2 takeaways from "The Four Loves"
Implementing Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity
How do you define love?
Maybe your mind jumped to 1 Corinthians 13—patient, kind, never keeping a record or wrongs. Or perhaps you’re familiar with the many words used by ancient Greeks to discuss different kinds of love, including: eros, for sexual or romantic love; philia, for friendship; storge, for familial love; and agape, for selfless compassion.
I recently finished C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, in which Lewis categorizes the many things we call love into four categories: Affection, Friendship, Eros, and Charity. Read on for the two takeaways that I think will stick with me for years to come.
What are the 4 types of love?
“The human loves can be glorious images of Divine love. No less than that: but also no more…”
Lewis separates love into four main categories:
Affection, or the love that grows out of relationships that we don’t choose. At its simplest, this includes love between family members, but it can also include classmates or coworkers, fellow church members, and many other relationships.
Friendship, a love that can be shared among groups of individuals tied together by a mutual interest, passion, or activity.
“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’”
Eros, romantic love. Not to be confused with sexuality, which Lewis terms “Venus,” Eros is “that kind of love which lovers are ‘in.’”
Charity, love for God. This is the highest form of love and is itself a gift of divine grace, as our ability to love God must come from him.
These loves don’t operate in a vacuum, and there may be great overlap between them—for example, it is rare (maybe impossible?) to find Eros without Friendship. Charity, then, stands as the elevated or perfected version of the other three loves, exemplifying all that make Affection, Friendship, and Eros good and desirable.
With those definitions in mind, here are two of the main takeaways I found in The Four Loves.
1. Love begets beauty.
Each of the four types of love share many characteristics in common, but one was strikingly evident to me as I read: each love allows us, in some special way, to see the Beloved as they really are—beautiful, unique individuals created in the image of a perfect, loving God.
In Affection, we grow to appreciate people we didn’t and couldn’t choose. “Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.” Instead of turning away from these people who may not be like us in many ways, Affection encourages us to invest in them, eventually learning to see them—and love them—for who they truly are.
SEE ALSO: Fostering Affection with fellow believers.
In Friendship, Lewis shares a beautiful image of two individuals not face-to-face, looking at each other, but shoulder-to-shoulder, engaged in some other interest that binds them together. But, rather than distract from the other person, that shared interest is the very thing that allows the Friend’s true person to shine through. “You will not find the warrior, the poet, the philosopher, or the Christian by staring in his eyes as if he were your mistress; better fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.”
Friendship, in being inherently communal, also allows us to see new versions of the people we love. “In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out,” Lewis remarks. “In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious ‘nearness by resemblance’ to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest.”
It’s perhaps easier to conceive of beauty’s role in Eros, for all lovers certainly see some measure of otherworldly beauty in their Beloved. Lewis expands on the familiar image of Christ loving his Bride, the church, to describe the ultimate hope of love in marriage. “As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical, or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs.”
Eros doesn’t just recognize the Beloved’s beauty today—with the help of an eternal perspective, it sees glimpses of the other person’s full possible beauty, and then inspires the lover to do what it takes to help their Beloved live up to that potential.
In Charity, we grow closer to God by enjoying the gracious gift of love that he has allowed us to participate in. “In God there is no hunger to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.” In loving God more fully, more completely, more sacrificially, we are let into the great mystery of his grace—the most beautiful thing one could hope to experience.
2. Love requires risk.
One of the best known quotes from The Four Loves is actually in response to what Lewis claims is a misplaced sentiment from none other than St. Augustine himself. Lewis recounts Augustine’s description in Confessions IV of his despair after the death of a close friend. Augustine is led to conclude that the reason he despairs so greatly is because he allowed too much space in his heart and his life to deeply love another person. “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose,” Lewis summarizes.
Though this way of thinking is appealing to the risk-averse among us, Lewis recognizes instantly that it seems to come up lacking. “We follow one who wept over Jerusalem and at the grave of Lazarus,” he reminds us. Certainly there’s something Christlike to be found in the inevitable heartbreaks that come with loving others fully.
“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 of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
He continues,
“Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. … We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.”
The problem is rarely, if ever, that we love another person too much. It is a problem, though, if our love for another person is not proportional to our love for God. The solution, though, is never to love another person less—it’s to love God more.
How do you know if you’re loving God “enough?” If the thought is anxiety-inducing for you (as it is for me), don’t worry: Lewis addresses this concern as well. Don’t stress about comparing the intensity of your feelings for God to the feelings you have for some earthly Beloved—instead, examine your priority, your loyalty. “The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?”
If you can believe it, these takeaways only represent a small portion of the notes I took while reading The Four Loves. (I probably underlined 33% of the book.) But, I hope these words and sentiments encourage you to love fully in the way that they’ve encouraged me during these last several weeks.
Now, LMK:
Have you read The Four Loves? What were your takeaways? What are you reading now? Let me know!