While getting these points across, Lewis was driven to exaggeration in denying eros’s happiness-seeking character altogether. Contrary to what Nygren thought, for Lewis, the pursuit of happiness is not morally culpable and even eros has an agapistic opening. The final analysis reveals what I take to be Lewis’s true concern. Perhaps surprisingly, Lewis, despite all appearances, may actually be compelled to agree with Nygren on this point. I argue that eros does, as Nygren claims it does, seek happiness – although not only this. After presenting and deconstructing it, I challenge Lewis’s argument. In this article I evaluate this engagement. Lewis’s use of the word ‘happiness’ in The Four Loves is so close to Nygren’s eudæmonism that Risto Saarinen has called it ‘a conscious showdown’. always seeking the happiness of the lover. Among other interconnected tenets, Nygren promulgated the idea that eros is eudæmonistic, i.e.
Anders Nygren’s antithetical juxtaposition of eros and agape became enormously influential in twentieth-century Protestant theology.
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