In their new volume, Agape, Justice, and Law: How Might Christian Love Shape the Law?, editors Robert F. Cochran, Jr. and Zachary R. Calo have compiled an impressive study that explores the potential role that the concept of Christian agapeFootnote ¹ might play in grounding and influencing American law. Soliciting articles from top scholars in a variety of disciplines—law, theology, religious studies, philosophy, and more—the book takes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach to this underexamined, yet important, topic. The volume's contributors disagree about whether and how Christian love as outlined in the New Testament ought to apply to civil law. Indeed, they disagree about whether love and justice are actually contradictory ideas. What ties the volume together, however, is their shared contention that Christian love has something valuable to offer American law. The result is a work that raises many more questions than it answers, but one that points towards fresh avenues for further inquiry.

The book has three main parts preceded by an introduction. In their introduction, Cochran and Calo argue that “law should be a manifestation of love,” which, they acknowledge, “stands in stark contrast to reigning modern legal theories” (1). For them, “law grounded in agape offers the possibility of more fully encouraging human flourishing in relationship and community than the theories that have dominated legal discourse in recent decades” (1–2). Moreover, “agape-grounded law challenges the tendencies of liberalism toward isolationism, of law and economics toward selfishness, and of [critical legal studies] toward cynicism” (8).

The essays that follow are each valuable in their own right, but do not advance a cohesive theory of love-based law. In part one, “Biblical Foundations,” Cochran explores Jesus's teachings regarding agape, and Darryl Tippens explores teachings of the apostle Paul. Cochran argues that Jesus taught a broad concept of love that included love of “neighbors, Samaritans, and enemies,” as well as loving responses to various conflicts (20). Jesus's teachings about love are not just directed towards Mosaic law, he argues, but have expansive “implications for all law” (4). These implications call “people to the full challenge of agapic love, but agapic love also imposes limits on the level to which it might be incorporated in the civil law” (28). In short, Cochran advocates for an understanding of agapic love that shapes—but stops short of becoming synonymous with—civil law due to the inevitable “hardness of human hearts” (28). Love, here, seems merely to temper the law rather than ground it. Tippens's essay, “‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’: The Pauline Tradition and ‘The Law of Christ’,” identifies five features or forms of agape described in Paul's writings: “(1) agape as Torah; (2) agape as epistemology; (3) agape as justice in action; (4) agape as defined by community and its narratives; and (5) agape acquired through habits and practices (‘liturgies’)” (41). Tippens concludes that Pauline agape “is not just an ideal, but a concrete way of life” that is both relevant and applicable to legal education and practice (52).

Part two, “Modern Perspectives on Agape, Justice and Law,” presents theoretical essays on potential tensions and harmonies between love, law, and justice. Linda Ross Meyer uses an example from the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons—chaotic good—to argue for the limits of pure lawfulness and pure love alike: “If human law is aware of its own limitations, and if human love is aware of its own liabilities,” she writes, “then perhaps we can avoid the alienated and bureaucratic hell of lawfulness as well as the closed-mindedness of storge [familial love], the arrogance of philia [friendly love], and the fanaticism of eros [erotic love], through the humility of agape” (66). Meyer prescribes the “humble love of receptivity,” which she then applies to the concrete problem of criminal sentencing. Sentencing law “should never aspire to perfect retributive lawfulness, but should be understood as an imperfect settlement” (71). Additionally, punishments should take into account the “unknowability” of a person's future character; attempt to restore trust to a community and restore meaning to broken lives; consider the behavior of the offender after the alleged event; and take into account the relationships and needs of the neighbors, victims, and family members of the offender (73). Ultimately, Meyer pleads for criminal justice and sentencing to be “humble and relational,” rather than “absolute and conceptual” (74).

Similarly, Timothy Jackson and Nicholas Wolterstorff submit that love and law are interdependent. Jackson uses the character of Javert from Les Miserables as an example of overreliance on law and the concept of Jihadism as example of an overreliance on love—the danger being that both extremes can be murderous. “Both phenomena,” Jackson concludes, “are symptoms of distorted vision” (98). Wolterstorff's primary argument is that agapic love and justice are not inherently contradictory ideas (102). In his chapter, Wolterstorff interprets both Jesus and Paul as rejecting the retributive understanding of punishment (123).

David VanDrunen, however, defends retributive forms of punishment as theologically valid. In his view, Christian love and justice are conflicting categories, and love is “an inappropriate category for evaluating civil law” (126). VanDrunen grounds this claim in his reading of Romans 13, wherein civil authorities are “instituted” by God “to be avengers who bring God's wrath against evildoers” (127). Yet VanDrunen also insists that retribution can be an act of love, and that Christian love “ought to temper the enforcement of retributive justice” through “a measure of forbearance” (136). Still, while Christian love can play a role in civil law, VanDrunen concludes, “civil law and government cannot be an expression of love in its distinctly Christian form” (138).

Contributors in part three, “What's Love Got to Do with It? Applications of Agape to Law,” consider the application of agape to specific legal issues and questions. Jeffrie G. Murphy's essay “Criminal Love and Criminal Punishment” contends that forgiveness does not contradict or contravene justice, and that the Christian concept of forgiveness, in particular, deserves a place in law (153). For Murphy, one can simultaneously forgive and demand that a person be punished (even by death) without contradiction, as long as the punishment is not sought vindictively (161). In contrast, Alberto R. Coll rejects the idea that Christian love alone can be the guiding principle in international relations. Specifically, he shows the difficulties of applying Christian love to the problems of war, nuclear deterrence, and large-scale transnational migrations (294). Writing from a Christian realist perspective, he suggests that Christian love can, however, manifest itself in international relations through justice (taking seriously the equal human dignity of our enemies) and moderation (existential humility that takes into consideration “the limits to our knowledge, our fallibility, and our propensity for sin”) (308).

Charles Mathewes, also a Christian realist, expresses suspicion “of sentimental misapprehensions and ham-fisted applications” of Gospel to law and politics (167). Yet he asserts that “love and justice must be dialectically interrelated” (167). From this position, Mathewes argues that there are “theological dimensions latent in the practice of judging” and that judging is not ultimately carried out by mere technical prowess, as maintained by some scholars (175). Judges, he reasons, must “appeal to something else, something more, something beyond the lucidity of their prose for their decision to be legitimate” (186). Still, he cautions, justice generally is “only, at best, imperfect in this dispensation, during the world” (186).

The remaining essays in part three are less concerned with the theoretical underpinnings of love, law, and justice and more concerned with Christian love's application to a particular area of law or legal problem. Michael P. Moreland's essay, “Justice, Love, and Duties of Care in Tort Law,” explores how a “theologically rich account of justice and its relation to love in the Christian tradition” may inform theories regarding duties of care in tort law (189). To do this, Moreland investigates the concepts of beneficence and universal and particular moral concern in Christian thought. He concludes that these concepts provide “a much-needed foundation for thinking about duties of care in tort law” (208). In her interesting essay, “The When and the Where of Love: Subsidiarity as a Framework for Care of the Elderly,” Lucia A. Silecchia contends that Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity, although “practical in a worldly way,” has benefits that involve “the reality of human love” (210, 211). In her view, the doctrine of subsidiarity requires balancing the “irreplaceable role for local, state, and federal assistance” of care for the elderly against the danger that large bureaucracies pose in disincentivizing “individuals, families, and intermediate communities to offer more personalized, lovingly active care” (221).

In “Agape, Grace, and Immigration Law: An Evangelical Perspective,” Jennifer Lee Koh carefully considers biblical sources of disagreements in Evangelical communities about immigration law enforcement. She concludes that shared Evangelical commitments to gospel, grace, and agapic love “should lead to a shift in favor of the noncitizen” (229). Lyman Johnson's perspicacious contribution, “Law, Agape, and the Corporation,” challenges the myth that corporations, by law, must be profit-based and must, therefore, be inimical to agape. “Nonetheless, although modern corporate law may not affirmatively encode or mandate agape,” he allows, corporate law “assuredly does not prohibit it [agape], and it readily enables it” (249). He continues: “Agape is possible within the corporation whether business leaders pursue distinctive corporate objectives motivated by compassion or simply pursue profits to varying degrees in a more benevolent manner. Agape is also possible within a corporation that itself is not governed benevolently because each individual within it can routinely relate lovingly to those they encounter, even if only in small ways” (271). Lastly, Thomas C. Berg, in “Agape, Gift, and Intellectual Property,” explores how agape could inform intellectual property law. In Berg's view, agape should inspire us to see human creativity “as a gift from God” and therefore the laws governing intellectual property ought to “encourage generosity—to return the gift to the Giver by distributing it to and empowering others” (290).

Ultimately, Agape, Justice, and Law succeeds in sparking a broad scholarly conversation regarding the relationship between law and love. Many of the contributors ably show how taking Christian love seriously could nudge secular law in a kinder, more compassionate direction, where other theories of law have failed. But readers are left wondering how an agapic understanding of law could effectively function in our religiously diverse, pluralistic, and increasingly secular society. Is an agapic understanding of law even attractive or accessible to those in faith traditions outside Christianity, or to those who subscribe to no religion or faith at all? What kind of interfaith dialogue, if any, is possible regarding the Christian concept of agape? Could such a Christian understanding of law be compatible with the First Amendment Establishment Clause and the judicial doctrine of separation of church and state? While the current volume does not answer these and other questions, it has opened the door for future scholarly inquiry. Agape, Justice, and Law is a welcome contribution to the growing field of law and religion.