Jonathan Enns

Book Review: The Screwtape Letters

// February 18th, 2009 // book review

The Screwtape Letters are a series of letters written from an experienced “mature” demon (Screwtape) to a more inexperienced younger demon (Wormwood). Each chapter is a new letter beginning with “My Dear Wormwood….” afterwhich Uncle Screwtape gives advice on how Wormwood is to tempt, manipulate, and coerse a certain Christian man out of the Enemy’s (God’s) will. Each chapter assumes a return letter from Wormwood has been written back to Screwtape with status updates on situations this man encounters and how Wormwood used the situation to try and achieve the Father’s (Satan’s) will in the life of the man. Screwtape schemes great plans to help Wormwood instill thoughts of pride, self-righteousness, depression, arrogance, or temptation in the mind or path of the man he is assigned to. Each letter is signed “Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape”

I really enjoyed the book, C.S. Lewis really put a twist on the way we look at many subtle sins we allow into our lives, and challenges the reader to think about how important those subtle sins are to Satan’s objective, and how they can lead to destruction. Lewis’s theology comes out quite a bit in the book and I can sense he has a very Arminian outlook on the Christian life, however also wound into the book solid foundation biblical truths, of grace, absolute truth, pure love, purity (of course Screwtape attempts to pervert these truths). There is also quite a bit of political thought that comes out as WW2 is going on during the writing of the book and the man assigned to Wormwood reacts to different political ideas & philosophies coming out of the British culture in the midst of the War. The Book is dedicated to J.R.R Tokien.

Here are some thoughts I highlighted from the Screwtape’s letters:

“There is no thing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them” (Letter 6)

“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.” (Letter 10)

“The safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (Letter 12)

“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility” (Letter 14)

“He [The Enemy] does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do” (Letter 15)

“They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen….Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful posessor of twenty-four hours” (Letter 21)

“…the demand for infinite or unrhythmical change…This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money…” (Letter 25)

“The enchantment of unsatisfied desire produces results which the humans can be made to mistake for the results of charity” (Letter 26)

“A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky” (Letter 29)