We may choose our friends and lovers based on their appealing qualities, but affection just bubbles up naturally in response to familiar people or things. It’s also the most diffuse of all the loves, and the least distinct from the others.
It even extends to inanimate objects, such as a beloved toy or favourite sweater or comfort food. Lewis wrote of affection as the natural bond born of fondness and familiarity, like that between a mother and her child or a man and his dog. “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.” But Lewis chose the first four because they’re either common in the New Testament ( agape, philia) or else they describe familiar biblical kinds of love ( storge, eros). There were others as well: ludus (playful love) pragma (practical love) philautia (self-love) and mania (obsessive love). Lewis focused on four of them: storge (“store-gae” meaning affection) philia (friendship) eros (romantic love) and agape (selfless love). It includes God’s love, as well as human love for God and neighbour, the love of a parent for a child, love between friends or lovers, and even in a negative sense the love of sin or evil.īy contrast, the ancient Greeks had a wide range of words for different types of love. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew ahav is the broad, multi-purpose word for love. This is not so different from some other languages, including biblical Hebrew. We love God, our spouse, our kids, our friends, our dog, and our favourite food or movie or season of the year. The English word “love” covers a multitude of relationships. They offer a welcome attempt to bring balance and a divine perspective back to the subject of love. In our own cultural moment, when love has come to mean sexuality before all else, Lewis’ meditations have fresh relevance. In it, he sought to present a balanced portrait of the different aspects of love – all of them created by God – using various Greek words that either appear in the Bible or else embody a biblical facet of love.Īcross every era, love remains one of humanity’s chief preoccupations, enjoyed and celebrated but also abused and misunderstood.
Lewis wrote one of his last books, The Four Loves. The two phrases are signposts along a cultural trajectory from idolizing romantic love to worshipping sexuality as the core of human identity, its every expression beyond critique.Ī few years before the Beatles recorded their classic song, C.S. And half a century later, “love is love” has become the rallying cry of celebrities and social media influencers alike. “All you need is love,” sang the Beatles back in the 1960s.
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