Screwtape - Eat Your Heart Out

At our last meeting, I attempted to explain why I felt that Screwtape's approach to human nature was not appealing to me. I have to apologize for my inability to express the ideas I was attempting to explain. So, back to my books I went. What follows are much more eloquent expressions of the ideas I was attempting to convey.

From the "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"

"In deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary... There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."

Commenting on this passage, Pope John Paul II wrote:

"Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a person, where we are alone with God. In the depths of our conscience, we detect a moral law, which does not impose itself on us, but which holds us to a higher obedience. This law is not an external human law, but the voice of God, calling us to free ourselves from the grip of the evil desires and sin, and stimulating us to seek what is good and true in life."

Hans Urs von Balthasar, in his book entitled "Prayer" complements these ideas.

"Man was created to be a hearer of the word, and it is in responding to the word that he attains his true dignity. His innermost constitution has been designed for dialogue. His reason is equipped with as much light of its own as it needs to apprehend the God speaking to it. His will is just that much superior to instinct and open to all that is good, that he is able without compulsion to follow the attraction of the most blessed good. Man is the creature with a mystery in his heart that is bigger than himself. He is built like a tabernacle around the most sacred mystery. When God's Word desires to live in him, man does not need first of all to take deliberate action to open up his innermost self. It is already there, its very nature is readiness, receptivity, the will to surrender to what is greater, to acknowledge the deeper truth, to cease hostilities in the face of the more constant love."

What more can I say?