Three Kinds of Love: A Review of Venerable Fulton Sheen’s Insight

Venerable Fulton Sheen offers a vivid, witty, and ultimately pastoral exposition on the many faces of love. He insists that the single English word “love” hides three fundamentally different realities inherited from the Greeks: Eros, Philia, and Agape. Sheen weaves humor, anecdote, scripture, and moral theology to show why distinguishing these loves matters for how people think, act, and live together.

🌿 This article documents observations from the source below. My goal is not to summarize it completely but to capture the ideas that most influenced my thinking. Future essays on Substack may expand, challenge, or build upon these observations.

One Word, Three Meanings

Sheen’s central claim is straightforward: modern speech has flattened love into a single category, often conflating feelings, friendship, and the self-giving love God shows humanity. That collapse produces confusion about what true charity and commitment look like. To correct this, Sheen unpacks the three Greek words that help recover nuance and moral clarity.

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The Three Loves Explained

Eros — Attraction and the Erotic

For Sheen, Eros is the pull of attraction: romantic desire, appreciation of beauty, the erotic impulse that draws people toward persons, art, or a way of life. He notes that Eros can be noble — an aesthetic, philosophical, or romantic longing — but also reduced to mere sensation. Freud and modern culture, Sheen suggests, tend to turn Eros into an experience-centered commodity: the person is loved only for the feelings they produce.

Sheen punctuates this with charming examples and epigrams. He quotes G. K. Chesterton’s proposal language as a model of noble Eros, and he jokes about how Eros can devolve into a preoccupation with the sexy rather than the beloved.

There are four great lamps of thanksgiving burning before me… I have tried to love everything in the universe as a remote preparation for loving you.

Philia — Friendship and Universal Goodwill

Philia covers friendship, brotherly love, and a committed goodwill toward others. Sheen emphasizes that Philia is not merely liking; it is a deliberate orientation of the will toward the good of others, independent of emotional warmth. This distinction lets one love many people — even those one does not inwardly enjoy — because love here is enacted, not simply felt.

Illustrations Sheen uses are compelling:

• A Russian fable about an angel lowering a carrot into hell illustrates that mutual self-interest cannot lift everyone out; only reciprocal love can.
• The culture of sharing food in some Pacific islands, where people would rather go without than eat alone, dramatizes Philia as a form of social solidarity.
• A wartime anecdote about prisoners sharing a lump of sugar that keeps circulating among the sick and the imprisoned shows how charity binds a community together even under persecution.
• A stewardess’s transformation from vanity to service — sent to work among lepers after being encouraged to “give her beauty” — exemplifies applied Philia, where a gift is turned outward for the good of others.

Agape — Sacrificial, Divine Love

The third and most central category for Sheen is Agape. This is the Christian idea of love as a free, self-giving, sacrificial commitment. Agape is not earned by lovableness; it is poured out on the unlovable and the enemy. Sheen stresses that the New Testament famously needed a new lexical category to express this kind of love, and Agape became that linguistic and theological tool.

Sheen draws the theological contours by combining courtroom and lifeguard imagery: Agape would lead a judge to execute justice and then voluntarily die for the condemned son. It is the love that takes responsibility for the guilty and redeems them. He connects Agape to the resurrection: guilt is acknowledged, but Christ's risen life makes freedom and forgiveness possible.

Key Distinctions: Emotion, Will, and Sacrifice

One of Sheen’s most useful practical points is the difference between liking and loving. Liking rides on emotions; loving is anchored in the will and can be commanded. He gives a memorable — if comic — example about not liking chicken because of childhood trauma, but being able to love (that is, to accept and act) when circumstance requires it.

His argument implies a moral discipline: one can cultivate Philia and Agape even when affective warmth is absent. That capacity is essential for Christian charity and social cohesion.

Scriptural Anchor: Peter’s Threefold Question

Sheen uses the post-resurrection scene on the shore of Galilee to show how scripture itself treats multiple senses of love. In John’s account, Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves him, using different Greek words each time. The exchange exposes Peter’s woundedness, his partial understanding, and the way Christ accepts even the imperfect, available love and commissions him to care for the flock. Sheen reads this as mercy meeting human limitation: God takes what is given and transforms it into service.

Practical and Pastoral Takeaways

Sheen’s reviewable ideas yield several actionable insights:

1. Use precise language. Calling every sentiment “love” understates the moral claims of Agape and overclaims the value of mere attraction.
2. Commanded love matters. People can act lovingly even without warm feelings; that willingness sustains community and sacrificial service.
3. Agape reorients how one treats enemies and the unlovable. Christian love is defined by giving, not reciprocity.
4. Human love is fragmentary. Sheen invites the reader to see human love as sparks from a divine hearth — beautiful, real, but incomplete until reunited with its source.

Strengths and Limitations of the Presentation

Sheen’s approach succeeds at clarifying moral categories with vivid storytelling and a light touch of humor that avoids abstraction. His use of anecdotes — comic, poignant, and sometimes startling — keeps complex theological claims accessible.

One limitation is the implicit assumption that these three loves are exhaustively mapped onto contemporary moral experience. Human relationships are messy and overlapping; ideals like Agape can be difficult to enact without communal structures or spiritual practice. Still, viewing love through Sheen’s tripartite lens sharpens moral judgment and encourages intentional formation.

Final Reflection

Sheen’s central exhortation is pastoral and hopeful: human hearts are incomplete by design, meant to receive and reflect a larger love. That missing fragment can be understood as a call to return to a source of love that alone heals and completes. Distinguishing Eros, Philia, and Agape helps people see where they are living by feelings, where they are committed to the common good, and where they are called to sacrificial charity. Viewed this way, love becomes less a vague sentiment and more a transformative practice.

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