Which 1942 C.S. Lewis book argues that pain can have a spiritual purpose?

The Problem of Pain is the 1942 C.S. Lewis book that examines how suffering might have a spiritual purpose. Lewis addresses the classic problem of evil: how pain and suffering can exist if God is good and omnipotent.

The book discusses divine goodness, human freedom, punishment, animal pain, and hell. Lewis argues within a Christian theological framework rather than presenting the work as a personal memoir of bereavement.

That distinction is important because readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. The latter was published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk and reflects Lewis’s personal anguish after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. The two books approach suffering from very different perspectives.