Christian accounts of grief: Lewis, Wolterstorff and the tradition of consolation

Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 6.2

What you will learn

• Describe how Augustine and other early writers wrote about grief and its limits.
• Summarize the accounts of grief by C. S. Lewis and Nicholas Wolterstorff and what each leaves unresolved.
• Explain the New Testament teaching that Christians grieve with hope.
• Compare how Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant practice shapes mourning.

The big idea

Christians have not asked the bereaved to stop grieving. Scripture shows Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, and Paul tells believers not to sorrow as those who have no hope, which is different from telling them not to sorrow. Writers from Augustine to C. S. Lewis and Nicholas Wolterstorff have described grief honestly, including anger, doubt and the sense of God’s absence. Their accounts do not solve the problem of evil. They show how faith can live in loss, and they warn against comfort that comes too fast.

Key terms

Grief

The pain and mourning that follow a loss, especially a death.

Consolation

An ancient literary and pastoral form of comfort for the bereaved, written by Christian and pagan authors alike.

Mourning

The outward expression and practices of grief, which vary by culture and tradition.

Memory eternal

An Orthodox chant at funerals and memorials, asking that the departed be remembered by God forever.

Requiem

A Catholic Mass for the dead, named from its opening words asking eternal rest.

Anger at God

A common part of grief, which some Christian writers treat as honest prayer, and others as a danger to be handled with care.

Hope of resurrection

The Christian belief that the dead will be raised, which shapes how believers grieve.

Background

Every culture mourns. Christians inherited a mixed legacy: the Hebrew Bible’s laments and funeral customs, and the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, in which some Stoics advised that wise people should not grieve at all. The Christian answer was different. Jesus wept (John 11:35). He wept at the grave of a friend whom he was about to raise, which shows that the expectation of resurrection does not remove the sorrow of loss.

Paul writes to the Thessalonians about those who have died, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). The text compares two kinds of sorrow: Christians do sorrow, but in a different manner. This lesson looks at the ways believers have written about that difference, from the fourth century to the twentieth. It is not a replacement for care from friends, pastors or counselors, and it is meant to be read at the pace the student can bear.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Augustine and the early tradition

Augustine wrote with unusual frankness about grief. In Book 4 of the Confessions he tells of the death of a close friend in his youth, after which the whole world looked like death to him and he became a great riddle to himself. In Book 9 he describes the death of his mother Monica. He held back tears at the funeral, felt ashamed of his dryness, and then wept alone. He notes that he asked God to forgive his tears, if they were a sin. His account shows both the force of sorrow and the early Christian worry that grief might betray faith.

Other early writers took a gentler line. Ambrose of Milan, preaching on the death of his brother, defended tears as natural. Gregory of Nyssa wrote movingly of the death of his sister Macrina. Over time the tradition developed a form of letter or sermon called a consolation, which offered the bereaved comfort from Scripture and hope of reunion. The tradition generally forbids despair, not sorrow.

Step 2: C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis, the Oxford and Cambridge scholar, wrote The Problem of Pain in 1940, a work of argument. After his wife Joy Davidman died of cancer in 1960, he wrote A Grief Observed (published in 1961 under a pseudonym), a different kind of book. It is a set of notebook entries in which he records anger, doubt and a sense that God has shut the door. He asks whether God is a Cosmic Sadist, then slowly finds a quieter kind of faith. He suggests that the questions he had asked are, in some sense, unanswerable, and not met with refusal but with a kind of silence.

A reader should note that the two books show two sides of the same mind: the argument in the one and the cry in the other. Lewis himself said that his earlier book had been written when he had not suffered much. Some readers take his later book as the more honest. Others find it ends without a settled conclusion, which is a part of its truth.

Step 3: Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a Reformed philosopher then teaching at Yale, wrote Lament for a Son (1987) after his son Eric died in a mountaineering accident in 1983 at the age of twenty-five. It is a short book of fragments. Wolterstorff says that he does not know why his son died, and that he has no theory. He rejects the idea that God planned the death to bring about a good, and he rejects the claim that suffering is always for the sufferer’s benefit. He takes up the image of a God who is not impassive but who suffers with his creatures, citing the cross, and says that God is not distant from grief.

The book does not give up faith. It treats the Christian hope of resurrection as the final comfort, a hope held by those who live without full answers. It is cited by many pastors for its restraint. Some philosophers note that it parts ways with the view of God as unable to suffer, and some Reformed readers note its distance from teaching on divine ordaining. The author does not claim to have reconciled these.

Step 4: Grief with hope in practice

Churches give grief a form. The Catholic funeral rites pray for the departed and use the paschal candle to signal Christ’s victory; a Mass is offered and the family is accompanied. In the Orthodox Church, the funeral includes the Trisagion prayers, the kiss of farewell to the departed and the singing of Memory eternal, with memorial services at the third, ninth and fortieth days. Protestant funerals often center on the Scriptures, the sermon and the assurance of resurrection, with variation among traditions.

These forms have common features. They name the death honestly, pray for the dead or commend them to God, gather the community, and proclaim the resurrection. They also give mourners something to do when words fail. Many bereaved people report that the structure itself helped them.

Step 5: What these accounts do and do not do

The accounts of Augustine, Lewis and Wolterstorff do not solve the philosophical problem. They do three other things. They show that grief and faith can coexist. They resist quick explanations. And they point to the person of Christ, who weeps, suffers and rises. Readers who want an argument should return to earlier modules. Readers who are grieving may find that these books, and the Psalms, are more useful than any theory. A person in deep grief that does not lift over time, or who has thoughts of self-harm, should seek help from a doctor or counselor as well as from a pastor.

1. Why does John 11:35 matter for how Christians grieve?
2. What is the difference between sorrowing and sorrowing as those with no hope?
3. What does Augustine’s account of his tears at his mother’s funeral show about early Christian attitudes to grief?
4. What makes A Grief Observed different in kind from The Problem of Pain?
5. Why does Wolterstorff refuse to explain his son’s death, and what does he put in its place?
6. What role do rituals play in helping the bereaved?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching affirms prayer for the dead, belief in purification after death, and the resurrection of the body. The funeral rites combine grief with hope, and the Church teaches the duty of comforting the sorrowing as a spiritual work of mercy. Catholic writers from Augustine to Henri Nouwen have written on grief with honesty.

Orthodox

Orthodox practice treats death as an enemy that Christ has defeated, which gives grief a double character: real mourning and Paschal joy. The prayers for the departed, the memorials and the singing of Memory eternal bind the living and the dead in the one church. Orthodox writers caution against both despair and denial.

Protestant

Protestants stress the Scriptures and the promise of resurrection, and the comfort of the Spirit. The Heidelberg Catechism has been a source of comfort to many mourners. Lewis, an Anglican, and Wolterstorff, a Reformed philosopher, are widely read among Protestants. Practice differs, and many Protestants do not pray for the dead.

Psychological and secular views

Modern research describes grief as varied and not as a fixed series of stages. Some counselors note that religious belief can help mourners cope, while others note that religious struggle, such as anger at God, can complicate grief. Most agree that supportive community and, when needed, professional help matter a great deal.

Why it matters

Everyone who studies suffering will eventually grieve, or sit with someone who does. Reading how others have mourned, and what they did and did not say, prepares a student for those moments better than any argument, and it honors the many who have already walked this road.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which of the accounts in this lesson speaks most to you, and why?
2. What would you want to be done for you, and what left undone, if you were bereaved?
3. How might a community support someone in grief long after the funeral?

Independent assignment

A letter of consolation

In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Write a letter, which you will not send, to a person grieving a loss (it can be an imagined person). Use the tradition of consolation: speak honestly about the loss, include one passage of Scripture, offer one practical form of help, and avoid explaining why the loss happened. Then write a short note on what you learned about the difficulty of this kind of writing. Keep the work private.

Further study

• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read Book 4 on the death of his friend and Book 9 on the death of his mother.
• C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain Read the last chapters, and note that Lewis later wrote A Grief Observed in a different voice.
• Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, The Heidelberg Catechism Read the first question and answer on comfort in life and death.
• John 11:35 Jesus wept.
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.
• Revelation 21:4 God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.