In this episode, the crew discuss inordinate loves, the nature of God, as well as divine versions of Gift-love and Need-love.
Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing…-the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves… Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Chit-Chat
Matt’s Updates
- Sr. Miriam James Confirmed!
- Lenten “Exodus 40” – Pray for me!
David’s Updates
According to KPBS, San Diego is now officially the most unaffordable housing market in the US, with the Median home price at $764,000. I just wanted to say this and share the article because I still have from time-to-time people ask me why I moved…
More relevant to Pints With Jack, at the time of recording we’ve just had a Patreon Event. We had a watch party for The Fantasy Makers, a documentary made by Director Andrew Wall, who came on the show in Episode 12. The documentary looked at Lewis, Tolkien, and George MacDonald:
And to coincide with this, on Thursday we’ll be releasing an episode with
Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson where we’ll be discussing MacDonald and his book, Phantastes.
On the last episode, St. Augustine was (very respectfully) attacked by Lewis. I recently record a video with Dr. Joseph Zepeda where we go into more detail about it:
Andrew’s Updates
On Slack by Carlotta posted a few choice quotations related to rightly-ordered loves, which we’ll be talking about today. This is from the scene where Orual is talking to the Fox and beginning to recognise her distorted love for Psyche. The Fox says:
“For mortals, as you said, will become more and more jealous. And mother and wife and child and friend will all be in league to keep a soul from being united with the Divine Nature.”
C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (Part II, Chapter 4)
I am now 76 days away from graduating seminary!
I have also purchased a picture of Mary consoling Eve:
Beverage and Toast
Recap & Summary
Recap
In Chapter 1 and 2, Lewis introduced the terminology of Gift-Love and Need-Love. He showed how loves, such as “love of country” and even the seemingly innocuous “love of nature”, can become demons when they are made gods.
In Chapter 3 we examined at the love of the familiar in “Storge”.
In Chapter 4 we considered how “Philia” fortifies us against the world.
Then in Chapter 5 we spoke about “Eros” and its carnal element, “Venus”, which Lewis says has been taken with a wrong kind of seriousness. We heard about the two crowns of marriage – one of paper and the other of thorns, and Lewis wrapped up the chapter by warning us that Eros must be guarded by virtue but can be an image for us of Christian charity.
Then last week we began Chapter 6 on “Charity”. Lewis compared the natural loves to a garden which require tending by “goodness and decency” and the whole Christian life. While the natural loves can be rivals to the love of God, Lewis thinks that most of us must first deal with our own selfishness. He suggested that St. Augustine taught that we should only love God since His love is secure, but Lewis rejected this, saying that the only place which is free from the risks of love is Hell.
Summary
Lewis emphasizes that inordinate love is not about the greatness of the love but about its proportion to other loves. He explains this in the context of Jesus’ words about loving and hating. Jack says love is not about feelings, but about the will.
He begins to explain the relationship between divine love and the natural loves. He says that God’s nature is pure Gift-Love, and that God implants both Need-Love and Gift-Love into our nature. However, both of these may be supplemented with supernatural versions, both in relation to God and to each other.
S5E23 Episode Summary
Discussion
1. “Inordinate Love”
So, we left things off last time with Lewis’ critique of St. Augustine… He begins today saying:
It remains certainly true that all natural loves can be inordinate.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter
…and he spends the rest of the paragraph considering that word, and what it does and doesn’t mean. Lewis notes that it doesn’t mean “insufficiently cautious” or “too big”. It’s a conjunction of Latin words “in” and “ordinatus”, literally meaning “not set in order”. Therefore it relates to proper proportion. Lewis unpacks this in relation to the loves:
It is probably impossible to love any human being simply “too much”. We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Although fine feelings should be wished for and prayed for, we can’t judge the strength of a love upon them:
But the question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved “more” is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the comparative intensity of two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, or put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
This reminds me of Mere Christianity. In fact, I’d suggest listeners when reading the final part of The Four Loves, reread the Charity chapter of Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 9). In that chapter Lewis says that…
Nobody can always have devout feelings: and even if we could, feelings are not what God principally cares about. Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will…He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go…
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 9)
2. “The Hate of Jesus”
Lewis then goes on to say that what Jesus’ words on this subject…
…are both far fiercer and far more tolerable than those of the theologians.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
When Jesus speaks about natural loves, he tells us to…
…[trample] them all under foot the moment they hold us back from following Him.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He quotes Luke 14:26 where Jesus says:
“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”
Luke 14:26
As Jack has already said, we’re not talking about feelings here. This is a Semitic idiom used to express preference. When Jesus speaks about serving two masters, he says that you’ll “hate” one and “love” the other, namely that when push comes to shove and there’s a conflict between the two masters, you’ll choose one over the other. He gives two other examples:
- When Peter objects to Jesus’ prediction of crucifixion, Jesus says “Get thee behind me”. Between the will of the Father and the will of Peter, Jesus chooses the Father’s.
- Jack also quotes Malachi 1:2-3 where the text says “I loved Jacob and I hated Esau”, yet we see both men blessed, but only one of them being selected for the ancestor of Jesus.
Jack sums it up, thus:
So, in the last resort, we must turn down or disqualify our nearest and dearest when they come between us and our obedience to God.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He notes that it’ll feel to our nearest and dearest like hate when we choose God over them. However, he says:
We must not act on the pity we feel; we must be blind to tears and deaf to pleadings.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Listeners will recall that MacDonald says something similar in Chapter 13 of The Great Divorce about the passion and action of pity.
We references some quotations St. Augustine which listener Carlotta had posted on Slack:
“These good things truly are beautiful and lovely in their own way, even though base and mean in comparison with the higher goods that bring us happiness. ”
“These lowest goods holds delights for us indeed, but no such delights as does my God, who made all things, for in him the just man finds delight, and for upright souls he himself is joy.”
St. Augustine, The Confessions
3. “Ordering and Hating”
Lewis says that prudence is needed here, knowing when to “hate”. Some will find it too easy and others seemingly impossible:
Our temperaments deceive us. The meek and tender–uxorious husbands, submissive wives, doting parents, dutiful children–will not easily believe that it has ever arrived. Self-assertive people, with a dash of the bully in them, will believe it too soon.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He then says something really interesting…
That is why it is of such extreme importance so to order our loves that it is unlikely to arrive at all.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He quote the closing lines of Richard Lovelace’s poem, “To Lucasta, going to the Wars”:
the Cavalier poet, going to the wars, says to his mistress:
Richard Lovelace, “To Lucasta, going to the Wars”
I could not love thee, dear, so much Loved I not honour more.
They are on the same page. She understands the claims of honour. Lewis speaks generally that this is good.
It is too late, when the crisis comes, to begin telling a wife or husband or mother or friend, that your love all along had a secret reservation–“under God” or “so far as a higher Love permits”. They ought to have been warned; not, to be sure, explicitly, but by the implication of a thousand talks, by the principle revealed in a hundred decisions upon small matters. Indeed, a real disagreement on this issue should make itself felt early enough to prevent a marriage or a Friendship from existing at all.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
4. “Divine and Natural Loves”
So how do we relate the human activities called “loves” to that Love which is God? Lewis says he’s going to try and do that more precisely, but warns us that whatever model or symbol he uses will eventually break down…
We cannot see light, though by light we can see things. Statements about God are extrapolations from the knowledge of other things which the divine illumination enables us to know.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
And he gives his typical Lewisian disclaimer:
If anything in it is useful to you, use it; if anything is not, never give it a second thought.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
So, he begins by repeating how he began this book, with St. John’s statement that God is love, saying that we must begin, not with ourselves but
…at the real beginning, with love as the Divine energy. This primal love is Gift-love. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He then addresses the Christian belief that God didn’t have to create the world. Loving us into existence, God reveals that…
This primal love is Gift-love. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give…. God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them… Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He describes God as a host who creates his own “parasites”, both in Creation and Redemption.
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing…-the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves… Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Lewis the speaks about the loves categories which were introduced in Chapter 1, saying that:
God, as Creator of nature, implants in us both Gift-loves and Need-loves.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Lewis now describes Gift-loves as images of God…
…proximities to Him by resemblance which are not necessarily and in all men proximities of approach.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
…and Need-loves don’t resemble God, but…
They are rather correlatives, opposites; not as evil is the opposite of good, of course, but as the form of the blancmange is an opposite to the form of the mould.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
So Lewis says that in addition to these natural loves, God may give us two far superior gifts…
5. “Supernatural Gift-Love”
Firstly, he says that God shares something of His own Gift-love, which Lewis says is different from the Gift-loves of our nature. Our built-in Gift-loves…
…never quite seek simply the good of the loved object for the object’s own sake. They are biased in favour of those goods they can themselves bestow, or those which they would like best themselves, or those which fit in with a pre-conceived picture of the life they want the object to lead… is always directed to objects which the lover finds in some way intrinsically lovable… or, failing that, to the grateful and the deserving, or perhaps to those whose helplessness is of a winning and appealing kind.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
…whereas in contrast….
…Divine Gift-love–Love Himself working in a man–is wholly disinterested and desires what is simply best for the beloved… enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, the sulky, the superior and the sneering.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
The second gift is that…
God enables men to have a Gift-love towards Himself [God].
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Lewis concedes the “sixpence none the richer” principle which we encountered in Mere Christianity – everything is God’s already, so what can we ever really give Him? He says:
…since it is only too obvious that we can withhold ourselves, our wills and hearts, from God, we can, in that sense, also give them…
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
There’s also another way to give to God – through our neighbour:
…every stranger whom we feed or clothe is Christ. And this apparently is Gift-love to God whether we know it or not.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He interestingly notes that:
Love Himself can work in those who know nothing of Him. The “sheep” in the parable had no idea either of the God hidden in the prisoner whom they visited or of the God hidden in themselves when they made the visit.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
6. “Supernatural Need-Love”
Lewis says that everyone basically agrees that this supernatural Gift-love comes by the Grace of God and should be called Charity… we finally come to this chapter’s love! However, he goes even further, saying that God may additionally give:
…a supernatural Need-love of Himself and a supernatural Need-love of one another
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He compares it to a magic wine which, when pour out creates its own glass. God not only transforms our need of Him into Need-love, but also makes us more receptive to Charity from our fellow man. This is a little surprising! He then looks at each of these in turn…
7. “Supernatural Need-Love of God”
Supernatural Need-love doesn’t create the need for God, it just enables us to recognise our need. Sometimes even glad acceptance of it because it helps us see what we really need.
It might seem that the typical Christian expressions of unworthiness before God as “insincere grovellings of a sycophant before a tyrant”. However, Jack says that they’re the continued attempt to dispel a misconception which we very fall into:
No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
This is the Screwtape trap…
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? …Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble!’… If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages a you please.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 14)
Far be it from us to think that we have virtues for which God could love us. But then, how magnificently we have repented! …Or if not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility. Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtlety, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own, attractiveness… Surely we can’t be quite creatures?
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
…and this is where Supernatural Need-love of God comes in… Our natural Need-love never fully acknowledges its own needness, but…
Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become “jolly beggars”.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
This put me in mind of St. Therese’s humility.
Jack actually says that holding on to the pretense that we have anything or can retain anything without God is one of the reasons we stop ourselves from being happy! He says something similar in Mere Christianity, but I love the analogy he gives here..
We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet–or one foot–or one toe–on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
It is in the very act of letting go that we are set free and receive.
8. “Supernatural Need-Love of Others”
So, Grace can transform our Need-love of God, but it can also transform our Need-love for each other. We need Charity from each other, but while we need it, it’s not the sort of love we want. We get offended if we discover that we are being loved with Charity…
We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
He gives the example of a spouse who becomes completely dependent upon the other, but we don;t need to restrict it to extreme cases:
There is something in each of us that cannot be naturally loved. It is no one’s fault if they do not so love it. Only the lovable can be naturally loved. You might as well ask people to like the taste of rotten bread or the sound of a mechanical drill. We can be forgiven, and pitied, and loved in spite of it, with Charity; no other way. All who have good parents, wives, husbands, or children, may be sure that at some times–and perhaps at all times in respect of some one particular trait or habit–they are receiving charity, are loved not because they are lovable but because Love Himself is in those who love them.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Because we don’t like to receive charity, Jack says spiteful people will go out of their way to pretend they are loving us with charity by saying things like:
“I forgive you as a Christian”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 6)
Sounds like the Controlling Mother (“I forgive him as a Christian”) and the Big Man (“I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity”) in The Great Divorce.
