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Copywork
About This Passage
Screwtape solves the old puzzle of free will and divine knowledge: the Enemy is not stuck inside time guessing the future, but sees every moment in one timeless 'Now,' so He watches your free choice without causing it. Copying this passage helps a reader grasp the simple point hidden in the deep idea — that watching is not making.
How it does so is no problem at all; for the Enemy does not foresee the humans making their free contributions in a future, but sees them doing so in His unbounded Now. And obviously to watch a man do...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of Screwtape's twenty-seventh letter to Wormwood. How does Screwtape use a rigged 'heads I win, tails you lose' argument against prayer? What does he admit about how the Enemy sees free choices? And what one question does the 'Historical Point of View' keep scholars from ever asking?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's 'heads I win, tails you lose' argument counts a denied prayer as proof prayer fails, and a granted prayer as something that 'would have happened anyway.' Is an argument that treats every possible outcome as a win for the same side a real proof or a rigged trick — and how would you spot the difference? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- In his very first letter Screwtape worked to keep the man from ever asking whether an idea was true, steering him toward what was 'practical'; here the 'Historical Point of View' trains scholars to ask every question about an old book except 'whether it is true.' Reading the two letters together, why does Hell so consistently aim to retire the question 'is it true?', and what is lost when people study a thing thoroughly without ever asking if it is so? Use details from this letter and the earlier one to Wormwood to develop your answer.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
A request; an asking for something one needs.
Item 2
Doing what one is rightly told or commanded to do.
Item 3
Real and outside the mind; not just a feeling.
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Critical Thinking
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