Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there, Welcome back
Speaker 1: as we continue with our philosophy and fiction of C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis series, and today we'll be starting on the Screwtape Letters. Now,
Speaker 1: I know that we just finished Perilandra, and so you
Speaker 1: might naturally think that we'll be doing that hideous strength.
Speaker 1: But there's some reasons why I'm inserting the Screwtape Letters here,
Speaker 1: and that'll become evident as we really get into that presentation.
Speaker 1: You know, in fact, let's just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: So here's my somewhat extended introduction to the Screwtape Letters.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: Helly, Welcome back as we get ready for the screw
Speaker 1: Tape Letters, which, as you probably already know, is really
Speaker 1: a source of immense wisdom, of immense insights, as we
Speaker 1: get a better understanding of what the diabolical looks like,
Speaker 1: of what temptation really is, and how to see that
Speaker 1: in our everyday mundane lives. Now, this is a book
Speaker 1: that I first read back in I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was high school or maybe early college. And I
Speaker 1: already told you that at that point I really wasn't
Speaker 1: a very avid reader. But this is a book that
Speaker 1: I read. This is a book that really stuck with me,
Speaker 1: and as I've revisited it in recent years, I've only
Speaker 1: come to appreciate it even more and recognize the just
Speaker 1: the reality the wisdom that it holds for us. And
Speaker 1: I don't bring this up very often except for when
Speaker 1: it actually has some used to do so. But I
Speaker 1: have a PhD in theology. I've done a lot of reading,
Speaker 1: and I really believe that I could scrap eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the reading that I did for my schooling and
Speaker 1: replaced out the few Lewis books, and I'd probably be
Speaker 1: better off for it. I think that most people would. Now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the you know, the the substantial
Speaker 1: classic text. I'm not talking about your your Augustine or
Speaker 1: your Aquinas or things like that. But as far as
Speaker 1: the reading I've done from authors to the last one
Speaker 1: two hundred years or so, most of that has just
Speaker 1: come and gone, and I don't think that I'm really
Speaker 1: worse off for leaving it behind. Is one thing that
Speaker 1: separates Lewis out from the academic vortex, from institutional academia
Speaker 1: is that even though he was a brilliant scholar in
Speaker 1: his own right, he really was a lover of ideas.
Speaker 1: He was a lover of wisdom, he was a lover
Speaker 1: of stories, he was a lover of learning. And that's
Speaker 1: different than somebody who is simply out to make a
Speaker 1: name for themselves, somebody who's simply out to create a platform.
Speaker 1: And Lewis often points us out that institutional academia has
Speaker 1: a tendency to fall in love with its own reason,
Speaker 1: to fall in love with abstraction in a way that
Speaker 1: separates it out from real human experience and causes it
Speaker 1: to really fall into the same sin of Satan, which
Speaker 1: is the fact that he fell in love with his
Speaker 1: own reason, his own ability to reach forward, as Weston
Speaker 1: Or the Unman told us in Perilandra, as with Tolkien's Morgoth,
Speaker 1: he's out in the void looking for the imperishable fire
Speaker 1: that dwells with Eru Luvatar alone. And this is the
Speaker 1: direction that academia tends to make. In fact, it's really
Speaker 1: where it pushes young academics to go right. You have
Speaker 1: to find some niche subject that nobody's ever written about.
Speaker 1: That way you can get your name attached to this
Speaker 1: small little corner of learning that odds are nobody else
Speaker 1: is ever going to look at again. But at least
Speaker 1: you've got your name on something. And so then you
Speaker 1: have to continue to do this again and again and again, right,
Speaker 1: publisher perish, as they say, And so you're constantly forced
Speaker 1: to innovate, to reach into the void in order to
Speaker 1: create a platform for yourself. Whereas you go to someone
Speaker 1: like Lewis, I think we really see somebody who loves ideas,
Speaker 1: someone who loves stories, somebody who loves learning. And I
Speaker 1: mean that is what a true philosopher is, right the
Speaker 1: Phileo Sophia, This is the love of wisdom. A true
Speaker 1: philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not just somebody trying
Speaker 1: to make their voice heard, to speak their truth or
Speaker 1: whatever nonsense we want to use there. In fact, we're
Speaker 1: going to see that it is that authentic love, that
Speaker 1: pursuit of genuine humanity that makes Screwtape so insightful, so convincing,
Speaker 1: so helpful. In fact, he says in the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one prologue that some people assume that he was able
Speaker 1: to write Screwtape because he's had such advanced learning and
Speaker 1: has engaged in such complicated thought concerning theology and morality,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But his response is no, The
Speaker 1: reason why he's able to write so well about temptation
Speaker 1: is he knows what it's like to be tempted. He
Speaker 1: knows the wickedness of his own heart, and that's what
Speaker 1: allows him to project this into the demon screw Tape.
Speaker 1: And so what we see in Lewis is this unique
Speaker 1: blend of complicated, difficult, dense learning that is really brought
Speaker 1: into an authentic spirit who understands himself and is seeking
Speaker 1: to better understand the world around him and ultimately is
Speaker 1: trying to move up the chain of being to God himself. Now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean he was perfect, doesn't mean he doesn't
Speaker 1: have any areas where we can criticize him. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think that we most certainly should, and so I'm
Speaker 1: not arguing for his canonization by any means. But I
Speaker 1: do think that we see a unique individual here, and
Speaker 1: I think that this really does come out in Screwtape letters. Now,
Speaker 1: before we jump into the prologue and some related information.
Speaker 1: I do want to go ahead and talk about some
Speaker 1: of the supplemental reading that I'm recommending to you. I
Speaker 1: really like this innitated edition of The Screwtape Letters. It
Speaker 1: has very esthetically pleasing print and formatting. It has a
Speaker 1: lot of notes that go into some historical and cultural
Speaker 1: background information for things that might have been lost to
Speaker 1: us since the time that this is written. He goes
Speaker 1: into a lot of cross references with other of Lewis's works,
Speaker 1: provides a lot of literary backgrounds for different references that
Speaker 1: are made in the Letters, and so it's very helpful.
Speaker 1: It looks really nice. I strongly recommend it next time
Speaker 1: recommending Breton Dickison's article a cosmic find in the Screwtape Letters.
Speaker 1: Don't talk more about that and just a little bit,
Speaker 1: but that link is provided in the supplemental reading page. Also,
Speaker 1: I'd like to recommend Lewis's a preface to Paradise Loss. Now,
Speaker 1: even if you've never read Paradise Lost. Even if you
Speaker 1: never read Paradise Lost, which you should at some point,
Speaker 1: but even if you don't, this is a book that
Speaker 1: can stand on its own, and you would be better
Speaker 1: for picking up and reading it through. It provides a
Speaker 1: great introduction to Louis's literary criticism, gives a lot of
Speaker 1: really helpful insights regarding literary form, form of poetry, form
Speaker 1: of stories, that sort of thing different forms of epic poetry.
Speaker 1: Until we get some comparisons in contrast between Milton with
Speaker 1: Virgil and Beowulf and Homer. And in fact, I'm also
Speaker 1: going to recommend this for the upcoming Beowulf and Boethiast study,
Speaker 1: and so if you're going to take that course as well,
Speaker 1: then this is definitely something that you should pick up.
Speaker 1: But also he's going to obviously set us up for
Speaker 1: Paradise Loss, and so he's going to give us some
Speaker 1: good thematic analyses, including the nature and activity of Satan. Now,
Speaker 1: even in the nineteen sixty one prologue to Screwtape Letters,
Speaker 1: Lewis does have some criticisms of Milton and the way
Speaker 1: that Satan is portrayed, but nonetheless he obviously sees great
Speaker 1: value in Paradise Loss and he does pull some inspiration
Speaker 1: from it. And so as we think about Lewis's take
Speaker 1: on the devil, his take on the demonic, take on
Speaker 1: this battle between good and evil. I think that this
Speaker 1: would be and I fit you greatly, even if you
Speaker 1: never get to the actual Paradise loss by Milton, and
Speaker 1: so do yourself a favor and pick this up.
Speaker 2: Strongly recommend it now.
Speaker 1: Next moving forward, I am going to start to pull
Speaker 1: from some of Lewis's letters, and so I would recommend
Speaker 1: that you pick up a copy of the Letters of C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 1: A lot of people already have Tolkien's letters, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of value in Lewis's letters as well, even
Speaker 1: though I don't hear them discuss nearly as often. It
Speaker 1: has a great detailed index for looking up where letters
Speaker 1: talk about certain subjects, certain people, certain of Lewis's own books,
Speaker 1: which is I think particularly helpful for a study like this.
Speaker 1: And so pick up a copy of the Letters of C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis.
Speaker 1: And then lastly, I would recommend that you pick up
Speaker 1: a copy of Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on Prayer, which
Speaker 1: is the one book I'm recommending that I actually don't
Speaker 1: have in print, and so I'm going to throw a
Speaker 1: picture of it on the screen here for a moment.
Speaker 1: But this really is a beautiful book. I think it's
Speaker 1: one of Lewis's most overlooked books, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to his popular level writing. This is another epistolatory novel,
Speaker 1: just like the Screwtape Letters, and so it's all told
Speaker 1: through the letters of C. S. Lewis writing to his
Speaker 1: friend Malcolm. But unlike Screwtape this really is an upbuilding work.
Speaker 1: And so it's all about the Christian life, focusing on prayer,
Speaker 1: but he deals on a number of different topics. I
Speaker 1: think that this is just full of so many gems
Speaker 1: of wisdom of Christian insight. I would strongly recommend that
Speaker 1: after you read Screwtape Letters, and you know, maybe it
Speaker 1: on time while this study is going on, maybe you do,
Speaker 1: but get a copy of Letters to Malcolm. It provides
Speaker 1: a great upbuilding parallel to what we get in Screwtape.
Speaker 1: It's the closest thing we have to a sequel, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's the supplemental reading. Let's go ahead and take
Speaker 1: a look at the opening of Screwtape Letters. All right,
Speaker 1: So the Screwtape Letters introduction. First thing I think worth
Speaker 1: talking about briefly is the fact that it's dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien,
Speaker 1: but we're not really told why, and Tolkien doesn't even
Speaker 1: seem to really know why. In the annotated Screwtape letters,
Speaker 1: we are told that this was during the peak of
Speaker 1: their friendship, and so, you know, maybe Lewis just wanted
Speaker 1: to dedicate this work to his friend just out of
Speaker 1: appreciation for Tolkien. I don't know if there's some kind
Speaker 1: of comedic element here, and if maybe Lewis knew that
Speaker 1: Tolkien wouldn't really appreciate this book, which by the way,
Speaker 1: he did not. I've heard it theorize that maybe there's
Speaker 1: a philological interest here that you know, a few times
Speaker 1: Screwtape talks about the value of language and of corrupting
Speaker 1: language over times, or making things more confusing, emptying out
Speaker 1: words of their meaning, and maybe that would have some
Speaker 1: particular interest to Tolkien. Or maybe there's something really authentic
Speaker 1: and really genuine going on here. Lewis is very clear
Speaker 1: that Tolkien was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity, and
Speaker 1: so maybe as Lewis talks about the nature of temptation
Speaker 1: then and by contrasts the nature of the Christian life,
Speaker 1: is giving some price Tolkien some appreciation to Tolkien for
Speaker 1: the role that he had in Lewis's own conversion to Christianity,
Speaker 1: his beginning of the Christian life, and to move. There's
Speaker 1: something like that there, but we don't really know for
Speaker 1: sure now. In a letter that Tolkien wrote to Michael
Speaker 1: Tolkien just shortly after Lewis's death, Tolkien writes, also, I
Speaker 1: was rightly amused to be told that Lewis himself was
Speaker 1: never very fond of The Screwtape Letters, his bestseller. He
Speaker 1: dedicated it to me. I wondered why, now I know,
Speaker 1: says they. And so Tolkien seems to say that, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe Lewis dedicated to him because Lewis himself didn't like
Speaker 1: it very much, and maybe there's some kind of joke there.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's interesting to think about. I don't
Speaker 1: think we have any clear answers here right now looking
Speaker 1: at the origins for Lewis's idea of the letter. And
Speaker 1: this comes from a letter written to his brother Warren.
Speaker 1: He writes, Humphrey came up to see me last night,
Speaker 1: not in his medical capacity, and we listened to Hitler's
Speaker 1: speech together. I don't know I found weaker than other people,
Speaker 1: but is a positive revelation to me. How while the
Speaker 1: speech lasts, it is impossible not to waver just a little.
Speaker 1: I should be useless as a schoolmaster or a policeman.
Speaker 1: Statements which I know to be untrue all but convinced
Speaker 1: me at any rate for the moment, if only the
Speaker 1: man says them unflinchingly. The same weakness is why I'm
Speaker 1: a slow examiner. If a candidate with a bold, mature
Speaker 1: handwriting attributed Paradise Loss to Wordsworth, I should feel a
Speaker 1: tendency to go and look it up, for fear that
Speaker 1: he might be right. After all, I've been a church
Speaker 1: for the first time for many weeks owing to the illness,
Speaker 1: and considered myself invalid enough to make a midday communion
Speaker 1: before the service was over. One could wish these things
Speaker 1: came more reasonably. I struck with an idea for a
Speaker 1: book which I think might be both useful and entertaining.
Speaker 1: It would be called as One Devil to Another, and
Speaker 1: with consists of letters from an elderly retired douvil to
Speaker 1: a young devil who had just started work on his
Speaker 1: first patient. The idea would be to give all the
Speaker 1: psychology of temptation from the other point of view. So
Speaker 1: I think it's worth considering that Lewis received this inspiration
Speaker 1: for the Screwtape letters a day after listening to and
Speaker 1: reflecting on his experience of listening to this speech by
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler. He notes that when he's listening to the speech,
Speaker 1: he found it rather compelling, not because it's true, and
Speaker 1: you don't misunderstand Lewis is saying anything that he's not
Speaker 1: saying here. Obviously he speaks extensively about the evils of
Speaker 1: the Nazis, about the evils of Hitler, and so there's
Speaker 1: no sympathy for Nazism here, just the opposite. He's recognizing
Speaker 1: the demonic power that's at work here, that we're dealing
Speaker 1: with strong rhetoric. We're dealing with convincing rhetoric that is
Speaker 1: not attached to reason, that's not attached to truth, that's
Speaker 1: not attached to goodness. This is sophistry. It is a
Speaker 1: counterfeit reason, and that is not actually reason at all.
Speaker 1: It's sentiment. It's bodily sensation, giving the rise of a
Speaker 1: sense of causation, a sense of reason. Ultimately, it is
Speaker 1: a counterfeit and that's because evil is by definition irrational
Speaker 1: because reason is tied into the reality of existence itself.
Speaker 1: All things were made through the Word, All things were
Speaker 1: made through the logoss of the Father, which is Christ.
Speaker 1: There's an orderliness, there is a reason that undergirds all
Speaker 1: of created reality. And as we approach reason, we are
Speaker 1: approaching that by which we reason, which ultimately is God himself.
Speaker 1: And so when rhetoric is not moving us in the
Speaker 1: direction of the beatific vision, but when rhetoric is moving
Speaker 1: us toward the miserific vision, moving us downward in the
Speaker 1: direction of hell, we're actually approaching non being. We're engaging
Speaker 1: in something that is irrational. This is why we're going
Speaker 1: to see this continual theme throughout the Screwtape letters, as
Speaker 1: screwtape advice, as Wormwood not to engage in any kind
Speaker 1: of debate or any kind of teaching exercise with his patient,
Speaker 1: but he's going to lead him into not thinking, into fusion,
Speaker 1: into a anti reason position. And we see this play
Speaker 1: out in Perilandra. Sometimes the unman is telling these stories
Speaker 1: that don't have a clear meaning behind it. They sort
Speaker 1: of evoke these sentiments of freedom and liberation and heroism,
Speaker 1: when in reality, you know Ransom notes that if you're
Speaker 1: actually looking at the reason that ties all these together,
Speaker 1: we're actually getting stories of he says, perverts and witches.
Speaker 1: That's only when you're applying reason and you're trying to
Speaker 1: see things clearly. When you're just listening to all these stories,
Speaker 1: they give you these sentiments of liberation, these sentiments of
Speaker 1: noble sacrifice and of heroism. And so we get that
Speaker 1: kind of rhetoric that moves against reason, But we also
Speaker 1: just get that remember that annoying rhetoric where the unman's
Speaker 1: just repeating Ransom, Ransom, Ransom. Henry says, what is it?
Speaker 1: And then the unman says nothing, Ransom, Ransom, Ransom. And
Speaker 1: I think that both tactics are really doing the same
Speaker 1: thing through these stories as well as through just this annoying,
Speaker 1: repetitive naming of Ransom. He's causing the lady, he's causing Ransom,
Speaker 1: to close themselves in. And so in the case of
Speaker 1: the stories, it's this closing in of self referential so
Speaker 1: called heroism, where you're acting not for the good but
Speaker 1: ultimately for your good. You're separating yourself from the good.
Speaker 1: You're closing yourself in. So too, in the annoying rhetoric.
Speaker 1: He's causing Ransom to fixate on his emotional response to
Speaker 1: his environment rather than focusing on the mission that he
Speaker 1: has before him. In both cases, the un man is
Speaker 1: trying to get his adversaries to close themselves in. And
Speaker 1: this is going to be a pretty common theme in Lewis,
Speaker 1: especially in his talk of the diabolical, his talk of evil,
Speaker 1: especially if you already have the great divorce in your head.
Speaker 1: This idea that the more that you move toward evil,
Speaker 1: the more that you get shut in, the smaller you become.
Speaker 1: Whereas the more that you move toward what is good,
Speaker 1: the more that you move toward God, more that you
Speaker 1: move toward the fulfillment of all things, the more expansive
Speaker 1: you become as you give yourself over in love. And
Speaker 1: so the beatific vision causes you to become bigger than
Speaker 1: you are. The miserific vision causes you to become smaller
Speaker 1: than you are. It's not so good. Move into the prologue,
Speaker 1: starting with the original. He says that there are two
Speaker 1: equal and opposite errors into which our rays can fall
Speaker 1: about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence.
Speaker 1: The other is to believe and to feel an excessive
Speaker 1: and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased
Speaker 1: by both errors inhil a materialist or a magician with
Speaker 1: the same delight. And so if the devils want us
Speaker 1: to either actually they don't exist and play the materialist,
Speaker 1: or they want for us to become hyperfixated on them,
Speaker 1: to glorify them and to play the magician. And something
Speaker 1: that Lewis shows us in this book and throughout the
Speaker 1: Ransom series is that the materialists and the magician are
Speaker 1: more or less the same thing, that they are both
Speaker 1: fueled by the demonic, that both are looking to close
Speaker 1: themselves in from reality and to control the environment around them.
Speaker 1: In fact, he says in The Abolition of Man, for
Speaker 1: the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been
Speaker 1: how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution
Speaker 1: had been knowledge, self discipline, and virtue. For magic and
Speaker 1: applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality
Speaker 1: to the wishes of men. And so, in other words,
Speaker 1: the materialist, scientists and the magician are both doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. They're trying to subdue reality to the will
Speaker 1: of man. And Lewis does an incredible job in the
Speaker 1: Ransom series of demonstrating this reality, we see how west
Speaker 1: End the physicists really turns into the demonic spiritualist from
Speaker 1: between out of the Silent Planet and Perlandra. We're going
Speaker 1: to see this theme, this natural relationship between the materialists
Speaker 1: and magician take even more explicit form when we get
Speaker 1: to that hideous strength. And so this is an idea
Speaker 1: that we're going to very much see at play in
Speaker 1: the Ransom series. The materialists and the magician are both
Speaker 1: doing fundamentally the same thing. They aren't becoming more expansive
Speaker 1: in their love for that which is good. They're simply
Speaker 1: trying to close themselves off. They're trying to consume reality
Speaker 1: for their own individualistic ends. Okay, moving forward, he says
Speaker 1: that the history of the European War, accept in so
Speaker 1: far as it happens now and then, to impinge upon
Speaker 1: the spiritual condition of one human being was obviously of
Speaker 1: no interest to Screwtape. So I think this is worth thinking.
Speaker 1: Look at here that Screwtape is going to warn Wormwood
Speaker 1: against getting too excited about the fact that there's war
Speaker 1: going on, right, don't get excited about the carnage, don't
Speaker 1: get excited about these external realities and external fears that
Speaker 1: a company wore. Because it's not external realities that are
Speaker 1: going to save or condemn a soul. It's the internal
Speaker 1: realities at play here. It's the direction of the soul.
Speaker 1: It's the presence or absence of faith, which external circumstances
Speaker 1: don't necessarily create in one direction or another. If anything,
Speaker 1: wartime tends to make people more aware of their immortality,
Speaker 1: which can actually cause them to move toward faith. And
Speaker 1: of course we see this happen that during times when
Speaker 1: mortality seems to be in the news a lot more
Speaker 1: than others. A lot of times this is when we
Speaker 1: see a rise in movements toward faith, at least superficial,
Speaker 1: if not substantial. And this is absolutely in line with
Speaker 1: Christian wisdom, the idea that freedom is not determined by
Speaker 1: external realities, but freedom is determined by the right ordering
Speaker 1: of the soul in harmony with the reality, which ultimately
Speaker 1: means that it's in harmony with who God is and
Speaker 1: the order that He established within created reality. And so
Speaker 1: freedom is an internal condition related ultimately to God rather
Speaker 1: than a state of external circumstance. And so I've talked
Speaker 1: about Boetheists before, and I imagine i'll probably talk about
Speaker 1: him again, that bo Atheists who is falsely accused of
Speaker 1: sedition and then he find himself imprisoned, awaiting ultimately his execution.
Speaker 1: He's able to discover freedom not because of the spinning
Speaker 1: wheel of fortune that's landed him here, but because he's
Speaker 1: learned to properly relate himself to fortune itself, and ultimately
Speaker 1: he's learned to properly relate himself to providence. And that
Speaker 1: is where we discover freedom, not through external circumstance. External
Speaker 1: circumstances can never provide or diminish your true freedom. And
Speaker 1: this makes you think of something Augustine said regarding the
Speaker 1: real evils of war in Contrafaustom, where we get what's
Speaker 1: been called his just a war doctrine. Augustine says, what
Speaker 1: is the evil in war? Is it the death of
Speaker 1: some who will soon die in any case that others
Speaker 1: may live in peaceful subjection. This is mere cowardly dislike
Speaker 1: and not any religious feeling. The real evils in war
Speaker 1: are love of violence, revel vengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity,
Speaker 1: wild resistance, and the lust of power and such like,
Speaker 1: And so for Augustine, the real evils of war it's
Speaker 1: not the fact that some people die. People are eventually
Speaker 1: going to die anyways, and so the fact that people die,
Speaker 1: it's actually not connected to war itself. Now, it might
Speaker 1: cause people to die sooner rather than later, but as
Speaker 1: Screwtape knows, that is not necessarily in itself a bad thing.
Speaker 1: The real evils of war deal with internal realities that
Speaker 1: they might stem up within us, that which we already have,
Speaker 1: a love for violence, a love for cruelty, for just
Speaker 1: being hostile toward other people, lust for power, These things
Speaker 1: which can be fanned up into bigger flames in wartime.
Speaker 1: These things are the real evils of war, not the
Speaker 1: war itself, and I think screw Tape would hardly agree
Speaker 1: with that. Now, moving to the nineteen sixty one prologue,
Speaker 1: Lewis says that he's often asked the question, do you
Speaker 1: believe in an actual devil? And he says, okay, If
Speaker 1: by devil, if you mean something that's equal with God
Speaker 1: will then no. And so he's clarifying against some of
Speaker 1: these popular understandings of the devil. He says that there's
Speaker 1: no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No
Speaker 1: being could attain a perfect badness opposite to the perfect
Speaker 1: goodness of God. For when you have taken away every
Speaker 1: kind of good thing, intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself,
Speaker 1: there would be none of Him left. And so, as
Speaker 1: I've said before, reality itself, a substance being, hinges on God.
Speaker 1: For that reason, being itself is good, and so evil
Speaker 1: is a movement toward non being, but can never actually
Speaker 1: become non being. The devil, in that he exists and
Speaker 1: has intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence, is good ontologically
Speaker 1: regarding his basic that he exists, these are good things. However,
Speaker 1: his evil is that he uses these good things provided
Speaker 1: and upheld by God for bad ends. He directs his will,
Speaker 1: he directs his attention away from God rather than to God.
Speaker 1: And that is the nature of evil. As Augustine says
Speaker 1: in the City of God, this then is the original evil.
Speaker 1: We have turned our hearts away from that light that
Speaker 1: would make us a light if we would set our
Speaker 1: hearts upon him. And so what evil is is a
Speaker 1: continual movement away from being. But as long as you
Speaker 1: have something that's moving, you have something that exists, And
Speaker 1: anything that exists is good. In that it exists. Evil
Speaker 1: deals with the orientation of the soul. It deals with
Speaker 1: the orientation of the power that something has. But the
Speaker 1: power that it has to do evil is itself good,
Speaker 1: and I think that's something worth emphasizing. The devil has
Speaker 1: no power to create, only to bend, only to corrupt,
Speaker 1: only to pervert. And the preface to Paradise Lost. C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis says that Satan's revolt is entangled in contradiction. From
Speaker 1: the very outset. He wants hierarchy and does not want hierarchy.
Speaker 1: Throughout the poem, he is engaged in songing off the
Speaker 1: branch he is sitting on, not only in the quasi
Speaker 1: political sent already indicated, but in a deeper sense still.
Speaker 1: Since a creature revolting against a creator is revolting against
Speaker 1: the source of his own powers, including even his power
Speaker 1: to revolt, he has become more a lie than a liar,
Speaker 1: a personified self contradiction, this doom he has brought upon
Speaker 1: himself in order to avoid seeing one thing, he has
Speaker 1: almost voluntarily incapacitated himself from seeing at all. So evil
Speaker 1: is a wilful blindness. It's a turning away from that
Speaker 1: by which you turn, that's what we find in the devil,
Speaker 1: and that's what we find in all who follow the
Speaker 1: miserific path. Now, because the devil has this wilful disorientation,
Speaker 1: he's not able to see himself in proper context. He
Speaker 1: doesn't see himself in proper relation toward that which is
Speaker 1: above and beyond and ultimately more significant than him. And
Speaker 1: so for that reason, the devil takes himself very seriously.
Speaker 1: Pride is the original sin Satan, said Chesterton fell through
Speaker 1: a force of gravity. Must picture Hell's estate, where everyone
Speaker 1: is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where
Speaker 1: everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly
Speaker 1: serious passions of envy, self importance, and resentment. And of course,
Speaker 1: Chesterton also famously said that angels can fly because they
Speaker 1: take themselves lightly. And it's because they recognize their context.
Speaker 1: They recognize the fact that they are part of a
Speaker 1: broader reality that is more significant than them. And because
Speaker 1: they're able to recognize their proper station in the grand
Speaker 1: cosmic hierarchy, well, they're able to not close in on themselves,
Speaker 1: but to expand themselves outwardly, and in so doing they
Speaker 1: are freed from the gravity that Satan experiences that pulls
Speaker 1: him ever downward. And this connects to the two quotations
Speaker 1: were given at the end of the prologue, one from
Speaker 1: Martin Luther the best way to drive out the devil,
Speaker 1: if you will not yield to text of scripture, is
Speaker 1: to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.
Speaker 1: And also Thomas Moore, the devil the proud spirit cannot
Speaker 1: endure to be mocked. I think it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: that Lewis here he quotes from Martin Luther as well
Speaker 1: as Thomas Moore, from a Protestant as well as a Catholic.
Speaker 1: I think this speaks well to his mere Christianity mindset.
Speaker 1: I do appreciate Lewis's continual attempts at being ecumenical. Here,
Speaker 1: I think that what he's doing in giving us these
Speaker 1: two quotations from these two sources is he's demonstrating the
Speaker 1: fact that Catholics and Protestants have a common enemy, namely
Speaker 1: the Devil. Now Here he explains why his vision of
Speaker 1: Hell and of the lower archy takes a bureaucratic form.
Speaker 1: He says, the greatest evil is not now done in
Speaker 1: the sordid dens of crime that Dickens love to paint.
Speaker 1: It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps.
Speaker 1: In those we see its final result. But it is
Speaker 1: conceived and ordered, moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clean carpeted, warmed,
Speaker 1: and well lighted offices by quiet men with white collars
Speaker 1: and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks, who do not
Speaker 1: need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol
Speaker 1: for hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police
Speaker 1: state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
Speaker 1: And this I think is brilliant. Right, when we tend
Speaker 1: to think of abject evil, we tend to think of
Speaker 1: the concentration camp, we tend to think of the labor camp. However,
Speaker 1: these are things that are ultimately created, not spontaneously, but
Speaker 1: but they're created by bureaucrats, They're created by politicians. They're
Speaker 1: created by people who tend to not get their hands
Speaker 1: dirty themselves, but who organize that hands would be made dirty.
Speaker 1: And we're going to see this image play out in
Speaker 1: fairly clear terms when we get to that hideous strength.
Speaker 1: And so this is I think a good lead up
Speaker 1: to what we're going to see there. And then he
Speaker 1: talks a little bit about what it is that's driving
Speaker 1: the demonic, what is the inspiration, what is the ambition
Speaker 1: for these creatures of hell? And he says that you know,
Speaker 1: he's envisioning, in his imagine of telling of this, that
Speaker 1: demons ultimately seek to literally consume each other. We see
Speaker 1: that play out in the screwtape letters. And he's using
Speaker 1: this imagery, he's using this imaginative device in order to
Speaker 1: get at something real. And he says, it is I
Speaker 1: feign for this that Devil's desires human souls and the
Speaker 1: souls of one another. It is for this that Satan
Speaker 1: desires all of his followers, and all the sons of Eve,
Speaker 1: and all the hosts of heaven. He dreams of the
Speaker 1: day when all shall be inside him, and all that says,
Speaker 1: I can say it only through him. And so remember,
Speaker 1: evil seeks to close itself inside. And ultimately, what evil
Speaker 1: wants to do is close everything inside. This is what
Speaker 1: pride does. It wants to bring everything into its own orbit.
Speaker 1: And so Satan, as the Arkond of Thlochandra, doesn't want
Speaker 1: to participate in the course of the heavens. That's ultimately
Speaker 1: trying to move in the direction of God. But what
Speaker 1: he wants to do is to orient the heavens toward himself.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, we tend to say that the
Speaker 1: Medievals put Earth at the center of the cosmos, but
Speaker 1: really that is how the devilhood wants to see it.
Speaker 1: And Lewis talks about this and discarded image and elsewhere
Speaker 1: he says that a better way to look at it
Speaker 1: is not actually to put Earth to the center. But
Speaker 1: Earth is something like on the periphery of the cosmos.
Speaker 1: It's outside the city walls, as it is outside of
Speaker 1: the heavens, outside of the heavenly chorus. And so in reality,
Speaker 1: in this model, the Earth is at the periphery of
Speaker 1: the cosmos and should strive to move toward the center,
Speaker 1: which is God. But the devil wants to move everything
Speaker 1: in his own orbit, rather than recognizing that which he
Speaker 1: necessarily does orbit. And this reminded me of a passage
Speaker 1: in Perlandrum in which we're told there was no doubt
Speaker 1: a confusion of persons in damnation. What Pantheus falsely hoped
Speaker 1: of heaven bad men really received in hell they were
Speaker 1: melted down into their master. As a lead soldier slips
Speaker 1: down and loses his shape in the ladle held over
Speaker 1: the gas ring. The question whether Satan or one whom
Speaker 1: Satan had digested is acting on any given occasion has
Speaker 1: in the long run no clear significance. And so Lewis
Speaker 1: talks about how as we fulfill our potential, as we
Speaker 1: achieve our ideal in God, we actually become more of ourselves.
Speaker 1: We become more of who we are meant to be.
Speaker 1: We give ourselves away that we might actually be given back.
Speaker 1: We surrender Isaac that he might be more fully his.
Speaker 1: We die to self that we might become ourselves. And
Speaker 1: I love this statement from Kirkeguard from one of his journals,
Speaker 1: in which he says, by God's help, I shall become myself.
Speaker 1: Whereas we move away from God, when we move toward
Speaker 1: Satan as Master, we don't become more ourselves. We simply
Speaker 1: become more of Satan and an extension of Satan. Because remember,
Speaker 1: reason itself is melted down and you were, and reason
Speaker 1: is necessary in order to have particulars. If you don't
Speaker 1: apply reason to the world, then all you have is
Speaker 1: one undifferentiated, massive stuff, and this is what we've become
Speaker 1: when we move away from reason and we move into satan.
Speaker 1: Now I already mentioned this, but he says that some
Speaker 1: people have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that
Speaker 1: my letters were the right fruit of many years study
Speaker 1: in moral and aesthetic theology. They forget that there is
Speaker 1: an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how
Speaker 1: temptation works. My heart, I need no others show with
Speaker 1: me the wickedness of the ungodly. And he notes that
Speaker 1: this is why The Screwtape Letters was actually relatively easy
Speaker 1: for him to write, even though in the end he
Speaker 1: didn't like it, because he had to really fall into
Speaker 1: his worst tendencies. To fall, all you have to do
Speaker 1: is to let go, and so it's not difficult for
Speaker 1: him to do. But he didn't like kind of letting
Speaker 1: his guard down. He didn't like sinking into this element
Speaker 1: of his existence. You know, Lewis likes to write upbuilding accounts.
Speaker 1: He likes to write positively about how we move toward
Speaker 1: the Beatoch vision, how we move toward what reality fundamentally is,
Speaker 1: and obviously this book is trying to get us to
Speaker 1: do that. But by first falling and demonstrating the inversion
Speaker 1: of reality, and that is taxing. It's got to be
Speaker 1: spiritually taxing, it has to be mortally taxing. And so
Speaker 1: one hand, this is easy to write, but he don't
Speaker 1: necessarily like writing it. Now, he was asked why he
Speaker 1: didn't write a sequel to this book, You know, why
Speaker 1: don't you write a companion book that comes from the
Speaker 1: other side, an angelic correspondence, And to that he says
Speaker 1: that ultimately he just wasn't qualified to do that. He
Speaker 1: says that everything about it would have to smell of heaven,
Speaker 1: and that's just not something that he felt he was
Speaker 1: qualified to achieve. It's much easier for him to give
Speaker 1: an account of evil than it is to give a
Speaker 1: first hand account of goodness. And I think that demonstrates
Speaker 1: a nobility, a great Christian humility. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: we do have from one of his notebooks a small
Speaker 1: little fragment that Brenton Dickieson has called the archangel fragment.
Speaker 1: And this seems to be a short lived attempt at
Speaker 1: providing an angelic correspondence. And so this is all we
Speaker 1: have from this. And so this is what Lewis said,
Speaker 1: I assume, speaking as one angel to another. For this,
Speaker 1: my dear, is the true delight. To take a creature whom,
Speaker 1: if the King permitted in our own will, were so
Speaker 1: strangely perverted, we could, with one touch of the little finger,
Speaker 1: turn into nothingness, even as that creature could spoil the
Speaker 1: down on a butterfly's wings. A creature so short lived
Speaker 1: that its whole mortal life rushes past us in a moment.
Speaker 1: A creature so feeble and understanding that only by gazing
Speaker 1: long and reverently into its mind can we discern its
Speaker 1: difference from the brutes. To take such a puppet, such
Speaker 1: an all but nothing, to hold back our strength and
Speaker 1: nurse its tiny freedom, as one who nurses a little
Speaker 1: spark into flame, To bear with its follies, to love
Speaker 1: its deformities, to remake every day and hour what it destroys,
Speaker 1: to watch, to prune, to bear it as a a
Speaker 1: woman bears a man in her womb, and all in
Speaker 1: hope of the day when it shall be exalted beyond
Speaker 1: its nature, against its nature, into something not only our
Speaker 1: equal but our superior, to train the infant God ever
Speaker 1: waiting for the day when we can reverence it, who
Speaker 1: is now too blind to reverence us that my child
Speaker 1: is the real joy, the endless fascination, the lovely irony,
Speaker 1: the imperishable reward. And so I don't know, And maybe,
Speaker 1: and probably Lewis was right in saying that he's not
Speaker 1: qualified to write from an angel's perspective. But I think
Speaker 1: we see something that has the potential here to be something,
Speaker 1: whatever that something is. And I think we see something
Speaker 1: like this play out when we see Malacandra and Perilandra
Speaker 1: take their place beneath tor and Tennadril in this hierarchy,
Speaker 1: when Torrentendral, who are originally below the Oarsu in the hierarchy,
Speaker 1: now enter into their glory. Now they're exalted above to
Speaker 1: the point where Torrent Tennadol are able to decide what
Speaker 1: Perilandra is going to do next. Is you going to
Speaker 1: just go off into the heavens or is she going
Speaker 1: to stay there to serve them as their agent. And
Speaker 1: this of course speaks to scripture when we're told one
Speaker 1: hand and the Psalms that we were made a little
Speaker 1: bit lower than the angels, and then Paul says to
Speaker 1: the Corinthians that we are going to judge the angels
Speaker 1: and so I think that we see this play out
Speaker 1: pretty remarkably in this prose here that Lewis gives us
Speaker 1: and be interesting to see where he would have gone
Speaker 1: with this, But of course he didn't, and so we'll
Speaker 1: never know. This is all that we have. But the
Speaker 1: closest that we do get to a positive counterpart to
Speaker 1: Screwtape Letters would probably be letters to Malcolm, as I've
Speaker 1: already mentioned, and so it's not anything like the correspondence
Speaker 1: of Angels to Angels, but it does give us this
Speaker 1: upbuilding epistolatory novel. I think it provides a good follow
Speaker 1: up to Screwtape that follows the same format but leads
Speaker 1: us in an upbuilding, positive direction, And so I do
Speaker 1: recommend that you read that after you finish Screwtape at
Speaker 1: some point. And then lastly, for this video, I've kind
Speaker 1: of already mentioned this here and there, but you may
Speaker 1: be asking the question, why are we doing screwtape right
Speaker 1: now and not starting on that hideous strength after finishing Peralandra. Well,
Speaker 1: when I first read Perilandra, I just felt like Screwtape
Speaker 1: naturally belonged here. I thought that Screwtape from Paralandra together
Speaker 1: would form a pretty powerful study of the demonic of evil,
Speaker 1: of our experience of temptation. And then I came to
Speaker 1: discover Breton Dickieson's article a cosmic find in the Screwtape Letters,
Speaker 1: and realized that in Lewis's mind, Screwtape Letters originally belonged
Speaker 1: in the Ransom verse. As Dickieson discovered that in an early
Speaker 1: handwritten prologue to the Screwtape Letters, Ransom was actually the
Speaker 1: person who discovered and intercepted this correspondence from Screwtape, which
Speaker 1: was originally written in Old Solar. And so we get
Speaker 1: this extra paragraph to the original prologue in this handwritten
Speaker 1: draft from Lewis. And so this is what was in
Speaker 1: that original handwritten draft that is not in the original
Speaker 1: prologue as published. And so Lewis wrote. But it is, however,
Speaker 1: too late to make any mystery of the process whereby
Speaker 1: doctor Ransom learned the language. The original of these letters
Speaker 1: is written in what may be called Old Solar, the
Speaker 1: promtive speech of all rational creatures inhabiting the Solar system.
Speaker 1: How Ransom came to learn it, I have already related
Speaker 1: in a book called Out of the Silent planet. But
Speaker 1: when I wrote that book, he and I were both
Speaker 1: mistaken in supposing it to be the local speech of
Speaker 1: a single world, that world which its inhabitants called malacantr
Speaker 1: We now know better, But there is no time within
Speaker 1: this preface to discuss the problems of extraterrestrial philology involved.
Speaker 1: But it should be added that the translation is necessarily
Speaker 1: very free. The capital letters used for pronouns when they
Speaker 1: refer to that being whom Scrooptape describes as the enemy are,
Speaker 1: for example, a most ingenious device of ransoms for representing
Speaker 1: a quite different and involuntary phenomenon in the original. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, many words mentioned where screw Tape is
Speaker 1: discussing what he calls the philological arm were already English.
Speaker 1: For naturally, devils whose terrain is England are well skilled
Speaker 1: in the language of their proposed victims. Even though this
Speaker 1: didn't make it into the published version, in my mind,
Speaker 1: in my heart, this is still canon at least had canon,
Speaker 1: if nothing else. Being a big fan of the Ransom series,
Speaker 1: I love thinking that this is part of the same story.
Speaker 1: But also I just think that it fits really well.
Speaker 1: It gives us some more insight into what was going
Speaker 1: on in the mind and the strategy of the young Man.
Speaker 1: It also connects well with some themes that we're going
Speaker 1: to see in That Hideous Strength, and so I think
Speaker 1: that right between Paraalandra and That Hideous Strength is a
Speaker 1: perfect place for reading and for studying and for really
Speaker 1: thinking deeply about the screw Tape letters. Also, as a
Speaker 1: side note, I think that we're going to see some
Speaker 1: connections to the Dark Tower as well, which we are
Speaker 1: going to discuss once we finish the Ransom series. And
Speaker 1: so even though I'm not considering that core reading, I
Speaker 1: do think it's something that is worth reading and something
Speaker 1: that we are going to discuss, and so if you're
Speaker 1: able to make it around to it, then I do
Speaker 1: recommend that you give that a read or give that
Speaker 1: a listen at some point before we get to the
Speaker 1: end of That Hideous Strength. But that's it for now.
Speaker 1: In the next fit, I'm going to go through letter
Speaker 1: by letter and provide some thoughts along the way. But
Speaker 1: until then, God speed. All right, thank you for listening
Speaker 1: or watching if you're over on YouTube. As a reminder,
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