In the Screwtape Letters, the senior tempter Screwtape admonishes Wormwood about the danger of tempting humans with pleasure. He tells his devilish understudy, “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. . . He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.” C.S. Lewis’s imagined letters from Screwtape coaching Wormwood on how best to tempt an individual so that he will not fall into the hands of “the enemy” (i.e. Christ) communicate powerful insights into temptation and the Christian life. In this section of the Screwtape Letters, Lewis’s imagination is shaped by a clear biblical truth that was present in Proverbs millennia before it appears in Screwtape’s fictional letter.
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