The Great Divorce Chapters 1-5

What sort of society does one get in Lewis’ depiction of hell?  Feel free to incorporate discussion of the characters that appear, and what vices they represent.

Week 8 Reflections - Screwtape Letters 25-End, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Over the course of The Screwtape Letters, the state of the patient's soul fluctuates as he experiences a conversion, doubt, dangerous friendships, war, love, and finally, in death, oneness with God. What major strategies does Screwtape use to tempt the patient into the Devil's camp? Why do these temptations fail? In what ways can the patient be seen as an everyman?


or/and


In spite the patient's triumph over temptation, his glorious entrance to Heaven-"the degradation of it!-that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits" (p.122)-Screwtape does not lose faith in his own cause. Why do you think Lewis chose to end the book in this ambiguous light? Why is Screwtape sustained by "the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end"? (p. 124). What warning is implied in the book's ending? In what ways does The Screwtape Lettersspeak to contemporary moral and spiritual issues both within and outside of the Christian Church?


(from HarperCollins)

Week 7 Reflections - The Screwtape Letters 17-24

Lewis exhibits throughout his writings an uncanny sense of human nature and a style capable of brilliant aphorism: "Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury"; "Gratitude looks toward the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead", to cite just two examples. Where else inThe Screwtape Letters do you find universal statements about human nature? Do these statements accurately reflect not just a Christian ethos but the workings of human psychology more generally?


or


Love is an important theme in The Screwtape Letters. Describing the human idea of love and marriage, Screwtape tells Wormwood: "They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion". Screwtape is also confounded by God's love for man, which he grants as real but irrational. What is Lewis saying, in the book as a whole, about human and divine love?


(from HarperCollins Reading Guide)

Week 6 Reflections - Screwtape Letters

In the first of Screwtape's letters, he instructs Wormwood not to attempt to win the patient's soul through argument, but rather by fixing his attention on "the stream of immediate sense experiences" (p. 2). Why is immersion in the particulars of "real life" fertile ground for temptation? Why is argument a risky strategy for devils to employ? Where else do you find this opposition between the particular and the universal-between materialism and spiritual faith-in The Screwtape Letters?


or


Why is Screwtape so pleased when the patient becomes friends with a group of people who are "rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world"? (p. 37). What influence does Screwtape hope they will have on him? Why should their "flippancy" build up an "armor-plating" against God? In what ways does Lewis merge theology and social satire in this and other passages throughout The Screwtape Letters?

(Questions from HarperCollins)

Week 5 Reflections - Screwtape Letters

Screwtape advises Wormwood to tempt the unnamed Person.  ”What theme/issue does Screwtape emphasize?  Trace this theme/issue by choosing select passages in his letters which address this.