Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This passage is one of Lewis's quietest jokes and one of his sharpest points. Screwtape lays down the devils' creed — 'He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn't make sense' — and then describes an endless, ever-grander research program to crack the Enemy's 'secret.' The comedy is in the confident final clause: more theories, more data, richer rewards, worse punishments, all 'accelerated to the very end of time,' which 'cannot, surely, fail to succeed.' Copying this shows a writer how to expose a false assumption by following it to its absurd end: no amount of method can ever find an answer that the searcher has decided in advance cannot be true.
We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn’t make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still we can’t find out. Yet w...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, reconstruct Screwtape's nineteenth letter to Wormwood in sequence — his nervous retraction of the heresy that the Enemy loves, the insoluble hunt for a hidden motive, the admission that 'His throne depends on the secret,' and the turn to whether being in love is good or bad. Then name the central claim: that Hell exists only by refusing to believe in disinterested love.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape insists the Enemy's love 'must be a disguise for something else,' hiding a 'real motive.' What makes the idea of love-for-its-own-sake genuinely impossible for the devils to accept, and why does that refusal leave them hunting forever for a secret that is not there? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In an earlier letter Screwtape described the Enemy's love exactly — 'the good of one self' becoming 'the good of another' — yet here calls that love 'an impossibility.' Why can a devil understand love so well and still refuse to believe it, and what does that reveal about the difference between knowing a truth and accepting it? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Acting without any selfish motive; not seeking advantage for oneself.
Item 2
Said or repeated again, more than once.
Item 3
Meant as a joke; said in fun rather than seriously.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free