The Four Loves By C.S. Lewis Review by Tracy Simmons
I had never heard of this book until I received the book ”Quotable C.S. Lewis” as a gift. In that book were some quotes from “The Four Loves” that intrigued me so I raced out and got a copy of it. The first thing that came to my attention was that the book is so darned small! It was really little more than a lengthy essay in book form, and I figured that it would be a quick trip from cover to cover.
I was wrong about that. It was a long trip, not because the book was terribly difficult in language or structure, but because the ideas presented were fairly “heady”. Lewis actually alludes to this in the beginning of the book when he discusses his own
difficulty in writing it. He claims that he set out on the project thinking it to be a simple contrasting of “god like love” to “human love”. What he found instead is what he calls a minimum of four loves that each have deeper reaching elements than might first be observed.
Included in these loves are ideas of Agape (or God like) love, brotherly love, romantic love and patriotic love. The fleshing out of these in the text of the book required me to stop frequently and go back over what I had read. I think that this is due to my own “understanding” of love, or at least, what I think I understand
In his usual fashion, Lewis just has a way of saying things and clearly, a way of thinking about things that are provoking and challenging. If you like C.S. Lewis and want to do some serious thinking about love, this book is a good deal.
