The Four Loves
by C.S. Lewis
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Book Summary Information
Author: C.S. LewisEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1991-11-07
ISBN: 0151329168
Number of pages: 141
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of The Four Loves
Book Review: To love at all is to be vulnerable
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading C.S. Lewis has for me always been like eating a rich dessert: you can't gulp it down in large mouthfuls or you'll miss the flavor. This analogy applies most of all, I think, to The Four Loves. Lewis has such a gift for unpacking complex topics with all the learning of an Oxford professor without coming off as condescending. Yet he never short-changes his readers - he challenges just enough to keep you walking with him as he explores the human heart and that part of it that is knowable in the Divine.
Like most of Lewis' works, you can pick any paragraph at random, and you will find a quote with the ring of Eternal Truth:
"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."
"Suppose you are fortunate enough to have "fallen in love with" and married your Friend. And now suppose it possible that you were offered the choice of two futures: "Either you two will cease to be lovers but remain forever joint seekers of the same God, the same beauty, the same truth, or else, losing all that, you will retain as long as you live the raptures and ardours, all the wonder and the wild desire of Eros. Choose which you please." Which should we choose? Which choice should we not regret after we had made it?"
"[Affection] is indeed the least discriminating of loves... There need be no apparent fitness between those whom it unites. I have seen it felt for an imbecile not only by his parents but by his brothers. It ignores the barriers of age, sex, class and education. It can exist between a clever young man from the university and an old nurse, though their minds inhabit different worlds. It ignores even the barriers of species. We see it not only between dog and man but, more surprisingly, between dog and cat. Gilbert White claims to have discovered it between a horse and a hen."
Christians, especially those who have marveled at the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, should not go through life without at least one trip through this book.
Summary of The Four Loves
A candid, wise, and warmly personal book in which Lewis explores the possibilities and problems of the four basic kinds of human love- affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. ?Immensely worthwhile for its simplicity...a rare and memorable book? (Sydney J. Harris).
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
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