Wormwood is wondering whether he should be overt and make his presence known to the patient, or whether he should remain hidden…
S4E12: Letter #7 – “Better the devil you know” (Download)
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Timestamps
00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:15 – Welcome
00:42 – Chit-chat
07:18 – Song-of-the-week
09:34 – Quote-of-the-week
10:55 – Drink-of-the-week
12:30 – Toast
13:26 – Chapter Summary
14:29 – Discussion
52:39 – Unscrewing Screwtape
56:44 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks
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Show Notes
Opening Chit-Chat
- In Lewis News, around the time of recording this episode, Narnia Web released their 70th Anniversary Video for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the video, Narnia fans from around the world reading a section from the book. You may recognize a particularly good-looking Englishman featured among the readers…
- People on the Slack channel have said that they like it when we talk about what we’re each currently reading.
- Andrew has been reading seminary books!
- In the last couple of weeks, I read The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
- We had a Watch Party of The Great Divorce by the Fellowship of Performing Arts.
Song-of-the-week
- Today we’re studying Letter Seven from The Screwtape Letters. In this letter Screwtape responds to a question which Wormwood has asked, whether he should overtly reveal himself to his patient, or remain hidden. It is because of this, the song-of-the-week and title of this episode is Better The Devil You Know by the Princess of Pop, Kylie Minogue:
- There was also a song of the same name by the group, Steps.
- An honorary mention should go to “Devil Inside” by INXS
- However, there were two other ideas in this letter which nearly took me in a different direction. Because of what screwtape says about cliques, the song-of-the-week was nearly “I’m with the in crowd” by Dobie Gray
- Also, because Screwtape wants the patient to wed his faith to other ideologies, another possibility was Just give me Jesus by Unspoken.
- As a reminder of what we said earlier in this season, if you think you have a better song title for an episode, let us know and if we really like it we might send you a copy of William O’Flaherty’s book, C.S. Lewis Goes To Hell.
Quote-of-the-week
- The quote-of-the-week came from this letter:
All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
One listener later contacted us and suggested that Billy Joel’s “I go to extremes” would have been a good alternative song-of-the-week. Needless to say, he got a copy of C.S. Lewis Goes To Hell.
Drink-of-the-week
- The drink-of-the-week was Talisker 10
- Color: Bright amber red
- Nose: Pungent, smoke accented, rounded
- Palate: Smoky, malty sweet, with sourness and a very big pepperiness developing
- Finish: Very peppery. Huge, long.
Patreon Toast
- Normally now we’d toast a Gold-level supporter on Patreon, but today I’d like to toast all of our supporters on the Slack chat channel (which is available to Silver-level Patreon supporter) as the chatter on there the last few weeks has been absolutely stellar.
To all the slackers, may you always find a home with us online.
David’s Patreon Toast
Chapter Summary
- I shared my one-hundred word summary of today’s letter:
Screwtape explains that, unlike in ages past, policy from High Command is to conceal demonic activity. This produces many materialists but unfortunately few magicians. Screwtape hopes that one day science, the Life Force, sex, or Psychoanalysis might be used to achieve the best of both worlds. In the meantime, disbelief in devils is fostered principally by presenting them as comic figures. Should the patient become a patriot or a pacifist? All extremes (apart from love of God) are encouraged, but Screwtape thinks pacifism the best bet, hopefully putting him into a coterie and providing a means of co opting his Christianity.
One-hundred word summary of Chapter 7
Discussion
Reveal or hide?
Earlier, Wormwood asked whether he should reveal himself to his patient. Screwtape responds:
That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
So while there are still Exorcists and there are still spiritual battles to be fought, the battleground looks rather different from perhaps when Christ walked the earth. As an aside, I’ve just confirmed yesterday that we’ll be interviewing an Exorcist before the end of 2020.
Screwtape explains the dilemma surrounding this question:
When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics. At least, not yet.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
So, if they hide their presence, they can make the man a materialist and sceptic. If they reveal themselves, then they get the fun of directly terrorising the patient and also the possibility of turning him into a “magician”. Lewis had time in both camps, both a materialist and as one with an interest in the occult.
Materialist Magician
At the end of that last passage, Screwtape suggested that one day the demons might get the best of both worlds of both the magician and materialist. He goes on to explain how:
I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us, (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
He then speculates as to the areas where this might be achievable:
The “Life Force”, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
That first one might require a little explanation… The “Life Force” mentioned here relates to the writings of French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson (1859) and George Bernard Shaw (1856). Both suggested the existence of a creative consciousness which guides man in a form of evolution. Lewis actually mentions the Life Force (“Élan vital”) in a few other places: Mere Christianity (Book I, Chapter 4) The Four Loves (Chapter 5). He’ll mention both the Creative Evolution and Shaw again in this book – Letters 15 & 22
So, Screwtape’s great hope is that one day they’ll be able to produce:
…the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” — then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
- Professor Westeron (Perelandra)
- Uncle Andrew (The Magician’s Nephew)
- Yeats (cf pref to 1950 Dymer–and annotated)
Maintaining Disbelief
So, returning to the subject of not revealing himself to the patient, Screwtape says he doesn’t think Wormwood will have much difficulty keeping his patient in the dark, particularly given demonic images in the popular imagination. I think that what he says has particular relevance to for our current generation:
.If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
This is somewhere between the Red Herring Fallacy and Straw Man Fallacy.
Patriot or pacifist?
- Screwtape then returns to the subject of whether to make the patient a patriot or pacifist.
All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major… War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 7)
So, returning to the subject of patriotism and pacifism, Screwtape shares with his nephew this fundamental law of Hell, which we’ll see applied again and again:
All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
Screwtape says that this is true at the societal level and the devils try to be the most counterproductive as they can be:
Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
Coteries
Regardless of whether the patient becomes a patriot or a pacifist, Screwtape explains that his goal is to get the patient in a group, a coterie, an “inner ring”:
Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
In The Four Loves he describes coteries:
“A little self-elected…aristocracy, basking in the moonshine of our collective self-approval”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Screwtape explains that this is true, even when it comes to Christainity:
…we have never yet quite succeeded in giving her all the characteristics of a faction; but subordinate factions within her have often produced admirable results, from the parties of Paul and of Apollos at Corinth down to the High and Low parties in the Church of England
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
Firstly, who are the “Paul” and “Apollos” mentioned? This is referring to the Apostle Paul and the evangelist Apollos (Acts 18:24-28). Paul talks about division in his first letter to the Corinthians:
I appeal to you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chlo′e’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brethren. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apol′los,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
1 Corinthians 1:10-13
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.
1 Corinthians 3:5-9
- What is “high” and “low” in Church of England? High Church places an emphasis on Bishops, Sacraments and Liturgy. There is the saying “High and crazy, Low and lazy, Broad and hazy”.
- I spoke a little bit about grace and Christianity which has been on my mind after reading Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God. Christianity is the one religion where you don’t get to brag!
Pacifist
So if you can have coteries in the Church, you can definitely have them among pacifists! Screwtape says that:
If your patient can be induced to become a conscientious objector he will automatically find himself one of a small, vocal, organised, and unpopular society, and the effects of this, on one so new to Christianity, will almost certainly be good. But only almost certainly.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
- Screwtape then asks a series of questions about the patient to test his suitability towards pacifism.
- Was he sympathetic to the pacifist cause prior to the possibility of his own conscription?
- Is a man of great courage?
- Is he convinced that pacifism is the right thing to do?
- Screwtape implies that if he can answer “yes” to any of these questions then pacifism won’t help the cause of Hell. Screwtape suggests nurturing a confused emotional crisis to transition him to uneasy patriotism.
Christianity as a means to an end
Screwtape ends his letter by saying that, whether the man becomes a pacifist or a patriot, Wormwood’s task is to get the man to treat this ideology as…
…a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
He says that the patient mustn’t simply regard temporal affairs, everything in his life, as primarily material for obedience. He says:
Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours — and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here…
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #7)
Andrew mentioned an article he wrote for Christian Century in 2016 entitled C. S. Lewis and American political rhetoric.
Unscrewing Screwtape
- Do: beware of all extremes (except extreme devotion to God).
- Do: look outward towards your neighbour in charity.
- Do: beware of “the in crowd” and party spirit
- Don’t: be a materialist or a magician
- Don’t: embrace scientism
- Don’t: think of the devil as “something in red tights”
- Do: render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but what is God’s to God.
- Do: remember that temporal affairs are primarily material for obedience.
- Don’t: make Jesus the ‘means’ rather than the ‘end’.
