Tag: The Problem of Pain

  • HEAVEN

    The Problem of PainC. S. Lewis It is requiredYou do awake your faith. Then all stand still;Or those that think it is unlawful business I am about, let them depart.SHAKESPEARE, Winter’s Tale Plunged in thy depth of mercy let me dieThe death that every soul that lives desires.COWPER OUT of Madame Guion ‘I reckon,’ said…

  • HELL

    The Problem of PainC. S. Lewis What is the world, O soldiers? It i I:I, this incessant snow, This northern sky;Soldiers, this solitude Through which we goIs I.W. DE LA MARE, Napoleon Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.SHAKESPEARE In an earlier chapter it was admitted that the pain which alone could rouse the…

  • DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE

    The Problem of PainC. S. Lewis Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summ. Theol., Ia Q XXV, Art 4 ‘If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures…

  • The Fall of Man (Part 2)

    The Problem of PainC. S. Lewis Judged by his artefacts, or perhaps even by his language, this blessed creature was, no doubt, a savage. All that experience and practice can teach he had still to learn: if he clipped flints, he doubtless chipped them clumsily enough. He may have been utterly incapable of expressing in…

  • HUMAN WICKEDNESS

    Part 2 C. S. Lewis 6. Perhaps my harping on the word ‘kindness’ has already aroused a protest in some readers’ minds. Are we not really an increasingly cruel age? Perhaps we are: but I think we have become so in the attempt to reduce all virtues to kindness. For Plato rightly taught that virtue…

  • HUMAN WICKEDNESS

    Part 1 C. S. Lewis You can have no greater sign of confirmed pride than when you think you are humble enough. LAW, Serious Call, cap. XVI The examples given in the last chapter went to show that love may cause pain to its object, but only on the supposition that that object needs alteration…

  • The Problem of Pain (Part 2)

    C. S. Lewis DIVINE GOODNESS Finally we come to an analogy full of danger, and of much more limited application, which happens, nevertheless, to be the most useful for our special purpose at the moment — I mean, the analogy between God’s love for man and a man’s love for a woman. It is freely…

  • The Problem of Pain (Part 1)

    C. S. Lewis DIVINE GOODNESS Love can forbear, and Love can forgive . . . but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object . . . He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that…

  • Human Pain, Continued

    C. S. Lewis All things which are as they ought to be are conformed unto this second law eternal; and even those things which to this eternal law are not conformable are notwithstanding in some sort ordered by the first eternal law.HOOKER, Laws of Eccles. Pol., I, iii, I In this chapter, I advance six…

  • Human Pain (Part 2)

    C. S. Lewis We therefore agree with Aristotle that what is intrinsically right may well be agreeable, and that the better a man is the more he will like it; but we agree with Kant so far as to say that there is one right act — that of self-surrender — which cannot be willed…