THE DEVIL
The commonest question [I am
asked about THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS] is whether I really “believe in the Devil.”
Now, if by “the Devil” you mean
a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the
answer is certainly No. There is no
uncreated being except God. God has no
opposite. No being could attain a “perfect
badness” opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away
every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence
itself), there would be none of him left.
The proper question is whether
I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I
believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become
enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us.
These we may call devils. They do
not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. DEVIL is the opposite of ANGEL only as Bad
Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan,
the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.
I believe this not in the sense
that it is part of my creed, but in the sense that it is one of my
opinions. My religion would not be in
ruins if this opinion where shown to be false.
Till that happens—and proofs of a negative are hard to come by—I shall
retain it. It seems to me to explain a
good many facts. It agrees with the
plain sense of Scripture, the tradition of Christendom, and the beliefs of most
men at most times. And it conflicts with
nothing that any of the sciences has shown to be true.
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| C. S. Lewis on the front cover of TIME for his THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, 1947 |
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