The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis 1

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Summary: Lewis’ darts aimed at his fellow Christians strike home, 

but those aimed at atheists go astray.

C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters concerns the Christian view of demons and the ways in which they affect the lives of human beings. The book takes the form of a series of letters purportedly exchanged between Wormwood, a junior devil, and his uncle Screwtape, on the topic of how Wormwood can cause the human to which he has been assigned, who is referred to only as “the patient”, to commit sins and damn himself. We do not see Wormwood’s letters, but their content can be inferred from Screwtape’s replies. Although the book is written from the demons’ perspective, Lewis naturally uses it to highlight what he sees as important truths of the Christian worldview.

Though the book may be intended allegorically, on the whole it leaves little doubt that Lewis genuinely believed that evil spirits existed and were constantly assaulting human minds. As he writes in the preface: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”

As this is, after all, a Christian book, I trust that readers will not be surprised to learn that in the end the “patient” escapes Wormwood’s clutches by dying and going to Heaven, and Wormwood himself is doomed to the fate that had been set aside for his patient, namely becoming a meal for his “increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle”, as Screwtape signs his final letter. In any case, the specific life events and circumstances of the patient, as related through the letters, are largely irrelevant. (He is a British man living during World War II, at first a casual and lukewarm churchgoer who becomes involved with a group of evangelical Christians, falls in love with a female member of their congregation, and is ultimately killed during a German bombing raid on his home town.) I will instead concentrate on the more general points Lewis makes, some of which are directed against atheists, others against corruption and follies among his fellow Christians. Although Lewis’ critiques of the excesses of Christianity are well aimed, his lack of understanding of atheism means that the barbs directed at nonbelievers usually fall short.

LETTER I

Screwtape suggests to Wormwood that he must at all costs keep his “patient’s” attention fixed on immediate sensory experience and not on abstract matters of reasoning or philosophy:

I summarized this book by suggesting that Lewis’ arguments aimed at atheism veer astray, and this is an excellent example. In this book and others (such as The Great Divorce), Lewis inveighs against atheists who allegedly are more concerned with whether atheism is a sufficiently “modern” philosophy than whether it is true or false. But what atheists does he have in mind? He never, as far as I know, presents a single example of an actual atheist who actually holds such a view, and prominent atheists of Lewis’ day, such as Bertrand Russell, were outspoken rationalists. I strongly suspect that this view is entirely Lewis’ invention, an insulting caricature designed to make atheism more susceptible to attack.

The implication that any person who reasons too much or too often will convert is likewise an inversion of the truth. In reality, it is atheists who welcome rational argument and challenge, and Christians and other theists who do their utmost to avoid it and shut it out; and it is atheists who promote a view not because it makes us feel good but because it is true, and it is Christians and other theists who often promote the idea that we should believe something is true because the consequences would be terrible if it were not.

As far as science leading to religious belief, the evidence shows that, to the contrary, the majority of distinguished scientists in every “hard” field are atheists. Lewis’ glib assertions fail to agree with the facts.

LETTER VII

Wormwood has asked whether he is to disclose his own existence, and Screwtape answers thusly:

I do wonder what Lewis had in mind with this line. The existence of this book, particularly its preface, makes it clear that he really did believe in demons as consciously malignant spiritual entities working to damn humanity. But this line hints that he believes not only that they exist but that they actively revealed themselves in the past. Is this, perhaps, an apologetic for why supernatural events were recorded so frequently in the more credulous past, when we largely lacked the ability to record or verify them, but now seem to be absent? How remarkable it is that demons choose to remain conveniently undetectable just when we invent tape recorders and video cameras! 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/essays/the-screwtape-letters/