Out of Egypt:

C.S. Lewis and St. Bernard on human love (a follow-up)

After writing my post on Thomas Aquinas and the forms of love, I thought I should follow up with one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, that, while not rigorous, expresses some key distinctions between types of human love:

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory."
Need-love says of a woman, "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

I would like to re-write the quote so that it would speak of a woman's love for a man also, but that is not easily done in this case.

It is interesting to note, however, that Lewis does not seem to speak of agape in this passage, since agape is, by nature, self-giving and works by its own power a change in the one who is loved.

With reference to human love for God, it is not surprising that Lewis does not mention agape, since God is, in His essence, impassible, and thus our love for Him cannot work a change in His nature. As it is written, "He has loved us with an everlasting love." Furthermore, God possesses all perfection in Himself, and thus has no need of any love which one could give Him. As Isaiah writes, "'Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exist,' says the Lord." As John Piper (and his teacher, Daniel Fuller) have said, it is because God delights completely, and is fully satisified, in Himself, that He is free to be gracious to us, both in the work of creation and redemption. To finish the quote from Isaiah: "'But on this one will who I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.'" God, as the Psalmist writes, "Though the LORD is on high, yet He regards the lowly; but the proud He knows from afar."

With reference to human romantic love, I believe it is possible to speak of agape. Again, I would reference the analogy of the bridegroom which I quoted from Luther. Insofar as marriage is a mirror of God's love, it is possible to wish the other's good simply for their sake, and, by faithful expression of this love, to actually grant them good. Humans can only do so imperfectly, since we are inconstant in our affections, even the best of our actions have mixed motivations, and we have imperfect knowledge of what another's good would be. However, I believe I have felt at times the faintest breath of self-giving love for another, and I desire to do so more.

If I had more time, I would go on to fully describe the four degrees of human love for God which St. Bernard of Clairvaux defines in his On Loving God. As it is, I will leave you with only their names and a brief description of each: 1) When Man Loves Himself for His Own Sake (natural love before God's working in the soul, in which common grace and the civil order serves to curb our desires sufficiently that society may continue), 2) When Man Loves God for His Own Good (most love for God is of this kind, even (I would say) perhaps in some conversions), 3) When Man Loves God for God's Sake (described best earlier in the text, when St. Bernard says, "Lord, you are good to the soul which seeks You. What are you then to the soul which finds?"), and 4) When Man Loves Himself for the Sake of God.

This last is a mystic love for God, and it is rarely to be encountered in this life, though it will be the fullness of eternity. Paul wrote under its impulse when he said, "I have been crucified with Christ, such that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

St. Bernard describes this love as follows:

[S]ince Scripture says that God made everything for Himself (Prv. 16:4; Rv. 4:11) there will be a time when He will cause everything to conform to its Maker and be in harmony with Him. In the meantime, we must make this our desire: that as God Himself willing that everything should be for Himself, so we, too, will that nothing, not even ourselves, may be or have been except for Him, that is, according to His will, not ours...This is what we ask every day in prayer when we say, 'Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.' (Mt. 6:10)

But this love is a hard lesson for us to learn, and we will be on learning it until we die. Reformed preaching, with its focus on absolute goods, I fear has often led us to preach the good of the fourth degree of love, while deprecating the previous degrees. If we practiced discipleship and spiritual formation as we ought, or even as it was done by St. Bernard and his like, perhaps we would not fall so easily into this error, and thus shut up the Kingdom of God to those to whom God would wish it to be open. There is a reason why people often convert to Christianity in other branches of the church besides the Reformed one, and then later, as they grow deeper in the knowledge and (hopefully, the love) of God, join the Reformed church. Let us never be prideful in the experience of God's goodness, or the knowledge of God's character. In doing so, we sin against the example of Christ, who was not ashamed to minister to the earthly good of sinners, and thus to show that "His yoke is easy and His burden is light."