The Four Loves: Eros

Lewis's chapter on Eros is an attempt to define Eros, explain it, and apply it to our marriages and other relationships.  With this attempt he completely succeeds and leaves me with quotes that I will know forever.

"By Eros I mean of course that state which we call "being in love"..."  From the first sentence, Lewis lays a solid basis that will allow the chapter to flow smoothly and allow no gaps in thinking.  In fact several times while reading this I had to go back and figure out what Eros actually was.  Whether this is simply my ineptness or a fault of Lewis, I was still able to simply go back and be reminded of his terminology.  Now about the substance of this definition (and what he adds to it later), I adore it.  Essentially, Lewis claims that we can all "fall in love," at one time or another in our lives, but to "be in love" is an entirely new battlefield.  Lewis claims that Eros says, "It is better to be unhappy with her than to be happy with another."  In Lewis's analogy of 'diving into the pond,' "being in love" is when you keep swimming, even after the fun part (diving).  There are those that are obsessed with "falling in love," so they never learn "true love" (Eros).

I must now touch on submission.  We talked about it so much in class that I need to address it (Plus I was the one who said that the ideal woman should be submissive).  I will start by saying that whole thing about "wives submit to your husbands..." has, for some reason, put a bad taste in most Christians today (including males).  This is a problem!  I would like to say that the word has changed definitions due to change in culture, but this is simply not true.  It is simply ignorance.  I will say, though, that I was glad to hear laughter after I said the word, rather than raging disagreement.  I have looked at submission on several different angles, and have decided that I should explain.  When I say that the ideal woman should be submissive, this does assume that the man loves his wife as Christ loved the church.  If the response to this assumption is, "Well you didn't say THAT!" then we can go nowhere.  We were talking about ideals, therefore I assumed that the situation would be ideal (i. e. the man loves the wife, in-turn).  C. S. Lewis sums this up when he says, "This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him., is in her own mere nature least lovable....... So, in these terrible marriages, once they have come about, the "headship" of the husband, if only he can sustain it, is most Christ-like."

Now to respond to the lazy, unloving husband scenario.  I totally agree with Professor Ribiero that a woman should make decisions if the man is not loving her and doing his job.  When the father tells his wife that he doesn't give a dang about what his kids do or don't do, she should step in and take control.  This, however, does not disprove submission.  Clearly the wife has been patient with the husband, and has done nothing to keep her from doing anything, therefore she is still in submission.  One might say, "Well, what if the husband tells the wife that she can have no rules for her children? What then should she do?"  To this I say that this is indeed a terrible scenario in which the solution requires submission.  Not submission entirely, but to some extent.  It does not disprove the ideal quality that a woman should be submissive.

Lewis further agrees with my statements when he says, "The real danger is not that husbands may grasp the latter too eagerly; but that they will allow or compel their wives to usurp it."  A man must look for qualities in a woman that, when he is weak, she may support him and long for him to support her.  Pride is important to man, just as affection is important to women.  Submission and Loving are the two actions that provide these feelings, and we must both do this, man and wife, if Eros is to be good to us.