THE CITY

Winter 2015
Anatomy
of Unbelief
Louis Markos
Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art
of Christian Persuasion, By Os
Guinness. IVP Books, 2015.
270 pages, hardcover, $22.00.
In Screwtape Letters #13, senior devil Screwtape responds
to the fears of his nephew and junior tempter, Wormwood,
over the sudden, unexpected repentance, renewal, and reconversion
of his human patient. Wormwood feels sure that
he has lost his prey, but Screwtape counsels him to do all he
can to prevent his patient from doing anything with his new spiritual
resolve: “As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not
matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little
brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book
about it.” 1
Os Guinness, a prolific author, speaker, and social critic who
founded the Trinity Forum, serves as a visiting fellow at the Brookings
Institution, and is a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center
for International Studies, has thankfully never allowed himself to
1
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 57.
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