Title: The Four Loves

Author: Lewis, C.S.

Format: Hardcover: 156 pages

Publisher: Harcourt; Reissue edition; November, 1991

ISBN: 0151329168

Review Date: December 20, 2004

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Rating:

Book Description: 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).

Review:

I had previously read this book while I was in high school, needless to say I got a lot more out of it the second time around.  Even before I read it the second time this book was very high on my list of recommendations, I've given away several copies of it.  My motives for reading it the second time were to help me with grappling romantic love.  But I was caught off guard as to how much the entire book challenged me in my Christian walk.

The chapter on friendship is very well written and a welcome antidote to today's homosexual movement reading their own agenda into what has been written in the past.  Lewis takes time to make a distinction between being friendly and being friends, and explains what problems can arise from those who have never had true friends.  His insights on why scripture hardly ever explains our relationship with God in the terms of friendship are needed by many of our pop-culture Christian brothers and sisters.

Although the chapter on charity, the last in the book, is one of the shortest, it is also one of the most acute.  This is because every type of love that is not charity has already been described, and the reader has the benefit of knowing what charity is by knowing what it is not.  With this empty frame, Lewis then proceeds to paint a picture of what charity really is.  Those who have been troubled by the Saviors description of marriage in regard to it's absence heaven will take comfort in this chapter.  Lewis eloquently cuts to the point and the reader comes away with the feeling the God may really know what he is doing.