The Problem of Pain









Posted April 10, 2010


Joan Ferguson said...

Lewis's view that Adam's sin was not disobedience in eating the apple, but in choosing himself over God. Adam had the opportunity to see himself either as a creation or an individual self existing apart from God is not how I see the interpretation of this story. I see the story of Adam as defining the point in human history when our species became able to rationalize.

Lewis states on page 2: Man is enabled to foresee his own pain which is preceded with mental suffering and to foresee his own death while keenly desiring permanence. That statement accords with my view of the 'fall' of Adam. At some point in human evolution we moved from being a species, like animals, who did not comprehend that we could suffer illness and that at some point we would die. At this transition point our 'knowledge' of these facts led us to 'fall' from a state of happiness into a state of anxiety, sadness and despair.


Michael N. Hull said...

I agree with his assumption that suffering can be understood if we say that God had to create the physical laws i.e. gravity, electromagnetism, freezing point of water etc. and leave them fixed and unalterable while creating spiritual laws i.e. prudence, abstinence, love, greed etc. and leave them alterable by the free will of Man. Thus if one disobeys a spiritual law one will suffer from the consequences of a physical law. An example which he gives is that if one walks on a slippery pavement and neglect the law of Prudence, you will suddenly find yourself suffering from the law of gravitation. Again, if you do not obey the spiritual law of abstinence from alcohol then you will suffer as the biological laws relating to liver damage operate.

The physical laws are those which scientists can model or write a mathematical equation. For example, the law of gravity can be expressed in the form of an equation while the hydrogen atom can be depicted with a model of an electron travelling in a circle around a proton.

Spiritual laws, however, can not be described by equations or models. These laws are described with the use of a narrative or a poem. For example, to talk about love, shame, greed one has to tell a story, or write a novel etc.


Derek Bell said...

The key question is: If God is "Absolute Goodness" then why was the world not left uncreated when from the outset it was destined to be a world of suffering?

D. Bell

Michael N. ull said...


I think Lewis does a bit of "word manipulation" to get out of this quagmire. He says: "By the goodness of God we mean almost exclusively His lovingness and then in the chapter on Human Wickedness he argues that love causes pain to its object on the supposition that the object being loved needs alteration to become fully lovable.

He seems to be running in circles here which goes back to your question which I would rephrase as: Why would Absolute Goodness create an 'object' which was destined to be wicked and hence needed to be altered so it could become more lovable?