Transcript
Welcome to the Kindlings Muse Podcast, an intelligent, imaginative, hospitable exploration of ideas that matter in contemporary life. And now here's your host, Dick Staub. Well thank you everybody. I want to welcome you to the Kindlings Muse at Earl Palmer Ministries this event is taped for podcast in front of a live audience at the Burke Museum Cafe on the campus of the University of Washington. Go Huskies. And Reverend Palmer selects a book that every thinking person ought to read and begins
with some opening comments, followed by a conversation with me, and then we're going to open it up for questions from our audience. Tonight, we're going to be talking about C.S. Lewis on the meaning of love. And Lewis actually wrote quite a bit about this subject, some of it directly in the book that we'll be looking at, Four Loves, but he also talked about this subject and a number of other things that he's written. And I
have to say, in the time that I was doing the project to raise the money to convert the Kilns, his home, into a year-round study center, I was able to meet a lot of people that knew C.S. Lewis. The number is dwindling. And what was interesting to me was how often they talked about his capacity for friendship and love and the fact that he actually brought a level of integrity to his writing because of
the way he respected people and showed a love for them, which makes this a really interesting subject because he approached this not only intellectually but very practically in his own life as well. And we're going to get into a discussion about that in just a minute. But we want to start with Reverend Earl Palmer, and I'd ask you to welcome Earl tonight. And tell us everything we need to know, and we're afraid to ask about C
.S. Lewis and love. [Palmer] Hey, all right. Well, Lewis had quite an interesting history with regard to writing, and this book, Four Loves, is especially interesting in light of that, that after he wrote Miracles, which I think is a fantastic book, but he was criticized for writing that book by people who said Lewis is out of his field. He should stick to literature, and he shouldn't try to write theology. And people said that, and it cut him,
it hurt him. And so he secretly decided not to write any more religious books. He didn't tell anybody except this one Roman Catholic priest that he was writing the Latin letters to, Father Gabriel, and that's the only person he actually said, he said, I don't think I'll write the religious books anymore because I don't think it pleases my audience. And so now the good news is that was about 1949 when that happened. He then decided, I'm
going to write stories like I always wanted to read. And so he started writing the Chronicles of Narnia and spent five years writing those seven Chronicles of Narnia and originally only going to write one. That was Lion for his godchild, Lucy Barfield, and then he got carried away. And so we're grateful for that because he decided not to write any more religious books. So he started the Chronicles. Then he fell in love and met Joy
Davidman. They were married, and that's quite a story. You have to see Shadowlands to hear that whole story, and that's quite a beautiful movie that tells the story, and there's a play also of Shadowlands. Anyway, Joy Davidman was a writer herself, a novelist, a considerably talented writer. In fact, Lewis wrote the introduction to her great book on the Ten Commandments called Smoke in the Mountain. And so she's a writer, and she found out after they were
married that Lewis had made this, he wasn't going to write any more religious books, and she said, that's nonsense. So we owe a great debt to Joy Davidman. She started dragging religious books out of C.S. Lewis again. Some of the very best ones came after that period. First was Reflections on the Psalms, which was his first then religious book again. And then just one after another, and one of those books is this book, The Four
Loves. And the interesting thing about The Four Loves, if you look at the introduction, you'll see that the copyright is Joy Helen Lewis. His wife actually copyrighted this book, though Lewis wrote it. You can see a lot of Joy Davidman influences in this book, though, I think. Because if you've read Smoke in the Mountain, then you read this book, and you realize that Joy Davidman is having quite an influence on C.S. Lewis. So this is
one of those books that he wrote. And of course, the last book he wrote before he died that was actually published after his death is one of the very greatest of the Lewis Christian books, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer. We did an evening on that book here. So we are grateful to Joy Davidman for doing that. The other interesting thing about this book is this is the only place, as far as I know, where you
can hear the voice of C.S. Lewis. The broadcast talks that he did during World War Two, which are the famous broadcast talks that became Mere Christianity, were on BBC, and everybody in England knew the voice of C.S. Lewis. We were told, many Brits told me, that the two most recognizable voices during the Blitz and during the Battle of Britain was Winston Churchill and C.S. Lewis, not King George. And you'll know why, not King
George, if you see the movie The King's Speech. He stuttered and had a terrible stuttering problem, so he rarely spoke. But Churchill did, and Lewis did, in those broadcast talks. But none of them were recorded, and we're sorry about that. Because now they record everything on radio and TV. But after he wrote this book, he gave a set of lectures. Joy Davidman urged him to do it, and they recorded them. And I have those, they're now
on CD. I first got them in cassettes, and now they're on CD. They're perfectly formatted now. The fidelity is fantastic. I was listening to Lewis the other night. He's got this deep and rich voice. It probably won't sound like you expect it to sound, but he had a very hearty and a big voice. And so if you want it, you can access those through, I'm sure Michael of the Logos Bookstore can get you, you can get
the CDs of the voice of C.S. Lewis. And you kind of owe it to yourself when you have a hero to hear the voice. Tolkien's voice was thin and light. Lewis's voice was deep and resonant. So anyway, that's just a little background on this book. So the Four Loves is Lewis's decision to write on four words. And Lewis is also a philologist, not as good a philologist as Tolkien, who absolutely loved words, but Lewis loved
words too. In fact, in one of his comments is, tell me what the hard words mean, and you've done more for me than a thousand commentaries. He wanted to know what the words mean, how they were used when they were used, what they meant when they were first said. And so he takes that approach to love. There are four great words for love that he decides to talk about in this book. And I'm going to take
you on a journey through those four words. He has warnings about each of the three of those words and even the fourth word, if you don't understand them. But Lewis takes us on a wonderful journey through the Four Loves. But he gives a warning at the very beginning. And the warning is some of the vintage Lewis quotations comes from this. He says, love ceases to be a demon only when it ceases to be a god, which
of course can be restated in this form. Love begins to be a demon the moment it begins to be a god. And this balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it, the truth that God is love, he starts the book with God is love, you know, because, you know, we all love this phrase, God is love. But we, if we forget this, ignore this truth that God is love, we may slyly come to
mean for us the converse that love is God. And that's the demon. When you create your understanding of love, and I've been a pastor long enough to meet an awful lot of people who have made that disastrous shift. They have come up with their own vision of love. This is what love means. Ah, that's what God is. But what I've done is I have now defined God in terms of my understanding of love. And he makes
that warning. And I thought that was interesting that that's at the very beginning of this book. It becomes a demon when we forget that love gets its meaning from God. God doesn't get his meaning from our definition of love. And a lot of people make that theological mistake. And sometimes theologians make that mistake too. We create a kind of our own, you might say our own design that we're going to let God answer. That brings me
to a Karl Barth quote that should sneak Karl Barth in here anyway. Somebody, he commented on the Paul Tillich, you know, is very interested in correlation and saying that he, Paul Tillich's approach to theology was to create these great issues, these life issues, and then look for the answer to these issues. And we make these questions and then in his theological method, then he finds that God answers these questions he's looking for. And Barth criticized that
and said, the problem with that is that if I get to make up the questions and I get to control how he answers them. But what if God makes the questions up? That's a different thing. Let God make the questions up. Don't take that model where I create the questions and then I let God answer them. And a lot of people have done that with love. I create my vision of love and then I'm going to
let God be that as far as he can fit into it, which means that I have to do a lot of careful reading to make sure he fits into my definition of love. That's how he starts the book off. Then he tells about four kinds of love. The first is, and he uses four Greek words. The first word is storge. Now, it's interesting if you're a reader of the New Testament, you'll say, you know, it's...
I don't even see that word in the Greek New Testament. Storge, S-T-O-R-G-E in English would look like that. It's natural animal affection in classical Greek. Louis is very interested in this. It's a natural animal affection. And the natural affection that would be between a mother and a child, child and mother, or a child and father. It is the word storge. It is natural affection. Lewis has a lot to say about it.
It is not quite true to say the word never appears in the New Testament. It does appear, but it appears with additives to it. For instance, it's added, Paul takes the word, storge, but adds philea in front of storge and uses it once. And that is in the book of Romans. When he talks about, and he's giving a list of the kinds of ways we should relate to each other. And one of the ways he says
is we should relate to each other with mutual affection. In other words, and he takes, phileo, which is really like mutual and affection. See, that's, storge. Like you would mother and child, child and mother. You should relate to people with mutual affection. And that is the word, storge. It's also used by St. Paul negatively. And he does it in his list of sins in Romans. And in this case, he does the Greek, the interesting Greek device
of putting an 'A' in front of a word. I've already taught you all about that in Greek. You can take, I did it yesterday in my sermon. The word for the idol was, ah erg, away from work, against work. And that's the word for idle. Why are you idle all day in the parable of the all-day workers? They were idle or they were away from work, or against work. That's why in classical Greek, ah erg,
see erg is the word for work, is used for the lazy guys who are against work. But here, Paul takes it and puts, 'ah' storge, astorge. And he uses it in Romans. And it's interesting in the list of sins, in the book of Romans chapter one, he loves lists. He has the lists of how when we break our relationship with God, everything deteriorates. And at one point he says, we are without feeling toward
each other, without affection, without feeling. So that even in this list of sins, do you know that's the next to the last of the sins he has in Romans 1. In fact, he talks about how the sins are getting worse and worse in Romans 1, and how we're doing worse and worse things. And finally, he gets right down to saying, I'll give you that list because it's so, it's so... when you see the word order, it's
kind of interesting the way he does it. You know, we did not see to honor God and so we became evil. And we're filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetous, malice, full of, he likes lists. So this is a list you don't particularly like. Envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, their gossips, slanderers of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents. He puts that in to catch the kids. Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Heartless
is this word, astorge, even against animal kindness, even the kind of kindness that animals would show. We end up in the deterioration of sin, even heartless, away from affection. And then finally ruthless, the final, the bottom, we actually enjoy doing it. In fact, then that's the next thing he says, we don't need to do them, but we approve those who do those things. So that's the word, storge. This is instinctive affection. And it's interesting in the
first chapter of this book, Lewis describes patriotism with that word. And he has the most fascinating discussion of patriotism in this first chapter. Those of you who've read it, I'm sure you'll agree. He takes on various authors who say you should love your country because your country's great. He says, no, you fight for your country not because it's great, but because it's your instinct to fight for what is you, what is you. It's the extension of
who you are. And Lewis went to war in World War I. He was badly wounded. And he didn't, by the way, you know, Lewis did not have to go to war because he was Irish. And most of the guys in Oxford with him that were Irish did not go to war. He went because he felt England is mine. And I fight for England, not because it's the greatest country in the world. I fight for England because
it is mine. And he says that, in his opinion, is what is patriotism. It's an animal instinct to fight so that you, and we respect it when we see people who fight for their homeland or for the extension. But then after going through all the values of, storge, he gives a warning against storge. He says, storge, when it isn't in a larger context and when it's bereft of ethics, it can become the most brutal of all
loves because my family, right or wrong, it's the mafia then. I kill because my family says I should kill. And I stop thinking about whether I should or shouldn't. So that animal instinct, he says, has got to be itself put into a larger framework. Storge, that's the first kind of love. The second kind of love he decides to discuss is friendship. And that is the Greek word, phileo. Now phileo is used, it's different than storge. It's
not instinctive like mother-daughter, but it's like brother-sister. Brother-sisters, he says, is different. Brother-sister love is different than mother-son love because there is a sense in which your brothers and sisters have to earn your respect. Your mother and you, you don't have to earn respect from it. That's just, that's a part of your biologies, more than brother-sister. And especially if you have step-sisters, step-brothers and others, but that is phileo.
That is the love that you have in association because you have, it's not just instinctive, but you look toward the same thing together. You look toward the family together. You share something in common with each other. And that's what he calls phileo love. And it's something that you like. So for instance, let's use that way in classical Greek, philia sophia, becomes the word philosophy. The love of wisdom because we like wisdom. You'd never say phileo foolishness.
You love foolishness. Nobody loves foolishness. We love wisdom. So that's where the word philosophy comes from, phileo sophia. Or it's interesting, philanthropy, phileo anthropos, means I love humanity at large. Who doesn't? It's just ordinary people, individual people I have a problem with. But nobody would say I hate humanity. I have a, phileo, toward anthropos, toward humanity. And we call that philanthropy. And some philanthropists may be brutal people to be around. But they love humanity. And that's
phileo anthropos. But of course, the most famous word is Philadelphia, phileo adelphos, brother. I love my brother. We are in this together. We play ball together. We have the same mother and father. But we are in this together and we don't focus on each other. We focus on what we're into together. And we maybe fight and all the rest. But we have that phileo adelphos, which is Philadelphia, the brother love of one another. And Lewis has a
lot to say about friendship. Because I think that is you made the point. He was able to make friends. And he has this wonderful definition of, phileo, friendship. And I think it's one of the best things he wrote about friendship. He says this. He says it's different than Eros. And we'll come to eros next. Eros, two men or a man and a woman or two people are focused on each other. In fact, they may be obsessed
with each other. Not in friendship. In friendship, it's different. You're not focused on each other. You're focused parallel with each other on something else. And here's the way he puts it. He says, without eros, none of us would have been begotten. Because he took somebody to be totally focused on another person to want to have sex. And so you get begotten. But without affection, none of us would have been reared. See, that is the parent, mother,
son, without that. So without that. But in phileo love, he comes up to this wonderful definition of phileo love toward two people. He says, in friendship arises, out of mere companionship, when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste, which the others do not share, and which till that moment, they believe to be unique treasure or burden for themselves. And the typical expression that opens up
friendship is something like this. Ah, you too. I thought I was the only one. And that was the friendship he had with J.R.R. Tolkien. Ah, you like northern stories. I like them too. And that began the friendship of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. We like the same thing together. Notice, it's not eros. It's not homosexual. I'm not focused on a man. And with my eyes on that person and obsessed with that person, we
are both focusing on stamp collecting. Or we're both focusing on like Bill Gates and his sidekick Paul Allen, who were focused on building a computer and a computer program. We're focused on that. And so that becomes the base of friendship. The friendship is you have your parallel. Two people looking that way, not looking at each other. And he makes a big point of that. Therefore, there could be friendship between a man and a woman that way
too. And Lewis had a lot of those friendships. Dorothy Sayers is one of them, though. He never really met with, he didn't want her to be in the Inklings because he only wanted men in the Inklings because he didn't want any distractions. But he and Dorothy Sayers really did. They really did have that kind of, they both were fascinated with words. They both were fascinated with the New Testament. They were both fascinated with Christian faith and
with writing stories. So they were that, they focused that way. And that became, then became friends, male, female. But it's not, eros, it's phileo, okay? But there are dangers in phileo. And the dangers of phileo are a little bit like the dangers of, storge. Of the instinctive love. The danger of phileo is just because you're my pal and we have our focus on the same thing. It can become ethically immune. And it can become highly, just
so my project is succeeding and our project is succeeding, then we don't care if we crush a lot of people around us. So again, it can lack an ethical balance. And so there's the danger that he warns us again with friendship. All right. Now, the big two are eros and agape. Eros is in some ways the most interesting word. One of the most interesting words in the Greek language. It's not used once in the New Testament
or in the Septuagint. They didn't use it. And why? Were they frightened of the word? No, I don't believe so at all. I believe they weren't because in classical Greek, eros, which is the intoxication. Eros is an intoxication with power, beauty, love, the power and beauty. And therefore, that's why it has the sexual connotation that it's the fascination with and being swept off your feet by power, beauty and sex, sexual power and beauty, and even without
sex. The amazing sense of being swept off your feet, of being dazzled by, of being overwhelmed by the greatness of something you see. And that is eros. And that's not bad. I don't think the New Testament is against it. I think in a way, the New Testament use of the word joy is a little bit like eros. Joy is surprise. And it's that surprise that is at the heart of eros. The reason the New Testament doesn't
use it is because in classical Greek, that is religious love. The classical Greeks, when they thought of love of the gods, it's always the intoxication and the seduction of the gods over you. And the Septuagint translators who were translated in the great Hebrew word, hasad, which is love, knew that love from God did not intoxicate us and overwhelm us. God always sets us free when he loves us. And that's why he calls us to make decision
with his love, rather than just to be swept up with his love. So that's the difference between hasad, the Hebrew word for love. And then when the New Testament comes along, and St. Paul is writing about love, love is not that which completely sweeps you off your feet. And dazzles you and seduces you so that you have no other choice. You can never say that. In fact, it's very dangerous when Christians use that kind of language.
I am absolutely intoxicated with Christ and swept off by feet by Christ. Well, it may not be Jesus Christ who's sweeping you off your feet. It may be your definition of love that's sweeping you off your feet. Because Jesus Christ doesn't do that. He doesn't take away your freedom. And he doesn't take away your ability to decide. Notice, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, opens the door, I will come
in. It isn't I'm coming in whether you like it or not. God does not overwhelm us. And so the New Testament writers did not want to use that word. And they reached into the Hebrew, into the Greek vocabulary for a rare word called, agape. Did you know that in classical Greek, agape is only used three times? And it means practically nothing. It just means goodwill in a very general sense. And the New Testament writers took that
little rare word and they defined it. Actually, the Septuagint did it first with taking the great Hebrew words for love and used agape for those words. It's like teenagers taking hold of a word like cool or something like that and then redefining it. So now that word has a whole new definition because of the way they used it. And that's what happens with agape. But eros is powerful, powerful eros is so intoxicating. And Lewis doesn't make
fun of it and he honors it. But he also sees the danger. Here's the danger with eros. Eros is the love of beauty. And when you have a relationship and by the way in eros there is a total obsession with and fascination with the other person. Whether it's homosexual love or heterosexual love. It's this total, you're totally engulfed by each other. And you're swept off your feet by each other. And that's eros. The danger in eros
is that there is a warning in eros toward the beloved. If you say to a person, I love you because you're so beautiful, you're so powerful, you're so absolutely dazzling. Do you hear the warning in that? When you're not dazzling and when you're not beautiful, this love is no longer on you. I'm going to find someone else who will be dazzling and beautiful and will command my attention. So there is built in to eros a profound
danger signal, a warning. It is not the love that makes you feel safe. It's the love that makes you feel unsafe. It's the love that puts you on guard. It's the love that makes you have to continually prove yourself. I have to continually prove that I'm strong. I have to continually prove that I'm beautiful. That's the tragedy in Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is fairest of them all. You know a tragedy is coming because sooner
or later, since the mirror tells the truth, the mirror will say, you're not the most beautiful, Snow White is. And that turns the queen into a witch. And there's an ancient story that sees the danger of eros. Eros becomes a witch. Eros can become a terrifying, terrifying danger. And that is, and Lewis saw it, and he warned against it. And yet, having said that, don't take away the wonder of eros. I'll never forget, can I tell
you a true story? When my wife and I took a trip around the world once, when we were in the Philippines, we got to make a trip around the world. And we went with our two little kids, with Anne, who was then six, and Jon, who was four. And we went to Lenin's tomb in Moscow. He saw the Lenin there. They weren't very much impressed with that. We were in Europe, and we went to the World
Council of Churches meeting. And then we flew over the Himalayas on our way back to Manila, and we stopped in New Delhi. And we went there for one reason, because Shirley and I wanted so much to go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal. And so we drove down to Agra. We hired a taxi. We had our two little kids. We drove down to Agra. We got to the monsoon season, so everything was mud. We went
into this parking lot. I've since thought that was a perfect way to go there. When you come into Agra, you can't see anything. It's just a big city. And you come up toward this famous site, and it's a muddy, muddy parking lot. And there's a little narrow doorway. The doorway was really not very wide, and it was wood, and it was not beautiful at all. And this is way back in 1960. My kids were about, I
said John was four and Anne was eight. And we went up and got out of the taxi, told the guy to wait for us. We didn't want to be left down there without a taxi. And we said, we're just going to go look at this. And we walked over to this doorway. And I'll never forget, one of the most dramatic things in my whole life was to take these two little kids, my four-year-old, my
seven-and-a-half-year-old. And we walked over to this doorway. And there the doorway opened. And there it was, the Taj Mahal. And my little son, age four, went, ooh! and I said to myself, I have a human being on my hands. A dog wouldn't do that. A monkey wouldn't do that. A human being does it. And that's the beauty of eros. It's human. It's this sense of being dazzled. It's dangerous. If you begin to
be obsessed with being dazzled, because some people have Christian religion where they always want to be dazzled every day. I want God to do something spectacular every day to win me. But I'll tell you, it's still beautiful. It's a beautiful moment when you see a person who's beautiful and they take your breath away. And that is the goodness of eros. But it also is the danger, all right? Finally, agape. Agape love is interesting because in the
New Testament, the love of God is not seen as an idea. Like eros really is an idea. So is phileo. And so it's not just the instinct, though, storge. But agape in the New Testament is the love of event, of what happens, of the someone who does something. It's an event that we love. And now I want to show you, both from the New Testament, but also from another book. The first papal encyclical of our present
pope, Pope Benedict XVI. He's written three now, and I bought each one of them. But he decided to write his first encyclicals on faith, hope, and love. But he has started with love. And I think this is a brilliant little book. You can get it from the Vatican. It's called Deus Caritas Est, because you know the papal encyclicals are always known by the first words in Latin of the encyclical. And the first words here are God
is love. God is love. The same way he starts four loves. God is love. And this is a marvelous encyclical on God is love. But listen to what he says. First of all, he warns us. He warns us about the dangers we have. In the world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance and even a duty of hatred and violence, this message of God is love is both timely and significant. For this reason,
I wish in my first encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others. But isn't it interesting? He gives the warning we're living in a time when there's under the name of some kinds of definitions of love. Certain religious movements, even Christian ones, have used it for vengeance. Use it to get at somebody. Just like phileo love, my love of my family, I can get at
somebody if they're not my family or I feel that they're a threat to me. And so then he decides to describe love. The opening of his description of love, I think, is absolutely so powerful. I just want to read the openings of that encyclical. He says, God is love. It's foundational for our lives. He says, and he talks about the need we have for love. And then the need we have for love. He says, we come
to believe in God's love. In these words, a Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. St. John's Gospel, and see that's his opening text, is 1st John 4:16. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent
his son to be the expiation, to be the one who identifies with us even to death and wins our salvation. That's how he starts the encyclical. So then he says, listen to this. He says, love is not an idea, but it's an encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. St. John's Gospel describes that event in these words, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
that whosoever believes in him should have eternal life. Love in the New Testament is an event that happens, not so much an idea, not so much this intoxication, but an event, and that event is Jesus Christ. Paul does it the same way in Romans 5. In Romans 5, he combines the two love words in the New Testament that we have come to treasure so much, the word grace, which means surprise, gift, love, and agape. He says,
therefore we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we've obtained access to this grace, this surprise gift, love, in which we stand and in which we boast in sharing the glory with God. But he says this, he says, and hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts, now he uses the word agape, has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that's been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely would anyone die for a righteous man, perhaps for a good one you might actually dare to die, but that would be like a friend, but God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died in our behalf. And that's how Paul decides to define love. John does it the same way in
1st John, here in his love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave himself, gave his son as an expiation for our sins. So we get now this wonderful four kinds of love and they each need, oh, I want to read one more thing about agape from Lewis and we'll end with this. He has this brilliant comment about agape. Well, then does that mean that agape love does away with the other loves?
Does it do away with storge? Does it do away with eros? Does it do away with phileo? Lewis says this, he says, does the divine love substitute itself for the natural as if we had to throw away our silver in order to make room for the gold? Lewis is so great with illustrations. The natural loves are summoned to become modes of charity, agape, while also remaining natural loves that they were. Again, he noticed Lewis's freedom theology.
God does not overwhelm us with his love. And so one sees here at once a sort of echo, a rhyme, a colorary to the incarnation itself. And it need not surprise us. The author is both the same. Christ is perfect God, perfect man. And the natural loves are called to be sanctified and brought in under the authority of agape. These natural loves are brought under the authority of agape, but they're enriched by agape. So I wanted
to read that wonderful line again. The natural loves are summoned to become modes of agape while remaining the natural loves that they were. We still have this intoxication with beauty, but yet we see it now in a larger framework so that it doesn't become the terror that it could be otherwise. Okay, that gives you something to start thinking about. Let's work with it. [Staub] Something to start thinking about and we'll be taking our Greek exams momentarily. This
is Dick Staub. You're listening to Earl Palmer Ministries, the Kindlings Muse. We'll be right back. Don't go away. [Music Break] Well, this is Dick Staub back with you. You're listening to the Kindlings Muse at Earl Palmer Ministries. And I was just telling Earl at the break that he did a remarkable job of taking a book that is densely packed with a lot of important concepts and summarizing it for us in a really approachable way. When Jesus gave his
new commandment that we love one another, what kind of love was he commanding that we have for one another? [Palmer] Well, I think that we have what Karl Barth called an evangelical ethic and we don't have a guilt ethic. We don't have a warning. Now, you had better love your neighbor or you'll have consequences. Now, there are consequences to not loving and there is consequences to evil. But that's not the motivation for love in the New Testament.
It's rather beloved, let us love one another. And you know, Barth calls that the evangelical ethic. In other words, we love because we have first been loved. In other words, you're not to love out of emptiness or out of guilt or out of command. So we don't have a mandate to love. We have a love that mandates. See, we experience a love that then invites us to share what we experienced. But then it warns us we
better do it too. I mean, Luther, that's how Luther handles our Lord's Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, you know, we pray that God will forgive our sins and then we say in our prayer and help us to forgive those who sin against us. And then Luther follows that and then our Lord follows it by saying, and beware if you don't forgive the sins of others, I may not forgive your sins. Or
he will not forgive. And there's a warning. And Luther says that our Lord adds that warning to assure us of our salvation. Now, think about that for a minute. He said, this is Luther's take on the Sermon on the Mount, that when Jesus commands us to love with the love that we've received, or in the case of the Lord's Prayer, to forgive with the forgiveness we received. See, we don't forgive out of emptiness. Then that assures
us that we've been forgiven. When we're able to forgive. It assures us that we've been loved when we're able to love. It's sort of like you give away the love and that assures you that you've been loved. And that's the sort of ironic logic of what we call gospel ethics. [Staub] How does the idea of agape love fit with Jesus saying that all of the law can be summarized in this, that you love the Lord your God
and love your neighbor as yourself? [Palmer] And in other words, that fulfills the Levitical code. And you know, the Levitical code itself ends with the, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. But the only problem with the Levitical code is it becomes clear in the young lawyer who meets Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Now that's a, phileo, question. What neighbor do I have to love? I mean,
it would be so nice if I could say, yes, you know, that's the great mafia answer. Yes, you love the people in the Cosa Nostra, but boy, those people outside of it, you have no obligation to them whatsoever. And in Bedouin culture, there was a lot of that. Remember in the Lawrence of Arabia, he wanted to be sure that he came up on the camp before they came up on him. Because in the Bedouin tradition, if
you came up toward a camp peacefully, they were obligated not to harm you. But if they come up on your camp, they can do whatever they want. And so he wanted to be sure that he came up on the camp first, then the Bedouin culture would work in his favor. But Jesus puts all of that on its edge by saying, I mean, St. Paul puts it all on the edge when he says, when you love your
neighbor, and it's in the context of talking about our enemies too there, we then, we have fulfilled the law. [Staub] You wrote a commentary on the Gospel of John and have spoken and written about the interplay between Peter and Jesus, where Jesus says, do you love me? And Peter uses these two different words for love, and it kind of, Jesus is asking, do you agape? And Peter is saying, I phileo. What's the significance of that exchange in
light of Lewis's kind of study of these words? [Palmer] Well, yeah, I honestly don't think that should be luxuriously interpreted. I wouldn't overinterpret that passage. The key in that scene in the post-resurrection account is that Peter, who denied the Lord three times, gets a threefold question from Jesus. It troubles him because he knows that he denied Christ three times, and that became a big fear. You will deny me before the cock crows three times, Peter. And
Peter does it. And then our Lord does a beautiful thing with Peter. He takes him through three questions. It's interesting, he does not say to him, did you love me, Peter? That would be the cruel question to ask. Did you love me? He couldn't say yes. I mean, I denied you. He doesn't say that. He says, do you love me? He brings Peter into the present tense. I think that's what agape love does. It brings you
into the present tense. And Peter answers three times. The third time he gets distressed. And there he's, Peter himself uses the word phileo. And I think what he's saying is, Lord, you're my friend. You know me better than I know myself. You tell me. And then Jesus serves him breakfast and says, feed my sheep. And it's done. And it's the three betrayals, the three denials, they're over. These three, you gave me good answers. But it's interesting.
I think Peter, when he uses phileo, he's saying, you know, you're my friend. You tell me. First, he says, yes, I love you. And but then,... [Staub] you know, what's interesting, though, is in that exchange, it ends with feed my sheep. And there's a pastoral sense to that. And as someone who was a pastor and is a pastor for all these many years, how does love play a role in a pastor in relationship with
the flock? In other words, you love people. You genuinely enjoy people. It's obvious. But it seems to me that you have to come to a place where you deeply love people to serve them the way that a pastor is called to serve. Is that something that you wrestled with through your career? [Palmer] Well, because a lot of people are not very likable. And you may not. You may not
like everybody in the, that you may not want to say, aha, you too, you're interested in that. They're not interested in the same thing you're interested in. So they're not going to become great friends of yours. You can't occupy every circle the same way. But to love someone means that it's a way of seeing them as beloved. And again, beloved, let us love. Now, notice the word of love. The word love is this love of Christ
in our behalf. That is love. Here in his love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and Jesus Christ took our place and came alongside of us so that when God looks at us, he sees us through, mediated through his son. And Bonhoeffer makes an interesting comment about love when he says that's what we have to do with our neighbor. And Bonhoeffer did it even in a Nazi or in a Gestapo prison camp.
He saw his captors. One of the, remember last year, Christmas time, we did the Christmas prayers of Bonhoeffer. And he prays for those who have their hard work in this house. He's referring to guards. The guards who have their hard work in this house. He prays for them. He sees them as beloved. They don't even know it. They don't even care about it. But he knows it. And this is what I think every Christian's got to
do. I've got to see the neighbor, even the neighbor I don't like, I've got to see them as beloved. And therefore, I have a mediated relationship with my neighbor instead of a direct relationship. By the way, eros is totally direct. Phileo direct in a way, but direct-parallel. And storge is direct-instinctive. You know, you can't, you know, you can divorce. A mother and a father can divorce each other, but they can't divorce their children.
You just can't do it. If you do it, that's considered absolutely unbelievable. Even an animal doesn't do that. An animal doesn't divorce himself from his, well, male tigers do, because they want to throw the female back in the heat, and so they'll kill the baby tigers. I remember that special I saw in tigers, and it really... [Staub] We're now moving into the zoological portion of the evening. [Palmer] I wasn't so fond of tigers after I, of male tigers
after that, because the female tiger has to hide her little cub for two years from males, because the male tiger sees the little baby tiger. It will kill the tiger to throw the female back in the heat. And not lions, but tigers do that. Well, anyway, we recoil at that, the thought you would not be loyal to your own offspring, because that's storge. But agape love is I'm loving someone because I know something about them. I
know they're a sinner, I know that too, but I know they're beloved, and I know they're beloved. And that changes everything. [Staub] Well, then why is it so hard to do? Why, when you get down to it, you know, to dwell above with saints we love, oh, that will be glory, to live below with saints we know, that's a different story. And that kind of call that we have to love, I mean, the Christian community is not
known necessarily as a place where we love each other because we see that we are all beloved. [Palmer] Yeah, well, I think several reasons. One, we forget. We forget the great truths often that are so important to us. But the other thing is that I think we got to be careful of is, I think there is as much danger of a Christian idealizing agape love. That would be now the warning with regard to agape love, to idealize
it so that it just washes away all the other loves. And so that I don't have any hobbies, I don't have any friends because I have to be always loving the poor and always loving the outcast. And I don't dare love anybody or have friendship with somebody who's rich maybe because then I'm not loving the poor. Or somebody that is, we just happen to like skiing together, oh, that's too sinful now because that's indulging in my
flesh and myself, I should be out in the food bank. And you know, in a way, you can so idealize love that in a sense you are depersonalizing the very people that you should see as beloved. With this idealization of love. And I think that is as dangerous as to forget that I'm supposed to love. [Staub] What is the relationship between, in agape love, between the act of the will to love versus the desire to love, something
that comes from within? Lewis said, love in the Christian sense does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of feelings but of the will. The state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves and must learn to have about other people. I mean, he sounds very much like, I love because I must discipline myself to love. Is that really the nature of agape love? [Palmer] Well, it's not what we want. But I think you
have to say about Lewis, there's one thing about Lewis, call it a personality trait, a quirk, or call it a weakness. I don't know. I kind of rather call it a beloved quirk. Lewis was driven with a tremendous sense of duty. And talk about the Brit with duty. Why go to war in World War I when you're an Irishman? You don't even have to do it. Duty. And why did he give the broadcast
talks? Duty. And why did he correspond? He corresponded with everybody that wrote him a letter. Duty. He had this tremendous sense of duty. And some people will mock that. And it's just like they mock people who have strict schedules they follow. I love people who follow strict schedules. I like that. It's dependable. And you remember Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady when they complained because he was so rude to Eliza Doolittle. And then a wonderful line
came out from his mother, his quirky mother who said, oh, it's just Eliza, don't be offended. He's rude to everybody equally. Well, that made it a lot better. He's just rude. But he's dependable. He's dependably rude. Like Puddleglum is dependably gloomy. Yet he comes through. And Lewis was dependably high on duty. And the way he took care of Mrs. Moore toward the end of her life and all these duty things that Lewis did. [Staub] But don't you
think that his relationship with Joy did bring a new dimension to him? ... There is no question about it. ... He was definitely kind of an intellectual, conceptual life by philology. You know, to study the words love and oh, now I've got to love and discipline. And you get this mechanistic view of Lewis, which seems to have really changed when he actually fell in love and realized the draw and the compelling nature of it and the spontaneity of
it and the deep devotion of it. I think we're misunderstanding Lewis, I think you'd agree, when we think of him only as that dutiful bread. But that is his overriding quality. But it did change when he married Joy. [Palmer] Yeah. In fact, some of the beautiful things he said about Joy are in the letter to the American lady, this little quirky lady in Los Angeles that got all these letters. And he told her about how Joy and
he went to a country inn. And he said, when we registered, I felt guilty. Like I was out with some woman and we were signing into this inn and I felt very guilty. It was wonderful, but I felt guilty. And here she was my wife, but I still felt guilty writing that Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you know, going into this hotel. And he wrote that. It was so dear because but he did have a genuine romance
with her. But if you saw Shadowlands, what I loved in Anthony Hopkins's handling of Shadowlands is when the death of Joy happens and he's with the boys, in this case, Douglas, and they're walking one of the last scenes of Shadowlands as Anthony Hopkins with they wept. And that was true. Douglas Gresham, I've met with him and I know him. I've heard him speak. I read his book, Lenten Lands, and Douglas, the stepson of Lewis, said they
wept together. And he said that was the only time I ever saw him weep with me. And then he said that's the only time he ever hugged me. Lewis couldn't hug. And the final scene in Shadowlands was so true to that. They're walking down the hill and Lewis is just gently touching his shoulders. But Lewis didn't touch people a lot. And he didn't. And so Douglas Gresham said he hugged me. That's the only time he hugged
me. Yet he knew that Lewis loved him, but he just wasn't a hugger. That wasn't something he could do. [Staub] So maybe love, as we understand it, has gone too far in one direction and his, as an act of will, is too far in another direction. There's really a balance there. Because he was, you know, when he died, numbers of people came forward and shared that he had paid for their education. But the contingency
of his paying for their education was that no one would ever know until he died. And mothers would bring their children who had great promise and say, you know, my son has a lot of intellectual possibilities, but we can't afford to send him to school. And Lewis would pay that kid's way. There's another story of him. A woman showed up with a little boy that her son, who I think was 12 or 13, and was unable
to read and had a severe learning disability. And Lewis, she had come to do some work on the property. And so they lived there for a while. And every night, Lewis would come home and he had made flashcards and would get down on the floor with this little boy and work with him on his alphabet to teach him how to read. That's a true story. Yeah, it is a true story. So he had this, I think
it's an amazing capacity to love. I think you have to love in order to write all those letters. It's got to go beyond duty to feel an obligation like that to your readers, to answer their correspondence from little children asking about Narnia to intellectuals asking deep questions. And he did all of that. I think he learned something about the dangers of love when Joy died. And he wrote A Grief Observed because he may have come close
to that love becoming a form of idolatry in a sense. And he wrote the book A Severe Mercy to Sheldon Vanauken, who had that problem. And his love was so deep for his wife that when she died, he could not function anymore. [Palmer] Yeah, it was Sheldon Vanauken who wrote Severe Mercy. But Lewis called it a severe mercy., and Sheldon Vanauken was giving all kinds of hints to Lewis. He had been a student of
Lewis. And then his wife, Davy, died of cancer as just a young woman in her 30s. And so he began to write letters to Lewis that made Lewis feel that he was preparing for suicide. Because he talked about, then I'll be with Davy, and then I can be with Davy. And Lewis alarmed Lewis. And this wonderful splash of cold water, Sheldon Vanauken later writes about this splash of cold water that came from Lewis who said,
be very careful, because he began to sense that Vanauken was toying with suicide. He said, be very careful. You cannot be sure that a disobedient act on your part will take you to the place where the obedient are. You just assume that if you commit suicide, you'll be with Davy. Don't be so sure. A disobedient act will not necessarily, you cannot be sure, it will take you to where the obedient are. And Sheldon Vanauken
said that one sentence, splash the cold water in his face, suicides out. I better live my life. And Lewis was, again, he is, in a sense, taking the demon out of that kind of love. That love that now is getting almost to the point of worshiping Davy. And if we only, I'll just have that. [Staub] We're going to take a quick break and come back and get to questions from the audience. Before we do, real quickly, 1st
Corinthians 13, love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast. That list of love descriptions that Paul writes, and that's so often used in weddings and so forth. Is that a useful kind of set of words to understand agape love? [Palmer] Ah, I believe it is. And I believe that's exactly what St. Paul is doing. He has just announced the marvel and the wonder and the danger of all the gifts. That the Corinthians are so
proud of. All these gifts of the martyrdom gift or the knowledge gift or the speaking in tongues gift. And then he starts out, and notice it's beautiful. He doesn't say, if you are this and don't have love, you're a clanging gong and a noisy symbol. You know, he puts it all in himself. He said, if I have these gifts and don't have this one thing, the love from God, then all of this is it. And there
is the great warning against the false loves and where love becomes a demon. And then he does this beautiful defining and then, but he ends it mysteriously. He says, ah, but I look in a mirror enigma. He uses the word enigma. I look in the mirror enigma, but when I meet God, he who knows me, I'll see him face to face. So, and then he steps back and says, well, so I'll abide in these three. Faith,
I'll trust God. Hope, I'll count on him for the future. And love, I'll experience his love. And the best is to experience his love. [Staub] We're going to be back with our audience's questions and comments tonight. You're listening to the Kindlings Muse at Earl Palmer Ministries. We'll be right back. [Music Break] Well, this is Dick Staub back with you. You're listening to the Kindlings Muse at Earl Palmer Ministries. And we've had a most interesting discussion tonight of C.S.
Lewis's book, The Four Loves. And now we're going to go out and find out what some of the questions and comments are in our beloved audience. That's what I used to always introduce my show. And here's your beloved host. Even if nobody else knew I was beloved, I clung to that hope. Ed, you've got the first question tonight. What's your question? [Ed] In the story of the Prodigal Son in the parable, and most aptly brought to mind
by Rembrandt's picture, we see this great love that the father has for the son and both his sons. And we know it, but it's so difficult to understand this love is the same and not different. In relation to what you've been talking about tonight, is there something you can help us into understanding, you know, what Jesus wanted us to see there in the father's love for both sons, not just for the one? [Palmer] Yeah. In fact, I
honestly feel that the elder brother is really the main object of that great account. Because remember, the people, they're complaining about the fact that he's spending time with the people who are considered sinners. And so he tells the parables, three, the ninty-nine sheep, one lost, and then ten coins, one lost. And then that marvelous statement, there's laughter in heaven or there's joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. See, you should be glad a sinner repents.
And then comes the great story of the two boys. And the one boy, of course, is rebellious and angry and has death wish. He wants his dad to die so that he can get his share of the... And anybody listening to that, a Jewish audience would be horrified at that story. What kind of a son would that be? Talk about going against, storge, love. He actually wants the death of his father so he can get the
money that his father has. But the father then, so in a sense, the boy says, give me my inheritance now. No Jewish boy would ever say or would never get away with saying that because that was a breach of storge love in Greek. That is instinct. You know, your dad is alive and you keep him alive as long as possible. But he says, okay, I'll die for you. And so he gives him his wealth and the boy goes. And then he comes back totally
repentant, totally broken. And as you know, in that story, the father sees him a long ways off, goes. And it's a total surprise. The whole thing is surprise. And I think that is our Lord himself defining grace, surprise-gift-love. The love that comes by surprise when you don't expect it at all. And the eyesight of the father, he's so able to see this boy the long ways off. He has a party. He puts a ring
on his hand, three stores. But the big part of the story is that the elder son who has been faithful in his work is just the opposite. He was totally storge love and totally loyal to the father, totally loyal to the family. And then, but he's bitter and won't come in. And the best part of the story is that the father has such good eyesight that he can now go out in the dark and find
the boy. Again, surprise. And when he finds a boy, and this is what I've always loved to say in this parable. When I have to teach it, you think about it for a minute. The most beautiful promise in the parable is not made to the little boy or to the runaway boy. He says, put a ring on his hand and kill the fatted calf. That's not the most beautiful. The most beautiful promise is given to the
elder son. Son, everything I have is yours. You're always with me. I mean, there is no greater promise than that. And but it was right that we had this party. And then he invites the boy in to... Now, notice Karl Barth's got evangelical love. He assures the elder son of love and then invites him in, to generosity. The same thing I preached yesterday on the Matthew 20. The same thing happens in the all-day workers. The all
day workers who griped that they didn't get more money than they should have got. And that the others got the same. Notice what the Lord in the parable says to them. He says, comrade. That's a grace word. Don't have a skewed mind. Don't have a bent mind. Don't look at it in a bent way. See my generosity and now enter into it. Same thing. Enter into the generosity. And so the parable is a magnificent parable. And
it's but I think it's magnificent on both both sides. That it's it's love that surprises us. And I think that's the main teaching of the of the parable. The love that surprises. [Staub] Celeste, what's your question? [Celeste] Well, I've been reading the biography of Mother Teresa, Come By My Light. And throughout her life, it describes how tortured she is with this absence of being feeling connected with from God and with others. Even though we don't see that
in her outward daily life. Would you say that she's crossed over that line of agape into the warning to the extreme side where she is so in thirst of having that those big aha moments or that deep connection that she loses the ability to connect on the earthly plain with others. Not just in serving, but in real intimate relationships, because I really don't see that throughout this biography. But it's a different book. But it really
came to mind when you were saying about the warning sign of agape. [Palmer] Well, yeah, what would be the warning sign for Mother Teresa? I think the only warning is that she may have misread her own ennui and her own feeling of melancholy. As if that melancholy she may have felt. After all, she's lived her entire life around profoundly needy people. And she has graciously shared and yet she's never felt that she's done
enough. And I think it is true that if Lewis had a quirk about his strong, you might say strong conviction of duty, she certainly had it too. This amazing woman who felt that strong sense of duty and also the the sense of grief when certain things were not happening in the world. For instance, she was terribly upset about abortion, terribly upset about anything that took life because she had spent her entire life helping in the house
of the dying. And remember when she came to the National Prayer Breakfast, she boldly spoke against abortion saying, how could we do that? You know, and she just grieved over it. And I think so she grieved for the failure of the general public as well and felt, where have I failed? And I think that was a misreading where she put too much guilt on herself. And again, needed and thank God for the prayers that she knew
and for her worship that I'm sure, you know, there's a great line from Thielicke, the God who forgives our sins also forgives our theological errors. And when she feels that she is not worthy of God's love, that's a theological error on her part. But thank God that he is able to cover that. And believe me, he covered it for Mother Teresa. [Staub] I do think you see in Four Loves, though, and you alluded to this, Lewis trying
to flesh out the idea that these are synergistic, they each have their place. And one of the things that you see about Lewis is he was at the pub because he liked to have fun with his friends. It wasn't just an intellectual chat. He enjoyed being with his friends and he was a rigorous, vigorous hiker. And he'd get his friends out on long hikes and he spent a lot of time just with his friends, not just
serving other people, you know, kind of finding his own points of human connectivity. [Celeste] There wasn't a lot of fun or joy. She had a lot of joy in giving, but as far as enjoying relationships with others who are close on the same level, seemed to be absent. And it was more that her thirst for God was all that counted and serving others for him. But I was just wondering if there was any connection with that. And
Earl, you gave a good... [Staub] Thanks. And she holds the record for coming the farthest tonight. She came from Wisconsin, for the show. She's a Seattleite who's doing graduate studies in Wisconsin and she's tried to get to the show a few times and finally made it tonight. I'm glad you did. Mike usually holds the record. He comes all the way from Anacortes, but I'm sorry, that's not as far as Wisconsin. Okay, good enough. [Mike] Been struggling
with unconditional love. And my question is, is it correct to say that the proper application of the four loves, is that a good definition of unconditional love? [Palmer] In other words, if you rightly understood all four of these, and they were all in focus, and they were all rightly... And had not become demons in themselves. Then you have fulfilled what love is supposed to be. Well, that's not a bad idea to think that through. You need, storge.
You need to love your own body. I mean, you are not doing anybody any good if you don't have an instinctive love for your own body, your own mother, your own father, your own country. I mean, I think people who are anarchists, there's something weirdly dangerous and demonized about the anarchist who says, I don't have any obligation to anybody. There's something wrong there. And so I don't call that. So you got to have that. And then
phileo, you got to have some friends. And then eros, there's some things have got to take your breath away. I mean, if you're not a person that has your breath ever taken away from you. I love, you know, the great panoramic set of photos that was done by the New York Metropolitan, of the Family of Man, that exhibition. I saw that exhibition once, a great... It's now been put into a book, The Family of Man, which
was a very striking, the famous photographer. And I remember this so dramatically, going through the Family of Man and the panels. And it was this one panel. Is there anything as real as hunger? And there's this picture of a hungering, starving woman holding a piece of bread. And I thought after I looked at that picture, what could possibly be on the next panel that wouldn't be an affront to this starving woman? And guess what was the
next panel? Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra, the NBC Symphony Orchestra. And then the line, Behold, the dreamer cometh. And yes, I mean, here you have grimness. And then right next to it, Malcolm Muggeridge saw that in Something Beautiful for God. There was a strange kind of light in that chapel that Muggeridge saw where Mother Teresa was. In the midst of that sadness, then a sense of wonder. And that's the good side of eros.
And then of course, agape, which is, it is the love that God surprises us with because of his generosity and of his grace. And you put them all together and I think you have a whole kind of love. Hey, I never thought of it that way, but I wonder if maybe Lewis himself, or Joy, probably Joy's the one that got him to write this book. And he says, you gotta put these all together. [Staub] Michael, your comment.
[Michael] Yeah, I just wanted to mention when you mentioned how the Pope's encyclical, Benedict, how he puts it that the love is an encounter with an event and a person. And I just thought when you said that, I thought immediately of Barth and Calvin. It was just, I thought it was wonderful that the Catholic Church and the Protestants are kind of coming closer together when you look back in the 15th century and it was not such the
case. But I just thought it was, I immediately thought of Barth when you talked about the Pope's statement about love. I thought that was neat. [Palmer] I agree. As you know, my young theologian here, he comes to my theological group. So you're right. Barth says you cannot separate word from work. You cannot separate what God does from what he says. And that's the idealists have always wanted to make that separation. Oh, I want all the words up
here. But it's event. It's an event that happened. Christ died on the cross. That's love. Love's not an emotion. It's an event that happened when Christ identified with us. And that is love. And the Pope starts the encyclical that way. And I think that was really wonderful. I think the Pope is a terrific theologian. I don't agree with everything in even in Deus est Caritas, but I was so touched by it. And his understanding of
Eros is very, very good, too. He really understands Eros, though he doesn't discard it. But he understands this. Let me read you a little bit of what he says about Eros. This shows you how wise the encyclical is on Eros. He says the Greeks considered Eros principally as a kind of intoxication. See, I just kind of referred to that. The overpowering of reason by the divine madness. That's a quote from one of the Greek philosophers, which
tears man away from his finite existence and enables him in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power to experience supreme happiness. And that would be religious love. And you can see why the Septuagint translator of the Hebrew Bible said that's not the Hebrew Bible's understanding of love. When God loves us, and notice how the Ten Commandments begins with his love. Hear, O Israel, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the
land of Egypt. I mean, that's an event that happened. I did something for you, and therefore no other gods before you. And then, of course, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his son to be the expiation for our sins. It's an event. It's not an intoxication. It sets you free. And that's why you then, but I think it was interesting how the pope puts that in. [Staub] And
Ben, what's your question? [Ben] If it is true that those who are forgiven little, love little, what are those people to do who don't need as much forgiveness? [Palmer] Yes, well, of course, they sometimes they're deluded because they think they don't need as much forgiveness. And it may be that they have, again, they have a problem of pride which has overrated their own innocence. And, you know, it is true. I do love sin. I like Garrison Keillor. He
made an interesting comment. He said we should be grateful for sin. If it wasn't for sin and guilt, no one would be on committees and that would create parks and do all these good things in the society. They are created by guilty people who feel guilty and therefore I got to join the park committee and make sure we have a park. But there's something Garrison's got his finger on something there and that is this. The most
dangerous person you'll ever meet is the person who perceives themselves as innocent. Adolf Hitler is a person who always perceived himself as innocent and therefore everybody else is guilty. And you'll see that in the psychosis and you'll see it in. So therefore I'd be very careful of the person that says I don't need any love because I don't have any sins necessary to be forgiven of. So therefore I have a very low threshold of forgiveness need.
Therefore a very low need of love. Hey, don't be proud of that. It'd be better to say man alive help me to understand what my sins are so that I can then bring them to Christ and be cleansed. But I've got to be careful that I won't fall into the Martin Luther problem when he was a young monk and kept imagining sins he didn't even commit to be sure he was covered. And so he started to
generate sins. And finally Father Staupitz had enough of this and said I want you to start teaching the book of Romans and the book of Romans cleared his head. But it's true Luther was trying to... there must be some sins I haven't imagined that I've done. Where are they? And then you end up with a person fixated on their sins. Don't do either. And I think that's what's so nice about the sort of unconsciousness of the
gospel. You can you need forgiveness. It doesn't mean you know where I need a lot or a little. I need it. Okay. Now get on with my life. [Staub] Final question, Jim. [Jim] Two part question. I'm not sure that I'm asking this correctly. But number one, in what sense are the four loves competitive with each other? And number two, how does our competitive society affect the four loves? ...Very good. [Palmer] Yeah, I think they are competitive in a way
because as we know even in the Bible, you think about how romance is stated in the Bible. A man shall forsake his father and mother and cleave into his wife. A woman forsakes her father and mother and cleaves into her husband. In a wedding ceremony, that's that marvelous moment when the young couple walk away from their parents and do their vows alone before the priest or the pastor and their two witnesses. But the parents are left
behind. And that leaving behind is good. Otherwise, your kid's going to live in your house for the rest of their life and you're going to have to do their laundry and everything. You don't want to do that. You want to raise your children so they want to leave home. And that wanting to leave home seems to go against storge. But it's storge now having done its job and now releasing you to the next eros, the good
eros where you see somebody who totally you fall in love with. And yet if it's mixed with agape, which is the love of forgiveness and the love of grace, then you have a very healthy eros and a very healthy phileo. Because I do believe the best romances are where a man and a woman would say, my best friend is my wife. She's also my best friend too. But yet she's not exactly my friend. But you are
looking parallel too as well as at each other. And so you want to get it. But they are competitive in a way. And some guys, it is true. Some guys are so happy. When I was in Washington, D.C., I have to tell you, I got invited by a young kid to go down to the map room in the House of Representatives in the Congress. Did you know there's a big room of maps? And there's the
Map Society in Washington, D.C. And I got to go to the Map Society meeting and there are all these old guys my age. Did you ever go to see the map room? Did you go there, Marty? It's in the bottom of the House of Representatives. I mean, the Library of Congress. In the bottom of the Library of Congress is the map room. And there's this association of guys. And I listened to these guys at their
meeting and I realized they live for maps, cartography. And the Cartography Society and all. There were no women there at all. There was maybe one woman. There was all these men. And I could just see this young friend of mine that took me. I said, now, I hope you don't get too caught up in this. You'll never get a wife. You will never find a girl here. You're going to be with all these old codgers and
you're going to be in love with maps and everything. But you're never going to find a girl. And so, you know, being the careful father wanted to make sure this kid, this high school kid, took me there. And he was a member of the Map Society. And, you know, that's phileo. See, we're focused. Boy, these guys were so loyal to each other. They loved each other for maps. There was no sex at all. I mean, it's
maps. But on the other hand, how are we going to have children in the world if everybody is caught up in phileo? [Staub] You know, maps, lions in their cubs, tigers in their... You get it all on the Earl Palmer Ministries show. This is Dick Staub. You've been listening to Kindlings Muse at Earl Palmer Ministries, where we've been talking tonight about C.S. Lewis's book, The Four Loves. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks for
joining us.