By Clement Harrold

January 30, 2026

Why would a good God allow an injured fawn to lie trapped for two weeks under a fallen tree in excruciating pain before a predator finally comes along and puts an end to its short, wretched life?

Provocative questions like this one bring us face to face with the problem of animal pain. The problem is perplexing in part because our conceptual tools for solving it seem rather limited. As C.S. Lewis confessed in his book The Problem of Pain,

The problem of animal suffering is appalling; not because the animals are so numerous (for, as we have seen, no more pain is felt when a million suffer than when one suffers) but because the Christian explanation of human pain cannot be extended to animal pain. So far as we know beasts are incapable either of sin or virtue: therefore they can neither deserve pain nor be improved by it. (The Problem of Pain, ch 9, “Animal Pain”)

Whenever humans suffer we can trust that God is using our pain to overcome sin and increase love in the world. Moreover, as humans we also have the immense consolation of knowing that God has actually entered into our pain, such that our suffering has been imbued with enormous value. But when it comes to the animal kingdom, no such consolation exists.

How, then, do we explain the vast and varied amount of animal pain that exists in the world?

Admitting the Mystery

The first thing to say in answer to our question is that we do not have a complete explanation for why God allows animal pain, nor do we need one. C.S. Lewis explains,

[W]e must never allow the problem of animal suffering to become the centre of the problem of pain; not because it is unimportant—whatever furnishes plausible grounds for questioning the goodness of God is very important indeed—but because it is outside the range of our knowledge. God has given us data which enable us, in some degree, to understand our own suffering: He has given us no such data about beasts. We know neither why they were made nor what they are, and everything we say about them is speculative. From the doctrine that God is good we may confidently deduce that the appearance of reckless divine cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion—and the fact that the only suffering we know at first hand (our own) turns out not to be a cruelty will make it easier to believe this. After that, everything is guesswork. (The Problem of Pain, ch 9, “Animal Pain”) 

For Lewis, our starting point must be to recognize that we live in an ordered universe, and that the evidence for an all-powerful and all-good God is overwhelming.

The fact that anything exists at all, the origins of the universe, the applicability of mathematics, the fine-tuning of the universe for life, the origins of life, the origins of consciousness, the reality of free will, the trustworthiness of our rational faculties, our innate sense of right and wrong, the objectivity of beauty, the near-universality of religious experience, and the person of Jesus of Nazareth are just some of the many compelling reasons to believe, firstly, that God exists, and secondly, that He is not some petty tyrant but rather the supreme Artist, Mathematician, and Lover.

This strong background evidence gives us the confidence that there is some justification for animal pain, even if we don’t fully understand what that justification is. Indeed, as the Evangelical Christian theologian Gavin Ortlund points out, one of the great strengths of the Christian worldview is its “absorbing power” which allows it to situate something like animal pain within a larger rational framework.

Another way of saying this is that Christianity has the resources for showing how something like animal pain might conceivably make sense in light of God’s providential plan for the universe. By contrast, a materialist or atheistic worldview has virtually no absorbing power; it is incapable of explaining almost every aspect of the way the world is, and as we shall see, it can’t even explain why animal pain is really bad.

A Possible Explanation: The Fall of the Angels

The theory which C.S. Lewis himself offers for making sense of animal pain rests on a couple of premises. First, we should recognize that animals do not suffer in the way that humans suffer. This is obviously true in the case of lower life forms like worms or birds, but it also holds true for higher animals such as dolphins or chimpanzees. The reason for this is that even a dolphin or a chimp does not have a sense of self in the way that a human being does. As a result, these creatures are not capable of the kind of first-person perspective on their experiences which would allow them to self-consciously think or feel “I am in pain right now.”

This point goes some way to mitigating the problem of animal pain, insofar as it indicates that animal pain is not characterized by the same sense of trauma, distress, and grief which characterizes most human suffering. Nevertheless, it seems implausible to suggest that this resolves the problem altogether. Even if animal pain is categorically distinct from human suffering, it still appears to be a bad thing which requires explanation.

This brings us to Lewis’s second premise, which is that the fall of the angels likely played a pivotal role in undoing the harmony of creation. While this idea might seem far-fetched at first, it is worth taking seriously. As Gavin Ortlund has shown, the “angelic fall theodicy” has a long pedigree in the Christian tradition, building as it does on the insights not only of C.S. Lewis, but also his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine before them.
 

Since the angels were destined to play a role in both the creation and governance of the world, it would not be surprising if the rebellion of one third of the angels—including the most senior of the angels, Lucifer, whom Scripture describes as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31)—should result in the corruption of the natural world.

This would also go some way towards explaining why animal pain appears to have existed long before the fall of Adam and Eve. Furthermore, as Ortlund points out, the book of Genesis tells us that God created the world “very good” (1:31), but it never says that the world was perfect. Indeed, we see evidence of its imperfection in the very fact that the serpent was in the garden. While it was the sin of Adam and Eve that introduced death to the human race, it is plausible that the broader breakdown in the natural world originated with the fall not of men but of the angels.

An angelic fall theodicy also helps account for the fact that we live in a universe which is undeniably good and beautiful on the one hand, and yet unmistakably broken and violent on the other. As Lewis remarked in his book Miracles, “We find ourselves in a world of transporting pleasures, ravishing beauties, and tantalising possibilities, but all constantly being destroyed, all coming to nothing. Nature has all the air of a good thing spoiled” (ch 14, “The Grand Miracle”).

Despite its abundant flaws, life remains, for man and beast alike, a glorious thing. Animals experience untold pains, yes, but they also enjoy a great many pleasures; and neither animals nor humans are in a rush to commit suicide in any great numbers. Even in this broken world of ours, it is far better to exist than not to exist. At the same time, we cannot escape the fact that the goodness of creation has been corrupted in some primordial fashion. God sowed good seed, but it appears an enemy has been at work planting weeds among the wheat (see Matt 13:24-30).

A Universe Awaiting Final Redemption

Even if the angelic fall theodicy has merit, it doesn’t fully explain why God would allow things to get so bad, or what justice there would be in allowing animals to suffer on account of the sin of the angels. Here, again, we must admit the limits of our knowledge. Nevertheless, there are a few additional things that might be said in fleshing out the theory we have been exploring here.

First, given that animals are not rational persons, what God owes to them in justice is very different to what He owes to an angel or a human being. As the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et spes affirms, “[Man] is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself” (24). From this it follows that animals only exist as a means to some greater end.

This opens up the possibility that it is still good for animals to exist even if their life is marked by transience and pain, provided their existence contributes to some larger plan or story whereby God better manifests His glory and pours out His goodness on human beings. Again, we can only speculate, but perhaps animal pain plays some vital role not only in underscoring the weightiness of human and angelic freedom, but also in revealing the devastating reality of sin, as well as man’s wholly unique status in creation.

Second, there exists an ancient line of thought within the Christian tradition which views the whole of the cosmos as journeying towards a state of perfection. On this account, God considers it more glorious, more beautiful, and ultimately more loving to permit a world which begins in brokenness but ends in moral and material harmony which will last forever. We find evidence of this viewpoint in Church Fathers like St. Irenaeus, as well as the writings of St. Paul:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom 8:19-23)

Third, it is possible that the wildness of creation, corrupted though it may be, still reveals something profound about who God is. Even broken creation has value insofar as it reflects something true about God’s nature. As Mr. Beaver and Mr. Tumnus remind us in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan (who represents Christ) is not a safe or tame lion, but he is good.

Speaking of lions, in The Problem of Pain Lewis speculated on how such beasts might remain themselves—and continue to reflect the grandeur of God—even in the new heavens and the new earth:

But if there is a rudimentary Leonine self, to that also God can give a “body” as it pleases Him—a body no longer living by the destruction of the lamb, yet richly Leonine in the sense that it also expresses whatever energy and splendour and exulting power dwelled within the visible lion on this earth. I think, under correction, that the prophet used an eastern hyperbole when he spoke of the lion and the lamb lying down together. That would be rather impertinent of the lamb. To have lions and lambs that so consorted (except on some rare celestial Saturnalia of topsy-turvydom) would be the same as having neither lambs nor lions. I think the lion, when he has ceased to be dangerous, will still be awful: indeed, that we shall then first see that of which the present fangs and claws are a clumsy, and satanically perverted, imitation. There will still be something like the shaking of a golden mane: and often the good Duke will say, “Let him roar again”. (The Problem of Pain, ch 9, “Animal Pain”)

A fourth point to consider is that even if we assume that animal pain originated with the sin of the angels and was further compounded by the sin of Adam, God is so powerful that He can still use it to reveal His goodness and glory. Indeed, from a Christian perspective, it is a striking fact that everywhere we look in the natural world we find vestiges of that archetypal Gospel ideal of life-through-death. All heterotrophic life forms survive at the expense of other life forms; the fawn perishes while trapped under the tree, but in doing so it provides sustenance to a host of other creatures. Even the autotrophs survive only as the beneficiaries of the sun, which will grow and grow until it eventually expires; and of course, these same autotrophs are a source of food for countless beasts and humans alike. In a sense, all of these gritty realities confirm what the Church Fathers so readily observed: the whole of creation has a cruciform shape.

Fifth and finally, it should be recognized that it is only our belief in a good God and a meaningful universe which allows us to identify animal pain as anything other than a natural, healthy part of the cycle of life. This was a point Lewis articulated in his response to the philosopher C.E.M. Joad:

I know that there are moments when the incessant continuity and desperate helplessness of what at least seems to be animal suffering make every argument for theism sound hollow . . . Then the old indignation, the old pity arises. But how strangely ambivalent this feeling is . . . if I regard this pity and indignation simply as subjective experiences of my own with no validity beyond their strength at the moment (which next moment will change), I can hardly use them as standards whereby to arraign the creation. On the contrary, they become strong as arguments against God just in so far as I take them to be transcendent illumination to which creation must conform or be condemned. They are arguments against God only if they are themselves the voice of God. (God in the Dock, ch 20, “The Pains of Animals: A Problem in Theology”)

As Gavin Ortlund has correctly pointed out, if we believe that the giant ensemble of animal pain is something truly broken and disordered—if we believe that in some true sense this is not the way the world is supposed to be (nor, for that matter, the way it always will be)—then we must first affirm the existence of a good God who makes such beliefs intelligible. 
 

Further Reading

B. Kyle Keltz, Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2020)

Gavin Ortlund, “On the Fall of Angels and the Fallenness of Nature: An Evangelical Hypothesis Regarding Natural Evil”

Reasonable Faith, “Animal Pain Re-visited”