The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis | Ben Shapiro's Book Club
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Alrighty, folks, it's Christmas break, and that seems like a really good time to bring you some great Christian content. Well, we did something here at The Daily Wire called Ben's Book Club, where we analyzed great literature. One of the pieces of literature we analyzed is one of my favorite books, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Here's what that episode sounded like. C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is all at once a deep rumination on religion, a high comedy rooted in the hilarity of both humanity's flaws and Satan's foibles, a tragedy about the nature of death, and a tale of redemption and everlasting life. Alrighty, so let's talk about The Screwtape Letters. It is a spectacularly good book.
One of the beautiful things about Screwtape Letters is it is a fictional encapsulation of much of C.S. Lewis's other work, If you've ever read Mere Christianity or Men Without Chests or any of his other essays, a lot of that ends up in the screw tape letters. And that's sort of how C.S. Lewis writes. I mean, C.S. Lewis famously writes the Narnia series. The Narnia series encapsulates a lot of his values in sort of a fantasy context.
What themes does C.S. Lewis explore in The Screwtape Letters?
He does the same thing. With regard to, he wrote a sci-fi trilogy that starts with Out of the Silent Planet, Perilandra. He does a lot of that sort of stuff. He takes his values and he sort of telescopes it into a fictional story for ease of use. Screwtape Letter is a little bit different because it's so obviously theology and obviously philosophy where it's a little bit more guarded in Narnia or Out of the Silent Planet. Here, he basically just says it straight up and it's very funny. One area where Lewis is often criticized is in not being funny enough. That when you read Narnia, there's no humor. in the Narnia books. But when you read C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, there's a lot of humor and very funny humor, actually.
So Lewis himself described writing Screwtape Letters. He actually said it was tough. He said, though I'd never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment. 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 work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. But it is wildly entertaining because he is, you know, obviously writing in the voice of one of Satan's minions. Now, I will say there's a bit of difference between sort of the Christian theology of Satan and the Jewish theology of Satan. So the Christian theology of Satan, which is that Satan is the opponent to God, almost a dualistic structure where Satan is responsible for evil in the world and is a rebel against God, fallen angel and all of this.
Jewish theology is a bit different. In Jewish theology, all of the angels, including Satan, are emissaries. The word in Hebrew for emissaries for messenger is the same as the word for angel. The word is malach. And so whenever you see that in the Bible, a messenger, that also is an angel. So when it talks about angels visiting Abraham, it uses the word malach, which is also messenger. The idea being that angels are essentially in Jewish theology, sort of single forces in the world without will. Whereas in the Christian theology, obviously Satan has a will of his own and he's rebelling against God, which makes him a really fascinating character. Lewis opens the book with a couple of epitaphs, one by Martin Luther, 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.
and one by Sir Thomas More. The devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked. Both of them are focusing on a simple fact of the matter, something that we seem to have lost in modern society, which is laughing at evil. And we've decided that it's very important to earnestly engage with bad ideas. You're not allowed to laugh at bad and damaging things anymore. If, for example, somebody says a man is a woman, an inherently hilarious idea because it's definitionally idiotic,
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:53
2
What themes does C.S. Lewis explore in The Screwtape Letters?
0:53–5:20
3
How does Lewis use humor in The Screwtape Letters?
5:20–7:59
4
What differences exist between Christian and Jewish theology regarding Satan?
7:59–18:32
5
What is the significance of the real world versus the spiritual world in the book?
18:32–24:54
6
How does Screwtape manipulate human perception of reality?
24:54–28:59
7
What role does temptation play in The Screwtape Letters?
28:59–57:47
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Ben Shapiro Show
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