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Questions about The Screwtape Letters

Comprising most of Lewis' writings.
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Postby Peepiceek » January 10th, 2008, 10:06 pm

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Letters 17-18

Postby Peepiceek » January 14th, 2008, 9:52 pm

Here Lewis defines gluttony as a preoccupation with food as a source of domestic querulousness.

What is the difference between unchastity and intemperence? My dictionary suggests that chastity only refers to sexual relations.

Screwtape mentions the notorious lustfulness of soldiers and sailors. Is this to contradict that excessive exercise can mitigate gluttony because soldiers and sailors get plenty of exercise?

What games is Screwtape talking about?

Letter 18

Screwtape says that sexual temptation is cosiderable tedium to devils. This suggests that they have no personal interest or experience with it. This suggests spirits don't have or need sex as a means of reproduction. Which leads me to the extrapolation: Screwtape can't really be Wormwoods uncle. In letter 19 we learn he can't really be affectionate either but we learn what he means by it in Letter 31.

Does unmitigated monogamy refer to Christ's extended definition of adultery in Matthew Ch. 5? My dictionary again differs, adding the qualifiers "willfull and malicious" which I'm sure many people would not require to label an act adultery. There is no such thing as innocent and accidental adultery. As Christ defined you don't have to do anything to comit adultery.

Panacea--

Lewis is saying God's real motive for inventing sex is to force people to cooperate for the continuation of the species and to make families where they will experience all manner of real pains and pleasures. Correct?

Is Lewis advocating arranged mairrage? Or marrying somebody you may not even like for sake of mairrage itself so long as it's somebody compatible?

What did St.Paul have to say on the subject?
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Letter 19

Postby Peepiceek » January 23rd, 2008, 4:24 am

This letter shows a real flaw in Screwtapes logic in not understand Love to the point of denying it exists. It's ironic that the devils strive so hard to figure out what God is really 'up to' when the truth was the first hypothesis they discarded and the entire search is based on the assumption that the truth is a lie. (I hope that makes sense.)
The 'heresy' Screwtape refers to is from Letter 14 correct?

I didn't know that moot was also a verb.

"A certain episode about a cross" Does this refer to the cross? or that Lucifer would cross God and fall.

Disinterested Love-- I am struggling with this concept (anybody feel free to jump in and help me) I think it means to love someone or something without recieving any benefit in return. I don't think that is possible but perhaps it means that the benefit you recieve is not the motivation. For example I love my baby daughter. It brings great joy to my heart to look at her smiling face. That is a benefit. No? It means to love someone but not need them. What if one becomes disabled and now his wife becomes his primary caregiver. Now that he needs her, is it no longer possible to love her disinterestedly?

"Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should reenter Heaven." --This is great news that even from the depths of Hell even the devils themselves could still be saved. So it seems a natural extension that their human victims would share the same possibility of final redemption. If you can just grasp this one simple concept, you've got a chance no matter what you've done.

overweening asceticism--

Isn't Love both irresistable and intrinsically meritorious? Is this an example of Screwtape not understanding Love?

"It is simply an occasion which we and the Enemy are both trying to exploit. " This is an example of Screwtape's tragically erroneous belief that God and the devils are equal and opposite antagonists. God's intention for Love had nothing to do with them as evidenced by the fact that it will still exist long after they all are gone.
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Letter 20

Postby Peepiceek » January 23rd, 2008, 4:42 am

I have read the first paragraph of this letter many many times and still can't quite nail down what exactly God did to forcibly end Wormwood's attacks on the patients chastity. I've ruled out smiting the patient with E.D. (or V.D. for that matter) because that would take away his free will to sin by unchastity. He must have by what ever means taken direct action against Wormword. Perhaps He used the asphyxiating cloud(letter 13). Or just lain the divine smackdown on poor Wormwood. Sent a couple of Angels down to beat the [snot] out of him tie him up in a sack and throw him into the Thames. (Why didn't He just do that from the beginning?)

Today it is a common belief that chastity is unhealthy.

What is the devils' problem with beards? Elimination of beards would mank men look like boys too?
"and there is more in that than you might suppose" Such as??

What's with the circumflex in the word 'role'? It isn't in the copy you gave me but in my Harper Collins copy. Maybe it's a typo.

Amenable--
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Postby galion » January 23rd, 2008, 3:55 pm

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Re: Letter 20

Postby Karen » January 23rd, 2008, 4:40 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Postby repectabiggle » January 23rd, 2008, 5:26 pm

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Postby Karen » January 23rd, 2008, 6:25 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Re: Letter 20

Postby Tuke » January 23rd, 2008, 6:34 pm

Last edited by Tuke on October 15th, 2008, 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"The 'great golden chain of Concord' has united the whole of Edmund Spenser's world.... Nothing is repressed; nothing is insubordinate. To read him is to grow in mental health." The Allegory Of Love (Faerie Queene)

2 Corinthians IV.17 The Weight of Glory
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Postby repectabiggle » January 23rd, 2008, 6:37 pm

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Postby archenland_knight » October 15th, 2008, 5:07 pm

Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Postby Karen » October 15th, 2008, 6:01 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Postby archenland_knight » October 15th, 2008, 8:06 pm

Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Postby Karen » October 15th, 2008, 9:30 pm

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -- Jorge Luis Borges
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Postby rusmeister » October 16th, 2008, 4:54 am

I think AK mostly hit it on beards. I would add that, as a distinctly masculine feature, getting people to see it as a "fashion" rather than a natural growth (after all, the unnatural act is shaving) is just chipping away at the differences between men and women, working on the development of a society that no longer sees any difference at all. "Vive la difference" becomes "sexism".

Also of note, in Orthodox culture the clergy pretty much always wears beards - I think you will only find beardless priests in America, and it's a result of not having an Orthodox heritage (Orthodoxy in the US is quite young, hardly 200 years old and has really seen growth only in the last few decades). In a hundred years or so, likely the beard will make a full clerical comeback in America as well, as that heritage develops.

Anything that establishes that we are different is good to me. :smile:
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