[C.S.] Lewis always makes me think and re-think. We need more of that in the Church today. O, that our teachers and preachers would read!
–Michel Kear, commenting on C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain on Amazon in a customer review
Notable and Quotable
Posted in Theology
The Problem of Pain had a tremendous impact upon me as I was working out
my faith. It is particularly helpful in its handling of animal sentience and
redemption for those of us who love our domesticated animals. I still return to it and recommend it to others. Having priests who read and read deeply
changes the lives of their entire flock.
Lewis’s Problem of Pain is thought-provoking, but it has its problems and is not Lewis’s best work. It should certainly be read in tandem with Lewis’s A Grief Observed. The work of theodicy by Lewis’s close friend Austin Farrer, Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited, is a much finer work. I have heard that Farrer’s theodicy is helpfully discussed in a remarkable collection of essays called Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of Austin Farrer (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2004), still available in paperback.