69 pages • 2 hours read
The Screwtape Letters
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Themes
Humans as Both Physical and Spiritual Beings
As Screwtape constantly reminds Wormwood, Christianity teaches that humans are unions of bodies and souls. This has far-reaching implications for human nature: Although the soul is eternal, the body exists in time and is therefore subject to changing conditions, appetites, etc., which Screwtape advises Wormwood to exploit. However, the distinction between body and soul is not so simple as a mere division between physical experiences and mental ones, as for an embodied being, mental states (feelings, thoughts, etc.) are also at least partly physical in origin. Nor does the juxtaposition of body and soul imply a moral classification of the physical as “bad” and the spiritual as “good.” Rather, Lewis suggests that the life of the body, broadly understood, can be either a gateway or a barrier to the life of the soul.
The nuances of this position emerge in Screwtape’s discussion of how to tempt human beings. It is a common misconception, Lewis suggests, that Christianity views sensory pleasure itself as sinful. As Screwtape argues, when a human being is directly connected to their experiences, whether that means eating, having sex, or taking a walk in nature, they are more likely to find life pleasurable and to be peaceful and content. Conversely, someone who refrains from physical indulgence can nevertheless fall into sinful patterns of thought, as mental states follow the same “undulations” that characterize all bodily experience. In many instances, Screwtape therefore urges Wormwood to distract his patient from his immediate surroundings and actions through his thoughts—e.g., to focus on whether he feels he has been forgiven rather than on praying for forgiveness.
This does not mean that physical experience is (in Lewis’s view) always moral any more than it means mental experience is always immoral. What makes the difference, Lewis suggests, is whether a given experience tends to bring a person closer to God or to ensconce them more firmly in themselves. This is why, for example, Screwtape is leery of harping too much on the actual commission of any particular sin: “[T]he Future is, of all things, the least like eternity. […] Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. […] Do not think lust is an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over” (76-77). Even a “sinful” act may immerse an individual in the present moment in a way that recalls eternity and therefore points them toward God.
Moreover, any pleasure can engender gratitude toward God, who is the ultimate source of pleasure, beauty, love, etc., and who wants humans to enjoy these experiences. On the flip side, an apparently Christian act—e.g., attending church—can draw a person further away from true spiritual life if it facilitates pride and self-absorption rather than communion with others and, through them, God.
Love, Self-Love, and the Conflict Between Good and Evil
Christianity traditionally teaches that pride is the worst sin and the origin of all others. Pride in this sense does not mean mere arrogance or vanity, however; rather, it entails a kind of self-love or self-absorption that precludes genuine love of others or God because it insists on placing the individual’s own needs, desires, fears, etc. first. In dramatizing the conflict between Heaven and Hell, Lewis therefore positions love (or the lack of it) as the crux of the issue.
Screwtape is very much aware that the primary goal of Christian life is to love God and to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Thus, much of Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood centers on turning the patient away from others and toward himself. This can take the form of pride in its most recognizable form. For instance, when Screwtape is informed that the targeted young man has become a Christian, he suggests that Wormwood encourage the patient to think of himself as superior to his fellow churchgoers. Screwtape talks about how the young man can envision the ordinary “grocer” not as a brother Christian but rather as a different kind of person lacking in the young man’s intelligence and faith.
However, Screwtape also proposes subtler methods of undermining the patient’s capacity for love. At one point, for example, he suggests Wormwood could exploit the patient’s shame regarding his cowardice to produce despair. On the face of it, this self-hatred may not seem like pride. However, besides producing a state of unhappiness that in and of itself may cause the patient to lash out, despair in the Christian context still involves an inflated sense of one’s importance—in this case, a preoccupation with one’s sins that is so intense it eclipses any appreciation of God’s love.
However, while Screwtape firmly grasps the human tendency toward self-love, his understanding fails when it comes to love of others. As Screwtape explains, the “whole philosophy of Hell” teaches that love is incompatible with individual existence, which involves continuous competition: “My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses” (94). By contrast, Christianity teaches that love is infinite and that one gains—or even becomes more distinctly oneself—rather than loses by giving selflessly. Screwtape cannot conceive of this, so he and the other devils conclude that the very idea of love must be a way of masking one’s actual intention of exploiting others. Indeed, it is this suspicion that ensures they remain in conflict with God:
[God’s] throne depends upon the secret [of love]. Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn’t make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to (101).
Screwtape’s combative stance causes him to misinterpret what he has been told. He assumes that “love” is some sort of weapon Hell could use to win the war when in fact the implication is that the devils’ war is entirely one-sided; if they accepted God’s love at face value, the conflict would cease to exist and they themselves would no longer be evil. Lewis implies that this failure to understand love is one reason why the devils fail in their mission to corrupt the patient (and will ultimately fail in their war): It is they, not God, who fail to recognize a basic truth about the world.
The Role of Reason and Free Will in Christian Life
Core to Christianity is the idea that humans are free to choose between good and evil and that the capacity for rational thought allows humans to distinguish between the two. As Screwtape notes, an omnipotent God could simply force humans to be virtuous through one method or another, but God wants human beings to freely choose the virtuous path: “[T]he Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct” (39). In other words, Christianity views humans as beings similar to God in their capacity for reason and agency, and the more they exercise those virtuously, the more godlike they become.
As a devil, Screwtape is disturbed by this and continuously suggests ways to temper the effects of reason and free will. For example, he discourages deep reflection even on topics that might superficially seem at odds with religious belief: “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” (2). As he goes on to explain, anyone in the habit of reasoning ideas out may ultimately apply that habit to an end the devils find undesirable—belief in God, or even the mere recognition that one has done something wrong. For this reason, Screwtape says, all temptation begins by bypassing or subduing one’s rationality: “[A]s in everything […] the way must be prepared for your moral assault by darkening [the patient’s] intellect” (109).
The Western philosophical tradition (Christian or otherwise) tends to view reason as a prerequisite for free will, arguing that a person is not acting “freely” if, for example, they are acting on unconscious instinct. The novel’s consideration of reason and free will therefore largely go hand-in-hand. However, Lewis also devotes some consideration to an argument about free will that often arises in the context of claims about the Christian god’s omniscience—specifically, the idea that humans are not free agents if God, who created them, knows in advance how they will choose.
Lewis, drawing on the work of theologians like Boethius, suggests that this objection stems from the assumption that God experiences events in succession, as humans do. This is not the case, however. People exist in time, but God exists in eternity: “[T]he Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man doing something is not to make him do it” (150). As a spiritual (if fallen) being, Screwtape regards this as obvious, and Lewis uses his perspective to rebut a common argument against Christian doctrine.
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