Preview

Cs Lewis 4 Loves

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1982 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cs Lewis 4 Loves
Introduction:

C.S. Lewis writes about God-love and Gift-love and the differences between both. He starts off describing Need-love. The best I can describe Need-love is in this passage on page 2: "We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves." We can perceive Need-love to be selfish but as C.S. Lewis uses an example to describe how Need-love is not always selfish, "Need-love in consciousness- in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone- is a bad spiritual symptom; just as lack of appetite is a bad medical symptom because men do really need food." After this Lewis goes on to say that man's love for God is only and completely Need-love where as God's love for mankind is only and completely Gift-love. Lewis describes Gift-love as the Devine love. He also describes when man and God are the most alike, or when man gets nearer to God or is more like God. C.S. Lewis writes, "Man approaches God most nearly when he is in one sense least like God. For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?" Then C.S. Lewis goes into describing love itself: "love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god" or "begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god." Lewis finishes his introduction saying, "Our Gift-loves are really God-like; and among our Gift-loves those are most God-like which are most boundless and unwearied in giving."

Likings and Loves for the Sub-human:

First C.S. Lewis starts talking about pleasures and relates them to the two loves we heard of in the introduction. One pleasure is one that is preceded by desire, or Need-pleasures. The other pleasure is one that pleasures on it's own right and don't need any preparation, Pleasures of Appreciation. Need-pleasure is described as,
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The Four Loves Cs Lewis Summary
    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Four Loves Cs Lewis Summary

    The Four Loves, authored by British novelist C.S. Lewis, is often viewed as one of the best books written on the subject of love as it pertains to religion. In the book, Lewis covers many ideas including the four types of love which include: storgé (empathetic love/affection), philia love (the love between friends), Eros (erotic/romantic love), and Agapé (the unconditional ‘God’ love). In this book, Lewis also covers the differences between need and gift love; however, one of the most astounding statements that Lewis makes is in the storgé passage, specifically in the section about affection where he states, “Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.” (pg. 53). Lewis also states, "The highest does not stand without the lowest. (pg.9) If affection is part of storgé, which is considered the lowest love, then to obtain the higher loves one must have affection. Furthermore, storgé (commonly referred to as affection) creates stamina in natural relations between people due precisely to that low-level nature it…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    C.S. Lewis: the Abolition of M
    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages

    C.S. Lewis: the Abolition of M

    While reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, I encountered a few questions concerning his view on Ethical Innovation and the dilemma conditioners face. It was a difficult book with many ideas that didn’t come completely clear to me at times.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Joseph Campbell Goddess
    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Joseph Campbell Goddess

    "Love and The Goddess," the fifth episode of Joseph Campbell's video "The Power of myth," talks about theories of love and of myths of the "Goddess". Joseph Campbell stats out talking on love. Campbell states, " The heart is the organ of opening up to somebody else. That’s the human quality, as opposed to the animal qualities, which have to do with, primarily with self-interest,". Which I believe means that we as humans are very primal, we focus on our self preservation. It is normally about how us as individuals can get ahead in life with little concern for others. Though with out heart, our conscious heart that is, we have a need to have a connection with someone.This "heart" compels us to place the needs of loved ones before our own, to do everything we can to keep the…

    • 545 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Surprised By Joy By Cs Lewis Summary
    • 663 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Surprised By Joy By Cs Lewis Summary

    His endeavors, imagination, and his sense of self expanded, especially with his creation of Animal-Land. This gave him glimpses of he what he experienced as bliss. Moments where he felt such desire, but as soon as they came, they just as easily slipped away. He eventually came to call this Joy. Something he spent a lot of his life trying to find this again.…

    • 663 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Cosi Essay
    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Cosi Essay

    During the production of the play, Lewis recognizes the presence of love. As he once believed that “Love is not so important nowadays” Lewis alters his views and realises true love does exist and…

    • 673 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Augustine Of Hippo Analysis
    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Augustine Of Hippo Analysis

    These two types of love are love of God, and love of the neighbor. The first is the Love of God. Augustine goes into great detail on this love in the Confessions. He speaks on how we are not to love the pleasures of this world, but simply find pleasure in God. Augustine speaks of his lustful pleasures that he indulged in during his early life, and how he later on struggled with them while trying to love God completely. “Loving and being loved were sweet to me. The more so if I could also enjoy a lover’s body.”(the Confessions, 13). Looking back Augustine realizes the foolishness of this sin. From this sin Augustine finds that serving and loving God is far more joyful and fulfilling to the mind and body. He states in Book V, “But allow my soul to give you glory that it may love you the more,” (the Confessions, 15). The second type of love Augustine outlines is that of loving the neighbor (Christian Doctrine, 79). Augustine realizes the importance of loving ones neighbor and describes how an individual is to show this love. “loving his neighbor as himself, a man turns the whole current of his love both for himself and his neighbor into the channel of the love of God.” (Christian Doctrine, 43). If one first loves God they will find that they love their neighbor as well. This plays a major role in Augustine’s World view. To show love to one another is to truly love…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Lewis vs. Freud - Does God Exist?
    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Lewis vs. Freud - Does God Exist?

    C.S. Lewis makes a far more convincing argument for the existence of God in Mere Christianity than does Sigmund Freud in The Future of an Illusion. Both works reflect on what religion really is; Lewis stands for the view that religion is about truth and attempts to prove that God must exist, whereas Freud claims that religion is actually about idiocy and is created by humans as a form of wishful thinking. He describes it as an illusion, a made up social construct of humanity. Humans crave protection and reacted to feelings of helplessness by creating religion. “God is the exalted father, and the longing for the father is the root of the need for religion,” he says (Freud, 39). He continues on to say that religion is made of assertions about facts of reality and argues that the motivation for believing in religion is wish-fulfillment (an illusion). Lewis agrees that humans indeed look for someone to protect us and to provide moral order but that that person is God. He feels it is only through a relationship with God that people can find true happiness. He explains that it is not coincidental that every human has a moral premise as to what is right or wrong (the Law of Human Nature), stating that human beings have an idea that they ought to behave in a certain way. Because this rule of right and wrong has to be real, not made up by ourselves, we shall admit that there is more than one kind of reality (Freud, 20). Lewis effectively convinces the reader that there must be something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior.…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    The Cross Symbol Of Love In The Bible
    • 2281 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The Cross Symbol Of Love In The Bible

    When it says, “God is love,” it means that love is an essential attribute of God’s…

    • 2281 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Meriwether Lewis
    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Meriwether Lewis

    Lewis, Clark, and the rest of their expedition ( A.K.A the Corps of Discovery) began their journey near St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1804. They encountered dangerous waters and harsh weather and endured hunger, illness, injury, and fatigue. Along the way, Lewis kept a journal of their sightings and adventures in addition to samples of plants and animals he confronted.…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Love and Person
    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Love and Person

    Love has a definition—a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person—but yet has so many different meanings. Thesauruscoping demonstrates the different meanings in which the word Love can deliver. The synonym of Love, Adoration, does not necessarily mean that these words have the same meaning. The definition of Adoration is the act of paying honor, as to a divine being or to worship. These words can be isolated from each other by meaning because they are two different descriptions. Love is an emotion and Adoration is a way of acting towards another. For example, there may be someone who loves to go to church every Sunday, being a part of their daily routine, but has adoration for God, meaning to worship and pay honor to what they believe in. The antonym for Love, however, does not have to be opposite but can have the same meaning as Love. An antonym for Love is Jealous meaning inclined to or troubled by suspicions or fears of rivalry, unfaithfulness, as in love or aims. These two words can have the same meaning, for example, a boy and a girl are head-over-heels in love with each other but the boy may have feelings for another person leaving the girl extremely jealous. This demonstrates that jealousy is expressed in love because the girl would not have been jealous unless she undoubtedly loved the boy. Thesauruscoping can show that a meaning of a word can be expressed in many different ways.…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Analysis "On Being Human"
    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Analysis "On Being Human"

    Some readers may be reminded here of the fierce battles between the angels and demons of Milton or the 'arrows of desire' of Blake. Indeed the nature of love and its forms was thoroughly explored and analysed elsewhere in the Four Loves by C.S. Lewis himself.…

    • 958 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    C.S Lewis
    • 280 Words
    • 1 Page

    C.S Lewis

    1. C.S Lewis contends, in Mere Christianity, that human beings have within them an inherent knowledge of a universal Right and Wrong. He claims that this moral conscience of sorts has existed throughout time and transcends civilizations. Thus, in that sense, the law of Right and Wrong is something we discover rather than create. C.S Lewis argues that the clearest explanation for this, is that someone had put this concept of Right and Wrong into us and this person must have created us. He then concludes that this creator must be God. I feel there are a few issues with C.S Lewis' contentions. His claim that morality is universal is difficult to document. Also, morality between civilizations has amounted to substantive differences. For example, homosexuals used to find themselves a persecuted minority in the West just decades ago. Arguments justifying this persecution tended to be that homosexuality was immoral. Today, mindsets towards homosexuality are slowly being reversed with an increasing percentage of people no longer viewing homosexuality as immoral.…

    • 280 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Martin Luther King's Three Types Of Love
    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Martin Luther King's Three Types Of Love

    What is love and how we distinguish between various levels of love? The answer might indeterminate since “Love” interprets differently by unlike people in different level. In another word, “love is not just one thing; love for God, country, parents, partners, children, neighbor, and so forth all have different qualities”(Guardian). The denotation of love differs between levels of action and feeling, and a definition of each level must be discovered in order to understand its varying power. Nevertheless, I’m not discussing the love we normally know in our day to day life; instead I’ll discuss the loves that Martin Luther King Jr. identifies during civil rights movement. He distinguishes three particular levels…

    • 1125 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Study Guide
    • 3248 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Study Guide

    1. In each paragraph on pages 32-5, Lewis discusses a distinct characteristic of storge. Explain at least three of these characteristics, and on the basis of these features, attempt to construct a definition of this form of love…

    • 3248 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Reign of God Chapter 3
    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Reign of God Chapter 3

    Everyone knows that the father of Jesus Christ is God. And God has relation to Jesus identifies him as God to us. So if we want to know God, we need to go to Jesus first. To summarize what is the most important statement in the Bible is “ God is love.” Love is the first and the last word in the biblical portrait of God. Some people may think that love is the most difficult things to learn in our entire life. But God had already told us what love is though the bible. Love is the essence of God’s nature. Love is what it means to be God. To the english word “love” ,it covers an enormous range of meaning. We use love to describe our attitude toward everything from our favourite food, people that important to us and also things that we treasure.…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics