TSL Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Oh no! The Patient has become a Christian! Fear not, Uncle Screwtape says -- there's still hope for damning him. Screwtape provides an overview of strategies that Nephew Wormwood might use to de-Christianize someone which basically amount on getting them to give up in disgust and change their mind about their Christianity he suggests

• Influence them to be judgmental about the (fairly ridiculous & unattractive) fellow Christians and the ritual of the Church
• Play (somehow) on the inevitable disappointment the man will feel after he's started on his path to Christianity and it's not easy
• Play up the hypocrisy of his fellow Christians -- surely some of them are sinners and the Patient, himself, is almost certainly infused with an extremely (although by no-means extraordinarily) false humility

He concludes by suggesting that Wormwood keep his target convinced of his own righteousness for "as long as you can."

Literary

There's a little bit of world building in this chapter. Most interestingly, Uncle Screwtape alludes to "usual penalties" that demons suffer when their patient becomes Christian. While he doesn't explain what these might be, he does suggest that a True Believer wouldn't seek to escape them and would genuinely welcome punishment for failure.

I like the idea, both here and in Milton's Paradise Lost that the Devil, even with a full view of heaven, sincerely feels his cause is just and worthy of inspired loyalty. I also like the idea of a diabolical bureaucracy where there is a systematized schedule of "usual penalties" for failures.

I also like Screwtape's contempt for humans. He calls them 'fools' (thanks to demonic influence?) and 'disgusting little human vermin.' It's important to the work to keep Screwtape enjoyably hate-able, and contempt is a good way to do that: the anti-sermon nature of the work has to inspire the reader to want to thwart and frustrate Screwtape and prove him wrong (at least about them).

Finally, there's a line that suggests that Wormwood will get to torment his damned patient for eternity with the "peculiar clarity which Hell affords." The idea that your personal demon gets to torture you forever with an infinite reminder of the mistakes you made to fall into his clutches is breathtakingly diabolical. Lewis outdoes himself!

The Theology

I'm going to break this into a couple of sections

Perseverance of the saints

This introduces, and makes cannon (in the fictional universe  of TSL) the, I think, intuitive sense that becoming Christian involves a decision and then a lot of focus and hard, dry work on the part of the Christian.

And that it's easy, even likely, to fall off the wagon.

It's more like dieting (or maybe quitting smoking) than a singular moment of transformation after which salvation is assured. 

I called this "intuitive" because I think it tracks any earthly program of self-transformation anyone has ever tried. Certainly trying to learn a skill, or a language, or lose weight follows this exact trajectory, to say nothing of breaking an addiction: it's hard, dry work, and everything in you is working against you. The only way to make it work is to rally willpower and overcome what feel like baser urges -- the whisperings of Wormwood???

In Calvinist theology, once a person is saved, they're always saved and being in the elect means an inexorable proceeding to salvation and (perhaps) earthly and eternal glory. In practice, though, it's the same thing: if someone decides they're Christian, declares their Christianity, gets baptized, but then (during the hard, dry work of self-improvement) falls away, they were obviously never saved to begin with.

From an earthly perspective, the Calvanist and Anglican perspectives arrive at the same conclusion: some of those people in the pews with you are headed for Hell.

And for all you know, you might be, too! Sure, you're on the wagon right now... but what happens tomorrow? Or the next day? You might discover that your faith was insufficient to get you through, and therefore (Calvanistically) that it wasn't (ever) the faith of a saint, at all.

Whether you're an Anglican or a Calvinist, I think the feeling of being Christian is the same, and even if we are predestined or elect in some sense, the illusion of self-empowering free will is strong enough that it's indistinguishable.

Kill Bill Part III -- Uma Thurman is The Bride (of Christ)

C.S. Lewis isn't above pandering to his readers. He (amusingly) describes Christian in the pews as potentially, "a great warrior on the Enemy's side" and The Church itself as "terrible as an army with banners."

While Paul (once, I recall) describes Christians as good soldiers, enduring hardships, and engaging in warfare, the passages I can recall  that describe the Church tend to use a much more passive, gentle, and even effeminate imagery: collectively, in most of the passages I'm familiar with, we're The Bride of Christ.

And even Paul's metaphor falls sadly short of the elite bad-assery implied in Lewis's description. It's more about enduring hardships and avoiding earthly entanglements than it is about terrifying pageantry and martial skills that would impress the Legions of the Prince of the Air.

I kind of like Lewis's take on it better, frankly. I'd like to imagine that Demons fear my deadly spiritual Kung-Fu.

I think the way to cross this divide is to embrace Quentin Tarantino's approach to bride hood -- "Does this dress make me look Dangerous?"

Don't stop believin' -- Hold on to the feelin'

Journey would have us understand that the key to believing (belivin) is emotion ('that feelin') -- but Lewis would have us not put our trust in soft-rock anthems.

Uncle Screwtape makes it clear that once the initial bad habits are broken, the patient will have less emotion involved in his going-to-church decisions. Lewis clearly sees Christianity and the desire to be Christian as rooted in the more rational parts of our natures, while emotional drives and desires work against it.

While this makes a certain, obvious amount of sense, it's also clear that for a long, long time (and very much today), emotion plays a critical role in people's belief, and while we're encouraged to engage logic to connect with God, we're constantly reminded that it won't work: God is beyond our understanding, and while trying to use logic is admirable, we should do so with no expectation of success.

I don't think logical arguments by itself would convince anyone who wasn't already convinced -- to the extent that grappling with Christian theology logically is useful, it's only after one has accepted Christianity as axiomatically correct. And only useful so long as one has no expectations of logical conclusions.

On the other hand, emotional connections are easy to come by -- fear of hell, for instance, is a time-honored (although very, very slightly out of favor these days -- perhaps, after a millennia, it's lost some of its impact?), is a common emotional appeal. More positively, a sense of belonging, acceptance, or forgiveness would seem to be the kinds of emotions that would draw people to a Church.

My Reaction

I find the idea that I might be on a "brief sojourn" in God's camp quite disturbing. I don't know how I'd really tell the difference between actual conversion and false conversion. I'm not sure there is a way -- to the extent that there are empirical tests for salvation (our interpretation of James), I don't think I could convincingly say I pass.

I know people who appear to be absolutely certain of their salvation (although I suspect if asked directly, they'd demure so as not to appear to have a deficit of expected humility), and in many cases it goes back to some experiential event. Maybe if you haven't had one, there's your answer.

And, of course, in Calvinist philosophy, study, hard-work, and (earthly) dedication won't make a difference. If I'm reprobate, no amount of work on my part will make a difference; I might as well sleep in on Sundays.

Of course the idea that salvation could come through hard work is equally terrifying -- no matter how much I do I'm sure it wouldn't quite be enough...

I've thought about these questions a lot, and I don't think they're quite answerable, but I find Lewis's demon-based view fascinating: he puts salvation all on the weak and fallible humans and finds God's love in allowing humans to struggle and fail in the name of freedom -- a bit like an earthly father letting his children play near a busy Interstate so as not to over-watch their development into free-thinking adults...