The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics by C. S. Lewis

Author:C. S. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Martyrs is exactly right. Years ago when I wrote about medieval love-poetry and described its strange, half make-believe, ‘religion of love’, I was blind enough to treat this as an almost purely literary phenomenon. I know better now. Eros by his nature invites it. Of all loves he is, at his height, most god-like; therefore most prone to demand our worship. Of himself he always tends to turn ‘being in love’ into a sort of religion.

Theologians have often feared, in this love, a danger of idolatry. I think they meant by this that the lovers might idolise one another. That does not seem to me to be the real danger; certainly not in marriage. The deliciously plain prose and business-like intimacy of married life render it absurd. So does the Affection in which Eros is almost invariably clothed. Even in courtship I question whether anyone who has felt the thirst for the Uncreated, or even dreamed of feeling it, ever supposed that the Beloved could satisfy it. As a fellow-pilgrim pierced with the very same desire, that is, as a Friend, the Beloved may be gloriously and helpfully relevant; but as an object for it – well (I would not be rude), ridiculous. The real danger seems to me not that the lovers will idolise each other but that they will idolise Eros himself.

I do not of course mean that they will build altars or say prayers to him. The idolatry I speak of can be seen in the popular misinterpretation of Our Lord’s words ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she loved much’ (Luke 7:47). From the context, and especially from the preceding parable of the debtors, it is clear that this must mean: ‘The greatness of her love for Me is evidence of the greatness of the sins I have forgiven her.’ (The for here is like the for in ‘He can’t have gone out, for his hat is still hanging in the hall’ the presence of the hat is not the cause of his being in the house but a probable proof that he is.) But thousands of people take it quite differently. They first assume, with no evidence, that her sins were sins against chastity, though, for all we know, they may have been usury, dishonest shopkeeping, or cruelty to children. And they then take Our Lord to be saying, ‘I forgive her unchastity because she was so much in love.’ The implication is that a great Eros extenuates – almost sanctions — almost sanctifies – any actions it leads to.

When lovers say of some act that we might blame, ‘Love made us do it,’ notice the tone. A man saying, ‘I did it because I was frightened,’ or ‘I did it because I was angry,’ speaks quite differently. He is putting forward an excuse for what he feels to require excusing. But the lovers are seldom doing quite that. Notice how tremulously, almost how devoutly, they say the word love, not so much pleading an ‘extenuating circumstance’ as appealing to an authority.

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