Which 1940 C.S. Lewis book examines why a good God permits suffering?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book examining why a good God permits suffering.

The work is a philosophical and theological study of pain, human freedom, divine goodness, punishment, and the Christian understanding of suffering. Lewis wrote it as a reasoned discussion rather than as a personal diary of grief.

That distinction matters because readers often confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. The latter was published in 1961 and reflects Lewis’s personal response to the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. Its emotional tone is much more intimate and questioning.

The Problem of Pain helped establish Lewis as a prominent Christian apologist. It predates his famous BBC broadcasts that were later revised into Mere Christianity, and it is also separate from The Great Divorce, his imaginative 1945 allegorical work about heaven and hell.