PWJ: S4E68 – SPAT 1 – “Three courses of Hell”

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Today we begin the sequel to The Screwtape Lettters, which is Screwtape Proposes A Toast. David is joined by Dr. Brenton Dickieson to unpack the opening paragraphs.

S4E68: Screwtape Proposes A Toast (Part 1 – “Three Courses of Hell”) (Download)

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Timestamps

00:10 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:15 – Welcome
00:52 – Dr. Brenton Dickieson
03:36 – Song-of-the-week
04:55 – Quote-of-the-week
05:27 – Drink-of-the-week
07:12 – Patreon supporter toast
07:41 – Chapter Summary
08:27 – Discussion
51:01 – “Last Call” Bell

YouTube Version

After Show Skype Session

David interviewed Stuart Hunt, the creator of a YouTube channel he’s recently been enjoying, Into the Wardrobe…

Show Notes

Chit-Chat

Song-of-the-week

  • Rather than do the hard work of picking a song-of-the-week which matches thematically with the subject matter, since Screwtape is proposing a toast, we’d just pick an appropriate toasting song! Today’s song-of-the-week is Tubthumping by the band Chumbawamba:

He drinks a Whiskey drink, he drinks a Vodka drink
He drinks a Lager drink, he drinks a Cider drink
He sings the songs that remind him of the good times
He sings the songs that remind him of the best times

Tubthumping, Chumbawamba

Quote-of-the-week

  • The quote-of-the-week comes from this section of Screwtape Proposes A Toast…

Your dreaded Principal has included in a speech full of points something like an apology for the banquet which he has set before us. Well, gentledevils, no one blames him. But it would be in vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast

Drink-of-the-week

  • The drink-of-the-week is for me is a rum and coke. Dr. Dickieson was drinking a Starbucks Earth Blend coffee, as well as a Dalwhinnie 15 from his PWJ glass!

Patreon Toast

  • We toasted Abby, a gold-level Patreon supporter:

Abby, may you always be your own person, not simply one the crowd. Instead, we pray you become what Screwtape describes as one of those horrible phenomena, one of the great Saints of our time. Cheers!

Patreon Toast

Chapter Summary

  • So, on to today’s section of Screwtape Proposes A Toast. Here is my one-hundred word summary of the section we’re going to be looking at today:

Screwtape proposes a toast at the Tempters’ Training College Annual Dinner, addressing the faculty and graduating students.

He notes that earlier, the Principal of the College, Slubgob, basically apologised for the poor standard of souls they consumed that night. Screwtape doesn’t disagree and reminisces about previous years when they got to feast on really great sinners.

He reviews the night’s meal: A municipal authority with Graft sauce, Casserole of Adulterers, and Trade Unionist stuffed with sedition. He concludes that, while the quality was indeed low, the quantity was magnificent.

Summary of Part 1 of Screwtape Proposes A Toast

Preparation

  • David asked Brenton about the origins of Screwtape’s toast, how we should read it, and what mistakes we should avoid.
    • David admitted he doesn’t think it’s as good as Screwtape’s letters.
    • Dr. Dickieson noted that the text is harder to personalise. He also asked how Lewis knew about the United States.
    • David suggested that it might be fun to speak to a Joy Davidman scholar if they see her influence in the toast.

Setting

  • The text of Screwtape Proposes A Toast actually begins with a something akin to stage directions:

The scene is in Hell at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College for young devils. The principal, Dr. Slubgob, has just proposed the health of the guests. Screwtape, a very experienced Devil, who is the guest of honour, rises to reply…

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • David said that when he once gave a talk on Screwtape at a parish, he would put on a pair of devil horns when he was quoting a passage from Screwtape so that the listeners would know that what he was saying was not necessarily true.
    • Brenton asked wheher all of Screwtape’s comments are upside-down or wrong.
    • He also asked whether we take something away from the text if we portray Screwtape as a comic figure. David quoted the epigraphs from Luther and Thomas Moore in The Screwtape Letters:

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.“

Luther

“The devill . . the prowde spirite . . cannot endure to be mocked.”

Thomas More

The Address

The Faculty

Screwtape begins his toast by addressing those present…

Mr. Principal, your Imminence, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils: 

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • There’s a play here on words…
    • Rather than “Eminence”, he uses “Imminence”
    • Rather than “highness”, he uses “nearness”
    • Rather than “Graces”, he uses “Disgraces”
    • “Thorns” and “thistles” are mentioned here because they’re associated with the devil – they’re barren, allude to the curses from The Fall, as well as the crown of thorns. Brenton also pointed out that in the movie The Omen, the son of the Devil is called Damien Thorn.
    • “Shadies” sounds like “ladies” and is also a play on the Roman word “shades” (ghosts).
    • Rather than “Gentlemen” he says “Gentledevils”

The Graduates

  • Screwtape explains that it’s customary on these occasions to address the graduating devils soon to be heading to earth. He reminisces about his own graduation and reminds these new graduates that they had better be successful…
    • This idea was clearly communicated towards the end of Screwtape’s Letters
    • In response to Brenton’s comments about devouring (and the Dementors from Harry Potter), David mentioned the line in Till We Have Faces where Ansit says:

They say the loving and the devouring are all one, don’t they?

C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 1)

The state of play

  • Screwtape then says that he wants to paint a picture of the state-of-play with regards to the spiritual war – he wants to give something akin to The State of The Union Address in the United States.
    • He says he doesn’t want to reduce the terror and anxiety which acts as the “lash and spur” to all of their endevours, but he says that he does want to lay out a “moderately encouraging view of the strategical situation as a whole”.

Meals of Yesteryear

  • Screwtape points out that the Principal of the college, Slubgob, offered something like an apology for the banquet food. Screwtape admits that…

…it would be in vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast

Screwtape reminisces on meals of yesterday:

Oh, to get one’s teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII, or even a Hitler! There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a cruelty only just less robust than our own. 

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • Who are these people?
    • Hitler, hopefully doesn’t need too much introduction.
    • Henry VIII was the 16th Century king of England who split from Rome and declared himself to be the head of the Church in England. He married six times.
    • Farinata degli Uberti was a 13th Century Italian aristocrat military leader who was the head of the anti-Papal, Ghibelline faction. You encounter him in Dante’s Inferno. Here’s a key to Lewis’ work that we sometimes miss as we focus on the details of an argument, a scene, or a cultural critique. Lewis read Dante as providing not so much a map of the afterlife but rather a narrative spiritual theology, what Lewis calls the “imaginative interpretation of spiritual life.” (Preface, 111).  
  • Screwtape goes on to discuss the meal that they’ve just consumed…

The Night’s Meal

Municipal Authority with Graft Sauce

  • Screwtape describes the first course…

There was a municipal authority with Graft sauce. But personally I could not detect in him the flavour of a really passionate and brutal avarice such as delighted one in the great tycoons of the last century. Was he not unmistakably a Little Man… a grubby little nonentity who had drifted into corruption, only just realizing that he was corrupt, and chiefly because everyone else did it? 

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • The word “Graft” has a bunch of different meanings. Here David thinks it refers to the corrupt use of money.

Casserole of Adulterers

  • Screwtape moves to the second course…

Then there was the lukewarm Casserole of Adulterers. Could you find in it any trace of a fully inflamed, defiant, rebellious, insatiable lust? I couldn’t. They all tasted to me like undersexed morons who had blundered or trickled into the wrong beds in automatic response to sexy advertisements, or to make themselves feel modern and emancipated, or to reassure themselves about their virility or their “normalcy,” or even because they had nothing else to do. Frankly, to me who have tasted Messalina and Cassanova, they were nauseating.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • Who were these people?
    • Casanova was the famous 18th Century Italian womaniser.
    • Messalina lived in the 1st Century. She was known for her promiscuity and was the 3rd wife of the Emperor Claudius. She was executed for plotting against her husband.
  • David and Brenton questioned how much of Screwtape’s comments are exaggeration.
    • Dr. Dickieson referred to Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique.
    • David spoke about the increasing intrusion of adverts.

Trade Unionist stuff with sedition

  • Screwtape reviews the final course of the meal…

The Trade Unionist stuffed with sedition was perhaps a shade better. He had done some real harm. He had, not quite unknowingly, worked for bloodshed, famine, and the extinction of liberty. Yes, in a way. But what a way! He thought of those ultimate objectives so little. Toeing the party line, self-importance, and above all mere routine, were what really dominated his life.

C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast
  • Brenton spoke about the holocaust, the Shoah. He referred to Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt who was sent to cover the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Hannah Arendt found not a great evil genius, sadistic, drooling for pain, but an ordinary, rather boring, bureaucrat who preferred good organization and helpful systems.
    • From Screwtape’s point of view, if Eichmann was a great genius he might have been awakened to the evil he was doing. Systematic evil is easy to perpetuate from the perspective of a demon; making someone a real in-the-bones bigot takes a great deal of work–and there is always the risk of awakening.

Meal Assessment

  • Screwtape says that tonight’s menu was in one sense, deplorable, but in another way, full of hope and promise! He says that the quality was terrible, but the quantity was impressive. I’m not sure if I believe Screwtape is really satisfied with this assessment. Both David and Brenton weren’t convinced that Screwtape actually believes this.

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