Now, with a new foreword by Lewis’s stepson, Douglas Gresham, an illustrated gift edition from HarperOne evokes the historical time and place of the book’s creation.Įarly in 1941, with Britain’s cities being pounded by the Luftwaffe, the BBC asked Lewis to deliver a series of radio lectures addressing the central issues of Christianity in the hope that they would provide comfort and hope to their beleaguered listeners. Lewis became one of the most respected and even revered books of the 20th century. Like The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity by C.S. This Sentinel page is not the place for historical or theological analyses of the Christian tradition that The Screwtape Letters apparently seeks to incorporate and elucidate, but Lewis’s book is still guaranteed to heighten our vigilance and urge that we “stand porter at the door of thought” ( Science and Health, p. Screwtape continues to be published with steady success, and is available from HarperOne in several formats. They live in a morally reversed world, where personal benefit and greed are seen as the greatest good, and neither demon is capable of comprehending or acknowledging authentic virtue when he sees it. In the 31 letters that make up the book, Screwtape gives Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining faith and promoting sin, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Lewis classic or not, you possibly know that it’s about a suave, senior demon, Screwtape, who acts as a mentor to his vulnerable but equally insidious nephew, Wormwood, tempting him and others away from God. Or as Mary Baker Eddy put it: “Mortal belief is a liar from the beginning, not deserving power” ( Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” To which Lewis adds: “Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar.”Īnd there’s no mistaking Lewis’s probable Bible source for that: “For he is a liar, and the father of it” ( John 8:44). The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.
Lewis is unmistakable: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”īut we only have to turn to the Preface of The Screwtape Letters, written at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1941, to get our bearings. They might even blame the devil for the haze! Because, as the main character, Screwtape, says: “Do not be deceived …. (“Jack”) Lewis who are unwise enough to speak or write of the devil (or engage in any way with him), might find passages from The Screwtape Letters coming hazily to mind.
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