Jason Lepojarvi

Postdoctoral Scholar in Residence, Regent College

Junior Research Fellow St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford, UK

4:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Woodward (IRC) Room 5

How Many Loves? A Friendly Critique of C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves

 Abstract

C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves has greatly shaped Christian understanding of love. It has become common practice to speak of “four” loves. But are there really four? What is love itself? Dr. Lepojärvi, a former President of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society, argues that the title of The Four Loves is misleading: there are not “four”, nor are they even “loves”. Charity or agape is the most misunderstood – even, or especially, among Lewis’s most devoted readers.

Biography

Dr. Jason Lepojärvi is a scholar-in-residence at Regent College for the 2016-17 academic year. His current work is a Post-Doctoral research project on the theology of love, titled Idolatry: Catholic and Protestant Perspectives. Born to a Canadian mother and a Finnish father, Jason studied theology and philosophy at the University of Helsinki, obtaining a PGCE. His master’s thesis focused on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body and of sexuality. It was published as the first (and remains the only) introduction to the subject in Finnish. As a Visiting DPhil Candidate at Oriel College, Oxford, Jason served as the President of the Oxford University C. S. Lewis Society in 2012–13. Jason, his wife, and their two daughters moved to Vancouver in July 2016. Prior to this, they lived in Oxford, where Jason worked as the Junior Research Fellow in Theology at St Benet’s Hall. His doctoral thesis God Is Love but Love Is Not God: C. S. Lewis’s Theology of Love (2015) critically analyzed C. S. Lewis’s position in and contribution to the debate on love (agape versus eros) that preoccupied much of twentieth century Protestant and Roman Catholic thought.