Four Loves by C.S. Lewis gave us the abiding, classical typology of love: affection (storge), friendship (philia), romance (eros), and charity (agape). But I have come to prefer an alternate fourfold understanding based more clearly on the essential relationships that define the natural family...biologically, emotionally, spiritually. These loves are: filial, fraternal/sororal/friendship, spousal, paternal/maternal. These structure the family as they analogously inform all human relationships even as they image the boundless, diverse love(s) of the Holy Trinity.
Filial is love of the child for mother/father, of the creature for the Creator, of the receiver for the giver, of the needy inferior for the generous superior. It is rooted in receptivity as in the affection of Lewis. For Lewis affection is a low form of love as our pets have such for us. But human, filial love is a far deeper reality, at once emotional, moral, spiritual.
It begins in the receptivity of the infant: the experience of comfort, pleasure, safety, delight while suckling at the breast and gazing at the mother's face. From here it flows organically into gratitude, trust (the first developmental stage for Eric Ericson), mutuality in affection, loyalty and loving obedience. Eventually it matures into respect, honor, reverence and adoration.
It is the essential, foundational love we have as creatures for our Creator. Human love is first and foremost always receptive. We did not decide to exist. That we live at all is entirely gratuitous. And so, the foundation of all love is gratitude. The only fitting response to grace and gift is thanks and praise. Nothing we do or achieve is adequate to reciprocate what we have received...except thanks and praise.
This primal love goes beyond our immediate parents to all who protect, provide, guide and care for us: grandparents, uncles/aunts, mentors, coaches, teachers, priests, police, military, governors as well as family, ethnicity, religion (Church), nation.
It is as well the root love from which flow the others: fraternal, spousal, paternal.
Fraternal, Sororal, Friendship is very close to Lewis's friendship or philia, but we root it here more deeply in love of brother/sister. It flows from shared blood, same mother/father and heritage. By extension, friendship beyond the family reflects a analogous form. There is a basic equality, notwithstanding differences in age, between siblings as between friends. It entails a symmetry in contrast to the asymmetry of filial/parental love. There is a permanent union of blood and family. For friendship there is a sharing in some value, activity, belief or such. With this love there is more detachment than there is in filial, parental and spousal love. What bonds is a third factor...interest, faith, hobby, loyalty. It is more lighthearted and playful. It blends well with the other loves which are not absolutely exclusive of each other: father/sons who golf or fish and mothers/daughters who shop and plan gatherings. It is a prerequisite for a strong spousal love, even prior to the sexual, romantic, unitive and generative.
Spousal love, flowering out of filial and fraternal, is the fulfillment of the eros or romantic love of Lewis. In our Catholic tradition, sexual or even romantic attraction, even when mutual, do not enjoy a stable, enduring ontological status of their own. Rather, they are dimensions of or moments within the greater, denser, complex reality of spousal, conjugal or marital love. On their own, sexual and romantic attraction are not genuine loves in the permanent, enduring sense. They are prone, inevitably, to frustration, heartbreak and tragedy unless they blend with charity, agape, Christlike or supernatural love. Romantic love itself, the passionate desire for union with the Beloved, can move, under the guidance of agape, in two directions: to fulfillment in marital communion or in the ascesis of renunciation and sacrifice when the consummation/fulfilment is not possible. For example if the desire is not reciprocated, or is prevented by a prior commitment of vow, the longing is denied...and can be cursed or blessed by the one who suffers so. Even within the happy marriage the sexual/romantic normally goes through many "deaths" or frustrations through all sorts of difficulties. Here again, the deprivation can be cursed, leading to acrimony, or blessed and become fruitful of a deeper agapic-parental love. As noted earlier, spousal love always contains primordially friendship as a presumption. Spousal love is not a final end on its own but grows into deeper forms of agape and generative love. So an enduring love never entirely loses the romantic dimension, but organically takes on more profound and fruitful form as agape and maternal/paternal. Spousal love, we learned from John Paul, is: free, exclusive, sexual, permanent, generative. At the same time it is filial, fraternal, and generative. For example, in the symphony of marriage there come moments when the man, however mature, enjoys the maternal love of his wife; and vice versa.
Spousal Love as Celibate and Virginal Marriage itself is not the most sublime expression of human spousal love. That is reserved for the vowed life of celibacy/virginity. In this union, normal, marital, sexual, romantic and fecund relationship is renounced in favor of a deeper, purer, eternal, spousal communion with Christ himself. This communion already anticipates, here in this life on earth, our destiny in heaven, where we will not be given in marriage, but enjoy absolute, eternal intimacy with God. The vowed life enjoys, by anticipation, this reality already now in priesthood and/or religious life. The surrender of all the joys, energies, synergies and fruits of natural marriage serves to intensify not only the mystical union with Christ, but also, in a 100 ways, filial, fraternal, and maternal/paternal love.
Maternal/Paternal Love We prefer here the gendered/sexual distinction rather than the abstract, discarnate "parental." Similarly, we value the brother/sister binary over the bloodless, fleshless "sibling." God created the human person as bipolar: male or female, a hard binary, no mixture of the two, no 3rd or 4th alternatives. The final goal of femininity is maternity, to give life. The final goal of masculinity is paternity, to give life. This means biological, but also moral, emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual life. The two contrast to each other in a splendor of complementarity, diversity, asymmetry, serendipity, playfulness, synergy and fecundity. Joined together in marriage they form an organic newness, a reality greater than each of them or the sum of both of them: the family. With this comes the agony and the ecstasy; the joyful, the sorrowful, the luminous and the glorious mysteries. As mentioned, the vowed religious and celibate priest themselves are generative in an even more profound manner. Even the unmarried, single person finds a multitude of creative ways to give life. Essentially, the mother enjoys an intimacy, receptivity, openness, and an organic generosity. The more structurally detached father must overcome a distance, assisted by the mother who (physically but more important spiritually) entrusts the little one into his hands. His mission is to image for the child our loving heavenly Father. The mother represents no one, but is always simply herself. The male role is inferior as representative while that of the woman is substantive in itself. The female is the high point of creation.
Benefits of this Family Typology of Loves
This very Catholic model has the value of overcoming the individualist temptation to view love as the activity or enjoyment of the basically isolated Self. By this erroneous view the Self has primacy and love comes secondarily, as a choice or activity. In reality however, the human person is always born into a preexisting communion of love. Created out of nothing, by the infinitely-generous Trinity, each person enters into a prior human community of love: the marriage, family, extended community, Church, tribe, nation. The "communion in love"...the Trinity, the marriage, family, etc...has an ontological primacy. Participation in this communion imbues the person with dignity, freedom, love, identity, mission and destiny. The person becomes his/her very self by loving others and loving the communion, in a manner that is entirely unique, distinctive, personal, unprecedented, incomparable.
Consider even the boundless diversity of love within the family. We have 7 children; so the 9 of us each love 8 persons; so our immediate family has 9 x 8 = 72 loves. If we go even a degree beyond in the extended family to aunts/uncles/grandparents/cousins we are in the hundreds. If we go even two generations prior and after, the grandparents and grandchildren we personally know, we are into the thousands.
Even the Holy Trinity is a pluralism of loves. It is absolute unity, but infinite distance between the Persons. The love of the Father for the Son is not the same as the love of the Holy Spirit for the Father. Even their love for us is distinctive. As a Triune One God they love us; but the Son has his own love, the Father his own, and the Holy Spirit a third. And so, in prayer, we can enjoy a colloquy now with Jesus, now with the Father, now with the Holy Spirit and now with One Holy Triune God.
In real life, of course, actual, concrete loves are always a blend of some sort. At my age (just turned 79) I expect to soon be reviving my filial love, entering more deeply into God's fatherly love for me, by receiving the care of my children/grandchildren as well as some network of nurses, doctors, and caregivers. Every single "love affair" is a creative, surprising "newness" that blends distinctively the fourfold splendors of love.
In heaven, of course, these delights will be magnified infinitely! We have much for which to look forward!
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