“The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis

Hey there, Church family.

One of the uses I hope to make of the site blog is to encourage you to check out some great resources I discover or have pointed out to me.  Today I want to talk to you about C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves.

I’ve read this book several times, but it’s been a few years since I last picked it up.  In it, Lewis presents a comprehensive understanding of the different kinds of love.  After a short discussion of how we should think about loving things that are sub-human, he tackles the four different kinds of love, identifying them by their Greek names.

The first kind of love Lewis deals with is storge, or affection.  He describes it as a fairly non-discriminating sort of love, which can develop even apart from our will toward things or people that could be considered otherwise unlovely or unloveable.  After describing its positives, he warns about the negatives and dangers of when storge goes wrong.

After this, Lewis discusses philia, or friendship.  He points out that there’s really not all that much discussion or value regarding this form of love in his culture.  There will be a long line to discuss romantic love or affection, but philia is not esteemed as it has been in some historical/cultural periods.  As with storge, Lewis describes the positives of friendship, and also presents the potential negatives when friendship love is allowed to go astray.

Lewis also gives us a chapter on eros, or romantic love.  This is a much-needed study, bringing intelligent thought and biblical truth to bear on a topic where people usually turn their brains off.  As with the other topics, he gives warnings about what romantic love looks like when it goes wrong (as it frequently does).  I wish I could force every unmarried teenager and twenty-something to read and memorize this chapter.

Lastly, Lewis describes what you all have heard me talk about many times:  agape–self giving, self-sacrificing love that is concerned with the good of its object.  This is the kind of love God has for us, and the kind of love we are commanded to have toward one another.  This used to be called “charity,” but that word has taken on a different, less-sufficient meaning in our culture.  The other loves are not capable of standing on their own, and, when not infused with agape, they are highly likely to go astray.

This book is a valuable resource to influence our Christian thinking.  It provides wonderful insights into a topic that every person on the planet thinks is important, even though they barely have a clue what the word “love” even means.

I also want to call your attention to a recent development regarding a related resource.  This book (like several of his others) was originally assembled and presented as a series of radio talks.  All of the original recordings of Lewis’ talks have since been lost, with the exception of The Four Loves.  These are the only recordings of Lewis himself speaking that remain.  Copies of this have historically been pretty hard to get hold of, but I’ve recently discovered that Barnes & Noble is selling the talks on CD. The book is a bit more refined and polished, but this CD collection would be well worth having, and I was thrilled to have found it.

About the author

louisb - Louis Brenton is the Lead Teaching Elder at Centerpoint Church.