Mercy But Murders…

Are justice and love contradictory concepts, or is the divide between them something of a false construct? Certainly both secular and Christian thinkers can be found who seek to emphasize one at the expense of the other, either demanding “justice” regardless of the means or the cost, or speaking of “love” in such a manner as to be blind to its object or inherent challenge. And when it comes to hazarding a theory of God’s perspective, the dichotomy can break apart even further, whether it’s New Atheists claiming the God of the Bible is a bloodthirsty executor, or hip Christian pastors telling us to forget all that stuff about judgment and accentuate the positive.

Helpfully, there are thinkers like American philosopher-theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff, whose latest book,  Justice in Love , addresses exactly these issues and attempts to chart a sounder course. Theos, a British think tank focused on religion in public life, posts a review of the book which explains that:

His [Wolterstorff’s] solution is to identify the idea of agapic love as “care”. This is a crucial turn in the argument and so it is perhaps unfortunate that the author has chosen to use this word in this way as it does not make his case significantly clearer. The argument is, in essence, that to care for a person is to seek not only their wellbeing but also, crucially, to pay due regard to their inherent worth.

By drawing on arguments from his previous book, in which justice is identified precisely as that attention paid to the inherent worth of each person, Wolterstorff manages to unite the demands of love and justice in the concept of “care”. It is an ingenious line of reasoning, which the author regularly backs up with New Testament references – crucially, because he is at root trying to show that ‘care’ is the best category we have for understand what agap? means – but one cannot shake off the suspicion that there is some clever linguistic sophistry going on here.