The Four Loves

“God is love.”

Lewis quotes from the book of John, and “God is love” (1) is the premise that underwrites Lewis’s examination of love itself. For him, anything for which love is expressed is worth examining for its divine attributes.

“Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority.”

By “at its height” (7), Lewis refers to the unchecked expression of a love. Eros, in particular, has potentially damaging ways in which to express itself. One of these is that the love can become of such importance to the person experiencing it that it may begin to take precedence over the love of God.

“Affection has its own criteria. Its objects have to be familiar. We can sometimes point to the very day and hour when we fell in love or began a new friendship, but I doubt if we ever catch Affection beginning.”

Lewis maintains that the other loves—Friendship, Eros, and Charity—have a starting point that is likely to be known to the person experiencing them, but Affection is an accumulative love that may be present without even being noticed.