Justice in Love
Overview
Love and justice have long been prominent themes in the moral culture of the West, yet they are often considered to be almost hopelessly at odds with one another. In this book acclaimed Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff shows that justice and love are at heart perfectly compatible, and he argues that the commonly perceived tension between them reveals something faulty in our understanding of each. True benevolent love, he says, is always attentive to justice, and love that wreaks injustice can only ever be “malformed love.”
Wolterstorff’s Justice in Love is a welcome companion and follow-up volume to his magnificent Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Building upon his expansive discussion of justice in that earlier work and charitably engaging alternative views, this book focuses in profound new ways on the complex yet ultimately harmonious relation between justice and love.
For more by Nicholas Wolterstorff, see Eerdmans Nicholas Wolterstorff Collection (2 vols.).
Key Features
- Offers a fresh take on the harmonious relationship of justice and love
- Exposes a faulty understanding of justices and love that views these virtues as at odds with one another
- Provides a companion and follow-up to Justice: Rights and Wrongs
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Justice: Rights and Wrongs is a magisterial book. In it and in its companion volume Justice in Love, Wolterstorff has gotten justice right.
—Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School
Learned, judicious, strikingly innovative, and crystal clear, this book has all the marks of yet another Wolterstorff classic in the making.
—John Witte Jr., Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, Emory University
The idea that justice and love are different, incompatible starting points for thinking about the moral life has led to the fragmentation of ethics among the disciplines of philosophy, theology, and law. In Justice in Love Nicholas Wolterstorff puts the pieces back together with careful argument, historical understanding, and fresh thinking about biblical texts. Anyone interested in Christian ethics will find new possibilities here, not only in relation to moral philosophy but also for pastoral care and political life.
—Robin W. Lovin, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics, Southern Methodist University
In the view of many, Nicholas Wolterstorff is the preeminent Protestant Christian philosopher in the English-speaking world. Justice in Love is an excellent addition to his profound works that have justly earned him this title. In its philosophically astute and theologically informed argument for ‘agapic love,’ which the Bible and Christian (especially Reformed) tradition teach, this book very much elevates both the theological and the philosophical discussion of this key doctrine. It should be of great interest to theists, both Christian and Jewish.
—David Novak, professor of religion and philosophy, University of Toronto
- Title: Justice in Love
- Author: Nicholas Wolterstorff
- Series: Emory University Studies in Law and Religion
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Pages: 306
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Agapé; Love › Religious aspects; Love › Philosophy; Christianity and justice; Justice (Philosophy)
- ISBNs: 9780802866158, 0802866158
- Resource ID: LLS:JUSTICEINLOVE
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:59:48Z