The Screwtape Letters

Attended lecture on 02 November 2007 @ 7.30pm.



It was a public lecture organised by the BGST (Biblical Graduate School of Theology).



The speaker was Professor James M Houston.



The Screwtape Letters is about CS Lewis's insight into our temptable human nature and his deep strategic concern for the Christian witnesses.



For Lewis heaven and hell are the most serious realities imaginable. And evil is a real trap.



CS Lewis is more selective of seeking polemically to guard some central Christian doctrines - the realities of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, and the need to have a clear perspective on human behaviour in the light of theological anthropology.



In the Srewtape Letters, Lewis does not depict evil in a spectacular, nor as an original force, But he sees evil as a parasite of the good.



The forces of temptation are more emotive than cognitive.



Most of us waste of life focus on common things instead of thinking of God.



Charles Williams, a friend of CS Lewis commented that :



"What is 'ordinary' or 'domestic' lies actually at the crossroads between heaven and hell."



Whereas the advice of Screwtape is the antithesis - keep the patient asleep from having to make any such choices... divert his attention from serious thought.

Then art of Lewis lies then, in balancing the cosmic seriousness of the Fall, and of the reality of Satan, demons, and Evil, with the ordinary, domesticated ways in which we remain vulnerable to temptations.

The temptations of the The Screwtape Letters are a concealed and deceptive process, gradual indeed, to choosing the Self step by step, instead of God.