In C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves, agape names selfless, giving love.
The Four Loves, published in 1960, examines four kinds of love using Greek terms and related English examples. Lewis discusses affection, friendship, erotic love, and charitable love, associating them with storge, philia, eros, and agape respectively.
Agape is presented as the fullest form of self-giving love: it seeks the good of another rather than treating love as mere attraction, usefulness, or emotional pleasure. Lewis also warns that even natural loves can become distorted when they are treated as absolute.
The terms are not always used identically in every ancient or modern Christian source. Lewis’s classification is a literary and theological framework, not a complete dictionary of Greek vocabulary. In the context of this book, however, agape is the canonical answer for selfless charitable love.