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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, THE ALLEGORY OF LOVE
Clive Staples Lewis, FBA (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
1502 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 7, 2023
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About the author
C.S. Lewis
1,032 books48k followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
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December 8, 2025
The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis
Sublime
C.S. Lewis is a wondrous writer.
The other two works that I have read by this stupendous author are:
- Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters
The latter I have read twice and I must admit that the first time I was thinking I am reading a comedy book.
There is humor in The Problem of Pain, if I am not mistaken and take lightly what is actually written with the intention to create panic.
When C.S. Lewis talks about our wrong ideas concerning God it is obviously no laughing matter, but still, take this one:
- “We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?”
Otherwise, I must say that if not completely convinced, at the very least I am very moved by many of the author’s arguments.
He had already created a paradigm shift- unlike the one described by DBC Pierre in Vernon God Little- and I wait for an epiphany.
I still jest with sacred material, but still, unconverted as I still am, I have decided to keep reading books on religion.
- The issue of free will strikes me as crucially important and able to explain so much of what is wrong in the world
And having admitted this fact- if it is a fact and not a hypothesis- then what C.S. Lewis explains next becomes of paramount importance.
- God cannot give freewill and then take it
- Even if He is the Almighty he cannot do nonsense
Which is better explained in the master’s words:
- “His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
I have also been impressed with the alternatives presented by this layman who writes and explains better than any preacher:
- You either admit that Christ was the son of God and everything else he preached or
- He was a fool if the above is not the truth
This next observation is also funny, to a man who has not come to fear the wrath of god and the perspective of going to hell, maybe:
- “Nor am I greatly moved by jocular inquiries such as, 'Where will you put all the mosquitoes?' -- a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined.”
And to end this note about an exhilarating, if in parts complicated and to my superficial ways a bit arid work, I will add some quotes:
“God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.”
“All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.”
“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”
...Plato rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited, and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour's welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.”
Sublime
C.S. Lewis is a wondrous writer.
The other two works that I have read by this stupendous author are:
- Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters
The latter I have read twice and I must admit that the first time I was thinking I am reading a comedy book.
There is humor in The Problem of Pain, if I am not mistaken and take lightly what is actually written with the intention to create panic.
When C.S. Lewis talks about our wrong ideas concerning God it is obviously no laughing matter, but still, take this one:
- “We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?”
Otherwise, I must say that if not completely convinced, at the very least I am very moved by many of the author’s arguments.
He had already created a paradigm shift- unlike the one described by DBC Pierre in Vernon God Little- and I wait for an epiphany.
I still jest with sacred material, but still, unconverted as I still am, I have decided to keep reading books on religion.
- The issue of free will strikes me as crucially important and able to explain so much of what is wrong in the world
And having admitted this fact- if it is a fact and not a hypothesis- then what C.S. Lewis explains next becomes of paramount importance.
- God cannot give freewill and then take it
- Even if He is the Almighty he cannot do nonsense
Which is better explained in the master’s words:
- “His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.
If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prifex to them the two other words, 'God can.'
It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
I have also been impressed with the alternatives presented by this layman who writes and explains better than any preacher:
- You either admit that Christ was the son of God and everything else he preached or
- He was a fool if the above is not the truth
This next observation is also funny, to a man who has not come to fear the wrath of god and the perspective of going to hell, maybe:
- “Nor am I greatly moved by jocular inquiries such as, 'Where will you put all the mosquitoes?' -- a question to be answered on its own level by pointing out that, if the worst came to worst, a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined.”
And to end this note about an exhilarating, if in parts complicated and to my superficial ways a bit arid work, I will add some quotes:
“God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.”
“All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.”
“The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the divine love may rest "well pleased".”
...Plato rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues. If, being cowardly, conceited, and slothful, you have never yet done a fellow creature great mischief, that is only because your neighbour's welfare has not yet happened to conflict with your safety, self-approval, or ease. Every vice leads to cruelty.”
April 22, 2024
I reread the Problem of Pain to fuel my internal examination on my mostly-agnostic stance on God and Christianity. The first half of the book gave me a lot to think about… but I found the latter part of the book hard to lock in on.
And I don’t know what’s up with this edition, but there were footnotes interspersed in the text and hyphens in the middle of words as if they were split at the end of a sentence, but they weren’t.
And I don’t know what’s up with this edition, but there were footnotes interspersed in the text and hyphens in the middle of words as if they were split at the end of a sentence, but they weren’t.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews