THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

This paper considers Lewis's views on the damaging effect of semantic change, as revealed in The Screwtape Letters.

The claim of this essay is two-fold. First, when Lewis speaks of salvation and heaven, as he so often does, not only does he figure it as redemption, perfect happiness, "union with God," and many other oft-used images, but also as divinization, being made a god, the "blessed participation in [God's] Life by a created spirit," and other traditional though far less common metaphors. These images represent a crucial part of a real doctrine in Lewis's works, rather than stray bursts of poetic enthusiasm. Second, Lewis presents friendship as an important means to becoming “those gods that we are described as being in Scripture."

Mythlore, 2018

This article analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and the Middle English dream vision Pearl. Through exploration of the tension between worldly and heavenly conceptions of justice, value, and possession in The Great Divorce and Pearl, this study demonstrates Lewis’s skill at utilizing and updating medieval source material in order to respond to twentieth-century problems.

On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the next month, political discussion centered around how the United States should react to this invasion. Not just political parties or groups of citizens debated options in the face of war, individual families struggled through politics, patriotism, and ideology to deal with the possibility that one of their own would be marching off to war. As opposing groups argued their cases, families around the world stood at attention waiting to hear the fate of their enlisted members. When faced with the threat of separation, relocation, even possible death, it is fairly common to assess, even reassess politics, patriotism, and ideology. More importantly, it is not uncommon for individuals to reassess the meaning of life itself. For one family this war thrust its members into just such a dialogue. For this family, where traditions were cherished yet envisioned differently among each generation and each individual, the significance of religion, love, and the very meaning of family became the central focus of daily letters sent to their soldier activated in the Persian Gulf War.

Logos, 2008

Published as Elissa McCormack