Which 1943 C.S. Lewis book argues that human suffering can have a place in Christian thought?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book about the place of suffering in Christian thought.

Lewis examines why a good and powerful God would permit pain, evil, and suffering. He discusses divine omnipotence, human freedom, the fall, morality, hell, and animal suffering. The book is a philosophical and theological argument rather than a personal diary of bereavement.

That distinction matters because readers often confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, and it records an intensely personal experience of mourning. The two books address suffering from very different positions: one primarily theoretical, the other deeply autobiographical.

The Problem of Pain became one of Lewis’s prominent apologetic works. Its publication in 1943 placed it between The Screwtape Letters and the later broadcast talks that were collected as Mere Christianity. Lewis’s approach is aimed at explaining Christian claims through reasoned discussion, though the book remains a work of religious argument rather than a neutral study of suffering.