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Summary: C. S. Lewis at his best...
Review: One of the best, and most influential, Christian authors of any time, C. S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" is a compelling, and chilling, fictional look at what goes on behind our back in the demonic spirit world.Screwtape, an upper level demonic spirit, often writes his subordinate, Wormwood, a demonic spirit assigned to misguide and misdirect a human on earth. The letters explain to Wormwood how he would best accomplish his mission of keeping the human our of the Enemy's (God's) hands and ensure that when he dies he goes straight to blazes. What is most chilling about "The Screwtape Letters" is that, even after all of these years, how much a person can see of themselves in them. Letter after letter seemed to be talking about me directly. Time and time again I saw one demonic trap after another I had fallen into being explained in a letter. I have to caution you, however. This book is not an easy read. C. S. Lewis did not attempt to write a book that everybody could understand. You will probably have to spend some time re-reading many letters and looking up words in your dictionary and/or concordance for a better understanding of what is being said. This can become quite frustrating, but when you are able to break through and understand a letter you will be able to see how it can apply to your own life. If you were ever interested in getting a better understanding of how the Enemy and his demonic spirits work, this is a great book to do it with. But be warned: you will learn something about yourself in the process.
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Summary: A review of "The Screwtape Letters" By: C.S. Lewis
Review: "The Screwtape Letters" is the absolute best book I have ever read. It is a very well written book. It really makes you think. C.S. Lewis' style is exquisite. He paints with words as an artist paints with pictures and a musician with notes and rhythms. While still being the best book I have ever read, it is also one of the strangest. Screwtape, an experienced devil, teaches his nephew, Wormwood, how to win a soul over from the so-called "Enemy", who is the Lord Jesus Christ. While he is doing this, he teaches the reader about the techniques that Satan uses to distract Christians away from God. Therefore, he is teaching us how to live better Christian lives and avoid giving in to temptations. He shows us through the example of his nephew, Wormwood, trying to win over a particular Englishmen. He tries to make him think that what he is doing is not sin. Even though, in the end, the man is not won over, we see how so many people go astray without even realizing it. This is an excellent book and I would reccomend it to anyone looking for a challenging book to read.
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Summary: a nonbeliever
Review: C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is a series of essays on apologetics but with a twist. They are written in the form of letters from Screwtape, a senior administrator in Hell, to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood's job is tempter--the devil on a person's shoulder. Screwtape's letters are filled with advice on how to capture a person's soul and turn them away from the Enemy (God). So reading the letters is to be taken with a reverse in logic, what is good for the devil is bad for us and vice-versa. The letters serve four purposes: to define what faith is and what it isn't, teach morality, defend Christianity, and criticize modernity. Lewis doesn't try to actually prove Christianity is Right; he takes this as a matter of faith. Either you believe or you don't--to try to prove it would be wasting breath. But Lewis does give a hard-set definition on what faith is. Lewis working definition of a faith is very simple: you believe there is a creator who loves you, and there is an innate moral code they want you to follow. Faith in Truth is for him foremost, and it is a fallacy to call yourself a Christian for anything else. Christianity must be an end in itself, to use it as a means is false. So Lewis says that you can't be a Christian because "Christianity is the best religion" or that "Christianity will give you inner peace" or that "Christians are better people" but because Christianity is true. All other reasons trail it. But there is also another aspect of what faith is, which makes Lewis a radical. In one of his later letters, Screwtape writes, "Even if we contrive to keep them ignorant of explicit religion, the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry--the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of the horizon--are always blowing our whole structure away." Simply put, you don't need to call yourself a Christian to be one! For Lewis there are two types of moral fallacy. First are the obvious-the official sins. What Lewis is concerned with are fallacies of fashion, of intent, the difference between charity and unselfishness, humor and flippancy, sadness and despair, humility and understatement. For Lewis, virtue without honest intent is no virtue at all. Lewis shows the absurdity of trying to prove that a God does not exist. Using lucid logic, he tears down every Atheistic argument. His most brilliant moment in the book comes when answering the conflict of an all-knowing God and the free will of man. Lewis argues that, God is a being which time has no hold of. God views creation like we view a painting and each of us through free will is contributing to a small part of that painting. For God, what we did is not dead and gone, but present as the present. Lastly Lewis, criticizes the modern era's need to label doctrines not as "true" and "false" but as "practical", or "academic", etc and the modern scholars' tendency to not consider the wisdom of old text, but the historical aspect of it. We ask, "why was this written?", or "what historical context was this written in?" Instead of the only important question, what wisdom and truth is in this? But what makes _The Screwtape Letters_ great is not only the wisdom in it, but also the ability of C.S. Lewis to write in such a way that avoids vagaries on a subject that is full of it. He not only tells us what something is, but also shows us. Lewis explores the small pleasures of life, humor, the meaning of marriage, the relationship between people, and in these everyday things finds the intricate workings of creation and damnation. Lewis depicts religion as up close and personal, not vague, but real as reality gets. It's "didactic", "erudite", "observant", "concise", but most importantly, there's truth here.
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Summary: A First Rate Performance Which Brings The Book To Life
Review: I'm not usually a fan of "books on tape" but this is a case where inspired reading (more of a one-man performance) brings out nuances which don't come across on paper. Screwtape was the first C.S. Lewis book I read as an adult (after reading the Narnia books nearly 10 times apiece as a child). Though I'm not a Christian, I found a lot of inspiration in Screwtape. Lewis is so good at capturing the little games we all play and the avoidance techniques we all use. He writes so well about the redemption of souls, and the meaning of our spiritual side. I remember finding some of the wit in the book a little obvious. Not so with Cleese's reading! He has never done anything better. His comedic talents bring out the humor of the book, including some lines which weren't funny on paper. But his performance ranges far beyond the merely funny: the menace with which he says "I could show you a pretty cageful down here . . ." or the quiet hypnotic way he reads Lewis's lines about the road to Hell being "soft underfoot, . . . without milestones, without signposts" -- these things send a chill down the spine. My only regret about these tapes is that four of the Letters are not included. But the remaining letters are read in full with no abridgement. I literally wore out my first copy of these tapes and have ordered a 2nd set.
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Summary: Psycho-ethical insight into man as eternal battleground
Review: This book jumped into my top 10 favourite books of all time, which shouldn't have surprised me as I had already realized that Lewis was bound to be a big influence on my thought... but artistically and intellectually, this book entertained me like few others I have read. Past the brilliance of the original idea (I call it 'reverse theology', reverse in the sense of reverse psychology), its strengths lie in C.S. Lewis' astoundingly insightful analysis of how the devil tries to trip us up. A recurrent theme is the need for a demon to keep his human target hazy - reacting to or embracing terms and ideas without carefully considering them, living on the surface. Lewis does the reader a great service - we learn from Screwtape how to be better, more thorough, thinkers. And the psychological and ethical insights go far beyond this one example. I recommend this book to all and I have a suggestion for getting the most out of it: take it letter by letter. Read a chapter and go about your daily business, letting the thoughts sparked by the chapter grow and develop. I sometimes did this, other times I was too addicted and kept reading, but I find the latter method sometimes made me stay too much on the surface - letting go of the trains of thought great sentences or phrases might have taken me on. I actually had the idea of writing a book called "The Screwtape Ideas: A Letter-by-Letter Look at C.S. Lewis' Classic"... with exploration of the theological, philosophical, socio-political, historical, and artistic issues raised by the book, in content and in form. I found out here at amazon.com there's already a study guide written, so I guess if I actually did this I would need to be very original. Anyway, at some point, I must own the John Cleese book-on-tape version The Screwtape Letters, I'm sure it's delightful.
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Summary: Re-release Cleese, please!
Review: John Cleese's rendition of "Screwtape" is phenomenal. The pairing of Monty Python's Mr. Cleese with C.S. Lewis' literary classic on the mechanics of spiritual warfare is inspired. I have only one question: when is this out-of-print recording going to be made available on DVD???
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Summary: thought provoking and inspiring long after you've read it
Review: "The Screwtape Letters" is one of those books that teaches you a lesson without you even realizing it... or even if you do, it's in the most non-threatening manner imaginable. It's akin to learning about duty and loyalty from watching "Star Wars." The work takes the concept of "the Devil's advocate" to a whole new level. By a strange set of circumstances (covered in the book's Introduction/Forward), we are privy to private written correspondence from one devil to another devil on the finer points of directing their "patient" to think evil thoughts and to commit evil deeds. The concept of a little devil sitting on your shoulder is magnified by the dubious fiends whose ultimate goal is consume the souls of those they lead astray as though they were food. Lewis brings forth several ways of re-thinking how we think and addressing the real heart of the matter. The book is an easy read and is entertaining to boot. Lewis intended this work (as his other books such as "The Narnia Chronicles" and "The Great Divorce") to be a fantasy that teaches, not a dramatized version of doctrine. Regardless of your background or your beliefs, the book's underlying themes concern the true nature of good an evil and how we use our will to apply good or evil onto those we care about and onto those we don't.
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Summary: MONTY PYTHON's John Cleese has gone to the Devil!
Review: I admit to having bought this cassette originally only on the strength of John Cleese's reading these letters fron a Senior Devil to his less-than-successful nephew, but once I started listening I didn't want to stop! C.S. Lewis (the celebrated author of the NARNIA series) wrote a searing and scathing work, but it's taken John Cleese's inimitable vocal genuis to bring these letters to life! His marvelous vocal nuances keep a grin on the listener's face throughout the whole six cassette sides (the Unabridged edition also includes the excellently done "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" on Side 6), and the two letters in which Screwtape actually loses both his temper with his nephew and his self-control (Letter #22) and the final letter (Letter #31) in which Screwtape's own hidden despair at the thought of not only losing the patient to the Enemy but also the thought of a world where he (Screwtape) longs for deep inside but can never be a part of (even though he'd never admit it, especially not to his failure of a nephew!) can be heard are works of genuis on the part of Mr. Cleese! It doesn't matter what religion you are; these cassettes will make any denomination laugh the Devil to scorn!
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Summary: Gets better every time I read it!
Review: No matter how many times I read this book I get a fresh insight into human spirituality. It's one of those slim little books that one can read in a flash, over and over. However, after the first reading I found that all subsequent readings had me dwelling over single paragraphs or even sentences, thinking of my own life as a "patient"! A must read for people of all creeds and none. A work of outstanding insight into the human spirit.
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Summary: Gotta read it
Review: This book goes to show you that Satan's best trick to make people think he doesn't exsist.
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