Teaching C.S.

Lewis:
A Handbook for Professors, Church Leaders,
and Lewis Enthusiasts
 Teaching C.S. Lewis
A Handbook for Professors, Church Leaders,
and Lewis Enthusiasts

by

Richard Hill and Lyle Smith

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING

 Teaching C.S. Lewis: A Handbook for Professors, Church Leaders, and Lewis Enthusiasts,
by Richard Hill and Lyle Smith

This book first published 2007 by

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2007 by Richard Hill and Lyle Smith

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN 1-84718-149-X; ISBN 13: 9781847181497
 This book is dedicated to
David Neuhouser
Professor and mentor for many generations of grateful Lewis readers
and to
Richard L. Nelson
who instigated a life-long love of C.S. Lewis
We must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to
become our critics and rivals.

—C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ...................................................................................................................ix
Acknowledgements................................................................................................xi

INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................xiii

CHAPTER ONE: THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS .............................................................. 1

CHAPTER TWO: MERE CHRISTIANITY .................................................................... 21

CHAPTER THREE: OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET ..................................................... 43

CHAPTER FOUR: PERELANDRA .............................................................................. 59

CHAPTER FIVE: THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH ........................................................... 73

CHAPTER SIX: THE GREAT DIVORCE ..................................................................... 87

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA ................................................. 105

CHAPTER EIGHT: TILL WE HAVE FACES .............................................................. 131

APPENDIX A: One Book C.S. Lewis Reading Group .......................................... 149

APPENDIX B: Multi-Book C.S. Lewis Reading Group........................................ 153

APPENDIX C: Syllabus for a C.S. Lewis College Course .................................... 155

INDEX .................................................................................................................. 161

 PREFACE

BRUCE L. EDWARDS, PH.D.

The most frequent question asked by visitors to my C.S. Lewis website is

this: Is there a study guide that will help me understand and teach [title of book]
by Lewis? I am happy to report that I can now say, “Yes, there is!”
Lewis’s life and work continue to inspire and provoke Christians of all ages,
dispositions, and communions. He is repeatedly mentioned in surveys by
seminarians, pastors, and ordinary church folk as the author most important to
their walk of faith. Lewis also continues to be a publishing phenomenon. When
one factors in the enormous popularity engendered by the release of the first
Narnia film, the visibility of and worldwide interest in the fiction, apologetics,
and scholarly work of this Anglo-Irish Christian polymath is at an all-time
high—as is the frequency of publications about him.
What has been missing in the dramatic groundswell of public fascination
with C.S. Lewis is a volume dedicated to equipping new seekers, disciples,
mentors, and conveners for teaching and reflecting on his work in a systematic
way. I am grateful that my fellow authors, professors, and Lewis enthusiasts
Richard Hill and Lyle Smith have produced just such a book. With this
publication they have provided countless readers with a quality presentation that
does what it promises: chapter by chapter guides and enriches both the
individual learner and the dedicated instructor looking for well-articulated and
well-informed Lewis insights, background, and resources.
The really good news here is that both Hill and Smith know their subject,
having studied and taught the works of Lewis in many venues. For more than
two decades, they have led professional and amateur scholars, college students,
and churchgoers into greater understanding of and appreciation for C.S. Lewis’s
life and legacy.
Each chapter demonstrates a command of essential biography, formative
influences, and ongoing impact, and, what is more, Hill and Smith understand
(and share) the cardinal Christian convictions that undergird Lewis’s vision.
They are able to foreground that vision in an engaging manner as they move
through the major texts. Many publications summarize and paraphrase Lewis
successfully—but Hill and Smith have provided a work that actually gets inside
x Preface

the life and mind of Lewis, a text that assists us in discovering how best to teach
his ideas and inspire his readership.
Finally, Hill and Smith have learned from Lewis how to speak to their
audience with clarity and respect as they present their insights. I commend this
work to you as one to which you will return again and again as you share
Lewis’s works with friends, family, and students.

Bruce L. Edwards
Professor of English
Author of Not a Tame Lion (Tyndale, 2005).
http://www.pseudobook.com/cslewis
<edwards@bgsu.edu>
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH (USA)
October, 2006
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Point Loma Nazarene University and Biola University
for their sabbatical support of this project, with additional gratitude to the PLNU
Wesleyan Center for 20th Century Studies for a Summer Scholars’ grant, and to
PLNU’s Faculty Research Committee for a Research and Special Projects grant.

We would also like to acknowledge Bruce Edwards for his original idea for the
book, and our respective wives, Judy Hill and Dorothy Donnelly Smith, for their
encouragement and advice. Appreciation is also due to the Edwin Brown Center
for Study of C.S. Lewis and the Inklings at Taylor University for providing the
Socratic Club poster used on the cover.

Special thanks to two young literary scholars for their invaluable assistance with
the manuscript: Katherine Manning, for her editorial suggestions and
copyediting expertise, and Shaun Farrell for help with formatting and indexing.

And for their patience and encouragement through the publication process, we
are grateful to Andy Nercessian, Carol Koulikourdi, Amanda Millar, and Vlatka
Kolic of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
 INTRODUCTION

This handbook is intended as a practical guide for professors, teachers, and

non-academic C.S. Lewis enthusiasts who lead Lewis study groups. It can also
be used as a supplementary text by students or group members.
Many scholarly volumes expound upon C.S. Lewis’s work, but our primary
goal is to provide material that can help make any Lewis seminar a success
without the weeks or months of research necessary to build a course from
scratch. The chapters cover all of Lewis’s novels, including the seven books of
the Narnia series, the space trilogy, Till We Have Faces, and The Great
Divorce. Also included are chapters on teaching Mere Christianity and The
Screwtape Letters, Lewis’s most popular apologetic works. Sample reading lists
for small groups and a college course syllabus are included in the appendices.
Each of the chapters can be used independently, so that course leaders may
choose the books they wish to cover and in which order they wish to cover
them. All chapters include the following components:

I. A biographical sketch of Lewis’s life at the time he was composing the

book or series, plus a discussion of his sources and influences. This
section provides basic background that eliminates the need to search
through several biographies and prefaces for a well-rounded discussion of
particular works.

II. A chapter-by chapter summary of the book for quick reference or

brush-up before class sessions. The summaries can also be read or
incorporated into a background handout by course leaders who opt to
cover particular sections of novels rather than the entire work.

III. A discussion of major themes to help readers understand Lewis’s

concerns and how he developed them. As with the study questions that
follow, much more is provided than will generally be used in a single
course, so teachers may pick and choose the items that fit their own
teaching priorities.

IV. Study questions geared to a range of reading levels, which can be

used to stimulate written or oral responses from individuals or groups.
xiv Introduction

Questions may be mixed, matched, and used in conjunction with original

questions from the group leader.

V. A “For Further Reading” annotated bibliography of books by, about,

and/or related to the book under discussion. This section may be useful
for teachers and students who want to take discussions to deeper levels.

Both of us have facilitated Lewis discussions in college classrooms, public

seminars, and church gatherings, and sharing our understanding of and
enthusiasm for Lewis has been a particular joy in our careers. We look forward
to hearing from those who make use of our studies, and we welcome comments,
corrections, and suggestions for the second edition. Please send all
correspondence to rhill@pointloma.edu.

Further Up and Further In,

Richard Hill & Lyle Smith
January, 2007
 CHAPTER ONE

THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

AND “SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST”

I. Historical Context
According to the diary of his brother Warren, the first inspiration for what
would become The Screwtape Letters came to C.S. Lewis on a Sunday in July
1940, during or after church services. As Lewis explained, the idea for the piece
originally called “As One Devil to Another” was “to give all the psychology of
temptation from the other point of view.” He apparently came up with the
character names the same day, and within a month or so was reading chapters to
Warren and the other Inklings, a group of friends and fellow writers.
The narrative’s bad-is-good approach (God is “The Enemy”) may have been
influenced by “The Praise of Folly,” an early sixteenth-century satire by the
Dutch theologian Erasmus, in which a personified Folly employs pseudo-logic
to argue in favor of human foolishness. According to Lewis’s preface, the letters
were also inspired by an epistolary novel of the early twenties, Confessions of a
Well-Meaning Woman by Stephen McKenna. The fictional author of the
Confessions had an inverted view of her subjects, full of humorous (to the
reader) hypocrisy. Screwtape makes the most of this narrative device, to the
point where Lewis said that he made himself uncomfortable by fitting his reason
to inverted diabolical logic.
While Lewis would have liked to portray both the angelic and diabolical
sides of the conflict (as did subsequent popular authors, such as Frank Peretti),
Lewis said he felt unqualified to even imagine the unearthly goodness of angels.
On the other hand, Screwtape and his associates came rather too easily, since, as
Lewis quoted ruefully in his preface, ““My heart showeth me the wickedness of
the ungodly.’”
When the book was first serialized in the church-based, weekly news
magazine The Guardian (which later serialized Great Divorce), readers loved it
for the most part. One exception was a man who canceled his subscription
2 Chapter One

because he felt the paper was “giving space to someone with diabolical
propositions that should never be printed in the Guardian.”
Despite the less-than-unanimous praise, the book version was published in
1943 and became a best seller in both the UK and the United States. Lewis was
even paid for a movie option, but he later shied away from a proposal to buy all
rights and the movie was never made. Between the success of Screwtape and the
BBC broadcasts of what would become Mere Christianity, Lewis was lifted
from academic obscurity to minor celebrity. He even appeared on the cover of
Time magazine, with a drawing of Screwtape on his shoulder.
That Lewis was uncomfortable with the ensuing distinction “famous
Christian apologist,” can be seen in the encounter between the narrator in The
Great Divorce and the Ghost of George MacDonald. Readers can also detect
discomfort with fame in Lewis’s preface to a later edition of Screwtape, in
which he dismisses much of the popularity of the book as due to young people
and others thinking that they had to read (or at least claim to have read)
Screwtape in order to impress others.
During this prolific period of Lewis’s writing, World War II overshadowed
all. Lewis was hosting young evacuees from London and living with shortages
and rationing. Still, the Inkings (a group of friends and writers, including J.R.R.
Tolkien. and Charles Williams) met regularly. As a wounded veteran of the First
World War, Lewis served in the home guard, made up of older men mobilized
for the expected German invasion. He was also beginning his talks over the
BBC and his tour of Army bases. His home life was somewhat chaotic; his
“adopted mother” Mrs. Moore was descending into poor health and evacuee
children were billeted at the Kilns. Lewis later used the experience with the
children as inspiration for beginning the Narnia series, and many of the
irritations he felt with Mrs. Moore may have found their way into the
mother/son sections of Screwtape.
Lewis revived the Screwtape character in a 1959 a short story for the
Saturday Evening Post called “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.” Though this later
installment featured the distinctive Screwtape writing voice, it is less spiritually
focused and much more a commentary on modern society, government, and
schools—perhaps the closest Lewis came (at least in large circulation
publications) to outright editorializing on current events.

II. Summary
The book has only the barest bones of a story; there is no dialogue, we never
learn the name of the “patient,” and not much action takes place until the last
chapter. The heart of the book is obviously not in the sketchy action, but rather
in Screwtape’s explication of hellish philosophy. The fiction occurs offstage and
 The Screwtape Letters 3

is told third-hand, distancing the reader from the characters. The form the work
follows most closely is that of the epistolary novel, but the thin plot and rising
action are secondary to the novel’s Christian apologetic.
Wormwood, a junior tempter, has been assigned a human “patient” to
bedevil and turn from God. His uncle Screwtape, a senior devil, is advising him
on the best way to achieve this goal. Wormwood’s “patient” is a young
Englishman living in London during the time of the German bombing “Blitz.”
The young man decides to become a Christian, and, as he tries to understand
and live by his faith, he meets with various difficulties, usually exacerbated by
Wormwood. He is troubled by pride and sloth, and he finds it difficult to be
charitable to his mother, his fellow parishioners, and others.
A crisis comes when the young man meets and becomes fascinated with
worldly people who would lead him away from Christ. But then he meets a
Christian girl who is, to Screwtape’s disgust, a good influence. As the war
intensifies, the young man manages to hold onto his faith despite his fear, so
that when he is killed, he is in a state of grace. He meets Christ and the Angels,
foiling Wormwood’s and Screwtape’s machinations.
A subplot concerns the superficially affectionate, yet deadly rivalry between
Screwtape and Wormwood. Lewis models Hell on contemporary corporate
culture and fascist states, with no real loyalty between denizens for whom “dog
eat dog” is a core—and literal—value. Wormwood yearns to rise at Screwtape’s
expense, and, at one point, exposes his uncle to Satan’s secret police for heresy.
Screwtape is able to smooth over his indiscretion, but Wormwood is now on his
“affectionate uncle’s” enemies list. Screwtape continues to advise Wormwood,
but he also seeks to terrorize him by veiled threats of what will happen if he
fails.
When Wormwood does let the patient slip through his fingers, Screwtape
crows triumphantly. In keeping with the rules of Hell, he is authorized to
consume Wormwood, which he presages with bloodthirsty gloating.

III. Key Themes

Satan Has No Redeeming Qualities
A concurrent project with Screwtape was A Preface to Paradise Lost, which
shared the aim of Screwtape in debunking the notion that Satan is a sort of
Promethean Hero or Faustian gentleman. Perelandra also took up this theme in
a more serious portrayal of the absolute baseness of evil. The pop-culture
perception of the Devil as some sort of mischievous adolescent, punished for his
spirit of adventure by the pompous authoritarian parent-figure of God, was a
simplification of Faust disseminated relentlessly into popular storytelling and
4 Chapter One

film. Portraying Satan as anti-hero plays right into the Devil’s hands, of
course—why not, he would seem to say to wavering souls, go along with the
dashing rebel? Why not have a little fun and take a break from the goody-
goodies and their lemony Father of Light?
But in Screwtape, (and perhaps even more shockingly so in Perelandra),
Lewis shows Satan as thoroughly evil, and evil as thoroughly ugly. The Devil is
certainly brilliant (much too brilliant for any human to ever outsmart) and he
can at will cloak himself in the personality of a debonair, educated gentleman
like Screwtape. But his real personality is inhumanly repellant and extremely
dangerous. By choosing selfishness and evil over obedience to God, he has
devolved into a monstrous creature. He is to us humans as a disturbed young
boy is to the flies he enjoys capturing and tormenting by pulling off their wings.
Likewise, Screwtape presents himself as a suave bureaucrat who has risen to
his station as senior devil by intelligence, diabolical diplomacy, and the use of
modern psychology. However, the twisted being that delights in cruelty shows
through the “company man.” We see the senior tempter’s undisguised delight in
Wormwood’s failure to capture a soul for the corporation. He is gloating,
sneering, “My poppet, my pigsnie,” reveling in his imminent, cruel revenge for
perceived slights by Wormwood. Likewise in Perelandra, the suave, articulate
persuader by day gives way to a nasty, idiotically cruel monster that slices open
frogs, even tears at shrubbery in a mindless delight in destruction.
For all of his frightening aspects, the Devil is also self-centered, vain, and
mendacious to the point of ridiculousness, and throughout the book Lewis
echoes Martin Luther and Thomas Moore (whom he quotes in epigraphs after
his preface) in suggesting that one of the best weapons against Satan and his
machinations is ridicule. He takes this idea an important step forward by
including the willingness to ridicule our own shortcomings and vanity when
they arise to bedevil us.

Satan is Not Co-Equal with God

In his preface Lewis immediately rejects the Manichean Heresy that God
and Satan are spiritual beings of equal power who struggle on a level playing
field for control of the universe. Rather than being a co-equal of God, Satan is
merely a high angel who went bad. Lewis sees the Devil and his voluntary fallen
angels as no threat to God, but a definite threat to those who, by misuse of free
will, put themselves outside God’s protection. Screwtape and his minions play
havoc with non-believers or lukewarm Christians, but those solidly in “the
enemy camp” of Christ are generally shielded from hellish machinations. God is
also able to reach into Hell itself at will, as illustrated in Letter XXII, when
Screwtape is temporarily transformed into a centipede.
 The Screwtape Letters 5

Lewis portrays Hell as neither a serious rival to Heaven nor even necessary.
The suffering humans endure at the hands of Satan and his junior devils fulfills
no heavenly plan. Hell was not created or even tolerated by God because it
serves any purpose. It is, rather, an unfortunate side effect that came with God’s
grant of free will to his angels and to humans. In Letter XIX, Screwtape relates
an “interview” between God and Satan, in which God wishes only that Satan
would see the truth and come back to the fold.

Damnation as “The Gentle Slope, Soft Underfoot”

Screwtape takes place during the worst years of the Second World War,
when civilians were being terror-bombed by planes and rockets, when many
believed that invasion and enslavement by Germany was imminent. Civilians
were dying in record numbers, men were falling by the hundreds of thousands
on the battlefield. Around the world, both evil and good men perpetrated
monstrous cruelties in the name of nationalism. Yet the focus of the book is on a
young man and his struggles with the mundane: church membership, which
friends to pick, courtship, and petty irritation with his mother, with whom he
still lives. As we learn from Screwtape, these seemingly trivial areas, not the
more dramatic evils of war and despotism, provide the most fertile ground for
sowing the seeds of damnation. Lewis also brings out this theme later in The
Great Divorce, where the sins of those in Hell—self-pity, possessiveness, petty
pride, and the like, are often technically minor.
While Screwtape takes diabolical pleasure in human misery, he often
admonishes Wormwood to get down to business—the task is to capture a
particular soul, not to delight in wars and disasters. In Letter XII, Screwtape
admonishes, “It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their
cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the
Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.” And later,
Pray do not fill your letters with rubbish about this European War. Its final issue
is, no doubt, important, but that is a matter for the High Command. I am not in
the least interested in knowing how many people in England have been killed by
bombs. In what state of mind they died, I can learn from the office at this end.
That they were going to die sometime I knew already. Please keep your mind on
your work. (Letter XXIV)

The “work” is, of course, convincing the patient to justify selfishness, to indulge
in petty vanities, to practice subtle slights, and otherwise to turn away from the
generousness of spirit with which God would have us conduct ourselves during
our time on Earth. Screwtape’s art is to take all and give nothing, if at all
possible. If a patient enjoys his sins, the tempter lacks finesse. If the patient
6 Chapter One

doesn’t even notice that all the small, self-justified sins constitute the surest path
to Hell, if it is all “soft underfoot, with no signposts or turnings,” then the soul is
all the more secure.

IV. Other Themes

The Modern World is Fertile Hunting Ground for Devils: In addition to
profound reflections on human nature, damnation, and salvation, The Screwtape
Letters (and to a greater extent, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”) are also a
vehicle for Lewis’s criticism of the modern world. Where modernity begins is
up for debate, and Lewis would perhaps place the line farther back than most
scholars. In some instances, such as the misleading presentation of debonair
devils and insipid angels in popular art, the problems go back for centuries. But
the “Modern Age” of the Twentieth Century incubates the most trouble.

The Rise of the Government and Corporate Bureaucracy: This is the model of
the “Lowerarchy” of Hell: an organization of polite functionaries who smile at
one another but can never trust anyone. Totalitarian governments are the fruition
of this ethos, wherein monstrous cruelties can be dispensed under the guise of
“organization,” “order,” “and “efficiency”; where evil is accompanied, as in the
Nazi and Soviet regimes, by well-organized committee meetings, accounting
records, and insipid memos.

The Modern Church is also a target of Lewis’s scrutiny. The current popularity
of what he calls Christianity and . . . plays right into Screwtape’s hands. In
Lewis’s day, the “and” comprised Christianity and Spelling Reform,
Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Pacifism, and the like; today, it
could be all those plus Christianity and Ecology, Christianity and Lifestyle
Tolerance, Christianity and Social Justice, and so on. In both cases the trouble
begins when the “and” part of “Christianity and” assumes the greater
importance, and the church becomes merely a vehicle for the worship of an
ideal or cause other than the love of God, the belief in Christ’s atonement for
sin, and the spreading of the gospel.

Speculations on the “Historic Jesus” is an area that Lewis, through Screwtape,

sees as a potential distraction for the modern church. As a Christian, Lewis
believed that Christ actually was fully human, subject by his own plan and
design to some limitations of human perception. As a scholar, Lewis welcomed
all historic evidence of Jesus’ time on Earth. What he objects to is the
Screwtapian device of reaching wishful thinking conclusions based on pure
speculation and skewed interpretation. When Jesus is portrayed as a
 The Screwtape Letters 7

revolutionary, or a pacifist, or a health crank to support modern secular notions,

then the “Historical Jesus” becomes another tool of Screwtape.

Modern Culture is a phenomenon upon which Screwtape and Lewis seem to

agree, though the former is delighted and the latter appalled by the modern
obsession with sex, androgyny, film crooners, the modern education system, and
consumer culture. Screwtape is delighted that “Puritanism” is an extreme
pejorative in the modern age. Lewis’s apprehension at what he saw in the
nineteen-thirties seems certainly justified by subsequent developments in the
areas he cited. This area, particularly modern education, is the prime focus of
“Screwtape Proposes a Toast.”

V. Teaching Strategies
1. The “bad is good” approach to the narrative is a wonderful device for holding
students’ attention and encouraging self-searching, which can lead to productive
open discussion sessions. Students can find common ground in discussing self-
deceptions and self-serving rationalizations practiced by most people. A “top ten
list” of the most common and hypocritical rationalizations for bad behavior can
be a diverting and enlightening class activity.

2. Another good general prompt at any point in the reading is, “What are we to
think when we find ourselves agreeing with Screwtape on anything? And what
are we to think when Lewis’s views and Screwtape’s views coincide?”

3. An excellent writing exercise is to have students invent their own tempter,

give him/her an appropriately ugly Wormwood/Screwtape/Slubgob-style name,
and have the tempter write letters to Uncle Screwtape about progress in
befuddling the student/“patient.” Sessions where students read excerpts from
these letters can be both entertaining and enlightening.

4. The letters are short but full of discussion opportunities, so a “serial” approach
to Screwtape works well in a course devoted to several of Lewis’s works. In a
sixteen-week course which covers six books, three weeks could be devoted to
each of five complete works, with two chapters from Screwtape discussed each
week in addition to the assigned book. Following are questions for each letter,
which can be presented as writing assignments or discussion prompts.
8 Chapter One

The Preface
1. What does Lewis mean on p. vii when he says he does not believe in “the
Devil”? What does he believe?

2. What are some important differences between scriptural angels and human
conceptions of angels? (pp. viii, ix)

3. Why does Lewis find Goethe’s Mephistopheles “pernicious”? Some

background and/or excerpts from the Goethe text would be useful here.

4. What does Lewis imagine to be Satan’s ultimate aim? (pp. xi-xii)

5. What is the book’s real purpose? (xii)

Preface to the First Edition

1. What are the “two equal and opposite errors” humans can fall into about the
devils? (3)

The Letters: General Questions

1. What is unusual about the point of view adopted throughout the novel? Why
did Lewis choose this point of view for this book?

2. Are there times when Screwtape seems to be speaking for Lewis as well as for
himself? Given the fact that Lewis and Screwtape are opposed on ultimate
things, how do you account for this apparent overlap or agreement?

3. Is there a story here, or do we see only thirty-one chapters on a random assort-

ment of subjects? If there is a story here, what is it?

4. What themes emerge from the book? For instance, what idea is Lewis
presenting about not only the spiritual life of humans, but that of our adversaries
as well? How do these ideas connect with one another? Give examples.
 The Screwtape Letters 9

Questions on Individual Letters

Letter I

1. Why does Screwtape discourage the use of argument in temptations?

2. Why does Screwtape distrust Reason?

3. Does Screwtape seem to think of “the real” differently than we do? How so?

4. What is the true task of tempters—to teach or to fuddle? What is the

difference?

Letter II

1. How does Screwtape see the Church as an ally to Wormwood as he seeks to

reverse his “patient’s” conversion to Christ?

2. What risks does God take with us?

3. What part does human pride have in the disillusionment for which Screwtape
hopes?

Letter III

1. What sort of picture of the human soul does Screwtape present in the first
paragraph? What is the “centre”? What would lie beyond the “centre”? (For
younger American groups, this is a good place for a side discussion on English
vs. American spelling.)

2. Why does Screwtape want Wormwood to keep the “patient’s” mind on the
“inner life”?

3. Why does Screwtape encourage Wormwood to try to make the “patient’s”

prayers very “spiritual”?

4. Who is the “elder brother” in the Enemy’s story? What is the point of this
allusion?
10 Chapter One

Letter IV

1. What tensions are beginning to surface between Screwtape and Wormwood?

2. How does Screwtape suggest the “patient” can be kept from the serious
intention of praying? What would he substitute in its place?

3. How can inducing the “patient” to focus his attention on the way he “feels” be
used to distract him?

4. How does Screwtape fail to understand God?

5. What is the one thing Screwtape fears when a person is praying?

Letter V

1. What is the reason for Screwtape’s impatience with Wormwood? Why is

Wormwood so excited about war?

2. How can a war work against Hell?

3. Why does Screwtape find God “so unfair”?

4. What is Screwtape’s view of an “undesirable death”? Why does he desire long

life, and death in a nursing home, for humans?

5. Why is “contented worldliness” one of Screwtape’s “best weapons”?

Letter VI

1. Why does Screwtape want to keep the “patient’s” attention fixed on the
future?

2. What is the usefulness to Screwtape of keeping the “patient” thinking about “a

dozen different and hypothetical fates”?

3. What is Screwtape’s “important spiritual law”? Explain the “general rule.”

Why does it work the way it does? What would be some benefits of consciously
resisting it?
 The Screwtape Letters 11

4. What sort of picture of the human soul does Screwtape present? How does it
both resemble and complete the picture in the first paragraph of Letter III?

Letter VII

1. Why do the devils want to conceal their existence for now? What might a
“materialist magician” be? Why are devils predominantly comic figures in the
modern imagination?

2. Why does Screwtape like to encourage most forms of “extremism” in human

beings?

3. What importance do the issues of patriotism and pacifism have for Screwtape?

4. How does this letter challenge current Christian thinking about politics, pa-
triotism, pacifism, and related topics?

Letter VIII

1. What is the “law of undulation”? What is the law’s spiritual importance?

2. What are some important differences between the ways in which God and the
Devil view human beings?

3. What are “peaks” and “troughs”? How does God seek to use “troughs”?

4. What use does God seek to make of periods of spiritual dryness? What use
does Screwtape want to make of these periods?

Letter IX

1. Why do the trough periods of human undulation present Screwtape with an

excellent opportunity for sexual temptation?

2. How does God view pleasure? How does Screwtape view it?

3. How does Screwtape seek to use, or pervert, pleasure in human temptation?

4. How does Screwtape want the human to think about his or her own “trough”
periods?
12 Chapter One

5. Why does Screwtape want to keep a human’s mind off “the plain antithesis
between True and False”?

Letter X

1. What sort of people are the “desirable new acquaintances” to whom

Wormwood has introduced the “patient”?

2. What sort of “false position” is the “patient” now in? Why is this important to
his spiritual life?

3. Why do “all mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be”?
What implications does this principle have for our daily conduct?

4. How have Screwtape and company transformed the meaning of the word
“Puritanism”? What spiritual significance does the transformation have?

5. How does Screwtape seek to turn even the “patient’s” spiritual aspirations
against him?

Letter XI

1. What are the categories under which Screwtape classifies the causes of human
laughter?

2. What is joy? Why does Screwtape not understand it?

3. What is fun? Why does Screwtape distrust it?

4. How does “the Joke Proper” work? What is incongruity?

5. What is flippancy? How does it tend to be spiritually destructive?

Letter XII

1. Does Screwtape seem to favor getting the “patient” to commit spectacular

sins, to rebel in an obvious and spectacular way? If not, what does he seem to
favor, and why?

2. Why does Screwtape advise keeping the “patient” dimly aware of his need to
repent? How can vague spiritual discomfort be turned to the devils’ advantage?
 The Screwtape Letters 13

3. How can “Nothing” be made strong enough in a person’s life to alienate him
from God and destroy his capacity for Joy?

4. What, according to Screwtape, is the “safest road to Hell”?

Letter XIII

1. What error did Wormwood allow? How has this worked to the advantage of
the “patient”?

2. How was the “patient” protected from Wormwood? What probably happened
on the “patient’s” walk back from the old mill?

3. What is the great danger of Pains and Pleasures from Screwtape’s point of
view?

4. What are the great differences between the way God seeks to detach us from
ourselves and the way Screwtape does?

5. How does Screwtape think even the “patient’s” repentance can be made
temporary and ineffective?

Letter XIV

1. What “alarming thing” does the “patient” seem to be doing?

2. What is the first way Screwtape suggests this development can be countered?

3. What is a more complex way Screwtape suggests of perverting the “patient’s”

new awareness from its proper end?

4. What is the state of mind to which Screwtape believes God wants to bring the
“patient”?

5. What will be God’s “whole effort” with the “patient”? Why?

Letter XV

1. What does God want humans chiefly to attend to?

14 Chapter One

2. How does Screwtape say a human should be induced to regard time? What is
problematic for humans about the past and future?

3. Under what circumstances would Screwtape allow a human to focus on the

present? Under what circumstances does he say such a focus should be attacked
“at once”?

4. In the last sentence of the letter, what recurring attitude toward humans does
Screwtape betray? Where has he let slip similar sentiments in previous letters?

Letter XVI

1. Why does Screwtape want the “patient” to visit many churches rather than
settle down at one?

2. What attitude toward a church does God desire of a layman?

3. What are platitudes? Why does God desire to render them audible to us?

4. Describe the two churches Screwtape recommends. Why would either of them
render spiritual growth difficult for their parishioners?

Letter XVII

1. What is gluttony? Distinguish between gluttony of excess and gluttony of

delicacy.

2. How can gluttony be used to introduce sin into areas of a person’s life other
than the physical appetite?

Letter XVIII

1. What is the “whole philosophy of Hell”? Does it make sense? Is it logical?

What is wrong with it?

2. What is God’s “philosophy”?

3. How does God’s “philosophy” explain the use He has made of sex as the
method of reproduction among humans?

4. What kind of relation does copulation set up between a man and a woman?
 The Screwtape Letters 15

5. Why does Screwtape have such a low opinion of being “in love”?

Letter XIX

1. What is the contradiction Screwtape fears he may have inadvertently fallen

into?

2. What does Screwtape’s denial that God really loves humanity, and the
speculations that flow from that, show us about the way he thinks? Discuss the
mixture of truth and untruth in his thought processes.

3. What is the only real interest Screwtape feels in the “patient’s” thoughts about
romantic love? What is the only thing that matters to Screwtape?

Letter XX

1. How does God protect the “patient’s” chastity?

2. Why does Hell seek to tamper with “sexual taste”? Is sexuality seen as the
end, or as simply a means to other ends?

3. What kind of pressure does the world place on women—on their self-image,
on the way they present themselves?

4. How would Screwtape comment on the present state of sexual mores in

Europe and America? Can we see a consistent pattern from 1941 to the Present?

5. What are the “two imaginary women” haunting “any human’s heart”? Should
Screwtape have written “any man’s heart” instead? Why does he include
women?

Letter XXI

1. What is the importance of getting the “patient” to make claims on life?

2. Why do we feel particularly possessive about time? What is illogical about

this feeling of possessiveness?

3. How does Screwtape view the human claim to ownership of their bodies? Is
this only Screwtape’s point of view at work, or does God (according to Lewis)
agree with this view?
16 Chapter One

4. In the last paragraph, is Screwtape speaking the truth? Does Screwtape often
say true things from the “wrong end,” as it were? Find examples in earlier
letters.

Letter XXII

1. How does Screwtape’s disgust at the dossier of the girl show how Hell
reverses all human and all Christian values?

2. What does Screwtape mean when he says that God is a hedonist at heart?

3. What makes the girl’s house particularly odious to Screwtape?

Letter XXIII

1. Screwtape writes “The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power
remains.” How have the World and the Flesh failed? What is the “third Power”?

2. Why would a spoiled saint make better sport in Hell than a debauchee or a
tyrant?

3. What is an “historical Jesus”? What use does Screwtape suggest making of

such a conception?

4. How does the “historical Jesus” differ from the Jesus of the Gospels?

5. Describe the link Screwtape would like to see made between Christianity and
politics.

Letter XXIV

1. What is “spiritual pride”? What does Screwtape mean by saying “It is always
the novice who exaggerates”?

2. How does Screwtape seek to use the hospitality and kindness of the girl and
her family to generate spiritual pride in the “patient”?

3. What is an “inner ring”?

4. What is the role of illusion and unexamined thought in leading the “patient”
into spiritual pride?