Screwtape’s Forerunner

Demonic dialogues 170 years before Lewis

Since C. S. Lewis first published The Screwtape Letters in 1942, many authors have mimicked the book’s memorable format.[1] However, few acknowledge that at least one author preceded the Narnian in imagining diabolical conversations for the edification of Christians. 170 years before C. S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters, a Scottish Particular Baptist pastor in London named John MacGowan (1726–1780) published his own satirical book of demonic dialogues in a book entitled, Infernal Conference; Or Dialogues of Devils.

Though I can find no reference to MacGowan in Lewis’s writings nor any proof that Lewis knew about his book, several similarities between the two works are worth noting. However, before exploring those similarities, I should note that MacGowan’s book was wildly popular in its day. In fact, before publishing 600 copies in Lexington, Kentucky in 1803 (one of which, I happily own), Joseph Charless sought subscribers for the book with the following advertisement in the Kentucky Gazette: “The Dialogues of Devils have gone through thirteen Editions in England, and three in America, which is some criterion of its merit—although its title might convey an idea injurious to its celebrity, yet it is, and always will be, read with pleasure and satisfaction, by all who call themselves Christians.”

A simple Google Books search turns up newer editions after 1803. Since Lewis was a well-read scholar of English literature, it would have been difficult for him to not know about a book as popular as MacGowan’s. But, of course, circumstantial evidence does not prove dependence.

Aside from sharing the unique format of demonic dialogue, the two books resemble one another in at least two other ways. First, both MacGowan and Lewis began their respective books by listing two common mistakes humans make in their assessment of demonic activity in the world. For MacGowan, on one extreme, “some continually throw the blame of their vices upon the poor Devil.” However, others “fall into the opposite extreme, and with all their power endeavour to clear the Devil of the slanders thrown upon him” by denying his involvement in mankind’s wickedness.[2] Here’s Lewis, writing nearly two centuries later: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”[3]

Second, both authors imagined a demonic underworld of familial relations. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters as an epistolary novel that took the form of thirty-one advice letters to Wormwood signed by “Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.” MacGowan also imagined his demons as relatives. In fact, in the very first conversation, the Listener overhears Avaro, representing the vice of avarice or greed, greet his uncle, Fastosus, derived from the Latin word for pride, fastus. As in Lewis, the elder Fastosus then proceeds to inform and advise the younger Avaro on the fine art of temptation. MacGowan and Lewis, therefore, each begin their respective books with advice from an uncle demon to his nephew.

The two books also differ in significant ways. MacGowan authored his book anonymously as “the Listener,” for, in contrast to Lewis’s preference for letters, MacGowan imagined a human author recording the demonic conversations he overheard after descending into the underworld through an entrance he happened upon in a large forest: “At first I thought that this could be no other than the cave of some ancient Druid; but approaching it, and having with much toil cleared away the noxious weeds, I found, what I had long sought for, an entrance into the dreadful cavity.”[4]

Lewis included other demons besides Screwtape and Wormwood. For example, Slubgob is the demon in charge of the training college, and Slumtrimpet oversees the tempting of the Patient’s girlfriend. In Lewis’s imagination, each demon receives a specific human assignment. In contrast, MacGowan imagines a family tree of demons who each preside over a specific vice in the world. Beelzebub, or Satan, is the king of the underworld, and Lucifer is the “prime minister of state.”[5]

Fastosus came into being “in Satan’s alarmed breast” when he responded in pride to the news of God’s intention to exalt his eternal Son.[6] Satan then begat Infidelis and his sister Ignorantis when he tempted Eve in the garden. This brother and sister married one another and begat Impiator, Avaro, Falax, Crudelis, Perfidia, Concupiscentis, and others. Fastosus married Inscientia and produced Ambitiosus, Contumax, Discordans, Malevolentia, and Iracundia.[7] Don’t miss the theological point of MacGowan’s demonic family tree. In providing Satan with only two sons, Fastosus and Infidelis, he made all vice derive from two streams—pride and unbelief.

Besides these key differences, the two authors approached the topic of demonic influence from distinct angles. Lewis used the form to expose the subtle strategies of demonic deceit and to plumb the depths of vice in the human heart. In contrast, MacGowan employed the medium to level cultural critique, highlighting the work of Satan within various religious traditions, society at large, and even politics. Whereas Lewis concocted a fictional life for his “patient,” complete with a conversion to Christianity and relational turmoil with his mother, MacGowan looked out at his eighteenth-century world to expose its evil as the work of Satan.

Of the two works, I prefer Lewis’s. His unmatched imagination created a fictional, yet plausible world where demons plot in coordination with sinful human tendencies. MacGowan, in contrast, primarily employed the medium to critique the evils he saw in his own culture. Lewis’s work thus maintains a timeless quality that MacGowan’s lacks. It’s not that MacGowan was wrong in many of his assessments; it’s just less interesting today. Nevertheless, MacGowan often wrote with humor and depth of insight.

For example, as a Baptist dissenter, he pointed out the irony of Congregationalists crossing the ocean to America for conscience’s sake only to “set up their own formula as the standard of religion, to which they required as implicit submission from others as the good bishops of England had ere while done for themselves.” As a result, Baptists and Quakers in America had learned that a death sentence was the same whether signed by the pope or their fellow Protestants. His demon gleefully remarks that persecution results anytime a sect has “been happy enough to grasp the reins of government for the time being.”[8]

I’ll conclude with one more insight from MacGowan that readers may find relevant. The demon Discordans boasts about his ability to divide Protestants from one another. He remarks, “Prejudice, cousin, deals all in extremes; it never touches on the middle path of judgment, the path reserved for the gentle steps of candour.”[9] Relatedly, the demon Infidelis says, “Under our influence, the abusing libertine censures the true Christian as legal, because he strenuously pleads for purity of heart and regularity of conversation. On the other hand, the real legalist . . . alleges that the evangelical Christian is an Antinomian because he utterly disclaims the merit of good works in the business of salvation.” He then concludes, “Indeed, on all hands, those who choose either of the extremes, never fail to censure such as adhere to the middle path of judgment; which you know is the only path of safety.”[10]

The world has changed in many ways since MacGowan’s time, but the strategies employed by the demons seem to stay the same.

---

[1] Most notably, see Peter Kreeft, The Snakebite Letters: Devilishly Devious Secrets for Subverting Society as Taught in Tempter’s Training School (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998); Randy Alcorn, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters (New York: Multnomah, 2000); Richard Platt, As One Devil to Another: A Fiendish Correspondence in the Tradition of C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2012).

[2] John MacGowan, Infernal Conference; or Dialogues of Devils, Concerning the Many Vices Which Abound in the Social, Civil, and Religious World (London: Milner and Company, 1880), 7.

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Harper One, 1996), ix.

[4] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 9.

[5] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 18.

[6] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 59.

[7] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 43–44.

[8] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 213–214.

[9] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 230.

[10] MacGowan, Infernal Conference, 239–240.