The Four Loves (1960)

I'm having trouble getting into this book, but I needed a book with the number "four" in it for TNBBC's Spring Challenge, to go along with "Three Junes" and "Slaughterhouse-Five".

If you can recommend another book with the number four in it, spelled out, I'd love to read something more...more...I don't know, entertaining?

CS Lewis is quite his own little beast. Reading his work is difficult, but always fruitful — you just have to be willing to dig your heels in and pay attention to what you’re reading. He has a lot of wonderful insight into love in The Four Loves — affection, friendship, passion, and charity. I talked about a slightly different version of these four loves during my month of love, but Lewis gave me some other things to think about as well. I really love how he talks about each of the loves reflecting different facets of God, and the different ways we interact with the people around us. I highlighted practically half the book, but here is my favorite quote:

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2012/09/21/book-review-47-the-four-loves-by-cs-lewis/ ( )

Two tapes. In his own reading, Lewis ventilates the nature of LOVE, drawing from the four Greek words: Storge (affection), Philia (friendship), Eros (sexuality), Agape (selfless love).

Shows how natural love can go sideways and actually pollute our relationships. Often it is selfish and destructive. Lewis shows how Godlike agape love can nurture all our relationships.

(After years of living with his brother and an older widow, Lewis married late in life, Joy Davidman. Her death shortly thereafter is the subject of the 1993 film, Shadowlands.)

The English language really is an inferior language for describing ideas or concepts. It is the weird amalgamation of so much else, kind of like the cultures that both spawned it, and that it in turn spawned. This thought has occurred to me almost every time that I have contemplated the greater variety of words to describe so many sensations and ideas in the Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic languages.

Most recently, this notion came to me when reading the book, The Four Loves, by C. S. Lewis. In the slim volume, Lewis deals with the subject of the four types of love found in the Bible. They are summarized briefly in the volume as Godly love, brotherly love, friendly love, and erotic love. The aspect that makes Lewis' thoughts interesting is that he combines his growing knowledge of the Scriptures with his knowledge of the Medieval and literary, as well as a dash of real-life experiences in anecdotes, to paint a picture much more vivid than most treatments of the four Biblical loves can claim.

Lewis attempts to flesh out the loves, and to deal with the different vagaries of each love, even with how they intersect with each other. Many of us can think of such intersections ourselves. As I write this, I am reminded of how Our Lord Himself made a connection between brotherly and Divine love, when addressing Peter shortly before the Ascension to the Father after His resurrection, where He confronted Peter over his denial of Our Lord. It is not that many loves are present, Lewis argues, but that so many loves fall under these four main headings. Together they weave a tapestry that is beautiful or ugly, Divine or demoniac, according to how we use such loves.

Lewis gives examples and anecdotes – indeed, this work contains the most anecdotes of any of his works that I've read – to make his case about the blessings of practicing the correct and Biblical notions of love, as well as the dangers of flouting such instruction given to us by God for our own good and His righteousness.

The only real drawback is not so much a drawback as a warning. Lewis uses much of the language of “paganism” as he rightly understands and points out that the writers of the Bible knew and used such language. God used it through them, to speak to us at our level. The “problem” comes from his apparent assumption that everyone knows this, or is prepared for it. Some may be harmed spiritually by being introduced to such a complicated issue and, without a proper introduction to the actual ins and outs of the interplay of the pagan and Christian at the time of the writing of the New Testament, make incorrect assumptions in other areas of Biblical interpretation that are erroneous. Lewis' leaps ahead of his audience are the most common “fault” if you will, of his writings on Apologetics, but this case is the only one that is at all egregious, in that the most danger could be caused in someone ignorant of the concepts he launches into with very little real introduction.

The book was a real blessing to me in helping me to focus my thoughts on facets of the Biblical loves in such a way as I had not done before now. If you can prepare yourself to research and fill in the preliminary knowledge of the pagan influences earlier referenced, the book will be of real value to you, if you are not sure that you can, then maybe you ought to hold off on reading it for now. ( )

I'll admit that I haven't read a ton of work by Lewis, but of the work I have read, The Four Loves felt the most scholarly, moreso even than my recollections of Mere Christianity. In The Four Loves, Lewis breaks down the concept of love and analyzes it from a moral and Christian perspective.

He uses familiar scholarly concepts from Plato's day by breaking love into the same four main segments that the Greeks used: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity. He adds to this the Christian scriptural reference that "God is Love" and then explores the religious aspects of love.

Some of the scholarly breakdown twisted my brain a little bit and took multiple readings to try and untangle…as he expounded on "Need Love" versus "Gift Love", I was right there with him, but when he started putting forth various in-depth analysis between Venus (sexuality) and Eros (romantic 'being in love'), things started to get muddled…and when he broke into the chapter on Charity, there were a number of theoretical and rhetorical leaps that were difficult for me to follow at times.

Overall though and in spite of moments of confusion, the general message of the book was good and well presented. He provided great insight into the differences between each of the categories presented. The concept of Affection vs Friendship in terms of what makes a 'real friend' was rather intriguing, especially as he continued his examples through love's progression to show how and why friendships are formed or fail to be formed, how and why friendships can grow into romantic relationships or not, and what aspect Charity plays in all of this.

As with Lewis's other books, there is plenty of theological discussion going on. I don't agree with everything he had to say, which is fine, but I think he made some great points. During the last chapter or so as he speaks on Charity, he provides some great nuggets for us to think on as we think about our own charitable behaviors. He also talks about the idea of Charity being both a 'need love' and a 'gift love' and that as we engage in that paradox, we are growing nearer to God's love.

I enjoyed the message of the book and the well thought out and well expressed arguments Lewis makes. The tone of the book was a little too scholarly at times which made it occasionally hard to read (since I've just finished school and am enjoying the break *grin*).

Still, I really like Lewis's insights, research and writing. I enjoyed "Mere Christianity" and "Screwtape" and I'm looking into a few of his other 'theological'/'scholarly' works. He has a nice style and presents great messages without being overly preachy.

****
3.5 out of 5 stars ( )