Agape: An Ethical Analysis (Yale Publications in Religion)

by Gene Outka

Book Overview

This study is the most comprehensive account to date of modern treatments of the love commandment. Gene Outka examines the literature on agape from Nygren's Agape and Eros in 1930. Both Roman Catholic... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300021224
• Release Date: September 1977
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The Book of Love

This is the definitive book on the ethics of love at this point in time. It is very heavy material to slog through, but there is a lot of good information there.

Classic Analysis of Agape's Ethical Status

Outka provides an ethical analysis from an analytic perspective of Christian theological writing pertaining to agape from writers 1930 to 1970. Among the central figures that he discusses are M. C. D'Arcy, Gerard Gilleman, Soren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, Anders Nygren, and Paul Ramsey. This work is still one of the very best because of its rigorous analysis of love issues.Outka is not so much interested in offering his own proposals about how best to understand agape, nor is he interested in proposing a particular theological scheme. Rather, Outka analyzes prominent texts with an eye toward how their authors understand agape as ethics. "I am convinced that many of the historic ethical concerns of the Judeo-Christian tradition have been encapsulated in the `love language,' and one ought to try to understand more clearly just what has been meant within that language" (5).Early on, Outka addresses what love as a normative, ethical principal or standard means. His concentration is upon how one's understanding of agape affects how one understands neighbor-love. Outka contends that crucial aspects of agape include the fact that agape is independent and unalterable. "Regard is for every person qua human existent, to be distinguished from those special traits, actions, etc., which distinguish particular personalities from each other" (9). Furthermore, Outka contends that agape entails a basic equality whereby one's neighbors' well-being is as valuable as another's neighbor's well-being. In chapters two and three, Outka addresses how various authors understand agape as related to loving oneself and to acting for justice. Chapter four engages how agape is related to various dominant ethical schemes and what Outka calls "subsidiary rules." The author notes that almost all of the authors do not equate agape with a particular given moral code. Chapter five includes the author's assessment of how agape might be understood as a virtue or aspect of one's character. Chapter six entails an examination of how various authors justify or support their contention that persons ought to love with agape. In other words, these are justifying reasons for why someone might regard others with equal-regard. In the seventh chapter, Outka pays particular attention to the claims of Karl Barth with regard to agape. He notes that Barth understands agape as both equal-regard and-self sacrifice. Outka then addresses how Barth understands the major themes examined in the book's previous chapters.In the book's final chapter, Outka explores various issues that have arisen in his examination of dominant texts on agape. He proposes what he believes to be the fundamental content of human agape and some unresolved issues related to that content. "The meaning ascribed in the literature to love, in general, and to agape, in particular, is often characterized by both variance and ambiguity" (257-258). This has to do, says Outka, with the particular wider beliefs and th