Theologians have sometimes asked whether we shall ‘know one another’ in Heaven, and whether the particular love-relations worked out on earth would then continue to have any significance. It seems reasonable to reply: ‘It may depend on what kind of love it had become, or was becoming, on earth.’ For, surely, to meet in the eternal world someone for whom your love in this, however strong, had been merely natural, would not be (on that ground) even interesting. Would it not be like meeting in adult life someone who had seemed to be a great friend at your preparatory school solely because of common interests and occupations? If there was nothing more, if he was not a kindred soul, he will now be a total stranger. Neither of you now plays conkers. You no longer want to swop your help with his French exercise for his help with your arithmetic. In Heaven, I suspect, a love that had never embodied Love Himself would be equally irrelevant. For Nature has passed away. All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.
• From The Four Loves
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