of friends carry an atmosphere of selfless love\u2014to Screwtape, \u201cthat deadly odour.\u201d The house is \u201cfull of the impenetrable mystery\u201d\u2014a selfless love that a devil can\u2019t comprehend. (82. Also see Letter 19, p. 74.) This family, in short, knows God, and the scoffers misknow Him.<\/p>\n 3. Knowing or Misknowing Society<\/strong><\/p>\n As Lewis wrote in the 1961 preface, he chose to symbolize Hell as \u201csomething like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.\u201d \u201cWe must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.\u201d Why imagine it as a bureaucracy? Because Lewis lives in \u201cthe Managerial Age, in a world of \u2018Admin.\u2019\u201d (7). Hell was imagined differently by Dante in the 1400s and Milton in the 1600s because their eras gave them different materials.<\/p>\n To know society accurately is to know that selfish ambition has eternal consequences. The patient\u2019s mother\u2014the finicky eater\u2014is selfish on a very small scale. But just outside the pages of The Screwtape Letters stand Hitler and his engineer for the death camps, Adolph Eichmann, who was discussed in the Spotlight materials for Week 1. Their selfish ambition cost the lives of millions. They aren\u2019t mentioned in the letters since Screwtape is not impressed by wars. Victims are easier prey for devils when they have years of peace to grow complacent.<\/p>\n Expand on this theme of selfishness with your classmates. Ask them what is the essence of a personality fit for Hell. Lack of compassion? (Stalin had 11 million people executed in the Great Purge and on other occasions.) Delight in cruelty? (Saddam Hussein\u2019s son Uday made torture his hobby.) Infinite craving for power? Determination to create a Master Race? Willingness to torture people for religious reasons (Inquisitions, witch trials)? Remind the class about Hannah Arendt\u2019s phrase \u201cthe banality of evil,\u201d and you\u2019ll be close to Lewis\u2019s conception. He writes that the greatest modern evil is carried out not in concentration camps but \u201cby quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.\u201d That could describe Adolf Eichmann, who claimed to be \u201cfollowing orders\u201d but who actually gave them. Now think of Screwtape, the bureaucrat who looks forward to devouring his nephew. \u201cThe mark of Hell,\u201d Lewis writes, is \u201cthe ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self\u201d that marked Goethe\u2019s character Faust.<\/p>\n Another misknowing of society is to miss an eternal perspective on war. God has decreed free will, so wars happen. But He works with His people in war as well as peace, wooing them to choose His ways. As bombing increases over England, Screwtape urges Wormwood to push his patient toward cowardice. But it could backfire\u2014\u201cThe danger of inducing cowardice in our patients . . . is that we produce real self-knowledge and self-loathing, with consequent repentance and humility. And in fact, in the last war, thousands of humans, by discovering their own cowardice discovered the whole moral world for the first time.\u201d When a war or revolution happens, \u201cthe undisguisable issue of cowardice or courage awakes thousands of men from moral stupor. This indeed, is probably one of the Enemy\u2019s motives for creating a dangerous world\u2014a world in which moral issues really come to the point.\u201d (104).<\/p>\n Of the three themes, this one is most dependent on knowing the 1930s and 1940s. Lewis\u2019s references (through Screwtape) to Bergson, Shaw, Creative Evolution, and the Life Force will be blanks to many readers today, and eugenics, psychoanalysis, Marxism and so forth (see Letters 7, 15, 23, etc.) will have altered connotations. To Lewis, these philosophers and conceptions were misunderstandings of society, history, and even eternity (see letter 25 on intellectual fashions, worship of \u201cprogess,\u201d etc.). His little sequel \u201cScrewtape Proposes a Toast,\u201d added in 1962, is still current since it deals with American-style public education. Through Screwtape, Lewis criticizes an exaggerated \u201cdemocracy\u201d that kills excellence by making social equality an entitlement. But I have had trouble teaching it even to advanced students. The term democracy becomes a red flag too easily, and reading an Englishman\u2019s critique of American schools through the mouthpiece of a devil is complicated anyway.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I plan to use The Screwtape Letters for my two Cornerstone classes, and, while I haven’t worked it all out yet, I have thought through a bit of the Ways of Thinking issue (not much, mind you!), as I’ve begun re-reading the book. First, I don’t think it will be productive to focus on every single letter. Sure, assign it all–but only concentrate on certain letters, such as IX, in which Screwtape takes some time walking Wormwood through his Christians’ dry “Trough” periods, which yield excellent opportunities to tempt them into sexual sins. It is in this chapter that he categorizes people in general: wishful-thinking types (p. 42 in my version of the text): those who can be assured that all is well; desponding types: those who can be tempted to despair. Earlier he mentioned those who think the ardours of their conversion ought to have lasted forever and those who think their present dryness is forever, etc. Anyhow, you get the idea…. In other words, I was thinking one could a different way than the Science route or the Missional route with this approach here in this particular discussion.<\/p>\n For each letter, I’m not sure how this next exactly is addressing Ways of Thinking, but I know how I would want each student to preach each text in a nutshell:<\/p>\n Letter 2 “The Church itself” can be an ally to the diabolical cause. How? Read Mt. 16:18; 1 Cor 12:12-27; Eph 1:3-14; 4:1-6; Rev 7:9ff. . What do these texts have to say? When can specific forms and styles of worship become barriers to worship and service to God, or can\/do they?<\/p>\n “Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anti-climax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman.” Letter 2<\/p>\n Why is there an anticlimax? Did this happen to you? Discuss.<\/p>\n In Letter 4, “teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.” After all, don’t our students so often judge their relationship with God by how they feel?<\/p>\n Ways of Thinking about Good and Evil, Letters 5-7<\/p>\n \u00a0I definitely do want to do an epistolary exercise of some sort; to me, that just makes sense with this book. I’d like to have them write how to catch college freshmen, but I realize it’s pretty transparent. I could return them at the end of the semester (or even have peer leader return them next semester?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About the Edition The bookstore stocks the edition with both prefaces (1941, 1960) as well as \u201cScrewtape Proposes a Toast.\u201d It\u2019s important that you use that one. For several years, the publisher was leaving out the 1960 preface, and your well-thumbed favorite copy might be deficient like that. Recommended material online DISCUSSION QUESTIONS Reading Group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2242,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2154","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3T2tB-yK","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2154"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2154\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Teaching Screwtape \u2013 Dr. Chris Willerton<\/h3>\n
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Teaching Screwtape \u2013 Prof. Karen Cukrowski<\/h3>\n
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