The Screwtape Letters Study Guide is intended to help you get the most from C.S. Lewis’ amazing book. It was written in 1941. Written in English. Not “American” English, but “English” English. That makes it harder for us across the pond to understand, as well as anyone else who uses American English. Plus, times have changed. The world is different now, a bit over eighty years later.
Introduction to The Screwtape Letters Study Guide is article #1 in the series: Screwtape Letters.Click the button to view titles for the entire series
Add to the time and the language changes the fact that the book is, in a way, upside down.
Where God is our Father above, Satan’s fallen angels refer t him as “our father below”.
Instead of a hierarchy of angels under God, it’s a lowerarchy of fallen angels for Satan.
As you can probably see, it’s not an easy book for us to read today.
And yet, it remains very popular. People are willing to go through the effort to read The Screwtape Letters. C.S. Lewis has such a keen insight into us, people. The things that affect us. Catch our attention. Draw us toward God. And draw us away from God.
Despite the time difference, in so many ways, we haven’t really changed in those regards. So there’s valuable insight available to us. It’s more than worth the time it takes to understand and read this wonderful book.
Some background on The Screwtape Letters
For a bit more explanation, here’s some background on The Screwtape Letters from britannica.com:
The Screwtape Letters, epistolary novel by C.S. Lewis, published serially in 1941 in the Guardian, a weekly religious newspaper. The chapters were published as a book in 1942 and extended in The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast in 1961.
Written in defense of Christian faith, this popular satire consists of a series of 31 letters in which Screwtape, an experienced devil, instructs his young charge, Wormwood, on effective strategies for tempting the human being assigned to him and making sure he continues on a steady path toward damnation. But confounded by church attendance and a faithful Christian woman, their efforts are defeated when their subject dies in a bombing raid with his soul at peace. Through his satiric use of the demonic narrative persona, Lewis examines the opposing sides in the battle between good and evil.
The book’s success begins with its witty use of ironic inversion: for example, God is “the Enemy,” Satan is “Our Father Below,” hierarchy becomes “Lowerarchy.” More important are its depth of spiritual understanding and keen psychological insights into human hypocrisies, lack of self-awareness, and actual motivations. The book was an immediate success, reprinted multiple times in its first year, and it was similarly successful when it was published in the United States in 1943. It was subsequently widely translated.
Introduction: Things to keep in mind as we study The Screwtape Letters:
The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of
Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.
The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.
Spiritual Warfare
Yes, spiritual warfare is real.
Some people are fascinated with Spiritual Warfare. Spend lots of time on it.
Others would prefer to ignore it. Pretend it doesn’t exist.
What does the Bible say about spiritual warfare?
Here are some verses from the Bible that address the devil and spiritual warfare/
We are involved:
1Pe 5:8 Control yourselves. Be on your guard. Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to chew up and swallow.
What can we do about it?
1Pe 5:9 Stand up to him. Stand firm in what you believe. All over the world you know that your brothers and sisters are going through the same kind of suffering.
Can we resist Satan?
1Pe 5:10 God always gives you all the grace you need. So you will only have to suffer for a little while. Then God himself will build you up again. He will make you strong and steady. And he has chosen you to share in his eternal glory because you belong to Christ.
1Pe 5:11 Give him the power for ever and ever. Amen.
To sum it up:
James 4:7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Just a quick side note here. Many years after writing this guide, I had an experience that totally mirrored one of the scenarios in The Screwtape Letters. I was trying to have a conversation with my non-Christian father about Jesus and salvation. I thought we were, finally, making some progress. All of a sudden, out of the blue, he said, “Let’s go eat”.
See if you remember this when you come across it. As I said, spiritual warfare is real. And C.S. Lewis’ awareness of us is right on target.
You’ll probably have some of your own experiences to share. I pray you’ll have more success than I did if you encounter one like mine.
About C.S. Lewis
For those new to C. S. Lewis or not familiar with his background, here’s a brief excerpt from //www.cslewis.com
Born in Belfast Ireland – November 29, 1898. When he was four, he gave himself the nickname “Jack” after a neighborhood dog named “Jacksie” died. His family & friends called him Jack for the rest of his life.
At age 15, he became an aethiest while enrolled at Malvern College in England, despite being raised a Christian up to that point.
About 18 years later, while working at Oxford, he converted to Christianity. Among those influencing his decision was J R R Tolkien.
Also while at Oxford, Lewis was the core member of the now famous literary group “The Inklings.” This group was an informal twice-weekly gathering of friends which included Tolkien, … among others. The meetings took place on Mondays and Thursdays. Monday meetings were held at a handful of local pubs, including The Eagle and Child, known to locals as The Bird and Baby and The Lamb and Flag. Thursday meetings were held in Jack’s rooms.
Lewis was married late in life at age fifty-eight to Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer fifteen years his junior. They married in 1956, two years after Lewis accepted the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, where he finished out his career.
After a four-year fight with bone cancer, Joy passed away in 1960. Lewis continued to care for her two sons, Douglas and David Gresham.
C. S. Lewis died at his home “The Kilns” on November 22, 1963. His grave is in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Warren Lewis <his brother> died on Monday, April 9, 1973. Their names are on a single stone bearing the inscription “Men must endure their going hence.”
So we see that as a child, he was raised a Christian – left the faith and decided to be an atheist – returned to the faith and came to be regarded as the most significant Christian writer of his time.
To be sure, an atheist is a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
What a path his life took!
The Screwtape Letters: Setting and Main Players
The Setting
England – during World War Two
Screwtape
A highly (or is it lowly) placed assistant to Satan – aka “Our Father Below”
Wormwood
Screwtape’s nephew – a novice demon in charge of making sure that his “patient” goes to Hell
The “Patient”
The young man Wormwood is assigned to
The Letters
Communications from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood giving advice, comments, suggestions, criticism, Etc. on his progress (or reversals) with the patient.
From the Preface to The Screwtape Letters
Hold onto these thoughts – we will return to them shortly:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. The sort of script which is used in this book can be very easily obtained by anyone who has once learned the knack; but ill-disposed or excitable people who might make a bad use of it shall not learn it from me.
Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar. Not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.
Some Years Later
Before getting any further into what the book is about, it’s important to look at something Lewis wrote years later about the book:
I was often asked or advised to add to the original ‘Screwtape Letters’, but for many years I felt not the least inclination to do it. Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. The ease came, no doubt, from the fact that the device of diabolical letters, once you have thought of it, exploits itself spontaneously, … It would run away with you for a thousand pages if you gave it its head.
But though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The world into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done. It would have smothered my readers if I had prolonged it.
I had, moreover, a sort of grudge against my book for not being a different book which no one could write. Ideally, Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood should have been balanced by archangelical advice to the patient’s guardian angel. Without this the picture of human life is lop-sided.
But who could supply the deficiency? Even if a man—and he would have to be a far better man than I—could scale the spiritual heights required, what answerable style’ could he use? For the style would really be part of the content. Mere advice would be no good; every sentence would have to smell of Heaven.
Here We Go
You now have a fair amount of background related to the Screwtape Letters.
However, before we jump in and start read/studying it, let’s see a bit of the study guide.
Here’s a sample from letter #8:
So you ‘have great hopes that the patient’s religious phase is dying away’, have you? I always thought the Training College had gone to pieces since they put old Slubgob at the head of it, and now I am sure. Has no one ever told you about the law of Undulation?
Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.) As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change.
Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks. If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life—his interest in his work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down.
As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty. The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it.
To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy wants to make of it, and then do the opposite. Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
I’d like to put in some notes here about what you just read.
- Notice that the contents of the letters to Screwtape are in pink letters. It’s intentional on my part.
- You may remember what James wrote –
- Jas 2:19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
- And you may remember that from the very beginning, Satan knew enough of what God said to be able to twist it.
- I represent that shadow of twisted knowledge by putting the letters not in red (like the words of Jesus in a Bible), but in pale red – pink.
- While I put a large quote here, the remainder of the lessons will have a few sentences from the beginning of the section, and some from the end of the portion related to each question. I don’t want to cause issues by giving you the entire book here. Plus, this guide is free and I make no money in any way from it. So this aids you in finding the entire text for each question from your own copy of the book.
- Between the “English” English, different spellings, different slang/popular words from a different time, there will be many words you’re probably not familiar with. As these words come up in the book, I included definitions so you won’t have to stop and find a dictionary. After all, you’re reading the book to learn about God, us, and things Satan might do to interfere with our relationship with God.
Conclusion – Introduction to The Screwtape Letters Study Guide
How to use the Screwtape Letters Study Guide
Determining the context of what you will read: There’s a lot of material to present here – so I’m going to try to arrange it in a useful way. Part of that will involve color coding the text – as well as different fonts and using italics.
That’s the introduction. But, it’s only an intro.
To get the most benefit from this study guide, I put together one more piece for you to understand how it’s put together – How to use the Screwtape Letters Study Guide. Formatting to help keep track of who’s who and what’s what. And some notes on studying in a group or on your own.
So I invite you to check out that one last piece, and then get started on your journey through The Screwtape Letters.