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Loading... The Four Lovesby C. S. Lewis
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I haven't read as much C.S. Lewis as I'd like. He always sounds like he's talking to himself, and then he zaps you with something so profound that you never forget it. This book is no exception, and says many things that made me feel quite uncomfortable. CSL explores various degrees of love: affection, friendship, Eros, and charity. It's by no means an exhaustive list, but it's a great place to start thinking about the role of love in your own life and in society. ( )As someone else stated, the book can be tedious to read. I likewise found myself rereading passages and double checking my progress. With that said, the book is fantastic and worth the read. It is uplifting and will help shape the biblical concept of love. I always find Lewis to be humble and refreshing. Worth the read! Good thoughts, as always, but I felt he didn’t go deep enough. An amazing book with excellent insight into the topic of love. This is one to add to your 'read yearly' list. I can't recommend it enough! Lewis' genius in all his writings shows forth as piercing insight in warm and delightful prose, and he brilliantly succeeds in this book. There has been more written on love than perhaps any other topic, but the vast majority is mindless drivel or hormone driven blindness or sentimental fluff or philosphical madness. Lewis will have none of that: he sets forth the nature and varieties of human and divine love, and through his keen insight allows us to see ourselves, others, and God better. His basic franework for the book is looking at love through the four different kinds of love that the Greeks defined. He devotes chapters to the "natural" human loves of storge, the love of family affection; philia, the love of friendship; eros, the love of sexual love and romance. He looks at their characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. He also looks at love through a three fold division between need-love, gift-love, and the love of appreciation. Lastly, he examines agape, the selfless love of charity. In some of the most beautiful passages he ever wrote Lewis describes how agape perfects our natural loves and prepares us both to truly love God and be like Him. "When we see the face of God we shall know that we have always known it." Leading a life marked by love is not a matter of just reading a book, but understanding the nature of God and the nature of love. This book is welcome wisdom in leading such a life. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0156329301, Paperback)The Four Loves summarizes four kinds of human love--affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Masterful without being magisterial, this book's wise, gentle, candid reflections on the virtues and dangers of love draw on sources from Jane Austen to St. Augustine. The chapter on charity (love of God) may be the best thing Lewis ever wrote about Christianity. Consider his reflection on Augustine's teaching that one must love only God, because only God is eternal, and all earthly love will someday pass away:Who could conceivably begin to love God on such a prudential ground--because the security (so to speak) is better? Who could even include it among the grounds for loving? Would you choose a wife or a Friend--if it comes to that, would you choose a dog--in this spirit? One must be outside the world of love, of all loves, before one thus calculates.His description of Christianity here is no less forceful and opinionated than in Mere Christianity or The Problem of Pain, but it is far less anxious about its reader's response--and therefore more persuasive than any of his apologetics. When he begins to describe the nature of faith, Lewis writes: "Take it as one man's reverie, almost one man's myth. If anything in it is useful to you, use it; if anything is not, never give it a second thought." --Michael Joseph Gross (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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