PowerPoint Slides from our first week of studying C.S. Lewis' "The Four Loves." Some great background on Lewis and what made him who he was. Thanks to Terry Miller for putting this together and leading our study.

1. The Four Loves

2. C.S. Lewis ; “Jack “

3. Biography 1898 -1963
 Irish / Poet / Author / Orator
 Oxford Professor for 38 years ; retired from Cambridge
 Scholar of Medieval literature
 Christian Apologist
 Wrote over 60 books on various subjects
 Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters , Mere
Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet
 Great teacher who popularized Christian ideas for the general
population
 He had a gift for making the complex accessible

4. “Jack “ Lewis the Atheist
He was an avowed Atheist until 1929
Taught by William Kirkpatrick, “The Great Knock”
Horrors of WW I solidified his atheistic beliefs
Met J.R.R. Tolkien in 1926 who challenged his
thinking as did author G.K. Chesterton.
On atheism; “ Nearly all I loved I believed to be
imaginary; nearly all I believed to be real I thought
grim and meaningless.”

5. Lewis’ conversion to Theism
 “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night
after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a
second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of
Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I
greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term
of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt
and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and
reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now
the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which
will accept a convert even on such terms. “

6. After Conversion to Christianity
“ I believe in Christianity as I
believe that the sun has risen;
not only because I see it, but
by it, I see everything else.”

7. Time Line of Lewis’ Life 1909 ; Lewis mother dies of cancer
 1917 ; Student at Oxford – meets Paddy Moore
 1918 ; Lewis is wounded in WW1. Paddy Moore dies. Lewis promise to take care of Paddy’s
family.
 1919- 1923 Back to Oxford . Janie and Maureen Moore begin living there with him.
Graduates in 1924
 1925 Becomes professor at Oxford
 1929 – Converts to theism
 1931 – Becomes a Christian
 1933 – 1950 ; The Inklings
 1951- Janie Moore dies of cancer
 1952 – Meets Joy Davidman
 1954 – Leaves Oxford for Cambridge
 1956 – Marries Joy Davidman
 1958 - writes the Four Loves
 1960- Joy Davidman dies of cancer
 1963 – Lewis dies / renal and heart failure

8. A wonderful collaboration that fought
modernism; The Inklings – C.S.Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien,
Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson and Warren Lewis

9. The Four Loves

10. Helen Joy Davidman

11. A Grief Observed

12. The Four Loves
 It was originally a series of ten recordings broadcast via radio
stations across the U.S. in 1958. Many Southern stations
refused to play the recordings because of the subject.
 It was the second time he made radio recordings into a book.
‘Mere Christianity’ was the first ( 1941-44 )
 Lewis recorded the episodes and rewrote it as a book with his
wife, Joy, who was dying of bone cancer. It was designed to
be a service to Christians and a way to share his love with his
wife.
 But Lewis’ writing style is old school. Not a textbook . All his
works are designed to be read aloud like poetry.

13. Human Love and Divine Love
7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for
love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of
God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love
does not know God, for God is love.9 God showed how
much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into
the world so that we might have eternal life through
him.10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that
he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away
our sins.11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we
surely ought to love each other. 1 John 4:7-11
God does… we should. A world of difference ?
Lewis wants us to be able to differentiate between “Like
and Same.”

14. Chapter 1 - Introduction
 Designed to give foundational basis for understanding the
nature of love itself.
 If we get this part wrong the truth that God is Love can easily
become the human ideal that Love is God.
 Two main categories of love : ‘Need Love’ and ‘Gift Love’
 ‘Need Love’ – human love. “ the son of poverty.” We are
born helpless .
 Humans are social beings dependent on others.
 Our whole basis of being seems to be one vast need.
 The argument has been made that human love is not really
love at all.

15. ‘Need Love’
 But this would be a mistake.
 “The highest does not stand without the lowest” – from the
‘Imitation of Christ’ - Thomas A Kempis and Luke 14:10
 “ The saints stand high in God’s eyes who are lowest in their
own and the more glorious they are, the more humble the
spirit.”
 We should humbly embrace our ‘Need Love’ because it is our
deepest need and desire. It is how God created us. (“It is not
good for man to be alone.” Genesis 2:18)
 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will
give you rest” – Matthew 11:28

16. ‘Gift Love’
 Divine Love
 The Love that God has for humanity
 From a human perspective it is sacrificial giving. It is not easy and seems
unnatural.
 But we are called by God to love one another as he loves us.
 What does this type of “Gift Love” look like ?
 I Corinthians 13: 3-8
 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I
may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not
proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but
rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
 8 Love never fails.

17. How can we ‘possess’ Gift Love ?
 “Man’s spiritual health is proportional to his love for God.”
 We need to know difference between Nearness to God and likeness to
God
 We are created in God’s image. We all have certain God given gifts. We are
like Him because he made us this way. But ‘likeness does not equate to
nearness.”
 “ Man approaches God most nearly when he is least like God.” ( The
man traveling the road home or sitting on the edge of the cliff analogy)
 Nearness to God is self initiated. It is a willed imitation. We must walk the
road to get there even if it seems to be further away than where we were
sitting.
 Our model for nearness to God is Christ. His life is “The Divine Life
operating under human conditions.” He is our template for Divine / Gift
Love.

18. Chapter 2 ; Likings and Loves
 ‘Normally’ we like things and love people
 Liking is not love but again, “The highest doesn’t stand without the
lowest.”
 To like something infers pleasure
 Two types of pleasure 1.) need pleasures 2.) pleasures of appreciation
 Need pleasures – immediate and transitory. Based on a desire that is
natural but that can be perverted. ( Water, sleep, addictions )
 Need pleasures foreshadow our Need Loves
 Pleasures of appreciation – not based on wants or desires. Starting point
for the experience of beauty. Something outside of ourselves that
deserves acknowledgement. Art forms, nature.
 Pleasures of appreciation foreshadows what ?

19. Appreciative Pleasure as Love
 There is an shadow here of ‘a disinterested love .’
 We don’t merely ‘like’ these things, we pronounce them to be ‘good’
 There is a third type of love beyond ‘Gift’ and ‘Need’.
 We will call it ‘Appreciative Love.’ Homage, admiration, hero-worship.
 Need love cries out from it’s poverty
 Gift love longs to serve or to even suffer for something
 Appreciative Love says thank you for simply being.
 “In actual life, thank God, the three elements of love mix and succeed on
another, moment by moment. Perhaps none of them except need love
ever exist alone, in chemical purity, for more than a few seconds. And
perhaps that is because nothing about is except our neediness is, in this
life, permanent.”

20. Love of Nature
 Love of Nature ; “It is the moods or the spirit that matter of the individual
when appreciating nature. Nature does not teach. It reveals something
about itself and something about us.”
 It is here when love can be perverted based on how we choose to ‘clothe’
our experience. The moods and spirits of nature hold no morality in
themselves. We project ourselves onto them as a graft.
 “A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature but an
experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”
 If we don’t understand this, then ”the love of nature begins to turn into a
nature religion.” Nature can point us towards God. But it is not the same
as God.

21. Love of Country
 Even Christ loved Jerusalem. But we must be able to again differentiate between
the sentiments themselves for what they are and are not.
 Love of country can also become demoniac and produce wicked acts. Private
citizens should keep a wary eye on the health or disease of our love for our
country.
 Love of home , love of tradition, love of language. None of this should be
condemned.
 “Just as family offers us the first step beyond self-love, so love of country offers us
the first step beyond family selfishness.”