Gods Megafoon? C.S. Lewis over het lijden

Samenvatting

It has been argued by various authors, including Ann Loades and John Beversluis, that
C.S. Lewis’s autobiographical book on evil, A Grief Observed, amounts to a withdrawal
of views from his earlier philosophical book, The Problem of Pain. When Lewis was
confronted with suffering in his own life, so the argument goes, his earlier views proved
to be existentially untenable. Against this by now common interpretation of Lewis, I
argue that – in spite of differences in vocabulary that spring from differences in genre
– his position in A Grief Observed is in fundamental continuity with that in The Problem
of Pain. Contrary to the spirit of the age, Lewis argues in both books that God may be
the author of human suffering and that He may use suffering for character formation,
especially to induce people to give up their usurped autonomy.