AGAPE: BEYOND JUSTICE TO AGAPE
John M. Dettoni, Ph.D.
I have an extremely deep appreciation for Lawrence Kohlberg and his monumental contributions to moral development theory and research. Kohlberg has called to our attention matters of ultimate moral and ethical import. He seeks through natural, rational means to find universals of right and wrong.
I applaud his approach that combines naturalism and empiricism to search for a moral universe. I also applaud his psychological and philosophical conclusions that there are universal moral structures. I also applaud the fact that justice is an absolute, universal structure. I also applaud the fact that Kohlberg has been driven from moral development to ethics, that is, from developmental psychology to philosophy.
I do have some concerns about Kohlberg's theory. The greatest failure that I see is from within a Christian perspective and that failure is that he does not deal adequately with justice from within a biblical-theological perspective. Kohlberg strongly rejects the divine command theory in his book The Philosophy of Moral Development. Some aspects of the divine command theory are worth rejecting. Kohlberg, however, omits a very crucial part of the whole understanding of moral judgment, moral development and moral action. From a Christian theist point, that critical element is God and Scripture. In an attempt to divorce morality from Christian theism, Kohlberg has set up what I thing is an unfortunate dichotomy. In fact he states in The Philosophy of Moral Development, "...Our new approach to the study of morality started with the assumption of the autonomy of morality and moral principles, rather than deriving moral development from or reducing it to something else, such as religious attitudes or principles" (p. 318). By isolating himself from theology and establishing himself planted well in psychology and philosophy, he has done two very unfortunate things in his methodology. One is, he misunderstands the whole Judeo-Christian theism. Seemingly he has rejected the Old Testament concept of God, and also more importantly the Old Testament concept of justice as it is embedded in who the God is. Secondly, he seems to have rejected a Christian view of New Testament justice and agape.
Kohlberg's methodology is a good starting point, and I thoroughly applaud his approach. It is well grounded in empirical research and reflective thinking. I would, however, add the necessity for a recognition of Scripture and a theistic approach to understanding morality. If God exists and He has revealed Himself to us, then we do a great disservice to all of humanity to ignore God.
If truth exists out there, we need to view truth from two perspectives. The first perspective is God's viewpoint. God is a revealer of truth, and he does so through both creation and through special revelation. He is truth and reveals it. Second is the human viewpoint. The person is the active inquirer into truth. That is, we human beings look for truth because we have the desire to find it; God is the one who reveals truth. The natural scientist, behavioral scientist, philosophical scientist, and the theological scientist all are inquirers. All of these are truth-seekers. They come to truth in the natural world with one particular action in mind: they inquire of the data out there to find out what indeed is true. These inquirers do not look necessarily for absolute truth but for degrees of truth or probability. Even the theologians can only say, "We know in part."
It is within these two perspectives that I see the need to ask what is the essence of being moral. To answer this we need to focus on the behavioral and philosophical sciences as well as the theological science. It is at this point that Kohlberg discards theology and would rather go with philosophy and psychology. That is his choice, but I think that is unfortunate. I do not think Kohlberg's approach is totally wrong. It is that his conclusions seem incomplete and insufficient. He has read the philosophers and refused the revelation of God and by God.
Kohlberg has identified a seventh stage that he calls a "metaethical stage". It is that metaethical stage description and his view of justice that are insufficient and inadequate. Ultimately I believe agape is more adequate biblically, theologically, and philosophically than Plato or Kohlberg's ideas of justice. Kohlberg and Plato's view of justice, and Kohlberg's view of agape are both cold and calculating, weighing and measuring, and completely cognitive and rationalistic. There is something missing in this whole approach to what we understand to be moral development. The missing dimension is a biblical view of justice which is both more strict and more loving and that directs us to the agape love of God.
Kohlberg states in his essay "Education for Justice" that he is following the Socratic and Platonic view of virtue and justice. He states:
Let me summarize some of the elements of this platonic view of virtue. First, virtue is ultimately one, not many. It is always the same ideal form regardless of climate or culture. No matter what climate it is or what culture, it is always the same ideal. Second, the name of this ideal form is justice. (Virtue is one, and virtue is justice, in other words.) Third, not only is the good one but virtue is knowledge of the good. He who knows the good chooses the good. He who knows the good chooses the good. Fourth, the kind of knowledge of the good which is virtue is philosophical knowledge or intuition of the ideal form of the good, not correct opinion or acceptance of conventional beliefs. Fifth, the good then can be taught, but its teachers must, in a certain sense, be philosopher-kings. Sixth, the reasons the good can be taught is because we know it all along dimly or at a low level and its teaching is more a calling out than an instruction. Seventh, the reason we think the good cannot be taught is because the same good is known differently at different levels and direct instruction cannot take place across levels. Eight, then the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions, and the pointing of the way not the giving of answers. Moral education is the leading of man upward, not the putting into the mind of knowledge that was not there before. (p. 58).
Kohlberg in this same article then goes on to say that "justice in turn is a matter of equal and universal rights. Justice is not a rule or a set of rules, it is a moral principle. And by a moral principle we mean a mode of choosing which is universal, a rule of choosing which we want all people to adopt always in all situations.... As a reason for action, justice is called respect for persons" (pp. 67-70). The definition of justice is at least respect for persons. He goes on to say that "Plato's argument is that what makes a virtuous action virtuous is that it is guided by knowledge of the good," and knowledge of the good is indeed to know justice. Kohlberg concludes "We will now try to show that virtue and action is knowledge of the good as Plato claimed" (p. 77). True knowledge, knowledge of principles of justice, does predict virtuous action.
Several concepts in these quotations seem to be salient. One is "justice is a matter of equal universal human rights." Equal has by its very implication the fact that we weigh and measure something. You remember when you were a child and either you had siblings in the house or you were at a cousin's or friend's house. When I was at my cousin's house I would always look at his plate to see how much he got of cake or ice cream. And if he got more than I got, it was not equal. The idea of equality is that we measure carefully to be sure that what you and I have are the same, especially if what I have is what you want. Equality, therefore, is normally understood in terms of weighing and measuring and getting it even so that it is exactly the same.
There is also in Kohlberg's thought a focus upon not only the equality but upon universal human rights. The word rights is very important. A right is something that I am owed, it is due me, there is an obligation that is due me. What Kohlberg is saying is that justice is a matter of weighing out that which is due us, in such a way that we all get a fair share.
Another concept is the word human. He is by definition allowing himself only to talk about humanity. My theology constrains me to a higher level, to ask what God's relation is to all of this.
Still another concept is universal, which means at least the fact that this equality is something that is for all people. Kohlberg uses the phrases "modes of choosing, a reason for action, knowledge of the good." These all call to mind that Kohlberg is talking about something that is very rational, that is based particularly on the cognitive domain of our being.
Kohlberg bases his moral development thinking on Plato. Plato had four virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Wisdom is reason. Courage is emotions; this is the feeling part. Temperance talks about volitional self control. Justice is the underlying harmonizer that balances all of these. The first three virtues by themselves are not good, unless they are kept in balance by justice. Plato had various strata of society composed of philosophers, emotional people, volitional people; you could have philosopher-kings, artisans and business people, and soldiers. But unless they are held in balance the society becomes eccentric. Justice is the harmonizing of all the virtues. One virtue by itself is not good; it must be conjoined and balanced with the others. Justice then exists in order to direct us in the doing of our duty, in fulfilling of our obligations. According to Plato, I have an obligation as a reasoning person to help those people who do not have the same reasoning ability, and those who are to be the courage people are obliged to help me in my reasoning. The way one does this is by justice which keeps us all in harmony with ourselves and with others. He or she is a just person. That is, there is a harmony within oneself and with other individual selves and with many selves in a society with other societies. A just society and just societies are kept in balance as one does one's duty, harmonizing with one another in the other three virtues.
Based on this very brief description of Plato's views of justice, one can see why Kohlberg would say justice is the most important of these. Justice then is a universal principle, and a function of the person by which wisdom is applied, in which courage is enacted, and temperance is practiced. Justice keeps all of those dynamics in balance in one's life.
What Plato has suggested is very similar to what we know in psychological theory as the dissonance theory or the balance theory in which individuals look for balance and reduction of dissonance. It is that dissonance concept that Piaget picked up as one of the four factors that cause growth or human development. That is, when a person senses that he/she is in a state of disequilibration, a lack of harmony or dissonance, he/she tries to get back into harmony. When the way of doing business with the world no longer makes sense like it used to, the person seeks equilibrium. That search for equilibrium becomes the dynamic force that motivates us developmentally and helps us to move on to a higher level of growth and development.
Both Plato and Kohlberg, and for that matter Piaget and Fowler, talk about the structure of the universe in terms of how people strive for balance. Plato and Kohlberg suggest that perfect balance is justice, that is, that one's obligations/duties are fulfilled. When I fulfill my duties I am a just person, acting justly. When rights are given to other people, I am fulfilling justice. When obligations are paid, I am doing justly. Therefore, all my relationships are rightly, or justly ordered. Kohlberg also makes the very crucial point that justice is not arbitrary or culturally relative. Justice is universal, and derived from being human, and is embedded in human nature. It is right, according to Kohlberg, to do one's duty equally to all other persons.
JUSTICE, EROS AND AGAPE
Justice, as Kohlberg and Plato have defined it, has a few problems. Henry Stob in his book Ethical Reflections used "eros," a word familiar to many, that is very close in its definition to the Platonic-Kohlbergian view of justice. Stob contrasts eros with agape. It is my contention, that Kohlberg's view of justice is much the same as what Stob defines as eros. If we are ever going to move to the highest level of moral development we have to understand justice/eros and what it is all about and then to consider a higher level of development, namely agape.
Stob suggests that eros is a natural, rational, scientific, mystical, and religious. "Love is the name we give to a man's innate and indiffusable longing for completion and support and to his inexpungable desire to appropriate that which he lacks. Eros, then, is desire, longing, thirst, and in the measure that these are satisfies it is enjoyment," (p. 116). These are all normal inner drives.
Stob states that there are six modes of eros: (1) self love which is basically self respect, (2) sexual or romantic which is what we normally think of in terms of eros, (3) mother love and love between relatives--the closeness and natural bond that is between members of the family, (4) friendship love that reaches beyond the self and beyond members of the family to embrace other people, (5) spiritual love that is moral aspirations, the aspirations that we express as we search for other worldly goods, and (6) esthetic love emerging in the presence of some value, whether it be truth or beauty or goodness and which contemplates and takes delight in the object of eros.
Stob states that eros has severe limitations. Self-love is not serviceable directly to others. Romantic love is partial; mother love is limited; friendship is selective; platonic eros is abstract or limited; esthetic is only a phase of human love. Eros is oriented to some value; the object of eros deserves the love it gets. "The eros scheme love is always motivated by the beloved; it is kindled from outside the lovers; it is evoked by some positive and compelling quality in the object that is loved....In the perspective of eros it is only as a carrier or bearer of value that a person become a candidate for my love. Love can never be a genuine concern for others in their actual concreteness" (p. 121).
Eros as justice is structurally related to and limited to equality. But equality is always seen as before the bar of justice. The law says to treat all people equally and goes on to state what equality looks like. That is, that each person has a right, each has his/her due, to equality before the law. Therefore all people are obligated to treat each other equally.
Thus eros and Kohlberg's view of justice do not provide what is missing, namely, how to avoid confounded and compounded legalisms of increasingly more abstract natures. Kohlberg's Level II is a highly equilibrated, highly cognitive, articulated level of principled justice, highly abstract but nevertheless still built on some abstract form of concrete legalism.
This view of justice or eros has one major limitation. There is a constant requirement to relate eros or justice to each other in some measurable form, or in some kind of logic. Persons seek to determine how they can fulfill themselves and how they can measure what is happening to them as well as to others. Both justice as Kohlberg has defined it and eros as Stob has defined eros are relatively impersonal logic. There is always concern with those things called rights, duties, obligations, circumstances and intentions. Justice from Kohlberg's perspective, rationally weighs personal and social rights to be adhered to. Justice is always rationally examining obligations that are owed. Justice continually ponders circumstances, investigates intentions, constantly weighs outcomes, examines what each one obtains, and ponders how each can be treated exactly like the other. In one sense justice is always before the court. The docket is always filled with claims of rights that are demanded, or rights denied or violated, or obligations that are sought to be fulfilled. Justice, it seems, is always filled with special issues and special circumstances and causes and cases that must be adjudicated. There is a constant seeking of adjudication between rights that are owed and rights that are denied, between violations and right that are in competition. Justice in one sense is never finished weighing the evidence. Justice has well been concretized as a blindfolded statue holding up the scales and weighing people against the law. That is the constant movement that is within justice: never finished, always going from case to case seeking precedence, measuring lack of equality, weighing circumstances in order to establish equality.
Justice is no help when two equally valid positions conflict. We need a greater help than the cold logic of justice. We need to go beyond justice to an even better mode of moral judgment. Kohlberg made an excellent suggestion that agape goes beyond justice (1981). Having said this, he refuses to accept it as better than justice. He refuses to accept the fact that it is higher in moral development than justice. Nor is he willing to say that agape is a principle above justice. In fact, he says, "Agape is not a principle of justice competing with the principles of fairness as reversibility. An attitude of responsible love still requires our sixth stage principle of fairness as reversibility to resolve justice's demands" (Kohlberg, 1981, pp. 351-352). That is, when I am trying to act "agapically", I must revert to the sixth stage in order to weigh it out. I must put myself in the other's place and ask myself what would I want you to do to me if you dealt agapically with me. I must go to the sixth stage or even lower in order to understand how agape is operationalized. Agape is an ethic, he says, that presupposes justice principles and maintains their integrity. Rather than replacing principles of justice, agape goes beyond them in the sense of defining or informing acts of supererogation, that is, acts beyond duty or justice, acts that cannot be generally demanded or required of all people, acts that freely give up claims the actor may in justice demand. All that agape does is say "I will do something that is greater than justice, but that's because I'm a nice person." I cannot demand of myself nor can anyone else demand it of me and there is no power that demands that I act agapically. Kohlberg says, "In summary, although an ethic of agape goes beyond justice to supererogation, it still requires principles of fairness to resolve justice's dilemmas. I cannot act agapically when there are dilemmas. Furthermore, our stage six principles of reversible fairness are the only principles on which the ethic of agape could rest, in contrast to utilitarianism or deserved principles of justice" (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 352). That is, I put myself in another's shoes, and I determine how I would want another to act towards me, and then I would act toward another as I would want him/her to act toward me. "Agape, then, is not a principle competing with the principles of fairness in the sense in which I define the idea of principles....It is an attitude inspiring acts of supererogation, rather than a principle on which there could be exact agreement or which could lead to just expectations. Acts of agape cannot be demanded or expected by the recipients, but are rather acts of grace from the standpoint of the recipient. Agape is an attitude inspiring acts of supererogation. It is not in itself a principle, and therefore cannot be demanded" (Kohlberg, 1981, p. 352).
A BIBLICAL VIEW OF JUSTICE
With Kohlberg's views of justice and agape in mind, we need to turn to look at a biblical view of justice. First we need to recognize that from a biblical perspective justice is the norm. It is the norm because it is embedded in the very nature and essence of who God is. Ethical conduct, moral rectitude, right principles, right actions, are indeed what God is. The character, the nature, the being of God is that he is always just. Deuteronomy 32:4 states that "God is faithful who does no wrong, upright and just is he." Isaiah 26:7 states "the path of the righteous is level, O upright one, you make the way of the righteous smooth." Psalm 9:4 says, "For you have upheld my right and my cause, you have sat on your throne judging righteously." Verse 8 of that same Psalm states, "He will judge the world in righteousness, he will govern the peoples with justice." Verse 16 of Psalm 9, "The Lord is known by his justice." Psalm 11:7, "The Lord, Yahweh, is righteous. He loves justice, upright men or just men and women will see his face." Psalm 33:5, "The Lord Yahweh loves righteousness and justice, the earth is full of his unfailing love." Psalm 33:4, "For the word of Yahweh is right and true, he is faithful in all that he does." Psalm 99:4, "The King is mighty, he loves justice, you have established equity, justice in Jacob you have done what is just.
The Old Testament suggests then God is his own norm. As the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament suggests, God is infallibly consistent in the normative self-determinism of his own nature. And he maintains his consistent nature faithfully as he maintains covenant with his people faithfully (Vol. II, p. 185).
Kohlberg rejects the approach to moral judgment based on God's norm of justice because he says the divine command theory of moral development is not valid. We cannot argue, he says, that something ought to be done, or something is just because it is a command of God or it is in the Bible, or its one of the Ten Commandments or that God will reward us.
Kohlberg has misunderstood the divine commandment argument. This argument is not based on a commandment in the Scripture being right. Rather it is based upon the argument that God is right, and what God decrees and declares and reveals is always in keeping with justice. The Christian does not argue that something is just because it's in the Bible or because it is a command of God. Rather the Christian argument is that whatever God does is just, therefore what he commands is just and right, righteous and good and ultimately loving. The claim is not that it is right or just because it is revealed, but that whatever is revealed is by its very source always just, good, true and righteous. God only reveals righteousness to us. He cannot do other. Thus, the norm in scripture is justice. It is embedded in God's will and it is there because God is always just.
The second thing to keep in mind in terms of a biblical perspective is that justice is not alone, but there is always added to justice a number of other concepts that qualify or modify the word justice. Divine justice is never an abstraction by itself, but is always found in the context of covenant and partakes of the rest of the divine character, namely, pity, grace, mercy, salvation, sanctification and primarily agape. God's justice then, becomes redemptive. He fulfills His own will and graciously promises salvation to us irrespective of our condition. He does not apportion our rights to us as we deserve them, but rather gives to us agapically and freely. This redemption is connected in the character of God for all humanity, namely, in his covenantal relationship with us. So then, justice, divine righteousness, pervades all of his relationships with humanity. There is a very fascinating story in Nehemiah 9, in which Nehemiah has put this all together. Nehemiah says "You are the Lord God, you are Yahweh Elohim who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and named him Abraham. You found his heart faithful to you and you made a covenant with him to give his descendants the land of the Canaanites....And you have kept your promise because you are righteous" (vv. 7-8). Later in the chapter Nehemiah lists many of the sins that the children of Israel have done and goes on to say: "But you are a forgiving God, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert the Israelites. Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert" (vv. 17b-18). "So you handed them over to their enemies who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers who rescued them from the hand of your enemies....In your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them for you are a gracious and a merciful God. Now therefore, O our God, the great mighty awesome God who keeps his covenant of love....in all that has happened to us you have been just. You have acted faithfully while we did wrong" (vv. 27ff.).
Notice all of the key words and phrases: You have kept your promise, covenant, forgiving, gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, great compassion, great mercy, gracious merciful God, keeps his covenant of love, acting faithfully. In fact, all of this has happened, Nehemiah says, because God is righteous and just and loving.
There are three attributes of God's justice in Scripture. The first is His judicial justice. God justly weighs us in his just balances, and we always come out on the short end of things. Second is redemptive justice by which God also provides redemption. Part of what it is for God to be righteous and just is the means by which He acts redemptively. This culminates in the glory of the Cross, where God's justice is clearly demonstrated in the crucifixion of Christ by means of his love, pity, grace, mercy, forgiveness and holiness. So then He is able to forgive what he formerly condemned. Judicially, God finds us wanting, but redemptively He says He can provide what is missing.
The third attribute is imputed justice. Because He has found us wanting in His judicial justice but because even more so He has given us the justice that we lack in redemptive justice He can provide us with an imputed justice, that is, God's own moral attribute or rightness is given to those who believe and receive his gracious and just redemptive justice. He supplies what is lacking in the judicial justice and the reason why he can provide redemptive justice is that he can give us imputed justice. It is therefore commanded of his people to go and live justly. Isaiah 1:1ff, suggests that we should stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead for the cause of the widow. And turning to the New Testament we are told in Romans 3:21-26 "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace though the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed before him unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just, and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus." Paul is saying here, among other things, the same thing that I am trying to say. God has provided redemptively what he found lacking in us from a judicial viewpoint. Paul can say earlier in Romans 1:16-17 that in the gospel there is a righteousness from God revealed, "...a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written the righteous will live by faith." God has revealed a righteousness that is given to us and we are therefore asked to go and live righteously. The contradiction that seems to exist between the judicial righteousness and the redemptive righteousness are resolved in the Pauline thought in Christ. Christ reveals God's perfect justice, that is, He shows us what is the norm, He reveals to us God's redemptive justice, He allows us to have imputed justice and he empowers us to live justly. Interestingly Paul grounds this justice not only in the character of God but in agape. In Romans 5:6-8 Paul says "You see at just the right time when you were still powerless Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love [agape] for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us." And in Romans 5:3, "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice."
There is a very fascinating development in the movement from Old Testament theology to New Testament theology. In a sense it could be put together in three words, two of them are Hebrew and one is Greek. The Old Testament concept of justice or righteous (saddiq) is almost always used in conjunction with lovingkindness, steadfast mercy (hesed). Justices and steadfast love (saddiq and hesed) indicate that redemption is a part of the idea of justice. Justice is never left to act by itself. Justice is always connected with God's lovingkindness, especially in His covenant. In the New Testament agape conjoins both saddiq and hesed. In the Old Testament God reveals that his nature is just, and he exercises that justice with mercy and pity, and especially with his steadfast love. Justice, along with steadfast love, is declared by the sovereign will of God and is related to the elect by the covenant. And that covenant, based on hesed and saddiq are maintained faithfully by God. God always acts justly toward his people.
In the New Testament, justice understood in its depth of revelation is agape. Whereas in the Old Testament justice and steadfast love were part of the covenant relationship that the elect have with God, the New Testament says that God so loved the world, not merely Israel. In the New Testament, agape replaced conceptually the Old Testament judicial justice and steadfast love and focuses particularly on the agape of God towards all the world. This agape is expressed in the New Covenant, a covenant not based on law but on grace, and which is the essence of the Abrahamic covenant. So that what has been talked about in the Old Testament as a concept of judicial justice and which is always modified by God's lovingkindness has now been replace with a new word and new concept and not just translated by a new word, namely agape.
Stob says that eros, and I would add Kohlberg's view of justice, are natural. Because they are part of the nature of being, they are tainted by sin, they have succumbed to the domination of what it is to be in a sinful condition. By themselves natural eros and natural justice are unredeemed, marred by sin and always fall short of the judicial justice of God. When weighed we always come up wanting. We always fall short, and we can never quite be perfect, just and loving people that God wants us to be, that is, to be in proper relationship with ourselves, with our neighbors, with society and with God. Stob suggests that something else is needed. Neither eros, nor the Old Testament concept of justice, is sufficient for us; agape is what is needed.
Agape, Stob states, is not the contradiction of eros, but differs from it. It is in fact its opposite. It is a supernatural love; it is divine. Men would not have know it had it not been revealed and men can share in it only as they are incorporated into Christ by faith through the operation of the Spirit. This love does not seek to acquire or possess. It is not appropriate or self-enriching. This love is the very sign and seal that one has already been enriched and fulfilled and made whole. All, therefore, that it can do, and all that in fact it does is given, imparted, created and redeemed. It is not turned in upon the self. It is directed outward toward the other. It is outgoing and communicative....[It] is not value oriented or is it in any way discriminatory. For it there is neither male nor female, black or white, learned or unlearned, no friend, no foe. Not denying distinctions appropriate to creaturely existence, it is in its own unique operation blind to them. The man who loves with this love treats every man as simply a "neighbor", someone who stands next to him, someone who crosses his path. This love does not ask who he is in order to decide whether or not he should be accepted in love; it only recognized that he is, in order to serve and to act responsibly to toward him (p. 122).
Love [agape] and justice are in their nature quite diverse. Justice has an eye for rights and claims and weights and merits and demerits, and affects precise distribution. Love, on the other hand, is a response to neither rights nor claims. It takes no account of either merits or demerits. Justice is concerned with all the delicate balances of the scales. For love [agape] however, scales or balances are an impertinence, an offense. Justice discriminately allocates goods and evils after careful calculations. Love on the contrary gives and for gives with uncalculating spontaneity and spends itself prodigally ....Divine love does not destroy but preserves and operates within the divinely cosmic order of justice....Divine love...does not circumvent or abrogate justice; it operates within the order of justice, endures the weight of justice, and thereby ratifies justice....The love of God can be exercised and become available to them only after all the demands of justice have been satisfied....The satisfaction o Agape is a supernatural f justice is the precondition of love's exercise, the necessary if not sufficient ground of active love. God cannot or at any rate does not love at the expense of justice, but God in his love does indeed go beyond justice. But in that love he does no less than justice. The cross of Christ is a sign of this. The cross is at once a cross of judgment and a cross of grace. It reveals the togetherness of God's justice and his love. It is in fact the enactment in a single event of both of these. (p. 133, 136)
Agape, therefore, is not constrained by rights, obligations, duties, equality, demands, violations, adjudications, or the fine points of legalism. Agape is free to act lovingly, to use Stob's word, to act prodigally, as a spendthrift, without consideration to the worth of the recipient or for that matter to the demands of the law. The reason agape acts this way is that first of all no recipient is worthy of agape. No one is owed agape. God acts this way, he demonstrates this to us while we are enemies. Agape then is the fulfillment of all the just requirements of the law. And like Jesus, agape completes what the law lacks and amplifies the meaning of the law and exposes the principles that underlie particular laws and the whole concept of law in general. Agape satisfies the otherwise impossible demands of justice. Agape sums it all up, all that God means by the law, and it terminates the conditions of the old covenant and establishes a new covenant.
When we turn to social relationships, that is, to agape in relationship to society, it would seem that the ethics of the kingdom as outlined by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5,6 and 7, are particular examples of how agape is to act in real life. Agape goes beyond justice, and exceeds it. Stob suggests that if I love agapically, "...I am not free to deny to others their just due, their rights, but I am free to surrender my own. I am free to make no claims, I am free in Christ to be self-sacrificial and in the extremity to lay down my very life for others. In this way Christian lovers move beyond justice, and a readiness to so move was declared by Christ to be the mark of his own disciples....Love never acts unjustly....Love may be more than just....Love may and does exceed justice....Love is never less than just....Though exceeding justice yet includes it." (Stob, pp. 143, 144)
AGAPE: KOHLBERG AND BIBLICAL
Kohlberg's view of justice implies equality and the blind distribution to each person his or her just desserts. It always includes obligation, and duty prevails. Biblical agape implies equity and not equality, considering each person and allowing for mercy and pity. Justice does not allow for this. It is cold, cognitive calculating. Agape is cognitive, true, but it is also affective. It calculates the cost not to the recipient but to the giver, not calculating what the other person did or deserves or the amount of equality involved. Agape does not ask what do you want me to do; it asks what do you need and how can I help you. It is not ultimately concerned for a universal principle embodied in some Platonic ideal, but is concerned for the individual's personhood and the image of God in each person. Justice regardless of how it is applied is still the half-brother of law, and as such it partakes of equality as its half-sister. Justice cannot extricate itself from legalism. When two conflicting laws are experienced in conflict justice decides upon the equal opportunity of damage falling upon all involved. It does not ask what is loving; it only asks for what is equal. If God used His justice only in dealing with us, we would all be judged and condemned. The point of Scripture is that God uses His justice and His agape in dealing with people. Without agape, justice merely destroys all of us equally.
Let me illustrate this. Kohlberg uses a dilemma of three men in a lifeboat. One person is the captain of the ship that sank, one has a broken shoulder and cannot do much in the boat, and the other is just a third member who is one of the crew. The boat is really only large enough to hold two people and there are provisions for two people. With an approaching storm, chances are that all three of them are going to perish. It is obvious in this dilemma that one of these people must go overboard. The question is, who is going to go over. Kohlberg suggests that drawing lots to provide an equal chance for all is the only just way to do it. This he says is stage six justice. I maintain that agape, within a theistic framework, would state that all three remain on board. Agape seeks to save all, not just a number decided upon by some calculation. Or agape volunteers oneself to self-sacrifice. Justice demands someone must go over. Agape says no, all of us are to remain together. Agape says we will attempt the impossible, casting aside calculations and casting ourselves upon the mercy of God who maked the sea, sky, land and all that is therein. And we set out to our salvation. The risks are higher in agape, because someone might want to return to stage six, or lower, and renegotiate the whole situation--the waves are getting bigger, somebody's got to go overboard. The agapic person instead is willing to sacrifice himself or herself rather than return to equal justice where the damage is equally going to fall on all of us. Because of this Jesus can say "Greater love has no man than this that one lay down his life for his friends." And Paul can also say in Romans 13:8-10 that only one debt, one obligation, on duty remains, and that is to love the other person. That all of the laws dedicated to establishing and maintaining individual rights in a given society, all the laws are summed up by "love your neighbor as yourself", and that "love is the fulfillment of the law."
Biblical, agapic love fulfills and exceeds the natural view of justice, even the Old Testament view of justice in its more restrictive and less developed form. In all of the social relationships of Scripture, one is encouraged not only to deal justly but also agapically: Proverbs 25:21, "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink and in doing this you will heap burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you." Exodus 23:4-5 suggest within the context of law the equally important concepts of justice and mercy: "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off be sure to take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fall under its own load, do not leave it there. Be sure you help him with it." Romans 13:8-10, "Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet and whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule: love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law."
Jesus, quoting from Exodus, stated: "I tell you who hear me, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your cloak do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you, but love your enemies. Do good too them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great and you will be the sons of the most high, because God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, therefore you be merciful just as your father is merciful."
In conclusion, the foundation of moral development theory rests more adequately for the Christian in a biblical-theological concept of agape than it does on a Platonic idea of justice. Kohlberg has rightly pointed to justice and the integrating and highest principle of moral judgments of moral behavior from a naturalistic perspective. But his concept of justice is incomplete for the Christian. Biblically and theologically agape changes the judicial justice of Kohlberg and much of the Old Testament concept of justice to a new and more highly equilibrated view of what it is to be moral. Agape, as the highest level of moral judgment and moral development encompasses more. It is deeper and wider and higher than justice. It is much more demanding of us when we ask the question: "What is it to be moral?" Agape ultimately is the only criterion of the moral. And whatever is agapic is morality in action.
© 1990, John M. Dettoni, Ph.D.
REFERENCES Kohlberg, L., "Education for Justice: A modern Statement of the Platonic View," in James M. Gustafson, et al. Moral Education: Five Lectures. Cambridge; Harvard Univ. Press, 1979, pp. 56-83. Schrenk, Gottlob, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. II, p. 185, "dikaios". Stob, Henry. Ethical Reflections. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. 1978.
© Copyright by John M. Dettoni, formerly Associate Professor of Christian Formation and Discipleship Fuller Theological Seminary Pasadena, California; currently President, Chrysalis Ministries, Inc.
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