C. S. Lewis and John Hick: An Interface on Theodicy

Abstract

In The Problem of Pain (1940), C. S. Lewis explores the problem of evil for a non-specialist, popular audience. In Evil and the God of Love (1966), John Hick examines the same problem for a specialist, scholarly audience. Whereas Lewis writes self-consciously as a lay theologian, Hick writes authoritatively as an academic theologian. In my essay, I analyze the striking parallels between their theodicies and ask: did Lewis influence Hick? If he did, then Lewis shaped scholarly discourse on theodicy while operating completely outside of it. If he did not, then their structural and stylistic intersections illustrate the possibility of dialogue between two distinct modes of theological discourse that fail to stay in conversation long enough to notice their close substantive affinities. Either way, the surprising and widely unnoticed parallels between C. S. Lewis’s ‘megaphone theodicy’ and John Hick’s ‘soul-making theodicy’ demonstrate the common ground between lay and academic theology, and indicates the potential for mutual enrichment, without eliding their distinctive methodologies, contexts, and audiences.