The Four Loves

C. S. Lewis’s classic work explores the four distinct types of human love: affection, friendship, erotic love, and the love of God. Drawing on the Greek distinctions—storge (basic affection), philia (rare and insightful friendship), eros (passionate love), and agape (selfless love of God)—Lewis examines how each shapes our lives and relationships.

Throughout this compassionate and reasoned study, he encourages readers to embrace all forms of love, recognizing both their joys and inherent vulnerabilities: “To love at all is to be vulnerable… draw nearer to God, not avoiding the sufferings inherent in all loves, but accepting them and offering them to Him.”

In The Four Loves, Lewis helps readers to:

• Strengthen personal relationships

• Understand the difference between need-love and gift-love, and pleasures that sustain versus pleasures that enrich

• Care for others while deepening their relationship with God

Timeless and insightful, The Four Loves challenges modern assumptions about love and invites us to open our hearts fully to its power.