PWJ: S4E46 – TSL 23 – “In Christ Alone”

Concluding that they’re not going to be able to extricate religion from the patient’s life anytime soon, Screwtape decides to adopt a new strategy. By encouraging him to accept a different vision of Jesus, and by wedding the his faith to politics, they’re going to turn the patient into a Pharisee!

S4E46: “In Christ Alone” (Download)

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Timestamps

00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:13 – Welcome
00:37 – Chit-Chat
02:53 – Song-of-the-week
03:55 – Quote-of-the-week
04:47 – Drink-of-the-week
06:47 – Patreon Toast
07:19 – Chapter Summary
08:03 – Discussion
49:35 – Unscrewing Screwtape
51:02 – “Last Call” Bell and Closing Thoughts

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

In this week’s letter from Screwtape, he talks a lot about the “historical Jesus”, how the devils come up with a new interpretation of Jesus under new ideological lines every thirty years or so. When David was preparing for that episode, he was put in mind of Trent Horn’s book Counterfeit Christs, so he invited him onto a Skype Session to talk about his book and how Lewis’ Trilemma helps us discover the real Jesus…

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

• Today I’m joined by a special guest co-host, our audio engineer and host of Forte Catholic, Taylor Schroll. 
• At the time of recording, we are now only a few away from having one hundred supporters on Patreon. I just want to say that we’re going to send out a gift to our 100th supporter on Patreon, so if you’ve thought about joining but haven’t quite pulled the trigger, now might be a good time to do that!

Song-of-the-week

• In today’s letter from Screwtape, there are two themes, the reimagining of Jesus under different ideological lines, and the usurping of faith by politics. I had quite a few choices:
  • Just give me Jesus by Unspoken
  • Only Jesus by Casting Crowns
  • Jesus Messiah by Chris Tomlin
• But in the end I went with In Christ Alone by Stuart Townsend, since it both speaks about who Jesus is and affirms that it’s in Him we put our trust (as opposed to earthly hopes):

In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid Ground
Firm though the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ Alone

Quote-of-the-week

• Since there has been a lot of talk in the media and from pulpits about the relationship between Christianity and politics, I thought we’d have the quote-of-the-week from the section in this letter where Screwtape unpacks his Hellish point-of-view on the subject…

“….our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means… The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

Drink-of-the-week

• The drink-of-the-week is Balvenie Double Wood (17 Year)
  • Color: Deep amber
  • Nose: Honey, malt, vanilla, unripe bananas, and green apples
  • Body: Creamy
  • Palate: Dried fruit, malt, vanilla, cinnamon, and cloves
  • Finish: Lengthy, with softly spiced oak
  • Score: 88
• Taylor was drinking water, but I forgave him.
• I mentioned the end of a tax war between the US and UK on whisky.

Patreon Toast

• We have a new Gold-level Patreon supporter to toast. Today we are toasting Matt B:
  • Matt, may the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you, may you put your trust in Him and may He give you peace. Cheers!

Chapter Summary

• Onto the one-hundred word summary for Letter #23, which was first published in The Guardian on 3rd October 1941…

Screwtape has a new strategy – he will corrupt the patient’s faith and turn him into a Pharisee! He will begin by getting the patient to focus on the “historical Jesus”, which is the most recent reimagining of Christ. (This separates the patient from reality and reduces Christ to simply a teacher who taught whatever ideas are currently fashionable) Then all they have to do is allow the patient to take these ideas to the political arena and to view his Christianity as a means to these political ends, rather than an end in itself.

Chapter Summary of Letter #23

Discussion

Charges dropped!

• In the previous letter, we heard about the new lady in the patient’s life – a Christian girl of great virtue. Needless to say, Screwtape wasn’t happy! Well, today he’s even less happy! He writes…

Through this girl and her disgusting family the patient is now getting to know more Christians every day, and very intelligent Christians too.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• I referenced this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

• We spoke about how this relates to The Benedict Option.

Religion gone wrong

• Screwtape says that, since it’s going to be impossible to remove spirituality from the patient’s life for some time, they must instead corrupt it:

The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power remains. And success of this third kind is the most glorious of all. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

There is a rich theological tradition of The World, the Flesh and the Devil, but here I think this “third power” which Screwtape talks about is a little subtler – it’s twisted spirituality – religion gone wrong. He later writes that…

A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• We’re going to read Screwtape Proposes a Toast once we’ve finished Screwtape’s letters and there he’s got some quite positive things about religion!

The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighbourhood of the Holy. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Religion and politics

• Screwtape does an assessment of the patient’s new friends and evaluates the best strategy with which to move forward is “the border-line between theology and politics.” He writes:

Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made out of it.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• I’ll admit, I was a little nervous as I was preparing this episode. The relationship between faith and politics has been much talked about here in the United States, following the recent election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden so tread carefully Taylor!

Pursuing the “Historical Jesus”

• Before speaking directly to the twisting of religion and politics, Screwtape takes what initially seems to be something of rather major detour (although he returns eventually). Here’s how he begins:

You will find that a good many Christian-political writers think that Christianity began going wrong, and departing from the doctrine of its Founder, at a very early stage. Now this idea must be used by us to encourage once again the conception of a “historical Jesus” to be found by clearing away later “accretions and perversions” [additions and distortions] and then to be contrasted with the whole Christian tradition.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• Screwtape explains that in the previous generation (so that would have been the generation before WWII) that they had promoted an “historical Jesus” along what he calls “liberal and humanitarian lines”. He says that their new “historical Jesus” is being promoted along “Marxian, catastrophic, and revolutionary lines”.
• I mentioned Dr. Michael Barber, a teacher at the Augustine Institute who, in his talks, often reminds his listeners that we should talk to God as much as we talk about God. He also often quotes:

Every new thing learned about God is a new reason to love him

The Advantages

So, Screwtape tells us that the “historical Jesus” keeps changing. He says that they do this every thirty years or so, and there’s some real advantages to doing this. He gives four advantages in total…

1st Advantage: Depart from history

• He says…

In the first place they all tend to direct men’s devotion to something which does not exist, for each “historical Jesus” is unhistorical.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

However, this begs the question as to how they keep coming up with a new unhistorical Jesus…

…by suppression at one point and exaggeration at another, and by that sort of guessing (brilliant is the adjective we teach humans to apply to it) on which no one would risk ten shillings in ordinary life, but which is enough to produce a crop of new Napoleons, new Shakespeares, and new Swifts, in every publisher’s autumn list.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• They come up with this new Jesus by doing something which St. Augustine noted in the 4th/5th Century. He said that heretics downplay one aspect of Scripture and exaggerate another. Additionally though, they encourage scholars to engage in crazy conjecture and call it “brilliant”. You see this every Easter when the latest crop of books and documentaries come out, purporting to reveal “the truth” about Jesus.
• Notes
  • A shilling was an old form of British currency which was discontinued in 1971 when everything was decimalized.
  • Publisher’s list was a list of forthcoming titles.
  • Rampant speculation which they’d never bet on, but produces lots of new “Historical Jesuses”.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte was an 18th/19th Century French military leader who took power after the French Revolution. We met him in The Great Divorce.
  • “Shakespeare” is William Shakespeare 16th/17th Century poet and playright.
  • The “Swift” here is Jonathan Swift, 17th/18th Century Irish novelist who wrote Gulliver’s Travels.

2nd Advantage: Just a teacher

So, the first advantage is that it gets people to believe in an ever-changing, unhistorical Jesus, but but Screwtape offers another advantage:

…all such constructions place the importance of their Historical Jesus in some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• So, under this construction, Jesus is important, not because of who He is, but of ideas he is said to have publicly promoted.
• I notice that it is for this very sort of thing for which Lewis crafted his Trilemma, which we read about back in Season 1 when we were studying Mere Christianity:

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book II, Chapter 3)

• As I was preparing for this episode, I found him say something very similar in the essay from “God in the Dock” entitled “What are we to make of Jesus?”:

He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects – Hatred – Terror – Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval

C.S. Lewis, What are we to make of Jesus? (God in the Dock)

I also recommended Jesus Shock by Dr. Peter Kreeft.

• Screwtape makes an interesting aside…

We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers. For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our continual concealment of them. We make the Sophists: He raises up a Socrates to answer them.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• Notes
  • Sophists were rhetoricians in ancient Greece. Spin-masters. 
  • Socrates debated the sophists. He was a 5th Century BC Greek philosopher. 
    • According to Bill And Ted’s Most Excellent Adventure, it’s pronounced SO-CRATES 😉 
    • Lewis helped found the Oxford Socratic Club in 1942.

3rd Advantage: Destroy the devotional life

• Screwtape then offers a third advantage. He says that they substitute real contact with God through Word and Sacrament and replace it with…

…a merely probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago. Such an object cannot in fact be worshipped. Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian. 

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• We discussed the misuse of Scripture.

4th Advantage: Not a book, but an event

• Screwtape offers a fourth and final advantage of this approach:

No nation, and few individuals, are really brought into the Enemy’s camp by the historical study of the biography of Jesus, simply as biography.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• I think the key element here is studying Jesus simply as biography – it brings with it a set of philosophical assumptions.  Screwtape also notes that the New Testament doesn’t actually contain enough of the right material for what we would today call a biography. He says that people were converted to Christianity by…

…a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption)

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• I mentioned the essential nature of the Kerygma.
• He also notes that this worked on a sense of sin which the people already had, not in response to some new teaching, but what he calls…

…the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• The “universal moral law” is “natural law”, something Lewis spoke about in Book I of Mere Christianity, as well as “the Tao” in The Abolition of Man. This was the advantage of Paganism!
• Screwtape explains the purpose of the Gospels:

The “Gospels” come later and were written not to make Christians but to edify Christians already made. The “Historical Jesus” then, however dangerous he may seem to be to us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

A means to an end

• It’s at this point that Screwtape then finally circles back to his comment at the beginning of the letter about mixing faith and politics, and explains why he’s been speaking so much about “the historical Jesus”. This was the quote-of-the-week:

About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything — even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• Taylor referred to “JP2”, who is “Pope St. John-Paul II”.
• Andrew has spoken a lot this season about “trading sins”, the idea that the devil will accept some growth in virtue, or the extinguishing of some vice, as long as it is exchanged for a more pernicious sin, typically pride.
• Screwtape wants the patient to treat Christianity as a means not an end in itself. He says it’s quite easy to coax humans into this position. He notes something said by an anonymous Christian (I looked it up – it’s actually Reinhold Nievhur) who said that his version of Christainity should be adopted because it’ll survive the changing of civilizations.

…only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

This is a quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr, a 20th Century theologian. It comes from An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. Screwtape points out what Reinhold was really saying:

“Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #23)

• Taylor compared the Church with Hydra from The Marvel Cinematic Universe!

The blood of the martyrs is seed of Christians

Tertullian, Apologeticus

I, in turn, quoted Obi-Wan Kenobi:

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

Unscrewing Screwtape

1. Do… find Christian community
2. Do not… get complacent or solely rely on that community
3. Do… hang around smart Christians – Screwtape doesn’t like it!
4. Do… read the New Testament carefully and even-handedly
5. Do… focus on the person of Jesus and not simply on what He said and did.
6. Do not…be sucked in by the latest sensational view of Jesus (the original one is good enough, thank you very much!)
7. Do not… make Christianity a means to an end
8. Do… be careful with politics

Fr. Jeffrey Doyle