104 - Introduction to The Screwtape Letters

But there's some reasons why I'm inserting the Screwtape Letters here, and that'll become evident as we really get into that presentation. You know, in fact, let's just go ahead and do it. So here's my somewhat extended introduction to the Screwtape Letters.

a very avid reader. But this is a book that I read. This is a book that really stuck with me, and as I've revisited it in recent years, I've only come to appreciate it even more and recognize the just the reality the wisdom that it holds for us. And I don't bring this up very often except for when it actually has some used to do so. But I

have a PhD in theology. I've done a lot of reading, and I really believe that I could scrap eighty percent of the reading that I did for my schooling and replaced out the few Lewis books, and I'd probably be better off for it. I think that most people would. Now. Obviously, I'm not talking about the you know, the the substantial classic text. I'm not talking about your your Augustine or

your Aquinas or things like that. But as far as the reading I've done from authors to the last one two hundred years or so, most of that has just come and gone, and I don't think that I'm really worse off for leaving it behind. Is one thing that separates Lewis out from the academic vortex, from institutional academia is that even though he was a brilliant scholar in his own right, he really was a lover of ideas. He was a lover of wisdom, he was a lover

of stories, he was a lover of learning. And that's different than somebody who is simply out to make a name for themselves, somebody who's simply out to create a platform.

And Lewis often points us out that institutional academia has a tendency to fall in love with its own reason, to fall in love with abstraction in a way that separates it out from real human experience and causes it to really fall into the same sin of Satan, which is the fact that he fell in love with his own reason, his own ability to reach forward, as Weston Or the Unman told us in Perilandra, as with Tolkien's Morgoth, he's out in the void looking for the imperishable fire

that dwells with Eru Luvatar alone. And this is the direction that academia tends to make. In fact, it's really where it pushes young academics to go right. You have to find some niche subject that nobody's ever written about. That way you can get your name attached to this small little corner of learning that odds are nobody else is ever going to look at again. But at least

you've got your name on something. And so then you have to continue to do this again and again and again, right, publisher perish, as they say, And so you're constantly forced to innovate, to reach into the void in order to create a platform for yourself. Whereas you go to someone like Lewis, I think we really see somebody who loves ideas, someone who loves stories, somebody who loves learning. And I mean that is what a true philosopher is, right the

Phileo Sophia, This is the love of wisdom. A true philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not just somebody trying to make their voice heard, to speak their truth or whatever nonsense we want to use there. In fact, we're going to see that it is that authentic love, that pursuit of genuine humanity that makes Screwtape so insightful, so convincing,

so helpful. In fact, he says in the nineteen sixty one prologue that some people assume that he was able to write Screwtape because he's had such advanced learning and has engaged in such complicated thought concerning theology and morality, that sort of thing. But his response is no, The reason why he's able to write so well about temptation is he knows what it's like to be tempted. He knows the wickedness of his own heart, and that's what allows him to project this into the demon screw Tape.

And so what we see in Lewis is this unique blend of complicated, difficult, dense learning that is really brought into an authentic spirit who understands himself and is seeking to better understand the world around him and ultimately is trying to move up the chain of being to God himself. Now, that doesn't mean he was perfect, doesn't mean he doesn't have any areas where we can criticize him. In fact, I think that we most certainly should, and so I'm

not arguing for his canonization by any means. But I do think that we see a unique individual here, and I think that this really does come out in Screwtape letters. Now, before we jump into the prologue and some related information. I do want to go ahead and talk about some of the supplemental reading that I'm recommending to you. I really like this innitated edition of The Screwtape Letters. It

has very esthetically pleasing print and formatting. It has a lot of notes that go into some historical and cultural background information for things that might have been lost to us since the time that this is written. He goes into a lot of cross references with other of Lewis's works, provides a lot of literary backgrounds for different references that are made in the Letters, and so it's very helpful.

It looks really nice. I strongly recommend it next time recommending Breton Dickison's article a cosmic find in the Screwtape Letters. Don't talk more about that and just a little bit, but that link is provided in the supplemental reading page. Also, I'd like to recommend Lewis's a preface to Paradise Loss. Now,

even if you've never read Paradise Lost. Even if you never read Paradise Lost, which you should at some point, but even if you don't, this is a book that can stand on its own, and you would be better for picking up and reading it through. It provides a great introduction to Louis's literary criticism, gives a lot of really helpful insights regarding literary form, form of poetry, form of stories, that sort of thing different forms of epic poetry.

Until we get some comparisons in contrast between Milton with Virgil and Beowulf and Homer. And in fact, I'm also going to recommend this for the upcoming Beowulf and Boethiast study, and so if you're going to take that course as well, then this is definitely something that you should pick up. But also he's going to obviously set us up for Paradise Loss, and so he's going to give us some

good thematic analyses, including the nature and activity of Satan. Now, even in the nineteen sixty one prologue to Screwtape Letters, Lewis does have some criticisms of Milton and the way that Satan is portrayed, but nonetheless he obviously sees great value in Paradise Loss and he does pull some inspiration from it. And so as we think about Lewis's take on the devil, his take on the demonic, take on

this battle between good and evil. I think that this would be and I fit you greatly, even if you never get to the actual Paradise loss by Milton, and so do yourself a favor and pick this up.

though I don't hear them discuss nearly as often. It has a great detailed index for looking up where letters talk about certain subjects, certain people, certain of Lewis's own books, which is I think particularly helpful for a study like this. And so pick up a copy of the Letters of C. S.

to his popular level writing. This is another epistolatory novel, just like the Screwtape Letters, and so it's all told through the letters of C. S. Lewis writing to his friend Malcolm. But unlike Screwtape this really is an upbuilding work. And so it's all about the Christian life, focusing on prayer, but he deals on a number of different topics. I think that this is just full of so many gems

of wisdom of Christian insight. I would strongly recommend that after you read Screwtape Letters, and you know, maybe it on time while this study is going on, maybe you do, but get a copy of Letters to Malcolm. It provides a great upbuilding parallel to what we get in Screwtape. It's the closest thing we have to a sequel, I suppose, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay, so that's the supplemental reading. Let's go ahead and take a look at the opening of Screwtape Letters. All right,

So the Screwtape Letters introduction. First thing I think worth talking about briefly is the fact that it's dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, but we're not really told why, and Tolkien doesn't even seem to really know why. In the annotated Screwtape letters, we are told that this was during the peak of their friendship, and so, you know, maybe Lewis just wanted to dedicate this work to his friend just out of

appreciation for Tolkien. I don't know if there's some kind of comedic element here, and if maybe Lewis knew that Tolkien wouldn't really appreciate this book, which by the way, he did not. I've heard it theorize that maybe there's a philological interest here that you know, a few times Screwtape talks about the value of language and of corrupting language over times, or making things more confusing, emptying out words of their meaning, and maybe that would have some

particular interest to Tolkien. Or maybe there's something really authentic and really genuine going on here. Lewis is very clear that Tolkien was instrumental in his conversion to Christianity, and so maybe as Lewis talks about the nature of temptation then and by contrasts the nature of the Christian life, is giving some price Tolkien some appreciation to Tolkien for the role that he had in Lewis's own conversion to Christianity,

his beginning of the Christian life, and to move. There's something like that there, but we don't really know for sure now. In a letter that Tolkien wrote to Michael Tolkien just shortly after Lewis's death, Tolkien writes, also, I was rightly amused to be told that Lewis himself was never very fond of The Screwtape Letters, his bestseller. He dedicated it to me. I wondered why, now I know,

says they. And so Tolkien seems to say that, okay, maybe Lewis dedicated to him because Lewis himself didn't like it very much, and maybe there's some kind of joke there. I don't know. It's interesting to think about. I don't think we have any clear answers here right now looking at the origins for Lewis's idea of the letter. And this comes from a letter written to his brother Warren. He writes, Humphrey came up to see me last night, not in his medical capacity, and we listened to Hitler's

speech together. I don't know I found weaker than other people, but is a positive revelation to me. How while the speech lasts, it is impossible not to waver just a little. I should be useless as a schoolmaster or a policeman. Statements which I know to be untrue all but convinced me at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly. The same weakness is why I'm

a slow examiner. If a candidate with a bold, mature handwriting attributed Paradise Loss to Wordsworth, I should feel a tendency to go and look it up, for fear that he might be right. After all, I've been a church for the first time for many weeks owing to the illness, and considered myself invalid enough to make a midday communion before the service was over. One could wish these things came more reasonably. I struck with an idea for a book which I think might be both useful and entertaining.

It would be called as One Devil to Another, and with consists of letters from an elderly retired douvil to a young devil who had just started work on his first patient. The idea would be to give all the psychology of temptation from the other point of view. So I think it's worth considering that Lewis received this inspiration for the Screwtape letters a day after listening to and reflecting on his experience of listening to this speech by

Adolf Hitler. He notes that when he's listening to the speech, he found it rather compelling, not because it's true, and you don't misunderstand Lewis is saying anything that he's not saying here. Obviously he speaks extensively about the evils of the Nazis, about the evils of Hitler, and so there's no sympathy for Nazism here, just the opposite. He's recognizing the demonic power that's at work here, that we're dealing

with strong rhetoric. We're dealing with convincing rhetoric that is not attached to reason, that's not attached to truth, that's not attached to goodness. This is sophistry. It is a counterfeit reason, and that is not actually reason at all. It's sentiment. It's bodily sensation, giving the rise of a sense of causation, a sense of reason. Ultimately, it is a counterfeit and that's because evil is by definition irrational because reason is tied into the reality of existence itself.

All things were made through the Word, All things were made through the logoss of the Father, which is Christ. There's an orderliness, there is a reason that undergirds all of created reality. And as we approach reason, we are approaching that by which we reason, which ultimately is God himself. And so when rhetoric is not moving us in the direction of the beatific vision, but when rhetoric is moving us toward the miserific vision, moving us downward in the

direction of hell, we're actually approaching non being. We're engaging in something that is irrational. This is why we're going to see this continual theme throughout the Screwtape letters, as screwtape advice, as Wormwood not to engage in any kind of debate or any kind of teaching exercise with his patient, but he's going to lead him into not thinking, into fusion, into a anti reason position. And we see this play out in Perilandra. Sometimes the unman is telling these stories

that don't have a clear meaning behind it. They sort of evoke these sentiments of freedom and liberation and heroism, when in reality, you know Ransom notes that if you're actually looking at the reason that ties all these together, we're actually getting stories of he says, perverts and witches. That's only when you're applying reason and you're trying to see things clearly. When you're just listening to all these stories, they give you these sentiments of liberation, these sentiments of

noble sacrifice and of heroism. And so we get that kind of rhetoric that moves against reason, But we also just get that remember that annoying rhetoric where the unman's just repeating Ransom, Ransom, Ransom. Henry says, what is it? And then the unman says nothing, Ransom, Ransom, Ransom. And I think that both tactics are really doing the same thing through these stories as well as through just this annoying, repetitive naming of Ransom. He's causing the lady, he's causing Ransom,

to close themselves in. And so in the case of the stories, it's this closing in of self referential so called heroism, where you're acting not for the good but ultimately for your good. You're separating yourself from the good. You're closing yourself in. So too, in the annoying rhetoric. He's causing Ransom to fixate on his emotional response to his environment rather than focusing on the mission that he has before him. In both cases, the un man is

trying to get his adversaries to close themselves in. And this is going to be a pretty common theme in Lewis, especially in his talk of the diabolical, his talk of evil, especially if you already have the great divorce in your head. This idea that the more that you move toward evil, the more that you get shut in, the smaller you become.

Whereas the more that you move toward what is good, the more that you move toward God, more that you move toward the fulfillment of all things, the more expansive you become as you give yourself over in love. And so the beatific vision causes you to become bigger than you are. The miserific vision causes you to become smaller than you are. It's not so good. Move into the prologue, starting with the original. He says that there are two equal and opposite errors into which our rays can fall

about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors inhil a materialist or a magician with the same delight. And so if the devils want us to either actually they don't exist and play the materialist, or they want for us to become hyperfixated on them,

to glorify them and to play the magician. And something that Lewis shows us in this book and throughout the Ransom series is that the materialists and the magician are more or less the same thing, that they are both fueled by the demonic, that both are looking to close themselves in from reality and to control the environment around them. In fact, he says in The Abolition of Man, for the wise men of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution

had been knowledge, self discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men. And so, in other words, the materialist, scientists and the magician are both doing the same thing. They're trying to subdue reality to the will of man. And Lewis does an incredible job in the Ransom series of demonstrating this reality, we see how west End the physicists really turns into the demonic spiritualist from

between out of the Silent Planet and Perlandra. We're going to see this theme, this natural relationship between the materialists and magician take even more explicit form when we get to that hideous strength. And so this is an idea that we're going to very much see at play in the Ransom series. The materialists and the magician are both doing fundamentally the same thing. They aren't becoming more expansive in their love for that which is good. They're simply

trying to close themselves off. They're trying to consume reality for their own individualistic ends. Okay, moving forward, he says that the history of the European War, accept in so far as it happens now and then, to impinge upon the spiritual condition of one human being was obviously of no interest to Screwtape. So I think this is worth thinking.

Look at here that Screwtape is going to warn Wormwood against getting too excited about the fact that there's war going on, right, don't get excited about the carnage, don't get excited about these external realities and external fears that a company wore. Because it's not external realities that are going to save or condemn a soul. It's the internal realities at play here. It's the direction of the soul. It's the presence or absence of faith, which external circumstances

don't necessarily create in one direction or another. If anything, wartime tends to make people more aware of their immortality, which can actually cause them to move toward faith. And of course we see this happen that during times when mortality seems to be in the news a lot more than others. A lot of times this is when we see a rise in movements toward faith, at least superficial,

if not substantial. And this is absolutely in line with Christian wisdom, the idea that freedom is not determined by external realities, but freedom is determined by the right ordering of the soul in harmony with the reality, which ultimately means that it's in harmony with who God is and the order that He established within created reality. And so freedom is an internal condition related ultimately to God rather

than a state of external circumstance. And so I've talked about Boetheists before, and I imagine i'll probably talk about him again, that bo Atheists who is falsely accused of sedition and then he find himself imprisoned, awaiting ultimately his execution. He's able to discover freedom not because of the spinning wheel of fortune that's landed him here, but because he's learned to properly relate himself to fortune itself, and ultimately

he's learned to properly relate himself to providence. And that is where we discover freedom, not through external circumstance. External circumstances can never provide or diminish your true freedom. And this makes you think of something Augustine said regarding the real evils of war in Contrafaustom, where we get what's been called his just a war doctrine. Augustine says, what is the evil in war? Is it the death of some who will soon die in any case that others

may live in peaceful subjection. This is mere cowardly dislike and not any religious feeling. The real evils in war are love of violence, revel vengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power and such like, And so for Augustine, the real evils of war it's not the fact that some people die. People are eventually going to die anyways, and so the fact that people die,

it's actually not connected to war itself. Now, it might cause people to die sooner rather than later, but as Screwtape knows, that is not necessarily in itself a bad thing. The real evils of war deal with internal realities that they might stem up within us, that which we already have, a love for violence, a love for cruelty, for just being hostile toward other people, lust for power, These things which can be fanned up into bigger flames in wartime.

These things are the real evils of war, not the war itself, and I think screw Tape would hardly agree with that. Now, moving to the nineteen sixty one prologue, Lewis says that he's often asked the question, do you believe in an actual devil? And he says, okay, If by devil, if you mean something that's equal with God will then no. And so he's clarifying against some of these popular understandings of the devil. He says that there's

no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain a perfect badness opposite to the perfect goodness of God. For when you have taken away every kind of good thing, intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself, there would be none of Him left. And so, as I've said before, reality itself, a substance being, hinges on God. For that reason, being itself is good, and so evil is a movement toward non being, but can never actually

become non being. The devil, in that he exists and has intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence, is good ontologically regarding his basic that he exists, these are good things. However, his evil is that he uses these good things provided and upheld by God for bad ends. He directs his will, he directs his attention away from God rather than to God. And that is the nature of evil. As Augustine says in the City of God, this then is the original evil.

We have turned our hearts away from that light that would make us a light if we would set our hearts upon him. And so what evil is is a continual movement away from being. But as long as you have something that's moving, you have something that exists, And anything that exists is good. In that it exists. Evil deals with the orientation of the soul. It deals with the orientation of the power that something has. But the power that it has to do evil is itself good,

and I think that's something worth emphasizing. The devil has no power to create, only to bend, only to corrupt, only to pervert. And the preface to Paradise Lost. C. S. Lewis says that Satan's revolt is entangled in contradiction. From the very outset. He wants hierarchy and does not want hierarchy. Throughout the poem, he is engaged in songing off the branch he is sitting on, not only in the quasi political sent already indicated, but in a deeper sense still.

Since a creature revolting against a creator is revolting against the source of his own powers, including even his power to revolt, he has become more a lie than a liar, a personified self contradiction, this doom he has brought upon himself in order to avoid seeing one thing, he has almost voluntarily incapacitated himself from seeing at all. So evil

is a wilful blindness. It's a turning away from that by which you turn, that's what we find in the devil, and that's what we find in all who follow the miserific path. Now, because the devil has this wilful disorientation, he's not able to see himself in proper context. He doesn't see himself in proper relation toward that which is above and beyond and ultimately more significant than him. And so for that reason, the devil takes himself very seriously.

Pride is the original sin Satan, said Chesterton fell through a force of gravity. Must picture Hell's estate, where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self importance, and resentment. And of course, Chesterton also famously said that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. And it's because they recognize their context.

They recognize the fact that they are part of a broader reality that is more significant than them. And because they're able to recognize their proper station in the grand cosmic hierarchy, well, they're able to not close in on themselves, but to expand themselves outwardly, and in so doing they are freed from the gravity that Satan experiences that pulls

him ever downward. And this connects to the two quotations were given at the end of the prologue, one from Martin Luther the best way to drive out the devil, if you will not yield to text of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. And also Thomas Moore, the devil the proud spirit cannot endure to be mocked. I think it's also worth noting that Lewis here he quotes from Martin Luther as well as Thomas Moore, from a Protestant as well as a Catholic.

I think this speaks well to his mere Christianity mindset. I do appreciate Lewis's continual attempts at being ecumenical. Here, I think that what he's doing in giving us these two quotations from these two sources is he's demonstrating the fact that Catholics and Protestants have a common enemy, namely the Devil. Now Here he explains why his vision of Hell and of the lower archy takes a bureaucratic form.

He says, the greatest evil is not now done in the sordid dens of crime that Dickens love to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered, moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clean carpeted, warmed, and well lighted offices by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks, who do not

need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern. And this I think is brilliant. Right, when we tend to think of abject evil, we tend to think of the concentration camp, we tend to think of the labor camp. However, these are things that are ultimately created, not spontaneously, but

but they're created by bureaucrats, They're created by politicians. They're created by people who tend to not get their hands dirty themselves, but who organize that hands would be made dirty. And we're going to see this image play out in fairly clear terms when we get to that hideous strength. And so this is I think a good lead up to what we're going to see there. And then he talks a little bit about what it is that's driving the demonic, what is the inspiration, what is the ambition

for these creatures of hell? And he says that you know, he's envisioning, in his imagine of telling of this, that demons ultimately seek to literally consume each other. We see that play out in the screwtape letters. And he's using this imagery, he's using this imaginative device in order to get at something real. And he says, it is I feign for this that Devil's desires human souls and the souls of one another. It is for this that Satan desires all of his followers, and all the sons of Eve,

and all the hosts of heaven. He dreams of the day when all shall be inside him, and all that says, I can say it only through him. And so remember, evil seeks to close itself inside. And ultimately, what evil wants to do is close everything inside. This is what pride does. It wants to bring everything into its own orbit. And so Satan, as the Arkond of Thlochandra, doesn't want to participate in the course of the heavens. That's ultimately

trying to move in the direction of God. But what he wants to do is to orient the heavens toward himself. And so, you know, we tend to say that the Medievals put Earth at the center of the cosmos, but really that is how the devilhood wants to see it. And Lewis talks about this and discarded image and elsewhere he says that a better way to look at it is not actually to put Earth to the center. But Earth is something like on the periphery of the cosmos.

It's outside the city walls, as it is outside of the heavens, outside of the heavenly chorus. And so in reality, in this model, the Earth is at the periphery of the cosmos and should strive to move toward the center, which is God. But the devil wants to move everything in his own orbit, rather than recognizing that which he necessarily does orbit. And this reminded me of a passage in Perlandrum in which we're told there was no doubt

a confusion of persons in damnation. What Pantheus falsely hoped of heaven bad men really received in hell they were melted down into their master. As a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring. The question whether Satan or one whom Satan had digested is acting on any given occasion has in the long run no clear significance. And so Lewis talks about how as we fulfill our potential, as we achieve our ideal in God, we actually become more of ourselves.

We become more of who we are meant to be. We give ourselves away that we might actually be given back. We surrender Isaac that he might be more fully his. We die to self that we might become ourselves. And I love this statement from Kirkeguard from one of his journals, in which he says, by God's help, I shall become myself. Whereas we move away from God, when we move toward Satan as Master, we don't become more ourselves. We simply

become more of Satan and an extension of Satan. Because remember, reason itself is melted down and you were, and reason is necessary in order to have particulars. If you don't apply reason to the world, then all you have is one undifferentiated, massive stuff, and this is what we've become when we move away from reason and we move into satan.

Now I already mentioned this, but he says that some people have paid me an undeserved compliment by supposing that my letters were the right fruit of many years study in moral and aesthetic theology. They forget that there is an equally reliable, though less creditable, way of learning how temptation works. My heart, I need no others show with

me the wickedness of the ungodly. And he notes that this is why The Screwtape Letters was actually relatively easy for him to write, even though in the end he didn't like it, because he had to really fall into his worst tendencies. To fall, all you have to do is to let go, and so it's not difficult for him to do. But he didn't like kind of letting his guard down. He didn't like sinking into this element of his existence. You know, Lewis likes to write upbuilding accounts.

He likes to write positively about how we move toward the Beatoch vision, how we move toward what reality fundamentally is, and obviously this book is trying to get us to do that. But by first falling and demonstrating the inversion of reality, and that is taxing. It's got to be spiritually taxing, it has to be mortally taxing. And so one hand, this is easy to write, but he don't

necessarily like writing it. Now, he was asked why he didn't write a sequel to this book, You know, why don't you write a companion book that comes from the other side, an angelic correspondence, And to that he says that ultimately he just wasn't qualified to do that. He says that everything about it would have to smell of heaven, and that's just not something that he felt he was qualified to achieve. It's much easier for him to give an account of evil than it is to give a

first hand account of goodness. And I think that demonstrates a nobility, a great Christian humility. Now that being said, we do have from one of his notebooks a small little fragment that Brenton Dickieson has called the archangel fragment. And this seems to be a short lived attempt at providing an angelic correspondence. And so this is all we have from this. And so this is what Lewis said, I assume, speaking as one angel to another. For this,

my dear, is the true delight. To take a creature whom, if the King permitted in our own will, were so strangely perverted, we could, with one touch of the little finger, turn into nothingness, even as that creature could spoil the down on a butterfly's wings. A creature so short lived that its whole mortal life rushes past us in a moment. A creature so feeble and understanding that only by gazing long and reverently into its mind can we discern its

difference from the brutes. To take such a puppet, such an all but nothing, to hold back our strength and nurse its tiny freedom, as one who nurses a little spark into flame, To bear with its follies, to love its deformities, to remake every day and hour what it destroys, to watch, to prune, to bear it as a a woman bears a man in her womb, and all in hope of the day when it shall be exalted beyond its nature, against its nature, into something not only our

equal but our superior, to train the infant God ever waiting for the day when we can reverence it, who is now too blind to reverence us that my child is the real joy, the endless fascination, the lovely irony, the imperishable reward. And so I don't know, And maybe, and probably Lewis was right in saying that he's not qualified to write from an angel's perspective. But I think we see something that has the potential here to be something,

whatever that something is. And I think we see something like this play out when we see Malacandra and Perilandra take their place beneath tor and Tennadril in this hierarchy, when Torrentendral, who are originally below the Oarsu in the hierarchy, now enter into their glory. Now they're exalted above to the point where Torrent Tennadol are able to decide what Perilandra is going to do next. Is you going to just go off into the heavens or is she going

to stay there to serve them as their agent. And this of course speaks to scripture when we're told one hand and the Psalms that we were made a little bit lower than the angels, and then Paul says to the Corinthians that we are going to judge the angels and so I think that we see this play out pretty remarkably in this prose here that Lewis gives us and be interesting to see where he would have gone with this, But of course he didn't, and so we'll

never know. This is all that we have. But the closest that we do get to a positive counterpart to Screwtape Letters would probably be letters to Malcolm, as I've already mentioned, and so it's not anything like the correspondence of Angels to Angels, but it does give us this

upbuilding epistolatory novel. I think it provides a good follow up to Screwtape that follows the same format but leads us in an upbuilding, positive direction, And so I do recommend that you read that after you finish Screwtape at some point. And then lastly, for this video, I've kind of already mentioned this here and there, but you may be asking the question, why are we doing screwtape right

now and not starting on that hideous strength after finishing Peralandra. Well, when I first read Perilandra, I just felt like Screwtape naturally belonged here. I thought that Screwtape from Paralandra together would form a pretty powerful study of the demonic of evil, of our experience of temptation. And then I came to discover Breton Dickieson's article a cosmic find in the Screwtape Letters, and realized that in Lewis's mind, Screwtape Letters originally belonged

in the Ransom verse. As Dickieson discovered that in an early handwritten prologue to the Screwtape Letters, Ransom was actually the person who discovered and intercepted this correspondence from Screwtape, which was originally written in Old Solar. And so we get this extra paragraph to the original prologue in this handwritten draft from Lewis. And so this is what was in that original handwritten draft that is not in the original

prologue as published. And so Lewis wrote. But it is, however, too late to make any mystery of the process whereby doctor Ransom learned the language. The original of these letters is written in what may be called Old Solar, the promtive speech of all rational creatures inhabiting the Solar system. How Ransom came to learn it, I have already related

in a book called Out of the Silent planet. But when I wrote that book, he and I were both mistaken in supposing it to be the local speech of a single world, that world which its inhabitants called malacantr We now know better, But there is no time within this preface to discuss the problems of extraterrestrial philology involved. But it should be added that the translation is necessarily

very free. The capital letters used for pronouns when they refer to that being whom Scrooptape describes as the enemy are, for example, a most ingenious device of ransoms for representing a quite different and involuntary phenomenon in the original. On the other hand, many words mentioned where screw Tape is discussing what he calls the philological arm were already English. For naturally, devils whose terrain is England are well skilled

in the language of their proposed victims. Even though this didn't make it into the published version, in my mind, in my heart, this is still canon at least had canon, if nothing else. Being a big fan of the Ransom series, I love thinking that this is part of the same story. But also I just think that it fits really well. It gives us some more insight into what was going on in the mind and the strategy of the young Man.

It also connects well with some themes that we're going to see in That Hideous Strength, and so I think that right between Paraalandra and That Hideous Strength is a perfect place for reading and for studying and for really thinking deeply about the screw Tape letters. Also, as a side note, I think that we're going to see some connections to the Dark Tower as well, which we are

going to discuss once we finish the Ransom series. And so even though I'm not considering that core reading, I do think it's something that is worth reading and something that we are going to discuss, and so if you're able to make it around to it, then I do recommend that you give that a read or give that a listen at some point before we get to the end of That Hideous Strength. But that's it for now. In the next fit, I'm going to go through letter

by letter and provide some thoughts along the way. But until then, God speed. All right, thank you for listening or watching if you're over on YouTube. As a reminder, the all that we do here through Mythic Mind on multiple podcasts, the show The substack, which has it's been a little bit slow lately, but we'll get back there soon.

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