The Problem of Pain

"We are deceived by looking on the outside of things" (52).
C. S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain (1940)

Points for Reflection

Chapter One ("Introductory")

1. why was C. S. Lewis, when an atheist, unable to believe in the benevolent God of Christianity (1-3)?
2. why does Lewis maintain that Nature could not, itself, provide evidence of a Creator (3-5)? Does this stance counter Romans 1:20?
3. Lewis provides a few literary examples of awe and dread in the face of the "Numinous" (7-8). Can you generate additional examples, either fictional or personal?
4. what is the difference between fear and dread, as defined by Lewis?
5. do you agree that morality cannot be inferred from experience alone (10-11)?
6. why does Lewis claim that the connection between the Numinous and morality is "natural," but not "obvious" (11-13)?
7. does Lewis believe that the Christian claim to God's incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ is logical and easily intuited, or idiosyncratic and unexpected (15)?
   

Chapter Two ("Divine Omnipotence")

1. like all careful philosophers, Lewis opens his consideration of an issue—in this case, the question of God’s omnipotence and goodness—by closely defining his terms.  What terms and concepts receive this sustained attention from him in chapter two?
2. according to Lewis, why is it illogical to conceive of a God who regularly prevents human suffering (24-25)?
3. as laid out by Lewis, is it possible for humans to have free will without creating the potential for both great kindness and great malice (23-25)?  Why or why not?

Chapter Three ("Divine Goodness")

1. does Lewis accept the doctrine of “total depravity” (30)?
2. does Lewis believe that morality is so fundamentally arbitrary and subjective that we cannot assume our own sense of right and wrong lines up with that of a divine creator (28-29)? Does Lewis believe that humans have within them a moral standard wholly different from God’s (30)?
3. when one with a paltry sense of morality bumps into others with a more developed moral sensibility, what emotional evidence appears to convict the first person of the real difference between them (29-30)?
4. according to Lewis, what do many modernists mean, really, when they talk of the “goodness” of God (31)? Where in popular discourse and media do we run into this particular conception of God?
5. as defined by Lewis, are love and kindness always, or usually, the same thing (31-32)?
6. how might kindness alone gradually become indifference (32)?
7. how is it that, according to Lewis, “God is both further from [each of] us, and nearer to us, than any other being” (33)? How does Lewis attempt to explain this paradox?
8. in what constitutes a foretaste of The Four Loves, a book Lewis would not write for another two decades, Lewis details a few types of love experienced by humans in an attempt to describe different facets of God’s love for humanity (33-40).  Which of these analogies do you find to be the most pleasing and potentially comforting?  Which proves itself the most difficult and challenging?
9. do you agree with Lewis that falling in love with someone marks the point at which one truly begins to care whether s/he is “clean or dirty, fair or foul”—that deep passion cares more about such things, not less (38-39)?  Is your conclusion generalizable to the love relationship between parents and their children?
10. why, according to Lewis, is God unwilling to just leave us to our own devices (40-42)?
11. Lewis argues that all attempts to describe God’s good love for women and men fall short because whereas there is an element of need in all human types of love, God has no intrinsic needs—only those needs He allows Himself to have (42-43, 45, 46).  We are not ever the lover in this relationship, but the beloved—the one wooed, not the wooer (44). Is this an impossible kind of love to comprehend?  Do we ever gain glimpses of such wholly selfless love in the midst of human relationships?asdf

Chapter Four ("Human Wickedness")

1. at the opening of the chapter entitled “Human Wickedness,” Lewis restates the thesis of chapter three, that whereas kindness only wishes others to feel good, love wants what is ultimately best for others, even if it involves pain and suffering (48, 32).  He proceeds to argue that modern society has fixated on one of the traditional virtues above all others, kindness, and on a single vice, cruelty.  Do you agree with this distillation of contemporary morality, with Lewis’ claim that we are much less interested in such virtues as mercy, temperance, chastity, and humility (49, 58)?
2. do you accept Lewis’ assertion that shame can be beneficial in helping us to confront such failings as cowardice, unchastity, falsehood, and envy (50, 61), or do you consider shame to usually be an unhealthy anxiety about very natural behavior (49-50)?
3. why is a guilty conviction of our own sinfulness so foundational to Christianity (50-52)?
4. what various defense mechanisms do humans apparently deploy to avoid facing up to the deep-rootedness of their sin (52-54, 55-58, 60-61)?
5. what do you make of Lewis’ theory that salvation may consist of perfected humans rejoicing in those shameful sins that made God’s compassion more palpable, instead of the utter erasure of those sins (55)?
6. do you agree both that all virtues are interconnected, and that every vice ultimately leads to cruelty (59)?
7. why does Lewis value the insight involved with shame more than its concomitant emotion (61-62)?

Chapter Five ("The Fall of Man")

1. as explained by Lewis, does Christianity see Good and Evil as equally powerful, and alike deriving from God (63)?
2. why does Lewis refer to the Genesis account of The Fall as “myth” (66), and think it irrelevant whether The Fall involved a fruit or not (65-66)?
3. why is it, exactly, that the very first sin must be a creature's "[trying] to set up on its own, to exist for itself" (69), a result of pride. Do the three real-world analogies Lewis provides effectively elaborate his point (70-71)?
4. in light of the account of humankind's fall from grace in Genesis 3, what do you make of Lewis’ hypothesis—which he calls both a “picture” and a “myth”—and the way it combines evolutionary theory with the Fall of Man (72-76)?  See also pages 66-69.
5. according to Lewis, pride and self-interest quickly transmogrify all thoughts whose starting point was selfless (70-71).  What four stages does he briefly enumerate in this process (71), and have you witnessed these in your own experience?
6. as described by Lewis, what was the first sin (76)?
7. prior to The Fall described by Lewis, which of the following wielded control over human behavior: human nature or human spirit (77-79)?
8. does Lewis posit that evil is the creation of God or of humankind (80)?

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu