Preview
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct Screwtape's eighth letter in sequence, then identify the conviction about love and freedom toward which it builds. How can you tell the forsaken soul who still obeys, not the opening law of Undulation, is the argument's true climax?
Discussion Questions
- Screwtape grounds the 'law of Undulation' in the claim that humans are 'amphibians—half spirit and half animal,' so that 'to be in time means to change.' Why does Lewis make change a structural feature of created, temporal life rather than a symptom of failure, and what does that reframing offer a person enduring spiritual dryness? Use Screwtape's words to Wormwood to defend your reading.
- Screwtape opposes the devils, whose aim is 'the absorption of its will into ours,' to the Enemy, who wants beings 'united to Him but still distinct.' Why does Lewis make the difference between a love that absorbs and a love that preserves the other the deepest division in the book's moral universe? Use details from the letter to Wormwood to defend your answer.
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Critical Thinking
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