Letter 8 Summary

Screwtape derides the Training College and its head, Slubgob, for its inability to properly educate young fiends like Wormwood, who has asserted the patient's religious phase seems to be dying away. Wormwood has shown himself to be ignorant of certain basic principles about human beings. They are amphibious, Screwtape asserts, half spirit and half animal. They occupy both the spiritual realms and the earthly realms, at the same time. This means they go back and forth, have ups and downs, high and low tides in their spiritual lives.

This man is going through a low point in his faith, but this is not necessarily good. In fact, Screwtape says, these low tides are the times the Enemy tries and hones a person's faith and causes the person to grow ever more close to Him. It is because of free will. The Enemy wants...