C. S. Lewis takes an interesting stand point in this book. He takes what a normal Christian would usually think and twists it into a full 180 degrees. Not only does C. S. Lewis challenge Christians to take a different view of the spiritual battle taking place within the lives of every person but Lewis also causes their face to possibly grow. There are five main viewpoints that will be discussed and examined throughout this essay; Anthropology, Bibliology, Theology, Christology, and Soteriology. The definition for Anthropology is “the study of human societies and cultures and their development.” In The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis depicts the average human life and a person’s interactions in an extremely unique way. C.S. Lewis made sure …show more content…
C.S. Lewis took the normal point of view of life that Christians hold and flipped completely on its head. The entirety of The Screwtape Letter is about Wormwood and Screwtape’s discussion and their letters back and forth from each other. Some examples of this would be when Screwtape refers to Jesus Christ and God as “The Enemy” and refers to Satan as “Our Father”. C.S. Lewis delves into the evil aspect of the Spiritual war that is ongoing. He delves into the kind of tactics that Satan might use and turns this book into an incredible lesson on the strategy of Satan and his demons. At first glance, one might ask what use there would be in reading this book. However, the advantages that any person can glean from this lesson are so enormous that it can change the very way that Christians view the faith. Christians should be encouraged to read The Screwtape Letters because it provides a new, refreshing view about Satan and the Spiritual war that is being …show more content…
As previously stated, C.S. Lewis created a masterpiece that was written from a different viewpoint. C.S. Lewis wrote this book from a Christian viewpoint and made sure that his audience would be challenged in the natural Christian faith and would be forced to think deeply about what they really believe and why. Many people will ask why knowing the enemy would be a good thing. However, knowing the enemy is one of the best courses of actions that a Christian can take, because the Bible talks much about Satan and his evil deeds and Jesus even talks more about Hell than He ever did Heaven. From these facts it is obvious that knowing your enemy is just as important as knowing your Lord and
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S Lewis, provides a very refreshing and unusual view on the internal Christian struggle with human nature and spiritual warfare; therefore; it offers itself as a guide to Christians even today on how to resist the temptations of the devil and his servants. The Novel The Screwtape Letters is divided into 31 separate letters, each written as a letter from a high-ranking demon, Screwtape; to his demon-in-training nephew Wormwood. Each letter varies in aggression, topic, and advice given. Considering this is a line of communication between two demons, whose goal is to corrupt humans into giving in to their human nature, this book is an anti-guide for Christians.
In the book, “The Screwtape Letters” there is one regarding theme, Uncle Screwtape convincing his patient away from christianity. However, there are three main points I would like to talk about. The first one is, Screwtape will do anything and everything to convince his patient away from christianity. The following one is, Screwtape starts noticing that everything he has done isn’t working so well towards the patient and starts becoming more angry. Last but not least, .
In the book, Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote from the perspective of an experienced tempter, who gave advice on tempting humans to his young nephew, Wormwood. Being posed with the question: does C. L. Lewis’ style effectively warns the readers of Screwtape Letters of the methods that Satan uses, or does the style encourage us to be sympathetic to Screwtape or Wormwood? , I believe that Lewis’s style was an effective teaching method and there are three lessons that can be learned from the book: a lesson on prayer, a lesson on not worrying about the future and a lesson on gluttony.
A theme that continuously shows in The Screwtape Letters is proving Christianity true by exploring evil. I have chosen letter four, nineteen, and twenty-one to display this theme. In letter four Wormwood is using praying as an evil. He tells Screwtape that his advice to tempt the Patient to keep pray for his mother non-specific and dull, has “proved singularly unfortunate”.
"One road leads home, and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness" (Lewis). Lewis saw this truism in action during his travels to RAF bases during World War II. He would speak, but more importantly, listen to the young soldiers and their chaplains. It is during these visits that many speculate he developed a clear understanding of the slippery spiritual battles invading the average person. Here, at the end of The Screwtape Letters, Lewis is now flipping the narrative.
Written by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters take place in England during World War 2. The book is an epistolary novel, told in the form of thirty-one letters, written by Screwtape, a superior demon, and addressed to his nephew, a lower demon called Wormwood. In the book Screwtape responds to Wormwood’s letter as to how to get a human, called a patient throughout the novel, to shy away from Christianity and Jesus Christ, known as the Enemy”. At the beginning of the book C.S. Lewis does two things: he dedicates the book to his friend and author of the Lord of The Rings Trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien, and quotes Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, and Thomas More, a Catholic saint.
In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape explains aspects of one’s own opinions and the afterlife. Screwtape wants humans to think about their own behavior and not just play a part. For example, Screwtape mentions in the story aspects of Christianity that he doesn’t believe in. Such aspects include how Christians are “army with banners” and how the church, “distracts the attention of men from their real dangers”. These emphasize how the rules of Christianity to Screwtape, can be more confined.
In his epistolary novel “The Screwtape Letters”, Clive Staples Lewis introduces the reader to a world of demons, doubt, and danger; all these facts of life are experienced by a recent convert to Christianity who is referred to as The Patient. The work is “a collection of fictitious epistles from a suave, professional, and insidious devil to a younger, inexperienced, but just as insidious fellow demon” (Watkins 114). While the quote does give a major insight into the conversation, it does not offer a glimpse into the way Lewis humanized Screwtape and his apparent nephew Wormwood. This humanization of the two devilish characters is part of what makes the novel a fascinating read. Lewis’ writing captivates the reader to think about the spiritual
Told in the famous C.S. Lewis The Screwtape letter, a well-known demon informs his nephew, Wormwood, of a struggle that the Christians face still today. A well lesson to all Christians, Screwtape advises Wormwood to go and let the patient talk like a parrot without discipline when in prayer. As explained by Screwtape, “When the patient is an adult recently reconverted to the Enemy’s party, like your man, this is best done by encouraging him to remember, or to think he remembers, the parrot-like nature of his prayers in childhood.”
The Screwtape Letters The Screwtape Letters by C.S Lewis is a satirical book that gives a face to spiritual warfare. The book is set in World War II era England (Lewis 9), a time of fear, uneasiness, and bleakness. It is written as the correspondence between two demons, Screwtape and Wormwood. Screwtape writes thirty letters to Wormwood, giving him instructions and detailed ideas on how best to tempt a man only known as “The Patient”.
C.S. Lewis, a Christian writer from England, penned a manuscript in 1942 called The Screwtape Letters that examined the temptations presented to man by Satan. “Lewis's Screwtape Letters was certainly one of his most popular works, and by his own admission it was a work that he found easy to write” (Harwood 24). By being a Christian himself, Lewis could sympathize and identify with fellow Christians undergoing the onslaught of spiritual attacks. Christians struggle daily with the temptations of Satan similar to those that Screwtape directs his nephew, Wormwood, to employ towards the Patient. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis uses the character, Patient, to symbolize everyman and his struggles with overcoming temptations by showing how Screwtape attempts to conjure a plan for Wormwood to lure the Patient to the Devil’s camp with Satan’s insipid temptations of vanity,
As “the patient” continues his journey choosing whether to be faithful or not, Wormwood, being the amateur “tempter” he is, fails to give clear direction to “the patient.” “[Temporary success] has gone to your head…” (Lewis 21). A tempter’s, such as Wormwood, biggest task is to continue keeping their patient straying away from Christianity their whole lives. However, Wormwood, getting caught up in mini success along the way, let it get to him and becomes his own stumbling block.
While Satan, “Our Father Below,” is a self-loving, deceitful father. When everyone agrees that Lewis’s style of writing is instructive. Some say Lewis wrote the book for people to understand and feel sympathy for Satan and his followers “demons”. Lewis’s style of writing makes one better equip to reorganize Satan’s subtle deceptions in three ways: it helps people recognize distractions in our thoughts, it helps people recognize distractions
“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” -Luther This quote is the backbone of C.S. Lewis' epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters, which chronicles the letters of Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his demon nephew Wormwood, on how to best tempt a human toward unhappiness and moral failure. The story is written from a Christian perspective, but the topics addressed are largely drawn from real aspects of human nature, thus their validity is not demeaned by this presentation; rather The Screwtape Letters provides an accurate testimony on the subject from a universal point of view. Covering a broad spectrum of topics, The Screwtape Letters employs upside down, infernal logic as Screwtape's young nephew Wormwood fails or succeeds in corrupting certain areas of his “patient's” life after Screwtape advises him on how to push an advantage or withdraw from a failed area. Though Wormwood receives a myriad of lessons on the exploitable weaknesses of human nature,
The biggest theme of The Great Divorce is salvation; more specifically, ensuring one’s immortal soul reaches Heaven and not Hell through the exercising correct moral choices in life and the practice of forgiving others and seeking forgiveness for your own sins. For Lewis, Heaven and Hell are not metaphoric or ideas, they are real places. In the book, Lewis develops this by having other related themes that affect salvation like, vanity vs. pride, love, the value of ideologies, faith vs. skepticism, jealousy, anger, and forgiveness.