The Four Loves

Key idea 1

Love Categorized by Motivation: Gift-love and Need-love

C.S. Lewis, renowned for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was not only a celebrated author but also a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, the mind behind The Lord of the Rings. Both worked at Oxford University’s English faculty and were founding members of the literary discussion group, the Inklings. Tolkien, deeply devout, played a key role in inspiring Lewis to renew his Christian faith after abandoning it during his youth. This reconnection profoundly shaped Lewis’s writing, as evident in the Christian allegories woven into The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Beyond fiction, Lewis used his writing to delve into Christian principles, particularly the concept of love. Initially, he approached love with what seemed like a straightforward perspective, reflecting the Gospel of John’s assertion: “God is love.” However, as Lewis examined love more deeply, he identified its various expressions, categorizing them into two distinct groups based on their motivations: Gift-love and Need-love.

Gift-love: Generous and Selfless

Gift-love is characterized by boundless generosity and an absence of self-interest. It inspires care and compassion for others without expecting anything in return. Parents nurturing their children, partners offering unwavering support, or strangers extending help to those in need are prime examples. Gift-love also drives forgiveness toward those who have caused pain.

This type of love mirrors Divine Love – the love God bestows upon humanity. God’s love is infinite, unconditional, and ever-present, even when humans turn away. While humans can emulate this love, we are inherently incomplete and filled with needs that stem from our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves. These limitations give rise to the second category: Need-love.

Need-love: Driven by Longing and Dependency

Need-love arises from a sense of deficiency or longing. It can manifest as dependency, desperation, or fear. For instance, a frightened child instinctively seeks solace in a parent’s arms, motivated by the need for safety and comfort.

Although it may seem inferior to the altruistic nature of Gift-love, Need-love serves an essential function. It drives connection – to others and to God – by compelling individuals to seek solace, guidance, or understanding. For example, in moments of crisis, people often turn to God for assistance or to loved ones for advice and support.

Need-love operates much like physical hunger: when hungry, you take action to address the need by eating. Similarly, emotional or spiritual hunger motivates individuals to reach out, ensuring they do not drift aimlessly through life.

The Interplay Between Gift-love and Need-love

Need-loves lay the groundwork for deeper connections. They act as the roots of a tree, supporting the growth of Gift-love, which can ultimately blossom into Divine Love. By reflecting on these layers of love, it becomes clear that Need-loves, while self-focused, are integral to fostering relationships. Over time, these loves can transform, encouraging acts of selflessness and creating space for the Divine Love of God to flourish within human hearts.

Key idea 2

Affection – The First Type of Love Rooted in Familiarity

When reflecting on the people in your life, it becomes clear that your feelings for them vary. While you may not like everyone, focusing on those you hold positive feelings for reveals the diverse nature of love.

Some individuals may occupy the core of your affections – your partner, close family, or children. Beyond them, there are friends you hold dear, along with colleagues, mentors, or others who, while not central to your life, contribute small but meaningful moments of joy.

These varied expressions of love demonstrate that not all love is the same. Recognizing this, Lewis sought to categorize love into four distinct types, beginning with the first: Affection.

Affection is often the earliest form of love we experience, originating in infancy when we depend on our parents for survival. For this reason, it belongs to the category of Need-love, a type of love that arises from dependency.

Unlike other forms of love, Affection is remarkably inclusive. It doesn’t rely on shared interests, values, or strong emotional bonds. For instance, you might feel Affection for a neighbor you only exchange pleasantries with in passing or for someone whose personality might otherwise frustrate you. This inclusivity extends to animals, as demonstrated by heartwarming examples of unlikely friendships between different species, such as dogs and chickens or cats and sheep.

The Foundation of Affection

Familiarity is the foundation of Affection. It develops naturally between people who interact regularly. Unlike romantic or platonic love, which often stems from deliberate choices, Affection grows among individuals who cross paths by chance.

This randomness is what makes Affection unique. It brings together people who might otherwise never form connections. Imagine moving into a shared house with strangers who are nothing like you. Over time, their quirks might become endearing, and you might develop a genuine attachment to them.

The Value of Affection

Affection plays a vital role in expanding our perspectives. Unlike the selectiveness of friendship or romantic relationships, its inclusivity allows us to learn from people we didn’t choose to be around. This quality makes Affection an essential and valuable form of love, despite being less intense than other types.

Challenges of Affection

However, the randomness that defines Affection can also lead to challenges. When relationships are formed without intentional choice, it’s easy to take those people for granted. Yet, even unchosen bonds require effort to thrive. Like any other relationship, Affection needs kindness, patience, and care. Without these, relationships can deteriorate, leaving people feeling neglected or undervalued.

In essence, Affection is a humble yet profound type of love. It unites us with people and even animals through the simple act of being present in each other’s lives, teaching us the importance of appreciating and nurturing even the most unassuming connections.

Key idea 3

Friendship – the second love – connects us with kindred spirits

Friendship, according to Lewis, represents the second form of love and, like any love, it requires care and effort to thrive. However, it stands in stark contrast to Affection. While Affection often unites individuals by chance, Friendship acts like a magnet, drawing together those with shared interests or values.

Consider the friendships you have. Can you identify a common interest or passion that initially brought you together? Perhaps it was a shared enthusiasm for stamp collecting, singing in a choir, or volunteering for a cause close to your heart. True Friendship, as defined by Lewis, goes beyond casual companionship. It’s a shared journey, where friends unite to pursue a common hobby, cause, faith, or profession. This shared pursuit binds friends together, as they not only engage in the journey but also actively support one another along the way.

Friendship, in this sense, falls firmly into the category of Gift-love. True friends don’t seek each other out from a desire to be needed, but because of their shared passion. Unlike other types of love, such as Affection (which may fulfill physical needs) or Eros (which involves sexual desire), Friendship is free from such necessities. Because of this freedom, friends can focus entirely on their shared interests and the joy of companionship.

Moreover, Friendship liberates us from the constraints of labels that other forms of love often impose. Think about a time when you discovered that someone shared your passion. In that moment, their age, background, or financial status likely felt irrelevant. Over time, you may have learned more about this person’s life, but those details weren’t central to the bond you formed or maintained.

This liberation allows us to shed roles and labels like boss, parent, or colleague when we’re with true friends. What remains is our authentic self, free to embark on the shared journey of Friendship. With our friends cheering us on, supporting us, and guiding us, we can grow closer to our truest selves. Friendship, in this way, draws out the best in us. Among true friends, you might feel amazed and humbled by the remarkable group you’ve found. Yet, your friends likely feel the same way about you.

Despite its many strengths, Friendship isn’t without its pitfalls. Being surrounded by like-minded individuals can sometimes create an echo chamber, reinforcing your existing views while making you dismissive of differing perspectives. For instance, it might be harmless to ignore someone who claims stamp collecting is a waste of time. But what if you dismissed a groundbreaking idea, like early meteorologists who tried to explain the science of storms in an era when such phenomena were attributed to witchcraft?

To counterbalance this risk, Lewis suggests that Affection plays a vital role in tempering Friendship’s potential shortcomings. By combining the inclusivity of Affection with the shared pursuits of Friendship, we can nurture our passions while remaining open to diverse viewpoints and new ideas.

Key idea 4

Eros – or romantic love – offers lessons in loving God.

You might know couples who transitioned from friendship to romantic love. Such individuals are fortunate, as they get to share a mutual passion with someone who deeply adores them. And for many, the physical intimacy of sex is the added bonus.

When C.S. Lewis reflected on Eros – the third kind of love – he recognized that sex is often intertwined with it. However, he noted that sex alone doesn’t equate to Eros. After all, people can have sex without love. In its pure form, sexual desire seeks physical gratification, while Eros seeks something deeper: the beloved, entirely and uniquely. In Eros, sensual pleasure becomes almost secondary to the lover’s overwhelming desire to admire, celebrate, and care for the beloved.

Interestingly, despite Lewis’s faith and the conservative culture of his era, he argued that society and the church placed too much weight on sex. He found that many viewed it with confusion or fear. For Lewis, sex wasn’t a significant obstacle to spirituality, as some preached. Instead, he believed that mundane aspects of married life – chores and obligations – posed greater challenges to prayer and spiritual connection.

Focusing his study on love rather than morality, Lewis distinguished Eros from mere sexual relationships. He described falling in love as an all-consuming preoccupation with another person – not just their physical traits but their entire being. Lovers, he said, are captivated by their partner’s qualities and willingly reshape their lives to please them. This places Eros within the category of Gift-love, as it prioritizes giving over receiving.

However, Lewis cautioned that Eros doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. Western culture has long promoted the idea that love equals happiness, but Lewis disagreed. He viewed Eros as a force that binds people through hardship and misery. This steadfastness is both the triumph and the danger of Eros.

Eros can inspire extraordinary acts of devotion but also lead to destructive extremes. Some people venerate Eros so deeply that they’d endure profound suffering or commit heinous acts rather than lose their beloved. This isn’t mere infatuation or sexual obsession – it’s Eros at its most intense. For this reason, Lewis warned against idealizing Eros as a transcendent or spiritual state, despite how poetry, music, and media romanticize it. Eros, he emphasized, remains firmly rooted in the human realm.

Yet, Eros also has a redeeming paradox. It can guide us toward a deeper connection with God. When we love God with the same fervor and selflessness that Eros inspires in romantic relationships, our bond with Him strengthens. Just as couples overcome squabbles to rekindle their love, we can repeatedly recommit to God, confident that His love for us is unwavering. This enduring relationship mirrors the beauty and challenge of Eros, reminding us of the transformative potential of love.

Key idea 5

Charity – the fourth love – embodies Divine Love working within us.

As we’ve observed with the first three loves, each carries the potential to falter. Affection can lead to complacency, causing us to take others for granted. Friendship risks becoming an echo chamber, narrowing our perspectives. Eros, with its intensity, can sometimes drive us to act irrationally or harmfully.

However, there is a way to prevent these loves from deteriorating. By anchoring ourselves in God’s Divine Love and intentionally nurturing all our relationships, regardless of the type of love they represent, we can keep them healthy and vibrant. Imagine your loves as plants in a garden. Initially, they may thrive, blooming with vibrant colors and drawing life around them. But without proper care—like weeding, fertilizing, and occasional pruning—the garden will wither. With consistent attention, however, it can flourish.

Yet there is one love immune to decay: Lewis’s fourth love – Charity.

Charity represents the purest expression of Gift-love, which is love grounded in selfless generosity. It seeks only the well-being of another, free from self-interest or hidden motives, such as the profound love one might feel for someone dear. Charity goes beyond Gift-love by inspiring care for those who may not seem lovable—those who are ill, hostile, or difficult. It extends to strangers in need, even enemies, and in serving them, we serve Christ.

Charity also sustains our love for those close to us when they behave in ways that test us. For instance, a parent might still love their child through a public tantrum or a partner might see past a spouse’s irritability to the fatigue and stress driving it. Charity allows us to respond with patience and tenderness, seeing beyond behavior to the deeper needs of others.

The most profound gift of Charity is its ability to love the unlovable. This is the love we need most, as it embraces us despite our flaws. Ironically, we often seek love for our merits—our attractiveness, intelligence, or talents—and feel surprised and humbled when offered Charity.

Consider a newlywed spouse struck by chronic illness shortly after marriage. The healthy partner, faced with a lifetime of caregiving, embraces the challenge with unwavering love. This act of selflessness astounds the recipient, who marvels at the depth of such devotion. While this scenario may be extreme, it reflects a universal truth: all humans have unlovable traits. Charity assures us that we are loved despite them. This ability stems from God’s Divine Love within us.

Charity can transform all other loves, making them flourish. Sharing a joke to uplift a colleague, playing with children, or engaging with a partner in deep intimacy are all acts of Charity in motion. By consoling or forgiving, we open our hearts to Charity, strengthening our bond with God as we reflect His love in our actions.

Final Overview

When it comes to love, it is evident that no two types of love are identical. The affection we hold for a neighbor may appear less significant compared to the deep love we have for a spouse. However, the reality is that every form of love carries value because it provides a chance to extend Charity to others. In doing so, we become vessels for the highest form of love – the Divine Love of God.