The Book Screwtape Feared Most

Some 27 letters into his correspondence, Screwtape stages an intervention. At all costs, the senior demon of C. S. Lewis’s classic Screwtape Letters tells his apprentice devil, Wormwood, do not let your human “patient” pray about his wandering mind. 

The patient is in love, Screwtape notes, and this presents a perfect opportunity to ensure that he never thinks of God (or, as the devils call him, “the Enemy”). Distraction is hell’s greatest asset, and if the patient had the wherewithal to lay his distraction before the Enemy in prayer, it would inch him along in sanctification.

At least one human author, Screwtape notes, has realized how this works. He’s “let this secret out” and threatened hell’s plans. That author is Boethius, the sixth-century theologian whose works were obscure in Lewis’s day and even less known now. Our modern neglect of his classic book, The Consolation of Philosophy, is a grave loss for the pursuit of Christian wisdom.

As 2024 comes to a close and we find ourselves in the season of Advent, we also mark the end of the 1500th anniversary year of Boethius’s death. In the year 524, Boethius awaited execution in Pavia, Italy, about 500 miles north of Rome. 

This was an unexpected end for a man born into an influential patrician house and adopted by another equally powerful family when his father died. Boethius had grown to be a remarkable scholar—possibly the most brilliant mind of his generation. He read Latin and Greek philosophy and poetry with abandon, absorbing the likes of Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero, Seneca, and Ovid. 

But everything changed when he read Plato’s Republic. Boethius realized that the corrupt politics of his society couldn’t improve until people who pursued wisdom and justice involved themselves in affairs of state. So Boethius himself entered public service and quickly rose through the ranks. 

By 520, he’d achieved the highest possible honors as master of the offices to the king of Italy, Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Boethius was the second most powerful man on the Italian peninsula and arguably across what was left of the Western Roman Empire. Then, one day, he lost it all. 

A friend and a former consul named Albinus was accused of treason, and Boethius rose to his defense. If Albinus was guilty, Boethius said, he himself was as well. Instead of relenting before this act of solidarity, Theodoric sentenced Boethius to death without a trial. Some accounts say he was put to the sword. Others report that a cord was wrapped around his neck, and he was strangled until he was on the edge of consciousness, then bludgeoned to death. 

Boethius maintained his innocence until the end. We can’t be certain of the truth, but today historians generally think that if he was guilty of anything that could be perceived as treason, it was probably his decision to write to the Eastern Roman emperor, Justin I, to warn him about Theodoric’s plans to allow Arianism—a heresy that denied the divinity of Christ—to flourish in the West. 

It was in prison that Boethius composed The Consolation of Philosophy, a dialogue between himself and Lady Philosophy. She appears out of nowhere in his prison cell to stage an intervention. The problem, she explains, is that Boethius is “distracted” but “not totally undone,” so she has come to guide him home. “I understand the cause of your sickness,” she says. “You have forgotten what you are” and need to be directed “to that true happiness your soul dreams of but cannot see because your sight is distracted by images.”

The source of that forgetfulness, Lady Philosophy reveals, is that Boethius is distracted—by politics and current events, by the corruption in Theodoric’s government, by his loss of honor and high office, by his memory of happier times. Didn’t she teach him better than this? 

That distraction, Lady Philosophy continues, has made the prisoner ungrateful. He has lost more worldly goods than some will ever possess and still can boast of his family, including two politically powerful sons. Instead of attending to these goods, Lady Philosophy charges, Boethius is focused on his own misfortune. He has failed to remember how the wheel of fortune always turns, how fleeting are the world’s measures of success. 

It may seem, at times, as if wicked people are getting ahead in pursuing those very markers of success, Philosophy concedes. But their lives will be punishment enough, she says, as they turn away from God, the source of all true happiness. The better way, she advises, is to attend to the state of our own souls. Lay all our thoughts, including our distraction itself, before God in prayer. Seek his perspective on the world’s turmoil. And never forget that divine providence—imbued with the same love that rules the sun and stars—rules our mortal hearts as well. 

No wonder Screwtape didn’t like this book. He wouldn’t like it any better today, as we too live in an age of distraction. In 2023, the average person consumed more than 13 hours of media per day. More than half of Gen Zers say they’d quit their day jobs to become social media influencers if given the chance. And who can blame them? They’ve grown up in a world of distraction. 

At every twist and turn of our day, we rob ourselves of time and attention. An email alert, the buzz of a cell phone, a reminder from our watches that we need to get our steps in—we constantly interrupt ourselves, setting up one obstacle after another to following Lady Philosophy’s advice. Screwtape must be throwing a party, and not least because Consolation is more neglected than he ever could have dreamed.

Lewis believed this masterpiece from Boethius was among the ten most influential books of all time. Six decades after he died and fifteen centuries after Boethius, that influence has sadly faded. 

Yet Boethius’s teachings about the trappings and distractions of worldly success ring as true today as they did when he set down his pen to face his executioner. The book he left behind can still challenge us to pray and pursue wisdom as doggedly as he did, to live our lives as if avoiding distraction really matters—because it does.

Advent is a season of waiting, and in waiting we often turn to distractions. But instead of succumbing to that temptation, let us follow the model of Boethius waiting in his cell. When, like him, we manage to tear our minds away from the world’s false promises, we can remember what hell wants us to forget: who we are and the great Love into which we’re called. 

SJ Murray is a professor of great texts and creative writing at Baylor University and founder of The Greats Story Lab.

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