But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. He addresses five objections to hell: 1) the objection to retributive punishment; 2) its eternality in comparison to transitory sin; 3) the frightful pictures in art; 4) how we could be happy in heaven with hell’s existence; 5) if hell implies God’s loss of omnipotence. While it is not possible to follow the moral law perfectly, “the ultimate problem must not be used as one more means of evasion.” You could be as pious as the early Christians but many don’t intend it. But I’ll limit myself to five). Lewis says that Christians must believe that since they were given dominion over beasts that everything they do concerning them is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse. He notes how biblical ancestors probably meant retribution when they spoke of God’s ‘vengeance’. To underline his point he says probably the most famous line from this book, “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.”. But a Christian must not think so. Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse though by mercy it may save—those who do the simple evil. Pain gives the only opportunity for bad men to amend. Free download or read online The Problem of Pain pdf (ePUB) book. The Big Idea: A. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them. Two things people are most likely to shun are problems and pain; therefore this very precious book is perhaps overlooked by many. This creates the problem of pain. He loves us. But Lewis’ main argument, thesis, and answer to the question throughout the book is that God can use evil and pain to mold us and make us into who we each were made to be. 5) Different ages excelled in different virtues. Lewis says that this objection assumes that heaven and hell “co-exist in unilinear time” like the histories of two countries. The first edition of the novel was published in 1940, and was written by C.S. Lewis Starts with his former atheistic stance and paints in broad strokes the problem of pain. It is not an unimportant question though since all “plausible grounds for questioning the goodness of God is very important indeed.”. This is not just fear, but dread. He says that we don’t need to be afraid that heaven is a bribe because heaven offers us nothing that “a mercenary soul can desire”, that the pure in heart will see God because they are the only ones who want to. Let us make no mistake; it is, I have begun with the conception of Hell as a positive retributive punishment inflicted by God because that is the form in which the doctrine is most repellent, and I wished to tackle the strongest objection. Lewis starts off by asking why humans need so much alteration. Today, The Problem of Pain earns a 4.10 out of 5 rating on Goodreads with 46k reviews. Second, In a world where choice is possible, there must be a neutral field, we can use it for good or ill. (This is one of my favorite chapters from Lewis’ works. Many find his work refreshingly objective while also short, conversational, commonsensical, and witty. To forgive them? He gives a few illustrations of this choice then paints a picture of what he guesses actually happened when Man fell. Because we’re wicked. Before doing so, however, he sets the stage, providing background information on what he perceives to be the origins of religion. The claim is so shocking—a paradox, and even a horror, which we may easily be lulled into taking too lightly—that only two views of this man are possible. Lewis presents a very readable and widely accessible solution to this problem, covering the origins of human suffering, incurred in the fall, what divine omnipotence and goodness really mean, and why they allow for the existence of pain in creation, heaven and hell, and a topic not often treated but important - the existence of pain in animals who are in every sense innocent. (119-120), As things are, however, this doctrine is one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous, and the goodness of God impugned. The Problem Of Pain by C.s. Lewis restates that allowing free will means that some people will choose rebellion and not all will be saved. 3) We know we’re acting for God’s sake if the material action of our choice is painful or at least contrary to our inclinations. Or does it reveal the conflict between Justice and Mercy? Lewis puts his wages on a God who holds goodness and pain in a paradox. (91), Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. The first answer, then, to the question why our cure should be painful, is that to render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain…Hence the necessity to die daily: however often we think we have broken the rebellious self we shall still find it alive. He says that the proper aim of any creature is to self-surrender – to offer back the will which we claim as our own, and this necessity is a daily occurrence which is inherently painful. Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate on the origins of the universe: it is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity which I have described…In a sense, it creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving. Lewis dc.date.accessioned: 2015-07-22T19:08:09Z Lewis’ beautiful picture of the powerful lion shedding tear after tear. He then reviews the story from Genesis 3 and follows it with an argument saying that we cannot call our early ancestors more ‘savage’ than we are today. This self-sacrifice, Lewis says, is not something we can escape by remaining earthly or being saved. The Pagan mysteries existed to allay this consciousness, and the epicurean philosophy claimed to deliver men from the fear of eternal punishment. He says that sentience is experiencing a “succession of perceptions” where consciousness sees the experiences a part of a larger whole. Immediately he shares the Christian answer that humans have used free will to become very bad. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you, you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. (54-55), I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. Lewis makes the startling assertion that Christianity “creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our own daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance … Animal nature could have also been corrupted prior to Adam by Satan because the “intrinsic evil of the animal world lies in the fact that some animals live by destroying each other.” Lewis pontificates that Man might have been brought into the World to perform a redemptive function. Lewis states the Problem of Pain again in a simpler way: “If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, He would be able to what he wished. He then talks about when Jesus and the apostles preached people understood a real consciousness deserving a divine anger, but in the 20th-century people don’t believe they are “mortally ill”. “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The total organism which had been taken up into his spiritual life was allowed to fall back into the merely natural condition from which, at his making, it had been raised…It was the emergence of a new kind of man—a new species, never made by God, had sinned itself into existence. Also, Lewis reminds the reader that in discussing Hell that we should not keep our friends and enemies before our eyes since both obscure reason, but to think of ourselves. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. This passion though loses sight of the end in the means. Lewis says that he doesn’t think the doctrine of the Fall answers whether it was better for God to create or not to create. Two parts to the chapter. (36), When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God, A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word “darkness” on the walls of his cell…We are bidden to “put on Christ”, to become like God. I am a sinner saved in Christ, a husband to my beautiful wife, a dad of three, and a pastor in New Jersey. 3) A third objection is the “fruitful intensity of the pains of hell” as depicted famously in medieval art and passages of scripture. all that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction…Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand. This chapter…is about you and me” (131). The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis, 9780007461264, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide. The tame animal is therefore, in the deepest sense, the only “natural” animal—the only one we see occupying the place it was made to occupy, and it is on the tame animal that we must base all our doctrine of beasts. Ultimately, to remove all pain would be for us to ask God to love us less, to stop attempting to bring us into perfection and full happiness and instead just leave us alone. There is no middle way. On this latter point, he gives an extend, unique argument for the possibly immortality of tamed animals, finding it in man’s redemption. If God uses pain to redeem and remedy, this implies some aren’t to be redeemed who won’t have it. If “the sufferings of this present world are not worth comparing to glory” (Romans 8:18), then, Lewis argues, in a book about pain we must consider the glories of heaven. Of all evils, pain alone I sterilized or disinfected evil; it does not proliferate. 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