The Problem of Pain

1.Lewis reconstructs the atheist's argument from pain with surprising sympathy, saying it is the argument that once convinced him. In your own words, what is that argument? Why does Lewis think it is so powerful?

1.Lewis famously argues that omnipotence does not mean the ability to do the 'intrinsically impossible' — God cannot make a square circle, not because His power is limited, but because a square circle is not a thing at all. Do you find this distinction convincing? Does it feel like it lets God off the hook too easily?

1.Lewis distinguishes between 'kindness' and 'love.' He says a merely kind God would be 'a senile benevolence' who just wants us to have a good time. What does Lewis say real love looks like — for God and even for humans who love well?

1.Lewis argues that the modern denial of human sinfulness is not intellectual progress but a form of self-deception — that we have lost the vocabulary and the mirror for seeing ourselves clearly. Do you agree? What has replaced the older Christian vocabulary of sin in contemporary culture, and does the replacement serve us as well?

1.Lewis argues that whatever the pre-Fall state of humanity looked like historically, the doctrine of the Fall is saying something theologically true: that human nature as we now experience it is not human nature as it was meant to be. How does separating the doctrinal claim from the precise historical form help or hinder your reading of Genesis 3?

1.Lewis opens with the claim that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but 'shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.' This is one of the most famous sentences in the book. What do you make of it? Does it ring true, feel offensive, or both?

1.Lewis addresses the objection that his argument seems to make suffering always good — a conclusion that would be both untrue and morally monstrous. How does he guard against this? What does he say about the danger of seeking out or glamorizing suffering?

1.Lewis opens by saying that the doctrine of hell is 'one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous' and that he would pay any price to remove it, 'if it lay in my power.' How does this admission shape the way you receive his defense of the doctrine?

1.Lewis says animal pain is, in some ways, a harder problem than human pain. Why? What makes it resist the explanations he has already offered for human suffering?

1.Lewis opens the chapter by noting that if Christianity is true, then our present life is almost a 'preface' — that the real story is yet to begin. How does this eschatological perspective function as a response to pain? Is it evasion or genuine consolation?

1.The appendix returns to the argument of Chapter 2 (Divine Omnipotence) and asks whether the un-fallen world — before sin entered — was free from pain. What is Lewis's position, and why does he think it matters for the overall argument?

1.Return to the answer you gave in Week 1: What was your version of the problem of pain when you began this study? How has it changed — not necessarily resolved, but changed? What do you understand now that you didn't before?