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Copywork
About This Passage
This is the letter's theological core, refuting the easy idea that war is a great chance to destroy faith. The argument unfolds in stages — a rival devil's claim dismissed, a doctrine cited, a qualification, an exception — modeling how a full paragraph can build a reasoned position. The clinical 'diffused suffering over a long period' and the bureaucratic 'Enemy headquarters' reward study of how cold diction can carry weighty matter.
I know that Scabtree and others have seen in wars a great opportunity for attacks on faith, but I think that view was exaggerated. The Enemy’s human partisans have all been plainly told by Him that su...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary of the fifth letter, then identify the single most important sentence in it. Explain why that sentence matters to the book's argument about suffering and the soul.
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape's rebuke turns on a precise distinction: Wormwood is 'not delirious' but 'only drunk' on the 'wine' of human anguish. What does this metaphor of intoxication reveal about the danger even to a tempter of confusing the pleasure of evil with its purpose, and why does Screwtape insist 'duty comes before pleasure'? Point to the passage and weigh it.
- Screwtape concedes that the Enemy 'makes prizes' of those who 'were following the best they knew,' a standard he finds 'monstrously sophistical.' What theory of moral worth — judging the will's sincerity over the act's correctness — does this concede, and why might it be defensible to honour an honest, mistaken life? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to develop both sides.
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Countless or extremely large numbers of things.
Item 2
Something that restores energy or gives relief.
Item 3
To tease by offering something desirable then withholding it.
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Critical Thinking
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