"Equal regard" versus "special relations"? Reaffirming the inclusiveness of agape

Journal of Religion

Volumn 77, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 353-379

  Pope, Stephen J ^a  

^a BOSTON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149440889     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/490020     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. See, inter alia, Don S. Browning, "Altruism and Christian Love," Zygon 27 (1992): 421-36
2. and Religious Thought and the Modern Psychologies: A Critical Conversation in the Theology of Culture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 150-59;
3. David Tracy, Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 435;
4. Jean Porter, "De Ordine Caritatis: Charity, Friendship, and Justice in Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae" Thomist 53 (April 1989): 197-239;
5. Vincent MacNamara, Love, Law, and the Christian Life: Basic Attitudes of Christian Morality (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988), p. 66;
6. Louis Janssens, "Norms and Priorities in a Love Ethic," Louvain Studies 6 (1977): 207-38;
7. Paul Rigby and Paul O'Grady, "Agape and Altruism: Debates in Theology and Social Psychology," Joumal of the American Academy of Religion 57 (1990): 719-37. There may be some variation on how these authors interpret equal regard and the place it has in their ethics. It is sufficient for this article to note the centrality of equal regard in recent literature on agape.
8. Gene Outka, Agape: An Ethical Analysis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972).
9. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, eds., Calvin's Commentaries: A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke, vol. 1, trans. A. W. Morrison (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 197.
10. John H. Whittaker, "'Agape' and Self-Love," in The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, ed. Edmund N. Santurri and William Werpehowski (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1992), p. 222.
11. Wolfgang Schrage, The Ethics of the New Testament, trans. David E. Green (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1990), p. 77.
12. Torrance and Torrance, eds., p. 198.
13. Outka, Agape, p. 21.
14. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 31;
15. cited in Stephen G. Post, A Theory of Agape: On the Meaning of Christian Love (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990), p. 32.
16. See James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocenlric Perspective, vol. 2, Ethics and Theology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 164, n.3.
17. See Post, A Theory of Agape; on "ethical pull,"
18. see Christina Hoff Sommers, "Filial Morality," Journal of Philosophy 83, no. 8 (1983): 69-84.
19. Edward Collins Vacek, S.J., Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994), p. 49.
20. For an analysis of recent literature on agape, including this superb monograph by Vacek, see Stephen J. Pope, "Love in Contemporary Christian Ethics," Journal of Religious Ethics 23 (Spring 1995): 167-97.
21. An excellent critique of moral philosophy on this score can be found in Lawrence A. Blum, Friendship, Altruism, and Morality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
22. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, in British Moralists, 1650-1800, ed. D. D. Raphael (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 2:74.
23. See Stephen G. Post, Spheres of Love: Toward a New Ethics of the Family (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994), p. 65.
24. Cited in Post, Spheres of Love, p. 101.
25. Outka, "Universal Love and Impartiality," p. 77.
26. Torrance and Torrance, eds., p. 196.
27. For a feminist perspective on proper self-love, see Sally B. Purvis, "Mothers, Neighbors, and Strangers: Another Look at Agape," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7, no. 1 (1991): 19-34.
28. For an incisive analysis of several major American theologians on self-love, see Stephen G. Post, Christian Love and Self-Denial: An Historical and Normative Study of Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, and American Theological Ethics (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987).
29. For example, Gustavo Gutiérrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), chap. 6.
30. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, vol. 1 of Works of George Herbert Mead, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), p. 141n.
31. See Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989).
32. Werpehowski, p. 146.
33. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3, pt. 4, trans. A. T. MacKay et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), pp. 29-30.
34. Werpehowski, p. 147.
35. See Barth, vol. 3, no. 4.
36. Vacek, p. 53.
37. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (1938; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
38. See Werpehowski, p. 140.
39. For a focused examination of the role of natural kinship and reciprocity within an ethics of Christian love, see Stephen J. Pope, The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994).
40. Janet Finch, Family Obligations and Social Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1989), p. 75.
41. See Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987).
42. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Rome: Marietti, 1948), II-II, 26.
43. William C. Spohn, "The Return of Virtue Ethics," Theological Studies 53 (1992): 73.
44. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, 63.