TSL Chapter 31 -- Sheer, Instantaneous Liberation

Summary

It's over. The Patient has died in a state of Grace and has been air-lifted to Heaven.

Wormwood is facing a final reckoning as well -- as a failure in the Kingdom of Noise, the consequences are to be eaten by Screwtape.

Screwtape describes the Patient's death -- a moment of agony and horror followed by revelation, peace, and glory. And recognition. Truths he had always felt deep within him become manifest. Life is suddenly thrown into perspective and stark relief.

All that is left now, is the feasting of Screwtape upon his poor Nephew. Wormwood.

My Thoughts

The back-nine or so (last 3rd of the book) was less compelling for me than the opening chapters. The anti-sermons seemed less barbed and pointed, the mythology and world building less of a draw. While I never tired of Screwtape's voice, I think I acclimated to the flow of the book.

This chapter regains some of the power of the opening strokes.

For one thing, the view of death and emergence and salvation is powerful and hopeful. It illustrates God's victory of Death in a material and evocative way. As always, Lewis's word-choice is surprising and perfect.

It brings the whole thing together both theologically and literarily -- leaving no doubt in the reader's mind that this conclusion was planned from the beginning. The book couldn't end any other way.

I also found myself thinking about it in context -- would this be of some comfort to those who had lost loved ones to the German bombs? I think, maybe, yes. It illustrates the hope at the core of scripture.

Screwtape Unmasked
If The Patient's ascension is satisfying, Screwtape finally telling Wormwood that he plans to enjoy eating him is nicely satisfying as well. Screwtape explains that his professed affection for Wormwood was sincere: He loves Wormwood the way a hungry man loves a tasty morsel. This 'revelation' (in scare quotes because, who couldn't see that coming) comes, apparently, after a plea from Wormwood for mercy in his time of need.

Of course the demons turn on each other.

Of course the apparent virtues of helpfulness and consideration were never more than a self-serving illusion: Screwtape would have been pleased if his protege damned The Patient... but he's at least equally pleased (if more not more so) to enjoy eating Worms.

Lewis does a good job wrapping this. He does not explain how Wormwood's correspondence ends up in his hands. I would like to believe that it was a final betrayal -- that Wormwood, knowing that Screwtape's words would indict him (Screwtape), arranged for them to fall into mortal hands.

TSL Chapter 30 -- Fatigue & Reality

Summary

The bombs are falling. The Patient is doing well -- doubly so because he considers himself a coward and feels no pride in his (objectively) heroic stand to duty.

Screwtape threatens Wormwood -- bring us food, or become food yourself -- and then keys on the one aspect in Wormwood's letter that has some promise: the Patient's fatigue. He's super-tired and Wormwood thinks that might be an opening.

Screwtape agrees that fatigue can be useful, but notes that a moderate fatigue is more fertile ground for sin than absolute exhaustion (which can make a man peaceful and reflective). He points out that when very tired, women talk more and men less, and that might be a good place to create some relationship drama.

He moves on to discuss attacks on the man's faith: he's seeing horrible things ("remains plastered on a wall") and maybe that can work emotionally on him to suggest a renunciation of a religious worldview. He points out that religious experiences can be dismissed as subjective, while humans tend to fixate on negative things -- even emotions, like hatred -- as real.

Screwtape concludes that, properly handled, the Patient will dismiss happy things as 'mere sentiment' and conclude grizzly details are objective reality.

My Thoughts

I connected with this: there's an tendency to treat depressing things as 'hard truths' and discount anything hopeful or positive as silly optimism. That said, there didn't seem to be a lot here beyond a look at a few human tendencies. Certainly not a whole lot theological or otherwise.

It did raise a question in my mind: every pessimist I've ever met has described himself as a "realist." Lewis isn't focusing on Optimism v. Pessimism, of course, but on the nature of reality itself.

Apparently -- according to Google -- Pessimists lead longer, healthier lives and are more accurate in their predictions for what's to come. Does this mean that the darker one's view of reality, the more accurate someone is?

It's not clear, but makes me wonder if I should be lowering my expectations...

TSL Chapter 29 -- Cowardice or Courage

Summary

The bombs are coming, and Screwtape calls the question of Cowardice (Courage, a virtue, is beyond Hell's power to induce). Cowardice is a tricky vice because it's so shameful and painful that it can inspire self-reflection.

And we can't have any of that.

He notes that in some cases Cowardice is so unpleasant it leads to "despair" but as an advancing Christian, the young man may know better than to practice the sin of Despair.

He concludes with the warning that fear, itself, is no sin -- Cowardice must be an act to be spiritual toxic.

My Thoughts

I'm not troubled with the idea that Cowardice is a sin, but the idea of Despair being a sin scares me. The idea that someone feeling Despair is not simply a victim of the darkness but, in succuming, is actually polluting their relationship with God seems to double the horror of Despair, itself.

I mean... if someone's going to be damned, at least the should have some fun, right?

TSL Chapter 28 -- But Only A Very Few

Summary

Screwtape scolds Wormwood for being pleased that bombs are coming. He explains what should be obvious: once the target is dead, the game is over. Hell only gets a short time to work on humans (a single lifetime), and if that is cut short, their window of opportunity is even more limited.

Screwtape explains that in his current state (working on defense, loving a Good Christian, etc.) were he to die in the air raid, he would "almost certainly be lost to us."

The Patient is in danger of being Saved!

Stepping back from the current crisis, Screwtape explains that a long life -- the dull slog of middle-age, for instance -- makes for "excellent campaigning weather," and that material prosperity can attach a man to the world, dragging him down.

He also muses on how some humans -- feeling the pain of a God-shaped-hole -- will try to fill it with fanciful visions of technology or psychology creating Heaven on Earth. But all of these things require time to work. And time runs out.

He concludes with a chilling thought: He (God) wants "some--but only a very few-- of the human animals with which He is peopling Heaven to have resisted us [Hell] through an earthly life of sixty or seventy years."

I think this means most humans who live to a ripe old age are damned?

My Thoughts

Again, the terrifying uncertainty of salvation comes through here. Most people who think they're saved probably aren't. Even if you've done okay -- at some point -- the current status of your soul can't entirely be known.

And again: my denomination rejects this view, but our version is even worse: at least in CSL's world, you can always turn your life around and start behaving. In Calvinism, if you're not elect, there's nothing you can do.

 Screwtape's point about death being the end-game sets up the final chapters of the book.

TSL Chapter 27 -- His Unbounded Now

Summary

The Patient is doing a lot of praying -- praying for earthly happiness, it seems, and Screwtape offers some advice on how to mess that up, once again playing on human expectations and perceptions. He suggests the "heads I win, tails you lose" argument to make prayer appear to be ineffectual:

If The Patient prays for something and it doesn't happen, clearly prayer doesn't work. If he prays for something and it does happen, it was obviously going to happen anyway (because the Universe is deterministic, yo), so it wasn't God's work after all.

Screwtape explains that all this isn't obvious because humans don't see time and space the way God does.

This leads to a further digression about how Hell has trained men to think in terms of the Historical Point of View which assumes ancient authors couldn't possibly understand the truth and that pre-modern thought is not especially accurate.

He smugly concludes that Hell's efforts have helpfully confused and cut off the current generation of thinkers, miring mankind in ignorance.

My Thoughts

One of the great strengths of using Screwtape as a mouthpiece is that he can "explain" cosmic things that Wormwood would obviously know, but he can avoid the bane of the Speculative Fiction Writer -- pure exposition -- by flipping things around and explaining, not cosmology to cosmic creatures, but inscrutable humans to his junior demon.

This works brilliantly because it allows Screwtape to expose and expose, without raising questions about why he's saying things his presumed audience ought to be intimately familiar with.

In this chapter, Screwtape addresses several meaty issues including causality, determinism, and predestination. He touches lightly on the solutions -- the eternal Now that God lives in explains why humans are both completely predictable, but not predestined (God sees the future no differently from the present, but humans still make their own self-damning decisions). 

As explanations go, this is a reasonably good one. It doesn't answer basic questions about why things would be set up this way, but it at least squares seeing "future" and free will.

For me, some of the throw-away issues (distraction, "crude" petitionary prayers, and so-on) were more potentially interesting and resonnant, but Lewis is more interested (in this chapter) in cosmic questions and in discrediting the Historical Point of View.

One thing that did bother me a little -- Demons' relationship to Time is never fully explained. The book requires Screwtape and Wormwood to be as blind to the future as men are... or else the tension around the outcome (is he or isn't he damned?) wouldn't exist and Screwtape's intentions and designs would be an open book. 

TSL Chapter 26 -- Unselfishness

Summary

Worms has (apparently) asked if courtship is the time for sowing seeds that will blossom ten years hence, into "domestic hatred."

Yes! Answers Screwtape, Yes! In the glow of love, humans will establish unsustainable relationship rules and then, when the "erotic" attraction dims, they'll grow to hate one another. Screwtape points, specifically, to the grand problem of "Unselfishness."

Basically each party aspires to put the other party's desires first and take semi-secret credit for being 'unselfish' -- and then: resentment! And dishonesty, and so-on.

Screwtape draws some kind of fine distinction between the demon-born negative of 'unselfishness' and the Godly virtue of Charity -- presumably Charity is sincere, but at any rate, he concludes with a slight, allusive non-sequitur: the hope that Slumtrimpet can do something about the Young Woman's "sense of the ridiculous."

Thoughts

Charity v. Unselfishness seems like a fairly fine semantic distinction, but the point here is reasonable: be Charitable (sincerely) or at least be up front about it. And don't expect anyone to be as Unselfish or Charitable as they are at the beginning of a relationship.

And I want to give Lewis credit for focusing on unrealistic expectations of others rather than preaching an unrealistic level of Charity in his readers.

It's one thing not to live up to our expectations of ourselves, but another (worse) thing to hold others to an unreasonable standard.

One other thought: reading Screwtape's unconsidered gender essentialism -- something I suspect would have been utterly common sense in its day -- is a bit amusing to modern ears, especially the bit where he notes that even an advanced Christian woman will make an unholy nag of herself and a similarly advanced Christian man won't get off his ass to help anyone. I suspect this this sort of thing makes for brilliant ammunition in a properly Christian household.

TSL Chapter 25 -- Merely Christian

Summary

Screwtape spends a letter complaining about the good Christians now in The Patient's orbit. The trouble -- the real trouble -- with them is that they're... wait for it...

Merely Christian.

(Italics in original).

They don't mix some kind of nonsense (Psychology, Faith Healing, Vegetarianism, etc.) in with their Christianity. Nothing trendy. Nothing Fashionable. Screwtape detests this, and spends the rest of the chapter writing about the wonders of Fashions and Vogues (caps in original).

The value of these is that they distract. Men in the grips of Fashions and Vogues will focus on one element of doctrine to the exclusion of others. Even where the doctrine is correct (example: Puritanism's prohibitions against lust), it's still an over-focus leading to something else slipping in.

The Plain Old Christian maintains 360-degree vigilance. He is not sucked into the timely or trendy.

Screwtape concludes by noting that the tendency to focus on the new is built into Man's nature. Men like both change and sameness, but the focus on the emerging over the emerged can be used against them. It takes their eye off the ball, as it were.

My Thoughts

Screwtape is cranky and ponderous here but it's hard to fault his basic message: that attempts to put Christianity into some kind of modern context run a risk of corrupting the message. And even if one is careful to make sure the message is correct, being timely instead of timeless is probably a mistake.

I suspect that this is more of an issue for people preaching: mixing in some Vegetarianism (or whatever) is probably a good way to get people's attention... a quick boost in apparent relevance and a way to appeal to people who have concerns beyond a life-long spiritual journey. For someone who was working on a syllabus, this advice would be hugely valuable.

Likewise for someone shopping for a Church: If I were looking for a Church, I might find myself drawn to one that mixes in trendy ingredients -- hey! Look! Interpretive dance! -- unless I were warned away.

Lewis strikes me as a harsh critic, and while I'm sure he'd have all kinds of things to say about Ascension (my current church), I can't imagine he'd fault us for being Fashionable. Not in the way he means it, anyway.