True Reality - Theme of the Screwtape Letters
True Reality – Theme of The Screwtape Letters
Quotations
Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him). As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirits can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. – Screwtape, Chapter 8, Page 37, Lines 7 – 15.
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to tow things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. – Screwtape, Chapter 15, Page 75, Lines 9 – 17.
My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have affected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space. – Screwtape, Chapter 12, Page 57, Lines 3 – 14.
Essay
Humans are not fully of the spiritual realm and yet not fully part of the physical realm. As part of the physical realm, humans are bound in life to time and its successive changes. Being part of the
Quotations
Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him). As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time. This means that while their spirits can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. – Screwtape, Chapter 8, Page 37, Lines 7 – 15.
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to tow things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. – Screwtape, Chapter 15, Page 75, Lines 9 – 17.
My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have affected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space. – Screwtape, Chapter 12, Page 57, Lines 3 – 14.
Essay
Humans are not fully of the spiritual realm and yet not fully part of the physical realm. As part of the physical realm, humans are bound in life to time and its successive changes. Being part of the