The Four Loves

by C.S. Lewis

In this volume, Lewis seeks to describe and assess the four loves as he see them: affection, friendship, eros, and charity. Each love receives a somewhat lengthy chapter. There is also an introductory chapter, and a chapter discussing “love” for non-human things.

Lewis illustrates affection with the picture of a mother nursing a baby, but goes on to say that it goes beyond that. He calls it a “warm comfortableness, this satisfaction in being together,” and from there goes on to discuss it in great detail. Friendship, we are all familiar with. But Lewis calls it “the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious, and necessary.” Eros is not, as you might suspect, sexual love (Lewis calls that Venus). Eros, in Lewis terms for this book, is “that state which we call ‘being in love.’” Finally, he turns to charity, the love of God.

The chapters are all insightful, though I would hesitate to say that any Greek writer who used one of the four words for love had everything that Lewis writes in mind when he chose a particular word. As is often the case, modern scholarship has gone far beyond the reach of the original author’s intent. That does not, however, mean that Lewis’ book isn’t valuable to consider. The loves which he discusses herein certainly exist in the world and in our lives. And unless we can temper all loves to be subservient to our love for God, we will find ourselves failing in our Christian walk. To that end, it is beneficial to better understand all of the different types of love that we meet in the world around us, whether or not they precisely line up with the Greek words as such.