The Pints With Jack crew review The Four Loves.
Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
“Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond desert to be in such company. . .Those are the golden sessions; when . . . our drinks are at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk;”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)
Chit-Chat
Andrew’s Updates
- Writing a chapter on “Clarity and Charity” for an upcoming publication
- Wife is finishing up one book and being approached for me
- Received black and white publicity stills from the movie Shadowlands and foil valentine cards from Narnia!
- Priscilla Tolkien, the last of the Tolkien children passed away
- Blackwells Books in Oxford has been sold to Waterstones
- Eating every other day
Matt’s Updates
- Went to a Murder Mystery Dinner (got recognized!)
- Lenten Practices going beautifully so far. Thoroughly recommend the books: Restored, Loved as I am, and Be Healed.
David’s Updates
- Having a great Lent doing the #Pray40 challenge with Hallow.
- Went to Confession this week!
- Marie and Alexander are coming home tomorrow from their Kentucky trip 🙂
- Next Sehnsucht journal will focus on the subject of Friendship!
Beverage and Toast
Recap & Summary
None this week!
Discussion
What has been some of your favourite parts of the Four Loves?
Matt liked this passage regarding theosis:
“Man can ascend to Heaven only because the Christ…is formed in him. Must we not suppose that the same is true of a man’s love? Only those into which Love Himself has entered will ascend to Love Himself. And these can be raised with Him only if they have, in some degree and fashion, shared in His death”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
…and where Lewis speaks about God’s love:
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, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breaths sake, hitched up.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Andrew mentioned the Charity chapter in general and the passage in Friendship about “golden sessions”:
Those are the golden sessions; when four or five of us after a hard day’s walking have come to our inn; when our slippers are on, our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows; when the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk; and no one has any claim on or any responsibility for another, but all are freemen and equals as if we had first met an hour ago, while at the same time an Affection mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life–natural life–has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 4)
David identified his favourite line in the entire book:
To love at all is to be vulnerable
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
He said that this was the first time I’ve read the Eros chapter while married and as a father. He was sold on the material before, but it was nice to see that Jack was right!
Matt also loved the Garden Analogy from the Charity chapter, explaining the co-operation with grace. Andrew pointed out that a gardener was mentioned back in the Affection chapter:
The child will love a crusty old gardener who has hardly ever taken any notice of it and shrink from the visitor who is making every attempt to win its regard. But it must be an old gardener, one who has “always” been there–the short but seemingly immemorial “always” of childhood.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Matt’s favourite passage:
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, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Unwilling to stifle Matt, David asked him to share the remainder of his notes:
“The rivalry between all natural loves and the love of God is something a Christian dare not forget. God is the great Rival, the ultimate object of human jealousy; that beauty which may at any moment steal from me my wife’s or husband’s or daughter’s heart.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
What was the main thing which struck you during the read-through this season?
David said that St. Paul talks about how wide and deep is the love of Christ – how wide and deep is love itself!
Matt said that it was how we need to put our loves to death in the same way we need to put everything to death before it can be raised and ready for Heaven. What doesn’t die cannot be raised to Heaven. You don’t think about your loves needed to be crucified but it’s a reminder that EVERYTHING needs to be in us.
Andrew noticed the differences with radio talks. He wondered what Lewis would have said on this subject after more years of marriage.
Matt also talked about the clarity with which Lewis explains how the different loves can go wrong.
Defining Love
Why do you think he doesn’t give a neat definition of love in the text? How would you define love?
Matt said that because God IS Love and we can’t have a neat definition of God. Any clean definition of Love will by definition be incomplete. For a definition he said that nothing is love if it isn’t in relation to (L)ove. (l)ove is only love in relation to (L)ove.
Andrew claimed that a neat definition of love is self-defeating.
David believes it’s a deficiency in the work and would benefit from a definition like the one given by St. Thomas Aquinas which is quoted in the Catechism:
“To love is to will the good of another.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 1766
Other Lewis works
Where do we see these topics dealt with elsewhere in Lewis’ corpus?
Matt referred to the idea in The Great Divorce that everything must die in order to be raised. In Mere Christianity we see the Heavenly and Hellish creatures showing us that our loves are either submitted to God are used to turn us away from Him. In The Screwtape Letters we see the importance of the will.
David pointed to The Great Divorce:
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
…and also pointed to the disordered planetary patriotism in Out of the Silent Planet.
Bible Love Words
Bible Love Examples
Listener Bud, submitted a request on Patreon, asking us to pick some biblical characters and relationships to illustrate some of these loves…
David referred to David & Jonathan, Eli and his wayward sons, as well as David and Bathsheba.
Matt referred to the TV show The Chosen, talking about the camaraderie among the Apostles, the agape love when they seek out a newly-fallen Mary Magdalene, as well as Nicodemus by the well and the relationship between Peter and his wife.
Bible Love Words
David spoke about the problem with Jack’s Greek designations. When you read the New Testament in Greek, you discover–as all beginning Greek students quickly learn–that the distinction between agapē and philia does not hold up.
For the Father loves [phileō] the Son, and shows him everything that he himself is doing
John 5:20
Bible Love Passages
Bud also asked us to maybe comment on some of the great “love passages” in the Bible, such as 1 Corinthians 13 and Ephesians 5:21-33.
Matt said that Corinthians shows how the natural loves (or indeed anything) without the divine love is worthless (or even demonic).
Andrew discussed the Ephesians passage, talking about the use of phileo for love in Greco-Roman context, and agapeo in Christian context.
Four Love Improvements?
Listener Jonah wanted to know what gaps we think there are in the book? What are its deficiencies?
Matt spoke a little more about the definition of love, as well as more clarity. He also thought some of the tangents were unnecessary and muddied the waters a bit.
Andrew wished Lewis could have updated the book after ten years of marriage.
Wrap-Up
David wrapped up the show by reading a favourite section of St. Augustine’s Confessions, which naturally has echos of both Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves:
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace
St. Augustine, The Confessions
