with no reference to style or tone, but rather to the near-diametric opposition between his long-known tactics and his current ones. Were I not to have read your comments or known something of your posting history, I might have thought this an attempted parody of the original Screwtape. But since I’m sure that was not your intent, I would like to know why, in your use of the character, though his voice and intent are recognizable, his methods seem so much at odds with those he expressed nearly 70 years ago.

Disclaimers first. Though I have devoured, appreciated and benefited from as much of Lewis as many alive over the last 40 years, I have also long since learned to view his theological musings through a more focussed scriptural lens than he–never coming to terms with sola Scriptura–frequently used:

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other, but the holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit; into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved. (Savoy Declaration 1.10)

Under that lens, like the little girl with the curl, although when Lewis is good he can be very very good, when he is bad he is horrid.

That said, many like myself in the center of the reformed wing will cite Lewis in his strengths. If his greatest weaknesses were rejecting Scriptural inerrancy/authority/sufficiency and the blurring the systematics of justifying grace via the imputed righteousness of Christ–and let’s face it, for some of us those are at the heart of the biggest issues that there are–his was a timely and necessary voice on the absolute, supra-cosmic uniqueness of the Son of God in the flesh, the Lord Jesus Christ, and secondarily on the eternal weight of every human decision, exposing how deeply sin is rooted in the heart. While he did not make–and should have made–more room for the free, sovereign, irresistible activity of the Holy Spirit in the converting application of grace to the undeserving sinner in his explanations of the latter–he was never a lover of TULIP–he still was able to frame every fictional moment in the light of eternity.

Returning to Screwtape, there are areas in which I strongly disagree with Lewis’ premises, especially those involving the patient’s destiny apparently hinging solely upon on his own decisions. Were the time, desire, skill and opportunity mine, I would love to attempt a Calvinist corrective parody of those areas. (No fear, the talents are lacking; ours is a work-at-home, homeschooling family as well; ’nuff said!)

My criticism of your piece, however, is due to your apparent–as I said, I don’t detect either parody or correction–extension of Screwtape’s character into the present while simultaneously, but without warning or explanation, having him use a nearly opposite approach to the souls of men.

To my point. At several points your Screwtape recites favorable tactical agendas:

Abortion, double incomes, excessive taxation, encouraging them to spend most of their free time on the Internet, the sexual revolution, a genderless society, etc. etc.!
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Corral them into faith in only the material world.
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Take the schools and take their minds! Control it from their toddlerhood all the way through their young adulthood, and then maintain them on a steady diet of friendly media and entertainment.
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feminism, abortion, race-baiting, evolutionism, gay marriage, anthropogenic global warming, class envy, materialism, reductive materialism, pornography, reality TV, atheism, agnosticism, addictions . . . the list can go on and on and on
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The glue is socialism.
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When you join all the tactics . . . abortion, pornography, reductive materialism; you name it . . . in just the right way, and then step back to see what you?ve got, you will see it is socialism.
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Foster it. Cultivate it. Encourage it. Grip the feeblest minds of their so-called thinkers and poison the well with a passion for socialism. Delude them into believing that only socialism will make them really know good from evil, and will allow them to finally achieve utopia
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Good work . . . nay, very good work on the health care reform passage in the United States.

What jumped out at me, as I’m sure was your intent, was that all of these tactics just happen to be either lifestyles or policy positions of the–political–opposition. But the original Screwtape had no interest in political factions and actions at all, other than as a guide for how to tempt individuals; he was far more, shall we say, bipartisan, and with his eye always on both sides of the factional coin:

(all quotations from the Barbour & Co., 1985 paperback)
Ch. 7 I had not forgotten my promise to consider whether we should make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist. All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged. Not always, of course, but at this period. Some ages are lukewarm and complacent, and then it is our business to soothe them yet faster asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them. Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the “Cause” is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy’s own purposes, this remains true.
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Whichever [political direction] he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Chrisitianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favor of the British war-effort or of Pacifism.
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Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours–and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you pretty cageful down here.
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Ch. 24 Pray do not fill your letters with rubbish about this European War. Its final issue is, no doubt, important, but that is a matter for the High Command. I am not in the least interested in knowing how many people in England have been killed by bombs. In what state of mind they died, I can learn from the office at this end. That they were going to die sometime, I knew already. Please keep your mind on your work.
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Ch. 25 The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. … Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

And even more cuttingly for both sides–liberal and conservative–from the later, brilliant “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”:

I see, and smell, even that under wartime conditions the College cellar still has a few dozen of sound old vintage Pharisee. Well, well, well. This is like old times. Hold it beneath your nostrils for a moment, gentledevils. Hold it up to the light. Look at those fiery streaks that writhe and tangle in its dark heart, as if they were contending. And so they are. You know how this wine is blended? Different types of Pharisee have been harvested, trodden and fermented together to produce its subtle flavour. Types that were most antagonistic to one on earth. Some were all rules and relics and rosaries; others were all drab clothes, long faces and petty traditional abstinences from wine or cards or the theatre. Both had in common their self-righteousness and their almost infinite distance between their actual outlook and anything the Enemy really is or commands. The wickedness of other religions was the really live doctrine in the religion of each; slander was its gospel and denigration its litany. How they hated each other up there where the sun shone! How much more they hate each other now that they are forever conjoined but not reconciled. Their astonishment, their resentment, at the combination, the festering of their eternally impenitent spite, passing into our spiritual digestion, will work like fire. Dark fire. All said and done, my friends, it will be an ill day for us if what most humans mean by ?religion? every vanishes from the Earth. It can still send us the truly delicious sins.

Mailloux, I would not have gone to such lengths, if any at all, for a mere literary quibble. My concern is far graver, both for you and for your many ardent admirers at this site. You periodically post deep indictments of the spiritual wantonness of the political left. I offer nothing to counter your various warnings, but I do call on you to consider the possibility that, in light of the words of Christ, your repeated reminders of true evils on one side of the political fence are no guarantee of the lack of evils on the other side–our own–and may in fact produce and strengthen an unwarranted security where none may exist.

In closing, the bookends of a recent Modern Reformation article by Michael Horton is extremely apropos:

What would things look like if Satan actually took over a city? The first frames in our imaginative slide show probably depict mayhem on a massive scale: Widespread violence, deviant sexualities, pornography in every vending machine, churches closed down and worshipers dragged off to City Hall. Over a half-century ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a town in America. He said that all of the bars and pool halls would be closed, pornography banished, pristine streets and sidewalks would be occupied by tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The kids would answer “Yes, sir,” “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full on Sunday … where Christ is not preached.
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Of course, Satan loves war, violence, injustice, poverty, disease, oppression, immorality, and other displays of human sinfulness. And of course he is displeased whenever a cup of cold water is offered to a thirsty man in Christ’s name. However, what he spends most of his time plotting is the displacement of Christ from the focal awareness, ministry, and mission of the church. Keeping unbelievers blind and believers distracted is his main strategy. Genuine renewal only comes when we realize that the church is always drawn to distractions and must always be redirected to Christ, always one generation away from becoming something other than the place in the world-the only place, in fact-where the finger points away from us to Christ, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

I encourage readers who have made it this far to read the entire article: Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way