The Four Loves
Romans 5:8-11: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us”
A couple of years ago, I reread C S Lewis' “The Four Loves.” I fondly remembered his writing on friendship or Philia specifically. In my reading, his chapter on Philia stood up well in comparison to how I felt when I read it originally. The chapter on Storge was also solid. In my opinion, he was poor in his treatment of Eros and Agape. I was shocked to see he didn't even mention the love of enemies as the paradigmatic expression of agape. I thought to myself, how would I have covered the four loves differently? This is, in part, why I am writing this essay. Here I will outline the four loves themselves, how they relate to each other, how Plato gives us an overlay with his concept of the tripartite soul and how we can get a complete picture of the nature of love. This conceptualization is not complete, but here are my thoughts at this moment.
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