The Problem of Pain Defended

Home , A Grief Observed, The Four Loves, The Problem of Pain

Seventeen

Philip Tallon

In 1939, Ashley Sampson of Centenary Press invited C. S. Lewis to write on the problem of evil for the Christian Challenge series. Lewis asked if he could write anonymously, because he felt he did not live up to the hard-edged principles he would need to espouse. This would not have been first time (or the last) that Lewis published anonymously. His early poems appeared under the name “Clive Hamilton” and the memoir of his wife’s death, A Grief Observed, was attributed to “N. W. Clerk” during Lewis’s lifetime. The publisher, however, refused his request for anonymity. And so with the publication of The Problem of Pain in 1940, Lewis kick-started his role as a public philosopher and theologian. Later works in this vein would include the radio talks that were published as Mere Christianity (1952), as well as books like Miracles (1947) and The Four Loves (1960), along with numerous essays on theological and philosophical topics. But The Problem of Pain was the first, and constituted a strong entry into the public sphere. Despite some self-deprecatory remarks by Lewis at the start of the book (“If any real theologian reads these pages he will very easily see that they are the work of a layman and an amateur”), Lewis’s work is thoughtful, scriptural, steeped in the Western tradition, and ambitious in scope (Lewis, 2001c, p. vii). Within 150 pages or so, Lewis handles the origins of religion, articulates the problem of evil in various forms, deals with free will and soul making, offers an imaginative reconstruction of the origins of humanity and its fall, discusses the nature of pain in some depth, grapples with the problem of animal suffering, and theologizes about heaven and hell. Despite the wide range of subjects, Lewis gives each topic serious thought. Though his treatment of any particular topic is rarely comprehensive, the quality of Lewis’s thinking on the problem of evil is impressive, and he anticipates many major developments in the philosophical literature over the next 60 years. It is worth emphasizing at the outset that Lewis is responding to the intellectual problem of evil in The Problem of Pain (as well as in sections of Mere Christianity). Though pastoral or emotional concerns are not far from his heart, they are not his focus:

[F]or the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little 212 PHILIP TALLON

courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all (Lewis, 2001c, p. vii).

If one is looking for an existential treatment of suffering, it is hard to find a better example than Lewis’s own book, A Grief Observed, which many sufferers have praised for its honesty and insight. Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye, a memoir about the loss of her mother, said that “A Grief Observed got me through the raw, hallucinatory first months. It made me feel less alone, because he really captures the experience of obsessiveness, loneliness, and embarrassment that many mourners feel” (O’Rourke, 2011). In the long run, of course, the intellectual problem and the existential problem are inseparable. The source of ultimate hope and comfort rests on the existence of a good God with the power to set everything right in the end. Though critical thinking about the reasons for pain may not always be comforting in the grip of suffering, the trustworthiness of the Christian gospel, which Christian theodicy partly defends, is necessary for any truly hopeful response to the problem of pain.

1. The Main Points of Lewis’s Theodicy

The argument of the The Problem of Pain gets rolling at the beginning of the second chapter, where Lewis offers a variation on the traditional form of the logical problem of evil:

If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both (Lewis, 2001c, p. 16).

This argument is formally valid; its logical pattern is plain old modus tollens (“If A then B; not B; so not A”). Lewis rightly sees then that challenging the argument requires challenging the premises, which he does by arguing that the meanings of “good,” “almighty,” and possibly “happy” must be shown to be “equivocal” (16). The word “equivocal” here can be slightly confusing, since its usage in common theological jargon sometimes implies the same word having two completely different meanings (for example, the ‘bark” of a tree and the “bark” of a dog). But Lewis uses “equivocal” to mean ambiguous. “[I]f the popular meanings attached to these words are the best, or the only possible, meanings,” Lewis writes, “then the argument is unanswerable” (Lewis, 2001c, p. 16). The second and third chapters of The Problem of Pain focus on defining God’s power and goodness in such a way that they do not imply an idyllic