The Four Loves-Eros

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

I Corinthians 13:13

In “The Four Loves,” C. S. Lewis writes about the meaning of love from a  Christian perspective. In the Greek language, there are four words for love - storge, phileo, agape, and eros. Though all of these are important, today in class we focused on eros - the romantic love or what people call “falling in love.” 

Many people might associate Eros with the sexual desires that we as humans have but C. S. Lewis defines Eros as something deeper. “Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved.” The thing that he is talking about is the sensory pleasure in love. But this is not something that lasts. If a man were to “love” a woman for the pleasure that she gave him, once he was done finding pleasure in her, he would dispose of her and move on. After all, “one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes.” Eros focuses more on the selflessness of love. It is said that when Eros is at its “purest” and “noblest,” that the sexual pleasure is “reduced to its minimum.” Pure love...something that is rarely seen today. Love to our culture seems to look like being married for 5 years and then divorcing, a husband beating his wife, the mushiness in chick-flicks, being trivialized on shows like the “Bachelor”, woman setting up their hopes for the ideal man, etc. But when I think of pure love, my grandpa comes to mind. When my grandma had a stroke 14 years ago, my grandpa was always by her side. Her first night at the hospital, the doctors asked my grandpa to go home. He refused and put up such a fuss that the hospital brought him a cot so that he could be with my grandma at night. I have always been amazed at his devotion and loyalty to my grandma. 

Like I said above, Eros desires nothing for themselves but only thinks about the other person, just like in a Christian marriage, the husband needs to love his wife as Christ loves the Church. The husband is called to love his wife and be the leader in the household. I understand though that this can be interpreted in many different ways today and not everyone sees eye to eye on this topic. But in 1 Corinthians 11:3, it talks about how the order in the household should be God, the husband, and then the wife. C. S. Lewis says it well when he says “This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion.” I saw this with my grandpa when I saw how he would do anything for my grandma and ultimately die for her.