Ian Faith interviews Dr. Michael Ward , Oxford scholar, Catholic priest, and leading C.S. Lewis expert, about the depth and relevance of The Screwtape Letters. Dr. Ward traces his lifelong immersion in Lewis's work from childhood, through living at The Kilns, to his Oxford PhD and beyond. The conversation opens with the book's dual purpose: mocking the devil (drawing on Luther and More) while simultaneously holding spiritual warfare in deadly seriousness, a balance Lewis maintained by focusing on ordinary, accumulative sin rather than dramatic evil, captured in the famous line that "the safest road to hell is the gradual one."

The discussion moves through several of Lewis's central themes: the church-pew temptation of spiritual pride, the psychological age's tendency to medicalize what may be spiritual, and the connection be ...