Slides: A Lewisian Approach to Eleonore Stump’s Problem of Mourning

The Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers
2025 Biennial Meeting

Christopher Holland

April 24, 2025

Goals

1. State Eleonore Stump’s “Problem of Mourning.”
2. Give her solution.
3. Suggest a Lewisian alternative/amendment.

There are three goals for my presentation today. The first is to state what Eleonore Stump has called the problem of mourning (2022); the second is to outline her solution to the problem; and the third is to construct an alternative (or perhaps amendment) to her solution. I aim accomplish the third task by bringing both the problem and her solution into conversation with Perelandra, the second book in C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy (2014).

The Problem of Mourning

even a successful theodicy can leave behind

• a disappointed God
• disappointed Saints

The problem of mourning is the last part of the problem of evil. It is what remains of the problem of evil after a successful theodicy. Assume that there is a successful theodicy. In other words, assume that God permits creatures to suffer and has a morally sufficient reason for doing so. Nevertheless, one might continue to press the problem of evil by insisting that each person in this world their could have been better had their sufferings never occurred. If so, everyone, including God, has some reason to be disappointed. Narrowing to a Christian context: behind the gospel lies the “story of an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, disappointed God” (Stump 2022, 8–9).

The problem of mourning can be raised from two different points of view. The first I will call “the disappointed God” and the second “the disappointed saint.”

A Disappointed God

Why should we not suppose that there is a defeat for God, a sadness, a deficiency of some sort, in the fact that God’s consequent will is different from his antecedent will, that God’s “Plan A” for the world had to be replaced by God’s “Plan B?”

— Stump (2022, 5)

I’ll begin with The Disappointed God.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan seeks not only to wreck God’s creation but also to “interrupt [God’s] joy.” Stump frames this aspect of the problem using Aquinas’s distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will.

God’s antecedent will is what God would have willed if everything in the world had been up to God alone. God’s consequent will is what God actually does will, given what God’s creatures will. For Aquinas, the will with which God assents to suffering is only his consequent will, not his antecedent will. In the circumstances of post-Fall human life, with human misuse of free will, God’s consequent will includes allowing human suffering in some cases. But the claim that all the suffering which God allows is willed by God only in his consequent will raises a question: why should we not suppose that there is a defeat for God, a sadness, a deficiency of some sort, in the fact that God’s consequent will is different from his antecedent will, that God’s “Plan A” for the world had to be replaced by God’s “Plan B?” (Stump 2022, 4–5)

Disappointed Saints

To say that [a person’s] suffering was defeated for her is to say that [1] there was a benefit from her suffering, [2] that that benefit came primarily to her, [3] that it would not have come without her suffering, and [4] that it significantly outweighed her suffering.

— Stump (2022, 5)

[3a] A human person cannot have union with God without suffering given that this is a post-Fall world.
[3b] A human person cannot have union with God without suffering in any world, including worlds without a Fall.

A second framing of the problem focuses on individual lives.

The problem pertains any post-Fall individual, but in what follows, I focus on “disappointed saints.” (By saints, I mean persons who do or will make up the heavenly community, those who enjoy or will enjoy union with God.) This narrows the scope of my presentation and avoids complications that arise from the doctrine of hell (i.e., permanent separation from God). It also highlights an important feature of the problem of mourning: that we cannot solve the problem of mourning by adding universal salvation to our theodicy.

To better see this aspect of the problem, it will help to consider Stump’s person-centered criteria for a successful theodicy.

To say that [a person’s] suffering was defeated for her is to say that there was a benefit from her suffering, that that benefit came primarily to her, that it would not have come without her suffering, and that it significantly outweighed her suffering.” [5; see also Stump (2013), 13]

Let’s break the criteria into parts and connect each with the benefit proposed in her defense against the problem of evil.

1. A person’s suffering is defeated by a particular benefit: union with God.

In Stump’s defense, suffering is always medicinal: God only allows suffering to ward off a greater harm (specifically, separation from God) or as an avenue to greater union with God (see Stump 2013, 381–83, 396–97).

2. The benefit must come to the person who suffers.

God’s reason for allowing a person to suffer cannot give rise to the distributive indifference problems that plague utilitarian moral theories. A person’s suffering can benefit others, but it must also provide a benefit the person suffering.

3. The benefit must be something that cannot be had without the suffering.

Again, on Stump’s model, suffering is always medicinal. Human persons are born in a fallen condition, estranged from God, and unable to save themselves. All suffering is either an operative means of grace connected to justification or a cooperative means of grace connected to sanctification.

4. The benefit must outweigh the suffering.

A person must prefer the complex good, they receive through suffering to not having suffered. The would not “wish away” their suffering because to do so would “wish away” its benefit.

Now, notice that my exposition of condition (3) presumes that the benefactor in question is a post-Fall human person. Stump, however, notes that “the modality of that condition can be understood in different ways” (6). Filling in union with God as the benefit in question, we get:

• 3a. A human person cannot have union with God without suffering *given that this is a post-Fall world.
• 3b. A human person cannot have union with God without suffering *in any world, including worlds without a Fall.

3a is plausibly true. 3b is implausible. Moreover, if we accept 3a and reject 3b, we must conclude that “A human person can have union with God without suffering in, at least some, worlds without a fall.” This leads us to an individualized problem of mourning.

Disappointed Saints

For any saint (or other post-fall human),

if God’s original creation had remained very good, then there would have been no worst thing to ward off; and on Christian doctrine the best thing would have been available without either suffering or atonement. And so there is a sense in which ultimately suffering is not defeated for any post-Fall human person because in a world without a Fall suffering would not have been needed for union with God.

— Stump (2022, 5)

For any saint (or other post-fall human),

if God’s original creation had remained very good, then there would have been no worst thing to ward off; and on Christian doctrine the best thing would have been available without either suffering or atonement. And so there is a sense in which ultimately suffering is not defeated for any post-Fall human person because in a world without a Fall suffering would not have been needed for union with God. (Stump 2022, 5)

At this point I should add that some theist will not find possibility of a disappointed God or disappointed Saints problematic. They might, in the words of Leigh Vicens, “prefer to view the Fall and all subsequent sin and suffering as something that God sorrows over” (2025, 9). However, for the purpose of this presentation, I will assume that a successful response to the problem of evil must address the problem of mourning.

O felix culpa and Stump’s M-Defense

Traditionally, theists have responded to the problem of evil with either a theodicy or a defense. To address the problem of mourning, a theist will need to supplement their theodicy or defense with a theochara or an M-defense.

Theodicy and theochara

• A theodicy attempts to justify God by giving God’s actual reasons for allowing suffering.
• A theochara attempts to give God’s actual reasons for being joyful rather than disappointed in creation, given the Fall

A theodicy attempts to justify God by giving God’s actual reasons for allowing suffering. A theochara attempts to give God’s actual reasons for being joyful rather than disappointed in creation, given the Fall.

Defense and M-defense

• A defense embeds possible reasons for God to allow suffering in a story that could be true of the actual world.
• An M-defense embeds possible reasons for God’s joy rather than disappointment in creation in a story that could be true of the actual world.

A defense embeds possible reasons for God to allow suffering in a story that could be true of the actual world. Finally, an M-defense embeds possible reasons for God’s joy rather than disappointment in creation in a story that could be true of the actual world (Stump 2022, 241).

O felix culpa

The post-Fall world and the lives of those in grace in this world are somehow better, more glorious, more of a triumph for the Creator, than the world and those lives would have been had there been no Fall.

— Stump (2022, 11)

Stump does not attempt to build a theochara but she does draws on the felix culpa tradition to construct a M-defense. The central claim of her defense is that “the post-Fall world and the lives of those in grace in this world are somehow better, more glorious, more of a triumph for the Creator, than the world and those lives would have been had there been no Fall” (11).

In this respect, Stump’s use of the felix culpa tradition is significantly different than Alvin Plantinga’s (2017) use of the tradition. While Plantinga compares the relative value of entire worlds, Stump focuses on how individuals within a post-Fall world have “better, more glorious” lives than they would have in possible worlds without a Fall.

True Self

The true self of a human being is the emergent condition of a human being who is thriving in union with God and has his deepest heart’s desire when that desire is for God and is reciprocated by God’s desire for him.

— Stump (2022, 272)

Stump’s M-Defense

An M-defense will sketch a possible world, reasonably like the actual world in respects relevant to the problem of mourning, in which the post-Fall world even with its suffering and scars is something for God to rejoice in rather than something that disappoints God. It will be a world in which a post-Fall person can be more his true self than he would have been in a world without a Fall.

— Stump (2022, 241)

Atonement and Mirroring Christ’s Passion

On Christian doctrine, God is love; and the most compelling manifestation of God as love is in Christ’s passion. For a person Jerome to be perfected in his true self, then, he has to be like Christ as Christ’s love is manifest in his passion.

— Stump (2022, 262)

Incarnation and Atonement.

Joyful Saints

To say that [a person’s] suffering was defeated for her is to say that [1] there was a benefit from her suffering, [2] that that benefit came primarily to her, [3] that it would not have come without her suffering, and [4] that it significantly outweighed her suffering.

— Stump (2022, 5)

[3c] A post-Fall person can be more his true self than he would have been in a world without a Fall.

Perelandra

The floating islands of Eden

Cast

Elwin Ransom

Protagonist. Sent to Venus (Perelandra) to interact with the Green Lady.

Dr. Weston (Unman)

Antagonist. Dies shortly after arrival and his body is possessed by a fallen angel, resulting in the ‘Unman’

The Green Lady (Tinidril)

The Eve-like figure of Perelandra.

The King (Tor)

The Adam-like figure of Perelandra. He is absent for much of the narrative.

Eldil (pl.) Eldial

 (roughly) an angel

Perelandra

Can refer to the planet Venus or to the Eldil of Venus

Maleldil

The Christian God described in Perelandra as having been incarnated as Jesus

Read the cast, very few remarks are needed here. Make comments later.

Felix Culpa and the Temptation of the Green Lady

It was this breaking of the commandment which brought Maleldil to our world and because of which He was made man.

— Unman (in Lewis 2014, 333–34)

start

• Set up the unman and the garden parallel
• Note that for our purpose, the bringing of Maleldil can entail all the goods, including personal goods that Stump includes in her felix culpa
• Unman even associates disobedience with a kind of martyrdom (345) for her race
• By posing this question to an unfallen being, Lewis invites us to consider a different problem of mourning. He invites us to consider the possibility, a possibility in which God is disappointed by obedience. And the saints must resign themselves to being less than the otherwise might have been.
• Perhaps Stump’s approach leads to this conclusion. That God’s antecedent will is a disappointing second to his consequent will.

end

Larger Cups, Larger Portions

The reward of eternal life is both one and many. It is many based on the various capacities of those who share in it … It is like a spring of water, available to all to take as much as they wish. Then, one who has a larger cup will receive more, and one who has a smaller cup will receive less. Therefore, there is one fountain, considering it in itself, but every one does not receive the same portion.

  — Aquinas’ commentary on John C14.L1.1855

The Great Watercourse

He has immeasurable use for each thing that is made, that His love and splendor may flow forth like a strong river which has need of a great watercourse and fills alike the deep pools and the little crannies, that are filled equally and remain unequal, and when it has filled them brim full it flows over and makes new channels. We also have need beyond measure of all that He has made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely necessary to you and for your delight I was made. Blessed be He!

— The Great Dance (in Lewis 2014, 446)

The fallen world has larger cups and deeper pools then the unfallen world, but in both worlds all cups are full. One will not be disappointed with a full cup.

Felix Culpa and the Temptation of the Green Lady

Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed Him. That is lost for ever. The first King and first Mother of our world did the forbidden thing, and He brought good of it in the end. But what they did was not good, and what they lost we have not seen. And there were some to whom no good came nor ever will come.

— Ransom (in Lewis 2014, 333–34)

What is this unknown good? Can it lead to larger cups too?

Greater Knowledge

All this, all that happened in your world, Maleldil has put into our mind. We have learned of evil, though not as the Evil One wished us to learn. We have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking. There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep. You are more ignorant of evil in Thulcandra now than in the days before your Lord and Lady began to do it. But Maleldil has brought us out of the one ignorance, and we have not entered the other.

— The Green King (in Lewis 2014, 436–37)

Perelandra’s Gift

We give you thanks, [Perelandra]” said the King, “and specially for this world in which you have labored for long ages as Maleldil’s very hand that all might be ready for us when we woke. …For though we were young then, we saw dimly that to say ‘It is Maleldil’ was true, but not all the truth. This world we receive: our joy is the greater because we take it by your gift as well as by His. But what does He put into your mind to do henceforward?”

— The Green King (in Lewis 2014, 436–37)

Felix Culpa Redux

All which is not itself the Great Dance was made in order that He might come down into it. In the Fallen World He prepared for Himself a body and was united with the Dust and made it glorious for ever. This is the end and final cause of all creating, and the sin whereby it came is called Fortunate and the world where this was enacted is the center of worlds. Blessed be He!

— The Great Dance (in Lewis 2014, 444)

The Great Dance

Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!

— The Great Dance (in Lewis 2014, 446)

The Great Dance

In the plan of the Great Dance plans without number interlock, and each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed. Thus each is equally at the center and none are there by being equals, but some by giving place and some by receiving it, the small things by their smallness and the great by their greatness, and all the patterns linked and looped together by the unions of a kneeling with a sceptred love. Blessed be He!”

— The Great Dance (in Lewis 2014, 446)

Q&A

Bibliography

Bowman, Mary R. 2003. “A Darker Ignorance: C. S. Lewis and the Nature of the Fall.” Mythlore 24 (1 (91)): 62–78. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26814228.

Goetz, Stewart. 2018. C. S. Lewis. Blackwell Great Minds. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.

Lewis, C. S. 2014. The Space Trilogy, Omnibus Edition. New York: HarperCollins e-books.

Milton, John. (1667) 2005. Paradise Lost. Edited by Philip Pullman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Peterson, Michael L. 2008. “C. S. Lewis on the Necessity of Gratuitious Evil.” In C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty, edited by David J. Baggett, Gary R. Habermas, and Jerry L. Walls, 174–92. Downers Grove, IL.: IVP Academic.

———. 2020. C. S. Lewis and the Christian Worldview. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Plantinga, Alvin. 2017. “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa’.” In The Problem of Evil, edited by Michael L. Peterson, 363–89. Selected Readings, Second Edition. Notre Dame, ID: University of Notre Dame Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpj7gm2.25.

Stump, Eleonore. 2013. Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Kindle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2018. Atonement. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2022. The Image of God: The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning. Oxford University Press.

Vicens, Leigh. 2025. “The Problem with the Problem of Mourning.” Religious Studies, February, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003441252500006X.