S4E5 – TSL 1 – “State of Confusion”

Today I was joined by guest co-host, Trent Horn, to discuss the first of Screwtape’s letters where the senior demon discusses reason and rhetoric.

S4E5: Letter #1 – “State of Confusion” (Download)

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Time Stamps

00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:14 – Welcome
00:00:42 – Guest Co-host Introduction
00:02:14 – Chit-Chat
00:07:23 – Song-of-the-week
00:07:57 – Quote-of-the-week
00:08:12 – Drink-of-the-week
00:10:29 – Toast
00:11:18 – Chapter Summary
00:12:18 – Discussion
00:59:13 – Trent Horn
01:00:08 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Remarks

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

Matt and Andrew shared their own thoughts on this chapter of The Screwtape Letters:

Show Notes

Opening

• Today’s episode is named after the song State of Confusion by The Kinks:

“Woke up in a panic, Like somebody fired a gun I wish I could be dreaming, But the nightmare’s just begun. There’s flooding in the basement, There’s water all around. There’s woodworm in the attic And the ceiling just fell down. I’m in a state (state) Of confusion (whooooh). I’m in a state (state) Of confusion (whooooh).”

State of Confusion, The Kings

Honourable mentions included You spin me round by Dead Or Alive and Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin.

• I introduced my guest co-host, Trent Horn:

Trent serves as a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, where he specializes in teaching Catholics to graciously and persuasively engage those who disagree with them. You may have seen him debating the existence of God with Alex O’Connor “The Cosmic Skeptic”, Abortion with David Boonin, Socialism with Sam Rocha, or Eternal Security with James White. He has master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. Trent runs his own podcast, which includes a pun in its name, The Counsel of Trent where he talks not only about theology and philosophy, but also about Severely Underappreciated Films How to win at the video game Oregon Trail How to survive natural disasters How to have the best day at disneyland He writes and publishes a new book seemingly every few weeks. Past titles include Counterfeit Christs Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues Answering Atheism Hard Sayings The Case for Catholicism Persuasive Pro-Life as well as What the Saints never said. I invited Trent onto this episode because we are going to be discussing a letter from Screwtape which relates to many things related to Trent’s work as an apologist: words, reason, science, and argument.

Biographical details of Trent Horn

• I spend much of my time pointing out incorrect Lewis quotations. Trent has done something similar in his book What the Saints never said.

• I shared the quote-of-the-week:

“Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church”

The Screwtape Letters, Letter #1

• The drink-of-the-week was Sprouts Chocolate Milk and we toasted Trent’s unborn son:

John-Paul, we raise our glasses to your good health and imminent arrival. May your delivery be swift and safe and may you give your two older brothers a good run-for-their-money. Cheers!

Toast for John-Paul Horn

Chapter Summary

• I then summarized Screwtape letter’s in a hundred words:

Screwtape’s correspondence begins by encouraging his nephew to use jargon, rather argument, to secure his human, explaining that argument awakens the Patient’s reason and moves the struggle onto God’s own ground. Wormwood is told to impress upon his Patient what Screwtape calls “the pressure of the ordinary”, the stream of immediate sense experiences, so as to distract the Patient from matters eternal. Screwtape illustrates this by telling the story of one of his former patients reading in the British Museum. The Senior Devil concludes by underscoring for his nephew that he is there to fuddle his Patient, not teach him.

100-Word Chapter Summary

Jargon and Logic

• Trent and I spoke about the use and dangers of jargon, as well as the life of the intellect and the purpose of logic.

• Screwtape begins the letter by talking about what the Patient is reading. As Lewis says in his spiritual biography:

“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading”

C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy

• The Senior Devil recalls a time a few centuries ago when people were more logical:

At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

…but their work has meant that they no longer need to argue:

Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

For this reason, he shouldn’t concern in making the Patient think that materialism is “true” or “false”:

Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous — that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

I mentioned that “the philosophy of the future” connects to Lewis’ “war” with Owen Barfield about his Chronological Snobbery. I commented that Screwtape’s comments here make me think of advertising.

We referred to dystopian literature such as Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World.

• Screwtape explains that argument is the wrong way to go:

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s own ground. He can argue too…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

…even the act itself has possibilities which worry Screwtape:

By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

• Rather than argument, he wants Wormwood to distract the Patient:

Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real”…

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

This “stream” put me in mind of our Social Media news feeds.

The Incarnation

• Screwtape alludes to the Incarnation, saying that it gave God (“the Enemy”) an unfair advantage:

Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy’s!) you don’t realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

I asked Trent whether it’s fair to say that God received an advantage from the Incarnation, alluding to a few passages in Scripture:

…he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:14-17

And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.

Mark 2:51

• Screwtape illustrates his point by telling an anecdote about a previous Patient:

I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch

I pointed out that the British Museum Reading Room is beautiful and quiet. Screwtape wants to get him out of there!

Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to shew him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn’t be true.

• Screwtape then underlines the point:

…they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

I referred to Lewis’ sermon The Weight of Glory where he explains that our desires are too weak:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

• I commented that Screwtape gets control of his Patient through his stomach and explained that this is why fasting is so important in the Christian tradition:

“[Fasting is] an apprenticeship in self-mastery… is a training in human freedom… [E]ither man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2339

Science

• As Screwtape begins to wrap-up, he comments on the Patient’s relationship to science:

…do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists. If he must dabble in science, keep him on economics and sociology; don’t let him get away from that invaluable “real life”. But the best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all and that everything he happens to have picked up in casual talk and reading is “the results of modern investigation”.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

I said that this reminded me of something Peter Kreeft said in a lecture about Arguments for God’s existence:

“There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among cosmetologists and astrophysicists, but there are many atheists among sociologists, psychologists and historians. The reason seems obvious. The first studied divine design, the second human un-design”

Peter Kreeft, Arguments for God’s existence

• Screwtape concludes the letter by underscoring Wormwoods main job:

 Do remember you are there to fuddle him. From the way some of you young fiends talk, anyone would suppose it was our job to teach!

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

Unscrewing Screwtape

• During “Unscrewing Screwtape”, we went through the spiritual lessons from the chapter:

1. Connect thinking and doing
2. Know what is proved and unproved
3. Do not blindly believe all advertisements
4. Think in terms of true and false
5. Take time for quiet reflection, in beautiful surroundings to consider universal, eternal things.
6. Take an interest in science and realities which you can’t see with your naked eye! Read books by believing scientists. We referenced a few books The language of God – Francis Collins, Particles of faith – Stacy Trasancos, Modern Physics, Ancient Faith – Stephen Barr, or A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos – Luke Barnes. I’d also suggest anything by Fr. Spitzer and from the Magis Center (https://magiscenter.com/)

When Trent spoke about being overwhelmed by seemingly endless questions he referred to Hilbert’s Hotel. He also alluded to this passage from Mere Christianity:

When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, “Hullo! I’m growing up.” It is often only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call “growing up”.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)

Find out more

• You can find out more about Trent at TrentHorn.com, TrentHornPodcast.com, his Patreon account, his YouTube channel, on Shop.Catholic.com and Amazon.com.

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