Which C.S. Lewis work is a Christian exploration of pain and suffering published in 1940?

The Problem of Pain is C.S. Lewis’s Christian exploration of pain and suffering, published in 1940.

The book examines why suffering exists if God is good and powerful. Lewis discusses divine goodness, human freedom, punishment, animal pain, and the place of suffering in Christian theology. He presents an intellectual argument rather than a personal diary of bereavement.

The distinction matters because A Grief Observed, written after Joy Davidman’s illness and death, approaches grief from a far more immediate and questioning perspective. The Problem of Pain predates Lewis’s marriage to Davidman and was written during the Second World War.

The book helped establish Lewis as a prominent Christian apologist. Its argument is associated with the philosophical branch of theodicy, the attempt to address the problem of evil and suffering. It remains one of Lewis’s most frequently discussed nonfiction works.