Today Screwtape presents one of his central ideas: the law of Undulation.
S4E14: Letter #8 – “Love Rollercoaster” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:13 – Welcome
00:42 – Chit-chat
06:11 – Song-of-the-week
07:24 – Quote-of-the-week
08:48 – Drink-of-the-week
10:37 – Toast
11:47 – Chapter Summary
12:41 – Discussion
44:01 – Unscrewing Screwtape
48:20 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
Matt and Andrew recorded a video to mark the anniversary of Lewis’ death:
Show Notes
Opening Chit-Chat
- Prepping for our next watch party FPA doing a live version of The Great Divorce All Patreon supporters are invited to video chat together afterwards.
- I’ve been reading The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher and Orthodox Worship by Williams and Anstall
Song-of-the-week
- In today’s letter Screwtape tells us about the Law of Undulation, how our loves and interests will naturally rise and fall. In light of this, today’s episode title and song-of-the-week is Love Rollercoast by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Those of you who know your 90’s trivia will know that this song was part of the soundtrack for the movie Beavis and Butt‐Head Do America.
Matt referred to a song by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers which I hadn’t heard before:
Listener suggestions have included:
Quote-of-the-week
- The quote-of-the-week came from this letter:
“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Drink-of-the-week
- The quote-of-the-week is… Macallan 12 Single Malt.
Patreon Toast
- Matt toasted Patreon supporter, Kate.
Chapter Summary
- Today we are discussing Letter #8 which was first published in The Guardian on 20th June, 1941… Here’s my 100-word summary…
Wormwood has announced that his patient’s religious phase is coming to an end. Screwtape dismisses his Nephew’s assessment, attributing the recent cooling of religious fervour to “the law of Undulation”. The senior demon explains that, due to the human’s “amphibian” nature, being composed of both spirit and flesh, his affections are in a constant state of undulation, with both peaks and troughs. Screwtape explains that this undulation is perfectly natural and used by God in human development. Wormwood must therefore know how to exploit the troughs, which Screwtape will explain further in his next letter.
Summary of Letter #8
Wormwood’s Misdiagnosis
Screwtape begins this letter in the usual manner, by castigating his nephew:
So you “have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away”, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
So it appears that the patient has recently experienced some dullness regarding his faith and Wormwood wishes to take credit for it! Screwtape looks for an alternative explanation… Lewis writes about the declining fervour of new converts in Letters To Malcolm:
Many religious people lament that the first fervours of their conversion have died away. They think–sometimes rightly, but not, I believe always–that their sins account for this. They may even try by pitiful efforts of will to revive what now seem to have been the golden days. But were those fervours–the operative word is those–ever intended to last?
Letters To Malcolm, Letter #5
The Law of Undulation
Screwtape instead attributes it to what he calls “the law of Undulation”. He explains that this comes about due to the two parts of human nature:
Humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
The word “amphibious” normally refers to something suitable for both land and water. Frogs are amphibians because they can survive on both. The military have vehicles which are amphibious as they can travel both across land and water. Screwtape uses the word “amphibious” here uses it to describe a creature which is both flesh and spirit. The same word was used by Sir Thomas Browne, a writer Lewis really liked, when describing humanity.
As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation — the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Screwtape is describing the split within each human person… The spiritual part which longs for eternity The bodily part with its passions The only thing that’s constant about the bodily part is change – a series of highs and lows, peaks and troughs.
Screwtape actually cites God’s intention to create “amphibious” creatures like this as one of the key reasons Satan rebelled:
The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
If you recall, Lewis was writing the Preface to Paradise Lost around this time, the epic poem by John Milton. This idea of Satan’s rebellion being connected with the creation of humanity is expounded there.
Anyway, returning to the law of Undulation, Screwtape says that if Wormwood had been paying attention, he’d have noticed ups and downs in all areas of the patient’s life:
…his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Screwtape says this is a natural phenomenon and requires action to take advantage of it…
God’s use of troughs
How then to take advantage of this undulation? Screwtape says that they must first consider how God uses the undulation… and then do the complete opposite! Screwtape says that God uses the undulation in a very strange way…
Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Once again, in Letters To Malcolm, Lewis writes:
It is saints, not common people, who experience the “dark night”… The “hiddenness” of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to Him
Letters to Malcolm, Letter #8
St. Teresa of Avila is often cited as saying to God (after being thrown from her horse):
“If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder You have so few!”
St. Teresa of Avila (roughly)
Difference in goals
To understand why God behaves the way he does, Screwtape explains the difference between the way God views humanity and Satan views humanity:
To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
This is Hell’s goal for the human race. What God wants, on the other hand, is quite different. Screwtape explains that God really loves humanity and desires their freedom (Screwtape will later get into trouble for saying this…)
He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself — creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Theosis! This is the participation in the divine nature we find described in 2 Peter 1:4:
Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
2 Peter 1:4
We spoke about theosis a lot when we read Mere Christianity:
…we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always has existed and always will exist Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has—by what I call “good infection.” Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book IV (Chapter 4)
Screwtape underscores the difference between the goals of Heaven and Hell:
We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other being into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Doesn’t this sound like the possessiveness of Orual?
God is not heavy-handed
So, given the differences in outlook, God doesn’t force himself upon humanity:
…the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use… He cannot ravish. He can only woo… merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Remember The Great Divorce. Either we say to God “Thy will be done”, or He says it to us. We get what we ultimately want.
The line “He cannot ravish. He can only woo” reminded me of something Lewis wrote in God In The Dock:
God has made it a rule for Himself that He won’t alter people’s character by force. He can and will alter them—but only if the people will let Him. In that way He has really and truly limited His power. Sometimes we wonder why He has done so, or even wish that He hadn’t. But apparently He thinks it worth doing. He would rather have a world of free beings, with all its risks, than a world of people who did right like machines because they couldn’t do anything else. The more we succeed in imagining what a world of perfect automatic beings would be like, the more, I think, we shall see His wisdom.
God In The Dock, “The Trouble with ‘X’”
Screwtape says that God might be a little more obvious in the early stages of the spiritual journey, but this will never last:
Sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Using Troughs
And this is why the trough periods are so important:
It is during such trough periods… that [the human] is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best… He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Echoing George MacDonald and Mere Christianity:
As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”
Mere Christianity, Book IV (Chapter 10)
…and then Screwtape wraps up that section with one of the best lines in the whole book:
Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #8)
Screwtape ends his letter by assuring Wormwood that Hell, as well as Heaven, can make use of the patient’s trough periods, and he says he’ll explain how to do this in his next letter…
Screwtape Unscrewed
We kept things simple this week…
- Don’t despair
- Do remember everything changes
- Do build Community to support you through the troughs
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