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Copywork
About This Passage
Here Lewis compresses a whole strategy of reduction into one sardonic sentence. To neutralize a divine person, the devils recast Him as a 'great man' in 'the modern sense' — not someone who restates the universal truth, but an eccentric original who pushes one idea further than anyone else. The metaphors are precise and damning: 'standing at the terminus' of a 'centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought' pictures a mind flung outward from the centre, off balance, at the far end of a track no sane person would ride to; and 'a crank vending a panacea' shrinks Him to a street-corner salesman hawking a single cure-all. The point is that once a teacher's value is located in some 'peculiar theory' of his own rather than in the old shared truth, greatness comes to mean eccentricity, and the most original crank outranks the wisest reminder. Copying this sentence trains a writer to load an argument into chosen images and to feel how a sneer can carry a thesis.
He has to be a ‘great man’ in the modern sense of the word—one standing at the terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought—a crank vending a panacea.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the argument of Screwtape's twenty-third letter to Wormwood in sequence — the turn from removing faith to corrupting it as 'an angel of light,' the manufactured 'historical Jesus' aimed at 'something which does not exist,' the concealment of the universal moral law, the descent of worship into mere approval, the real engine of conversion, and the climactic 'rift,' 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Then state the single corruption you think organizes the whole letter, and notice how the devil's concessions keep arming the reader against him.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's prize move is 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Is the deepest danger that a person will hold a false belief, or that he will become indifferent to whether his beliefs are true at all — and why might cultivating indifference to truth be a more thorough corruption than instilling any particular error? What in the letter to Wormwood helps you decide, and why?
- In his very first letter Screwtape labored to keep the man from ever asking 'Is it true?', diverting him toward what is 'practical' or familiar; here, generations on, the aim is stated outright — 'Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.' Reading the two letters together, is the constant of Hell's strategy better described as promoting falsehoods or as retiring the very question of truth — and why does the distinction change how one should resist it? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood, and explain why your reading is stronger.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
To instruct and build up, especially morally or spiritually.
Item 2
A firm, often one-sided supporter of a party or cause.
Item 3
Real and solid; considerable in amount or importance.
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Critical Thinking
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