Nothing New Under the Sun: A Reading Response to The Screwtape Letters, Letter 23

Even the Enemy knows that “there is nothing new under the sun.”

In the 23rd letter to his nephew, the Elder demon, Screwtape, says this:

He makes note that the earliest converts were convinced of the Truth of Jesus not because of His biology, but because of “a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption)” (pg. 126). He goes on to say that the aforementioned fact was successful in producing converts because it was “…operating on a sense of sin which they already had—and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a ‘great man’, but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers” (pg. 126).

A few things to note here:

1. The “universal moral law” Screwtape mentions, the one that contributed to the “sense of sin” they had since they were teething, was most likely The Ten Commandments given by God by way of Moses (and the natural law).
2. They knew the law because they were taught it. You know not to go into your neighbor’s house and steal his wallet the same way you knew not to steal cookies or push your siblings when you were younger: someone had to teach you. 
3. Though each generation is “more wicked than the last,” no new forms of sin truly exist. 
4. They did not commit sin against a new law created by an egotistical, “great” leader, but by the universal moral law that all humans ought to uphold. 

There is a time and place for historical facts, biology, and such when it concerns Jesus and using them as tools to help us understand who He is.

But make no mistake: they are mere tools.

Jesus can save whosoever He wants in any manner  that He wants whether through apologetics, history, ethical studies, or through a more personal means (like getting down in the mud—made with His spit—and removing the scales from your eyes!) 

He knows. 

Blessed be the name of the Lord.