Screwtape 12-15

In letter 12 Screwtape is talking to Wormwood about the excellent progresses happening with the patient, and how to keep moving forward with progression. The patient has shown a complete change in how he acts and thinks, which is a great thing for Wormwood because it shows him leaving the Enemy. I think the most intriguing part of this letter is that Screwtape wants Wormwood to keep the patient thinking that he is still changing toward the Enemy while in reality he is actually changing toward Hell. If the patient is knowledgeable about the change toward Hell then he would immediately go back to the Enemy. If the patient is able to think about being with the Enemy and not act on it then eventually the patient will loose faith and the change will be reversed. I thought this was the best part because it is saying that Screwtape still wants the patient to have Christian thoughts and not practice them, because then the change toward Hell is a lot easier for the demons to make. It makes perfect sense to me why Screwtape would want Wormwood to keep these actions going. In my own life there are things that I can be thinking about and consider myself to be but when I do not act upon them for long periods of time I eventually loose all thoughts and beliefs about them. In reality this means that I no longer will consider myself to be part of that category I once used to describe myself as.

Screwtape 8-11

I chose to write about letter number eight because I was intrigued about certain lines from this letter. As I was reading the first time I was just doing just that reading and not really looking into anything that was being said. Then when I went back and reread everything this letter caught my eye. The first thing that caught my eye was the line "Humans are amphibians- half spirit and half animal" (p. 37). This actually made me laugh because it was a different way of looking at the human life. I thought about it a little deeper and it made complete sense. I do have the animal side of myself where I can die and my physical body will rot away. Then there is the spiritual side which is never ending. The spirit can live with out a body to support it. I kept reading and the next thing which supported what I thought about the human/ amphibian comment was "As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time" (p.37). I felt that this was an accurate statement made by Screwtape. Those were the main statements from letter 8 which intrigued me. I generally liked the letter but those two parts were the best for me.