If the being was incapable of doing anything else, then it follows that the being was not truly “free,” and thus had no choice but to disrespect God.īecause humans have free will, they are constantly vacillating between good and evil, or between God and Satan. While free will is a notoriously difficult concept to define (even Lewis doesn’t try to do so in The Screwtape Letters), one useful “test” of free will was proposed by the important Christian thinker Saint Augustine: if a being commits a wrongful act, the act can only be considered a “sin” if the being, placed under identical circumstances, could have behaved any other way. In Christian theology, humans are unique insofar as they have free will. Humanity’s imperfection, Screwtape maintains, is a consequence of its freedom. God has created humans to be deeply flawed-they have imperfect knowledge of the world and of themselves, they are foolish and irrational, and they often disrespect God. Early on in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape explains the challenges that human beings face in their lives.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |