Screwtape's "Religious" Affections
It was a surprising thing to learn that demons are incredibly affectionate beings. Yet, that is precisely how Screwtape signs his letters (collected and bound at great personal risk by C.S. Lewis).1 And not just a few of them. Without fail, the master-demon signs off each of his letters to his nephew and fumbling demon-in-training, Wormwood, “Your affectionate uncle Screwtape.”
The only time Screwtape diverts from this form is with the last of his letters where he signs it, “Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”2
Affectionate? Not the first description of the demonic that comes to one’s mind–at least not mine. But there it is at the close of each of his letters.
“The affections” are a sort of buzzword among certain evangelical types like myself. Particularly those who have been influenced by the writing and ministry of John Piper. Piper is himself the disciple of the Jonathan Edwards whose work, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, is the impetus for much of the use of the language of “affections” today.
To most versed at all in the language of “affections,” “affections” carries a connotation of being deep-seated and genuine, while “feelings” feels more shallow and untrustworthy, and “emotions,” well, that word is a junk-drawer of psychotherapeutic confusion. I myself have been helped by the language of “affections” and believe it is much to be preferred for describing the (dare I say) “emotional” aspect of the Christian life.
That is all well and good. But what in the world is a demon doing signing his letters of torment instruction with that word?
Now before going forward I want to dismiss a fear we all should rightly have when discussing the demonic. And the fear is that discussing the demonic is precisely the kind of thing one ought not to do. (If only someone had told that to the gospel writers!)
All kidding aside, there are dangers, many of them in fact, revolving around our thinking–or refusal to do just that–about the demonic. As Lewis writes, “There are two equal and opposite errors which our race can fall about devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” And they are happy with either error we pick, so long as we do pick, Lewis says.3
So, let me be clear that I am not interested in the affections of a mythical demon instructor or the affections of actual demons for the affections of demons’ sake. But I do wonder if we find a helpful hint as to just what the affections are by considering how a demon could use the word as the primary marker of his “feelings” for his nephew.
The remainder of this essay, then, is just that wondering.
The Affections of Demons
Maybe the best place to start is with Screwtape’s final letter. What are we to make of the fact that in his concluding letter Screwtape is no longer simply affectionate, but “increasingly and ravenously affectionate”? Not only that, but is worth pointing out here that it is not only the closings of the letters, sans the final one, that are identical. So too are the openings of each letter. Up until letter XXXI, Screwtape begins each letter by addressing his nephew with “My dear Wormwood.” But here in the final letter, as with the closing, this constant has morphed and reads, “My dear, my very dear, Wormwood, my poppet, my pigsnie.”4
So not only the closing but the opening of the letter has shifted and shifted heavily in the direction of deeper ardor. Wormwood is no longer just “dear” to Screwtape, but doubly so and “very dear” at that. Further, he is now referred to as Screwtape’s “poppet” and “pigsnie”—terms of endearment denoting the tenderest and sweetest of loves.
And this love Screwtape has for Wormwood is the subject Screwtape’s attention at the beginning of this final letter. Apparently Wormwood is in a world of trouble. And that is to put it mildly. Wormwood has failed. Screwtape chastises Wormwood for allowing his Patient (the name Screwtape uses throughout the book for the human Wormwood torments) to slip through his fingers.
By this end of the collection of letters the Patient has converted and died in the Blitz and has entered his reward in Heaven. What is to become of Wormwood? Another assignment perhaps? If only. For those who fail in their objective to lead their patients to damnation, they themselves are devoured in place of the soul they would have brought to Hell.
In light of this, Wormwood has apparently written to Screwtape to curry favor in the far flung hopes that his uncle can rescue him from his fate. His uncle, after all, has made his affection for Wormwood clear throughout. But that turns out to be just the problem.
Screwtape responds,
How mistakenly now that all is lost you come whimpering to ask me whether the terms of affection in which I address you meant nothing from the beginning. Far from it! Rest assured, my love for you and your love for me are as like two peas. I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me. The difference is that I am stronger. I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As a dainty morsel as ever I grew fat on.5
Affection. Desire. Love. Who knew demons were capable?!
Finally we see what Screwtape means by “affectionate.” He is affectionate for Wormwood alright, and even “desires” him. But unfortunately for Wormwood, not with a desire of the heart, not a relational desire. Screwtape’s desire, his affection for Wormwood, is gastrointestinal. He craves his nephew like one craves a long awaited meal.
Screwtape then proceeds to describe the experience of both the Patient and Wormwood at that moment when the Patient was eternally “lost" to the Enemy (God). The joy of the Patient and Enemy alike. The sheer horror of Wormwood and the “howl of sharpened famine for that loss” which “re-echoes at this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of Noise down to the very Throne itself.”6 The section is really quite remarkable.
Following it, Screwtape concludes with these words: “Meanwhile, I have you to settle with. Most truly do I sign myself, Your increasingly and ravenously affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”7 We’ve returned to Screwtape’s affection and we now find beyond a shadow of a doubt that it lies in his stomach. He yearns for his newphew with the licking of his sulfer-chapped lips. These are the affections of Master Screwtape.
Admittedly, Lewis warns readers in his preface “to remember that the devil is a liar” and thus “not everything that Screwtape says should be assumed to be true even from his own angle.”8 Lewis is referring to Screwtape’s instructions to the young Wormwood about tormenting human souls; but if demons lie pathologically, then perhaps Screwtape’s letter openings and closings are not to be trusted either. If so, the entirety of this article has been a waste of both your time and mine. And I do apologize if that is the case.
But let’s suppose it is not. That while a liar, Screwtape can be taken at his word in describing his passions. He certainly wants to convince his nephew of as much and there is no hint of twisting the truth as he attempts to do so in letter XXXI. Let’s entertain that he truly is affectionate for his nephew in that he desires to consume him. And that as the moment approaches, he is only becoming “increasingly and ravenously affectionate.” Let’s assume, knowing the risk involved in doing so, that Screwtape is telling the truth when he says that his affection for Wormwood is constant, strong, and growing.
If Screwtape is to be believed, Screwtape’s affection for Wormwood is a hunger. It’s a craving from the deepest recesses of his putrid core to devour another. It is a hankering for the flesh of another.
“What hath the stomachs of Hell to do with the hearts of Earth?”
What is clear thus far is that Screwtape has affections and that these affections are ultimately gastrointestinal. This would be nothing more than an analysis of a character in a fictional novel’s feelings were it not for the fact that, according to Jesus, genuine affections for him—the kind of affections any of us should actually give a hoot about—can be described in exactly the same way.
There are multiple examples of this but the most concentrated occurs in chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. Jesus has just fed the 5,000 and now is being followed by the crowds wanting more food. In response Jesus says things like, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (v.27) and “the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (v.33). Lest anyone be confused as to who he is referring to he then says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (v.38). Again, “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (v.42). And again, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (vv.48-51). Did you catch that? No? No worries Jesus makes it unmistakably clear 2 verses later:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on my, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (vv.53-59)
Jesus describes himself as bread, as food. And says that unless he is feasted on, no one can have the life he gives. Aka, what is needed is not a simple mental ascent to facts about Jesus, but a devouring of him. One’s affections—in the same vein as Screwtape’s for Wormwood—must be involved.
What is clear from John 6 is that Jesus is after something deeper than intellectual box-checking; something that goes deeper into the affectional core of the person. What must be present is a desiring, a hungering, a craving for Jesus. Jesus wants us to be affectionate for him in that he wants to be devoured by us.
If you have listened to or read anything by Piper on the affections then you know that one of his favorite ways to describe affections is by “savoring.” That is a good word for this affectional dimension of faith. Jesus must be the meal we savor above all others.
In this way, Screwtape’s affections for Wormwood are religious in nature. They are cravings and savorings. They seek to devour and be satisfied by another. They are hunger pains to be filled. Unsurprisingly, though, they are woefully aimed at the wrong object. Wormwood will be consumed and cease to be. A deeper hunger than before will be left in the wake until the next failed tormentor.
Christ is the meal that never depletes. As Psalm 116:11 says, “in [God’s] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
He is the bread of life. Whoever comes to him will never hunger. Whoever believes in him shall never thirst. Turn your affections upon him. Satisfy your ravenous appetite to the full.
zh
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1954), 9.
Ibid., 160.
Ibid., 9.
Ibid., 156.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 160.
Ibid., 9.