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C.S. Lewis and Suffering
The problem of human suffering has been one that has plagued many philosophers, skeptics, and Christians alike. For some, it is difficult to understand how an all-good and all-powerful God could, or would, allow suffering to plague humanity to the extent that it does. Most people want to believe that God would want all creatures, especially those who are made in his likeness, to be happy. Therefore, when people begin to come to terms with the fact that many people are unhappy and many people are in a state of suffering and misery, it can be difficult not question the will of God and question your own faith. C.S. Lewis apparently wrestled with such questions himself which led him to many insights. Lewis writes (Popova, 2014):
"There is no reason to suppose that self-consciousness, the recognition of a creature by itself as a "self," can exist except in contrast with an "other," a something which is not the self. . . . The freedom of a creature must mean freedom to choose: and choice implies the existence of things to choose between. A creature with no environment would have no choices to make: so that freedom,...
However, challenging the problem of pain is one that has loomed for millennia on a theological basis and therefore Lewis has his work cut out for him. Lewis argues that God cannot do what is not intrinsically possible for him and there is a special provision that is inherent in the granting of free will, that a level of the freedom to choose comes with some consequences.
By introducing the concept of free will, it follows that God could not give us free will and deny us the possibility to choose evil at the same time, or this would violate the laws of noncontradiction. That is to say, part of being human and having consciousness also involves a level of suffering that is inherent in the mere act of being alive in the material world (Harmon, 2012). The fact that we live in a natural world that is governed by certain laws,…
Works Cited
Harmon, J. (2012, Fall). C.S. Lewis on the Problem of Pain. Retrieved from C.S. Lewis Institute: http://www.cslewisinstitute.org/C_S_Lewis_on_the_Problem_of_Pain_page1
Popova, M. (2014). C.S. Lewis on Suffering and What It Means to Have Free Will in a Universe of Fixed Laws. Retrieved from Brain Pickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/07/25/c-s-lewis-problem-of-pain-free-will/
" Defenses against it may be equally inconclusive, but in their fertility they at least promise a solution some day. Bibliography Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Belliotti, Raymond a. Roman Philosophy and the Good Life. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009. DeRose, Keith. "Plantinga, Presumption, Possibility, and the Problem of Evil," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991), 497-512. Draper, Paul. "Probabilistic Arguments from Evil," Religious Studies 28
Evil The free will defense suggests that God permits, but does not cause evil. Therefore, it is possible to live in a universe in which good and evil continually coexist. Human beings are blessed with the ability to make a choice that can further the objectives of God and good, or to promote the interests of evil. Although this view is logically coherent, there are clear objections to it. One objection is
Initially St. Augustine favoured the dualistic view that evil was external and separate from the world and mankind that in evident from the Manichean worldview. However, he was later to reject this strict dualism and taker another view of the nature of evil. This was more Platonic and was based on the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry. This refers to the view that evil is a measure and result of
The Cosmological Argument: This argument begins with the tenet that for the Universe to exist something outside the universe must have created it. Also refereed to as the First Cause or the Uncaused Cause theory, here God exists as the prime mover that brought the universe into existence. The universe is a series of events, which began with God who must exist apart from the universe, outside of time and
Even before one gets to Rowe's argument, however, one may disregard Hick's argument because it depends on imagining an infinite number of possibilities to explain away evil, rather than accounting for it. Instead of actually explaining how a benevolent and omnipotent god can allow evil to exist, Hick's argument simply states that this evil is not really evil, although with no evidence to back this up other than the convenient
Once again, the theist can simply point out that human knowledge -- either our own, or in the collective sense -- is not only incomplete but not even necessarily close to complete. Furthermore, inference from incomplete evidence is dangerous; before Columbus, European philosophers would have felt themselves on firm "rational ground" to suppose that no edible starchy tuber existed, and yet the potato would have proved them wrong. Attempts to