636 - The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy

The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Edited By Edmund N. Santrrni and William Werpehowski
Washington, Georgetown University Press, 1992. 331 pp. $25.00.

The authors of the nine essays in this volume are religious ethicists (nearly all of them are also Christian theologians) who bring extensive knowledge of Anglo-American moral philosophy to bear on one or another aspect of the double love commandment in the Synoptic Gospels. The essays treat one or more of the three objects of love in those commandments-God, neighbor, and self-either in relation to each other or in relation to other moral issues. Examples of relating love to other moral matters are found in Timothy P. Jackson's commentary on neighbor love and political violence and John P. Reeder, Jr.'s reflection on how universally effective mutual love would change justice. Except for the essays by Reeder and Ronald M. Green-who, while astutely aware of ways theological beliefs are said to shape thinking about love, do not adopt any of them-each author holds that a theological frame of reference transforms, without rejecting, secular ethics' treatment of similar topics. John H. Whittaker, for example, holds that loving the neighbor as ourselves depends on understanding self-love in response to God's love for us, and Jean Porter criticizes Karl Rahner for failing to distinguish "salvific love" from a genuine moral act. This theologically informed moral inquiry into the love commandments that appropriates and modifies themes from philosophical ethics constitutes the distinctive character and unity of the essays in this volume.

Prospective readers should not expect to learn about all of the major theological and ethical conceptions of Christian love, to receive an exhaustive treatment of all aspects of the love commandments, or to gain a systematic knowledge of issues in the biblical or traditional interpretations of love-even though the authors do draw resourcefully on Scripture and the tradition. Neither do we have here a "school" of theological or ethical thinkers addressing various aspects of Christian love from a unified perspective. William Werpehowski's theological justification for special relations in friendship or familial obligations, for example, differs dramatically from Green's rational,

638 - The Love Commandments: Essays in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy

nontheological defense of Kant's principle of beneficence. These features, coupled with the difficulty of the articles, render The Love Commandments inappropriate as an exclusive means to introduce oneself or a class to the current discussion about Christian love. Nevertheless, prospective readers can expect provocative discussions of important issues, such as Edmund Santurri's argument that the severely mentally retarded are due the full and equal rights that love accords all humans and David Little's contention that Christians might feel "bound in gratitude" for God's love to perform supererogatory acts that they would not consider mandatory for others.

There is a "flagship" essay in this volume. Gene Outka's essay on "Universal Love and Impartiality" consumes fully one-third of the book. This article extends the discussion of impartiality among self and neighbors in Outka's twenty-year-old book on agape, which remains a standard reference for the study of Christian love. Beginning with the claim that Christian love is universal-it includes regard for the self and for all other humans-Outka considers whether love cares for the self and all others impartially, without special attention to the interests of one party or another. He concludes that universal love incorporates "interpersonal consistency" and the "role-reversal test" (roughly the Golden Rule) upon which advocates of impartiality insist, but it also "accommodates differences between neighbor-love and self-love" that strict impartiality denies. First, Christian universal love authorizes, within the bounds of affirming God's love for the self, some partiality toward the neighbor. It commends some supererogatory acts that are partial toward the neighbor, and it calls upon us to compensate for our inclination to be partial toward ourselves by making judgments based on special sensitivity to our neighbor's interests. Second, a response to divine love authorizes partiality toward some projects of the self. It calls us to avoid being diverted from remaining steadfast in our own faithful service to God and to give special attention to what we can do for ourselves (namely, attend to our own moral and religious development) that we cannot do for our neighbor. Outka's treatment of these "asymmetries" between neighbor-love and self-love is informed by his own brand of theocentric ethics-explicitly distinguished from the theocentric perspective of James Gustafson-but he characteristically utilizes insights from theological and philosophical ethicists with whom he disagrees. Outka is more interested in constructing his own position than in polemicizing against others so that even those who do not concur with his theocentric frame of reference will learn much with which they can agree. This article alone is worth the price of the book.

Harlan Beckley

Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA