Can we flip this around?

[Billie Hoard]

So we have had some great discussion (I really appreciated the back and forth between @Daniel L Heck and @Michael Raburn) on the general Jesus-y-ness of a human rights paradigm, but I am wondering what happens when we flip the question and ask all you pro-human-rights paradigm folk, what does an agape paradigm lack, which a human rights paradigm supplies?

[Derek Morphew]

Guys, you should read Wolterstorff's treatment of Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, and on Justice in both the OT and the NT. It speaks to this question. I found myself agreeing with his argument.

[Daniel L Heck]

Thanks, @Derek Morphew ! I've just read some summaries of Wolterstorff's general position, but am really interested in his work. Do you have a starting point that you'd recommend? At the moment, an article would be preferable to a book for me ... although I do want to read his books as well, once I get through my current reading and writing project.

@Bill Hoard, the position that I've articulated lines up nicely with Wolterstorff's general position, as you can see it summarized here, for example: http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Emory-University-Studies-Religion/dp/0802866158/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=12EAJDDM9CAD3B6FDBWN

Based on the previous discussion, I would say that a love paradigm, properly understood, fully incorporates a human rights paradigm (properly understood) and expands on it. Love is not less than respect for human rights; it is more. So when someone sets them in opposition to each other, they might be doing it in one of two ways. First, they might be just agreeing with me...possibly without realizing it. For example, if they suggest that human rights alone isn't enough, or is less than the Gospel, then we can be in complete agreement. That's a variation on what I've been saying. However, if they're suggesting that human rights is a red herring, or needs to be undermined or subverted or 'guarded against' or something like that...that's where we part ways. If that's where they're coming from, then I think they've either misunderstood love (in the Biblical sense), human rights (in the pretty normal contemporary sense) or both.

Within a Christian love paradigm, a good human rights paradigm finds its proper and honored place...and a human rights paradigm helps us better understand a Christian love paradigm, of which it is a part. Or in other words, a 'love paradigm' that can't integrate a human rights paradigm isn't a love paradigm in the first place.

[David Johnston]

I agree with you, Daniel. Bear with me, as I draw this out

Yale philosopher emeritus (retired in 2002) Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote two books on justice in the 2000s:

Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008); Justice in Love (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2011).

As I mentioned in my paper this year on the Hauerwas panel, I was finishing up a book that draws heavily on Wolterstorff’s work on justice, Justice and Love: A Muslim-Christian Conversation. Of course, it deals with much more than this, but in Ch. 5 I do take up Wolterstorff’s arguments against what he calls “modern day agapism.” Here’s a very, very brief summary of his argument in Justice in Love …

First, he says, one has to take into account the prominent role justice plays in the Bible (that he had argued in detail in the first book). Another way of putting this is “the two imperatives issued by the writers of antiquity”:

“One is the imperative to do justice, coming to us from both the Athens-Rome strand of our heritage and the Jerusalem strand. ‘Do justice,’ said the prophet Micah in a well-known passage. The ancient Roman jurist Ulpian said that we are to render to each person his or her right or due (ius). The other imperative comes to us only from the Jerusalem strand: love your neighbor as yourself, even if that neighbor is an enemy. Do not return evil for evil, said Jesus. The ancient Greek writers praised eros-love and philia-love. Jesus, quoting the Torah, enjoined agape-love.”

Now coming to agapism, he notes that although Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey are all luminaries of this movement, the founding texts were written by the Dane Kierkegaard (d. 1855, Works of Love) and the Swede, Bishop Anders Nygren (d. 1978, Agape and Eros).

For them love is about benevolence and generosity, and especially of the self-sacrificing kind (agape). Barth argued that love was being for the other. Therefore, it’s distinct from eros and philia. Since Jesus enjoins love of enemy, it can only be a deep heart-felt response to God’s forgiveness in Christ, which is the supreme model of agapic love.

No Christian can disagree with that, of course. But what does this have to do with justice, asks Wolterstorff? In one passage of his Works of Love, which speaks to the “inner glory of equality” in all human persons, Kierkegaard raised an important issue. Could he mean that we intuitively respond to the image of God in each person we encounter? Not likely, says Wolterstorff, though Kierkegaard goes no further with this thought. Nygren clearly would have answered this question in the negative. He asserts that the legal requirements of the Old Testament subsumed under the Greek word nomos (law) are completely obsolete in the New Testament scheme. Justice has been superseded by love.

Nygren leans on two parables of Jesus to show that love trumps justice – the workers in the vineyard (Mat. 20:1-16) and the prodigal son (Luke 15). For Nygren, Jesus casts all notions of justice to the wind and focuses on compassion and pure grace. But Wolterstorff strongly disagrees. In the first case Jesus gave each worker the promised wages for a days work. As he said to those who had worked all day, “Friend, am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

With regard to the prodigal son, Nygren contends once again that the father by throwing a party for his wayward son demonstrated “unjust love.” The elder brother had a right to feel snubbed. Wolterstorff retorts that the father’s answer is actually different: “Look dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day.” The older brother still inherits everything that remains in the father’s estate. He isn’t wronged in any way. And even if you believe retributive justice required punishment, the father’s forgiveness puts that behind him. In fact, this is a feast of forgiveness.

Agapic love has not caused injustice in either of the two parables. For Wolterstorff this illustrates well the conundrum that modern day agapists are left with: to love people sometimes causes injustice. But if this is so, then a loving act would cause one to violate one’s neighbor’s “right not to be so treated.” Earlier in the book he had argued the following (Ch. 2):

“And if he has a right not to be so treated by me, then I ought not to treat him that way. In general it’s true that if someone has a right against me to my not treating him than way, then I have a correlative obligation toward him not to treat him thus. The position of the agapist implies that I am sometimes permitted to do what I ought not to do; sometimes it is even the case that I should do what I ought not to do. That cannot be right. Something has to give in the classical version of modern day agapism.”

This is why, reasons Wolterstorff, Reinhold Niebuhr concluded that justice is for this age and love in its fullest dimension is reserved for the age to come. Quoting Niebuhr, he says that democratic society that promotes the basic rights to life and property, and, even more so, calls for laws to enshrine “moral rights and obligations” is “a closer approximation of the law of love.” Wolterstorff calls this “non-classical agapism.”

But as Wolterstorff has it, there is “a certain structural affinity between justice and the ideal of love.” “True justice,” he explains, “requires that everybody’s rights be honored equally.” This thought, however, leads Niebuhr to a conundrum. Here he is in his Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr:

“The ideal of equality is a part of the natural law which transcends existence, but is more immediately relevant to social and economic problems because it is an ideal law, and as law presupposes a recalcitrant nature which must be brought into submission to it. The ideal of love, on the other hand, transcends all law. . . . It is impossible to construct a social ethic out of the ideal of love in its pure form, because the ideal presupposes the resolution of the conflict of life with life, which is the concern of law to mitigate and restrain. For this reason Christianity really had no social ethic until it appropriated the Stoic ethic.”

Wolterstorff promotes what he calls “care agapism.” What is needed, then, is a better definition of love. Yes, love does “seek to promote the good in someone’s life as an end in itself,” but it must also seek to treat the other in a just way. Justice in love here means ensuring that we treat our neighbor “in a way that befits her worth,” or such that her rights are honored. He explains,

“The understanding that we need, if agapism is to be plausible as an ethical system, is an understanding of love as seeking both to promote the good in a person’s life and to secure that she be treated as befits her worth. To treat her as one does because justice requires it is to love her. Of course, that to which she has a right is itself a good in her life, not something in addition, and so too for being treated as befits her worth. So the more precise way of putting the point is that we need an understanding of love such that seeking to secure for someone the good of being treated as befits her worth is an example of love for her.”

Contra Niebuhr, Wolterstorff (along with Catholic social teaching, I might add) emphasizes Christianity’s social ethic:

“Seeking to promote the flourishing of one’s fellow human beings requires that one also seek to promote the flourishing of a wide variety of social entities of which those individuals are members or by which they are affected – families, clans, neighborhoods, cities, churches, synagogues, clubs, groups, peoples, states, agencies, institutions, enterprises, organizations.”

In the end, Wolterstorff grounds his “care agapism” in the love of God that “acknowledges” and responds to his own image, which he implanted in the human person at creation (and in Genesis 1 God calls this “very good”). This is similar to my own argument in Earth, Empire and Sacred Text: Muslims and Christians as Trustees of Creation. From a Vineyard perspective, I think we would say that the fullness of this image, soiled as it was by the fall and redeemed by the cross, is part of the first fruits of God’s coming kingdom that we are called to demonstrate today at every level of society. This is what Jesus meant when he said we were to be salt and light in a dark world.

Wolterstorff puts it in terms of analytic philosophy:

“To treat the other justly is to advance her life-good in some respect; that is benefaction. It is also to pay her what due respect for her worth requires; that is acknowledgment. In doing justice, benefaction and acknowledgment are united. And because care incorporates acting justly, care likewise unites benefaction with acknowledgment.”

To sum up, I apologize for the length of this. Still, it was too short to do justice to Wolterstorff’s argument that runs through two books!

[Billie Hoard]

Wolterstorff promotes what he calls “care agapism.” What is needed, then, is a better definition of love. Yes, love does “seek to promote the good in someone’s life as an end in itself,” but it must also seek to treat the other in a just way. Justice in love here means ensuring that we treat our neighbor “in a way that befits her worth,” or such that her rights are honored. He explains,

“The understanding that we need, if agapism is to be plausible as an ethical system, is an understanding of love as seeking both to promote the good in a person’s life and to secure that she be treated as befits her worth. To treat her as one does because justice requires it is to love her. Of course, that to which she has a right is itself a good in her life, not something in addition, and so too for being treated as befits her worth. So the more precise way of putting the point is that we need an understanding of love such that seeking to secure for someone the good of being treated as befits her worth is an example of love for her.”

 —

@David Johnston I think these two paragraphs get to the crux of what seems (definitely still working through all of this) problematic to me about a Justice (or human rights?) approach. It seems to be privileging Justice over Love. I realized that attempt is to synthesize the two by recognizing that from a Divine perspective the two are not in conflict but it seems to take Justice as the "thing we have understood better" and demand a new/modified understanding of agape. That strikes me a both philosophically and theologically backwards. And in terms of applicability, this "care agapism" may create more conflicts than it resolves. Does Wolterstorff recognize a potential distinction (is this where he is differing from the agape authors he cites?) between a person's rights and their worth?
So for example, if Bob commits a horrible crime against an innocent person (Wanda), a Lockean (my starting point for understanding what we mean by human rights and justice) understanding would say that Bob's worth has not diminished but he has tacitly given up his right to liberty and safety (Locke would say that Bob has entered into a state of war). So it seems to me that the way we treat Bob may differ depending on whether we are reacting primarily to his worth or to his rights. Particularly if Bob has murdered Wanda, a Lockean analysis would say that he has clearly given up his own right to life (by entering into a state of war) and that any of us would be within our rights in taking his life. But it Bob is still of undiminished worth, it is no more loving to kill/execute Bob now than it would have been to kill him before he murdered Wanda.
I am probably misunderstanding or oversimplifying the view you are expounding so I would very much appreciate your help with it!

[Daniel L Heck]

I'm not sure of what Wolterstorff would say, but I wouldn't want to operate from within a Lockean rights framework. Slavery is freedom, and all that. Objecting to a Lockean rights framework is not necessarily an objection to human rights...and if the objection is that he is wrong about human rights, then this tends to reinscribe human rights, rather than undermine it.

I think Locke, as you've summarized him, is wrong about human rights here, because the argument doesn't appropriately integrate the implications of the notion that all people are made in God's image.

Additionally, even if we were to adopt a Lockean rights position,I don't think @David Johnston's summary of care agapism collapses love into human rights. If there is any collapse at all, it adds an additional criterion of 'care agapism' to our theory of rights:

... we need ... an understanding of love as seeking both {A} to promote the good in a person’s life and {B} to secure that she be treated as befits her worth... Of course, that to which she has a right is itself a good in her life, not something in addition...

(Letter tags and bolded italics are mine.)

Let's just say that your Lockean framework satisfies {B}: 'securing that [Bob] be treated as befits his worth'. (But notice that Locke might disagree that this is an appropriate rights criterion, insofar as he introduces an exception clause which permits one to treat Bob in a way that does not befit his worth while not violating his rights, because his rights have been relinquished. In other words, Locke does not think that we are talking about inalienable human rights, but instead thinks that they are quite alienable.) Even granting that, we still need to satisfy the other criterion, of 'promoting the good in Bob's life'. If we say that 'treating someone according to their worth' is a good, we are not saying that this is the only good.

If we follow this argument, it provides us with another way (one that isn't necessarily theological) of pointing out that the Lockean rights framework is not a satisfying human rights framework, because it doesn't  also involve the promotion of the good in Bob's life.

So the argument doesn't subsume care agapism under the heading of rights, and especially not Lockean rights. (This argument doesn't allow one to say: I will treat Bob as homo sacer and that is both right and loving, because love is nothing but treating him according to his non-existent/suspended rights.)  If anything, this argument would subsume human rights under the further criterion of love! (No, you have no right to treat Bob as homo sacer, because this neither seeks his good, nor treats him according to his worth!) I think it shows up Locke's reasoning to be both tortuous and torturous.

[David Johnston]

In the same spirit of what you just said, Daniel -- and leaving Locke aside -- here's a bit of a different take on your post, Bill.

First of all, thanks, Bill, for responding!

You ask about the potential distinction between a person's worth and his/her rights. That’s an important question.  Wolterstorff would answer that rights “are grounded in the dignity of the rights-holders.” He calls that the “mainstream” view and he goes on to explain:

“Because of the equal, ineradicable, and animal-transcending dignity each human being has qua human being, none may be carved up for stew, none may be shot and tossed into a dumpster for waste management to haul away, none may be deposited on a mountainside to die, none may be tortured for the vengeance or the pleasure of the torturer” (Justice in Love, 147).

What is it that gives humanity its worth? Almost all secular accounts of human worth, following Kant, are predicated on some quality that humans possess, and it’s usually rational capacity. The great legal philosopher Richard Dworkin disagrees. This dignity, he argues, can only supervene “on the way in which human beings are “created.” Wolterstorff agrees.

That’s crucial, right? Think of people suffering of dementia, or infants or a variety of intellectually disabled people (like my daughter). Their rational capacity is mostly gone, yet they are just as worthy of being treated with the respect that any human being deserves.

In reading your query, I thought of Exodus 35:30-34, the one text you would think proponents of capital punishment could turn to confidently. Murder calls for the death penalty, and there is no possible recourse to a ransom, which of course would favor the rich. This is about all being equal before the law, here the law of Moses.

But think of this in the context of the Noahic covenant (Genesis 9:6-7) – “If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image.” Then the text adds the Gen. 1 command, “Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth” (I’m quoting from the NLT).

Justice and worth are interrelated here. Though human dignity is intrinsic by being tied to God’s creation, justice is something that has to be worked out in human society. As societies evolve, justice may be carried out differently. For instance, the Mosaic law was clearly meant to limit the scope of violence and not necessarily an endorsement of it (thus "eye for an eye" was likely meant as "you can't take more than an eye for an eye"). These written laws came at a time when the Israelites had transitioned from a nomadic, tribal society to one with a centralized government. The above mentioned ransom option reflects a move away from the traditional tribal method of blood feud to a more bureaucratic way of meting out justice.

I lived 16 years in the Arab world (Algeria, Egypt and the West Bank). Much more than in North Africa, the Middle East is still struggling with the tribal blood feud mentality, by which a murder in one family/clan/tribe is avenged by the killing of any comparable person in the guilty family/clan/tribe. In Palestinian society some of the traditional methods of dealing with social conflicts are still in evidence. And even from that region into Central Asia, the notion of honor and patriarchy is behind the “honor killings” of women whose behavior is suspected of having tainted the family honor.

I digress a bit, but only to show that justice is always a work in progress. I personally am convinced that the death penalty is no longer appropriate in our modern democratic societies. I understand your argument, Bill, but I feel that even the dignity of convicted murderers is such that we don’t have the right to put them to death. Moses himself was a murderer and that’s why he fled Egypt! I don’t necessarily want to get into a discussion of this, but your example raised this issue, at least in my mind.

In the end, I feel that Niebuhr’s use of “approximation” is still useful. Yes, justice and love should be tied as much as possible. That’s seems to be the minimum of what loving neighbor requires – setting up a society with just laws. But this side of heaven, with the complexity of national and international affairs and human sin being as pervasive as it is, we will always be battling for greater justice this side of heaven. And it’s particularly in view of that complexity that I find Wolterstorff’s definition of “care agapism” so persuasive -- holding on to human rights by virtue of God-given human dignity, but allowing for an ongoing discussion of what this means in practice in our globalized world.

[Billie Hoard]

Thanks @David Johnston and @Daniel L Heck I think it would be helpful to backtrack a step and work some definitions. What/whose human rights schema would you say you refer to. As I have mentioned, I am most familiar with Locke's breakdown but apparently y'all aren't especially fond of his (though I think they do need engagement since it is Lockean HR that inform most Human Rights thinking in the West). Can we take 1 Cor 13 as a working definition for Agape? In that light, (and responding to @Daniel L Heck 's comments) I think I would say that the best Human Rights approach would be contained within, but not as complete as, an agape paradigm. And I think that an agape paradigm would open the possibility of "breaking" certain potential human rights rules. For instance if the right to property (I know, very Lockean) is guaranteed by a HR perspective, agape may require a person to give up their property for another. Interestingly though agape (and this brings us back to the pacifism discussion) might preclude all forms of compulsion where I am not aware of a HR perspective which does not include a mechanism for ultimately violent enforcement of it's (usually benevolent) dictates. I may be going in circles a bit, but these comments are really helping me frame this question. Thanks!

[David Johnston]

Bill, whether we like it or not, in 2015 we live in a world of nation-states and you and I have to submit to US laws, the land in which we live. Democracy in its various forms is an ideal that most nations uphold, so here, for example, if we don't like our laws we have to find ways to influence our lawmakers or get involved ourselves in the political arena. But I don't think there's a law that says you can't give away your property. But in the case of laws on the books, the state definitely has the monopoly of violence, or force.

Human rights, as you say, is a paradigm that was first fleshed out in general terms by the 1948 UDHR and it became the foundation for an ongoing effort to accumulate new agreements and declarations, all of which now form the corpus of what we call "international law."

Religious freedom in this country is fairly extensive. Without the draft (I was almost drafted for the Vietnam war), conscientious objectors can freely live out their pacifist convictions.

What you are arguing about "care agapism" seems to me to apply to our behavior in the church, which is fine, and I completely agree about that. Just to say, my concern with this issue has mainly been to help bridge misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians, find ways for us to cooperate for the common good, and the like. But yes, as followers of Jesus, whatever the context, we should be models of sacrificial love toward all our "neighbors"!

I just want to make sure we're on the same wave length. And yes, this conversation would be a lot easier if we were in the same room

[Jon Stovell]

If this were Wikipedia, I'd have to edit this...

it is Lockean HR that inform most Human Rights thinking in the West

 —

... to read thus:

it is Lockean HR that inform most Human Rights thinking in the West^{[citation needed]}

[Billie Hoard]

If this were Wikipedia, I'd have to edit this...

it is Lockean HR that inform most Human Rights thinking in the West

 —

... to read thus:

it is Lockean HR that inform most Human Rights thinking in the West^{[citation needed]}

 —

So I would say that's more of an evolved and hitherto unquestioned opinion than something I read. My understanding of the development of the contemporary (Western) approach to Human Rights (and this is derived from the history and philosophy classes I have taken as much as any books I have read) is that they are traceable back primarily to Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (though a number of other enlightenment thinkers and their own educations obviously influenced them, it probably really all goes back to Aristotle and then to Plato, but taking a Whitehead approach is probably somewhat distracting here), with Lock having the stronger influence in English speaking countries while Rousseau carries more weight in continental thinking and documents though there are plenty of Locke's fingerprints on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen(Hobbes seems to have set up and then been eclipsed by the two of them). I don't think the influence that Locke had on Jefferson or the other US "founding fathers" is particularly contested at this point (though I am interested to read any dissent here) though I have to admit to near total ignorance when it comes to the historical formulation of Canada's approach to Human rights. I believe I had (probably unfairly) assumed that it paralleled that of the UK wherein (at least as I understand it) Locke was an active voice in the developing enlightenment theories of natural and human rights. But I really seem to be drawing that from a sort of amalgam high school-through- grad school impression rather a careful examination of historic influence.
I am inclined to stick with the Second Treatise on Civil Government to the US Declaration and Bill of Rights to the UDHR line of influence (though it may well be less significant than other influences, Rousseau, Magna Carta and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizenspring to mind as potential alternatives).
So yeah, that statement was overly absolute and definitely reflects an assumption more that a thoroughly provable point. However, I would want to point out that Locke's "Life, Liberty, and Property" are covered by articles 2 and 17 of the UDHR and his thinking (particularly on the "appeal to heaven") shows up in the preamble.
Out of curiosity @Jon Stovell would you disagree? If so, which HR formulation do you think has most informed western HR thinking?

For reference http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

[Billie Hoard]

@David Johnston I think we are on the same wavelength then and I am beginning to suspect that we are going to end up at a "two kingdoms?" discussion. I think that there are some issues regarding the way in which we view the state and the actions of the state. Are they "tainted" by their ultimate dependence on violent coersion however benevolent their dictates may be, or are state actions at least potentially compatible with the Kingdom of God? Is a Human Rights paradigm something which will be eclipsed by an agape paradigm when the "not yet" finally becomes "now" or will we just get better at conforming to them? 

[Jon Stovell]

Out of curiosity @Jon Stovell would you disagree? If so, which HR formulation do you think has most informed western HR thinking?

 —

I dunno. This is not my area of expertise. It just seemed to me like you were making a sweeping and questionable claim. While Locke has an important place on the list of influential philosophers who wrote about rights, several centuries have elapsed since he published on the subject. That's a lot of time for other thinkers to develop alternative conceptions and frameworks for human rights. It seems to me that there are a few options:

• Perhaps the Lockean view has remained dominant to this day, and therefore targeting it for critique as you did in your earlier post is directly on point. But that'd be a rather remarkable lack of development over the course of time, and I would want to see some substantiation before I accepted it.
• Perhaps the Lockean view has remained seminal even in today's models of human rights. This is more believable historically, but it still requires substantiation. It would make criticism of the Lockean view relevant insofar as Locke's ideas remain in play in the present, but such criticism wouldn't amount to a direct critique of the present models. It would just be a critique of ideas that are no longer current.
• Perhaps the Lockean view has some limited degree of continuing influence in current human rights frameworks, in that certain Lockean ideas have been retained and propagated. This is also quite historically plausible. Targeting the Lockean framework is probably not very useful in this case, however. It'd be better to just get on with critiquing the current models and the ideas they use, regardless of their genealogies. If in a specific case you feel that the genealogy of a current idea that traces back to Locke is relevant, you could just demonstrate that and get on with things. There's no need to make (or substantiate) broad claims about Lockean influence in this scenario.
• Perhaps the Lockean view has very little relevance to current human rights frameworks. I don't expect that to be the case, but it could be. Again, in this case you'd do better to deal with the occasional Lockean idea if and when one appears, and leave it at that.

In cases where I am not in command of the full history and current state of the discussion of a subject, I default to assuming that the situation is like that of option 3: earlier ideas probably have some influence on the present discussion, but I don't assume that that earlier frameworks are still in play unless and until I discover otherwise. This keeps me focused on the arguments actually before me.

[Billie Hoard]

Thanks @Jon Stovell that's really helpful,  I think I was probably trying to make a #2 claim which I overstated and which came accross as a #1 claim. Having tried to think about it I am interested in the question academically but wouldn't want to push more than a #3 claim in the context of this conversation. My own background involves reading a good bit of Locke so that tends to be where my mind goes when thinking about HR, (clearly I have been reading  too many of my own assumptions on to other folks in this discussion)  that said I really am far more interested in the HR models that others are bringing to the table and should probably have settled for a disclaimer that I am most familiar with Locke's model so that is what i am primarily reacting to. 

[Jon Stovell]

Is a Human Rights paradigm something which will be eclipsed by an agape paradigm when the "not yet" finally becomes "now" or will we just get better at conforming to them?

 —

If I read them rightly, I think @David Johnston, @Daniel L Heck, and @Derek Morphew would all consider this to be a false alternative. They all seem to be arguing that the idea of human rights is integral to any consistent agape paradigm. So of course there would be more to the eschatological fulfilment of God's intended social order than "just" respecting one another's rights perfectly. But neither will that fulfilment "eclipse" human rights and respect thereof and replace them with something else.

Also, Derek at least seems to be explicitly rejecting a "two kingdoms" framework.

[Billie Hoard]

Also, Derek at least seems to be explicitly rejecting a "two kingdoms" framework.

 —

And on a (side?) note, I am really interested how that works. I am a big fan of a two kingdoms framework so I am pretty sure I am just missing some large chunk of theology. Is there a thread I can go read or re-read?

But on the question of agape eclipsing or extending a human rights paradigm, I want to ask why someone who operates out of an agape paradigm would want to talk much about human rights (outside of it's being very interesting and wildly relevant to contemporary culture). This is why I think the word "paradigm" is useful here. So far as I can tell, if agape is the lens through which we understand human interaction (pardon the mixed metaphor) human rights questions just don't come up because we are busy loving people. Whereas if we are looking through a human rights lens it is at least possible that we will still fail to love people.
So could we take the human rights-agape paradigm relationship as analogous to the Newtonian-Einsteinian  physics paradigm. The Newtonian paradigm (is model a better word at this point?) isn't exactly wrong, in fact it is great for doing all sorts of things, but it will only get us so far and once we shift to a more accurate paradigm (model) it becomes apparent that Newtonian physics isn't exactly right either. I think the analogy breaks down in that Einstein wasn't quite right either, where I take agape to actually be the Way of Jesus.
So that is where I am trying to track the pro-HR thinking, is there a version of Human Rights which would not have to be modified (would not also be "not quite right either") when we take an agape approach of human interaction. Of if I were to try asking one more way: Does the shift from HR to Agape only involve addition to the HR framework or is there a modification of the framework involved to en extent significant enough to make it no longer fit its old definition?

[Jon Stovell]

Also, Derek at least seems to be explicitly rejecting a "two kingdoms" framework.

 —

And on a (side?) note, I am really interested how that works. I am a big fan of a two kingdoms framework so I am pretty sure I am just missing some large chunk of theology. Is there a thread I can go read or re-read?

 —

The search function in the site menu should answer that pretty quickly for you. If you don't find anything that answers your questions well, you can always start a new discussion topic for it. The best location for that would probably be in The Nerd Zone.

[Daniel L Heck]

So could we take the human rights-agape paradigm relationship as analogous to the Newtonian-Einsteinian  physics paradigm...

To look at the analogy I used before, I think the relationship between agape and human rights is like the relationship between water and hydrogen. (I'm a moral objectivist, natural law type with a super-Creational theology, so I think that both are part of the created order ) One reason that I have been talking about human rights in this context is that I'm surprised when other care agapists understand human rights to be antagonistic to care agapism, or to be unneccessary to a full account of care agapism. To me,it sounds like they're saying, "We need pure water, which we'd have if only we got that pesky hydrogen out!" This largely seems obvious to me, although I can also understand the confusion. (Which I think is largely semantic, although there are also some knotty conceptual issues here, as well as some real questions about political engagement.) At any rate, I also prefer the water analogy to the scientific paradigms analogy because the epistemic questions come in from a different angle. (Notice, for example, that what I'm saying about water does depend on a certain shared theory of chemistry, so there is an operative theory of water involved. I think this an important distinction, because but I think that human rights are more than a merely human construct that are imposed on the world by human decision, whether individual or collective. So we have theories of human rights, which bear a broad analogy to theories of chemistry...and Locke's theory of human rights has more than a little alchemy in it.)

This analogy to water and hydrogen can be understood in either personal or political terms.

Loving care for another person involves respect for their rights (the dignity that is due to them, specifically as image-bearers.) Sometimes, people really do treat their 'loved ones' with less respect than that, and in those cases, I think they are being unloving. The example of a husband who comes to treat his wife's body as his property, rather than a unique example of the image of God, comes to mind. I choose this example because it helps to directly challenge the propertarian collapse of 'human rights' into 'property rights' ... which is also how we get to the position that slavery is freedom. Specifically, slavery is my freedom to own you as property. And here, I have rather quickly pointed out one of the bridges from the personal to political dimensions of this

If you want to understand what I'm saying, you can first approximate "human rights" by reading "treating people according to the dignity that is due to them all as image-bearers." Insofar as secular institutions insist on treating people in this way, I think they are approximating something central to the Biblical narrative and natural law...even if they don't understand what they're doing in this way. In this, they are like faithful Gentiles or Samaritans who can sometimes offer correction to us (as Messianically-expanded Israel) by their example.

I do think there is another discussion going on here as well, for which this one is foundational in some senses. That involves states, and how Christ's kingdom relates to them. I think that is certainly germane as well, and I'd like to get into it shortly. My SVS paper is focused on developing our theology of kingdom-state-relationships in the context of the refugee crisis.  But right now, my daughter needs me

[Michael Raburn]

Christians once had a social ethic based on love. Aquinas' account of the virtues in his Summa Theologica lays out the full range or moral and theological virtues. In laying those out, he gives special place to justice and to charity.
Justice is in one sense a general virtue that covers all relations between people. The closest thing to rights language in Aquinas is probably legal justice (although conflating them would be a mistake). Note what he says about legal justice:
"...legal justice is said to be a general virtue, in as much, to wit, as it directs the acts of the other virtues to its own end, and this is to move all the other virtues by its command; for just as charity may be called a general virtue in so far as it directs the acts of all the virtues to the Divine good, so too is legal justice, in so far as it directs the acts of all the virtues to the common good. Accordingly, just as charity which regards the Divine good as its proper object, is a special virtue in respect of its essence, so too legal justice is a special virtue in respect of its essence, in so far as it regards the common good as its proper object. And thus it is in the sovereign principally and by way of a mastercraft, while it is secondarily and administratively in his subjects.
However the name of legal justice can be given to every virtue, in so far as every virtue is directed to the common good by the aforesaid legal justice, which though special essentially is nevertheless virtually general. Speaking in this way, legal justice is essentially the same as all virtue, but differs therefrom logically: and it is in this sense that the Philosopher speaks." (ST. II-II. 58)

It is in this sense that human rights language can be somewhat helpful in that it can help direct people toward common good.

But, also note what Aquinas says later about charity:
"Ambrose [Lombard, Sent. iii, D, 23 says that charity is the form of the virtues.
I answer that, In morals the form of an act is taken chiefly from the end. The reason of this is that the principal of moral acts is the will, whose object and form, so to speak, are the end. Now the form of an act always follows from a form of the agent. Consequently, in morals, that which gives an act its order to the end, must needs give the act its form. Now it is evident, in accordance with what has been said (7), that it is charity which directs the acts of all other virtues to the last end, and which, consequently, also gives the form to all other acts of virtue: and it is precisely in this sense that charity is called the form of the virtues, for these are called virtues in relation to "informed" acts." (ST. II-II. 23)

Charity is the form of all the virtues. According to Aquinas, Christians grow into the virtues - all of the virtues - as the Holy Spirit infuses the theological virtue of charity into us. Love makes all the other virtues possible and actual in our lives. From this perspective, there is no dichotomy between love and justice. Love make justice happen. The only argument against a human rights approach is that the reverse is either less likely or perhaps not possible. Justice does not make love happen. The counter to that claim would be that justice creates an environment where love can grow. That is an interesting possibility but it is not the Christian way. Love is infused in us as we are filled with the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised his followers. We are people empowered to love and that enables us to excel in all the virtues, many of which can be generalized and called justice. This is the Christian social ethic and it has nothing to do with Stoicism. Quite the opposite. (Okay, I'll stop, Niebuhr bashing is too easy.)

We might want to converse with the world with human rights language but we have to understand that in doing so we are not using our native language and what we really mean, what we are really about, is Spirit-infused-charity expressed in virtues. And we have to clear that the world lacks the power to sustain human rights and justice because it is still the world and the only power to do such things comes from God and comes in the form of love (apart from the Spirit some degree of moral virtue, including justice is possible, but imperfectly and temporarily). So we have to decide how much energy we want to give to making the world incrementally better and how much we want to give to being the church and thus showing the world that it is the world and powerless to be otherwise.

(Re: Locke/modern expressions, I think the most common understanding now is a Rawlsian, bureaucratic understanding of rights. Michael Sandel gives the most lucid explanations: http://www.justiceharvard.org/)

[Daniel L Heck]

Charity is the form of all the virtues. According to Aquinas, Christians grow into the virtues - all of the virtues - as the Holy Spirit infuses the theological virtue of charity into us...The only argument against a human rights approach is that the reverse is either less likely or perhaps not possible. Justice does not make love happen... The counter to that claim would be that justice creates an environment where love can grow. That is an interesting possibility but it is not the Christian way.

I don't read those passages from Aquinas in a way that leads to this conclusion, and am interested in hearing how you get from A to B to C here.

If we grant that charity is the form of all the virtues, and that all of them have charity as their ultimate end, then doing justice truly (in Aquina's sense, which explicitly involves a sovereign*) is always ordered toward charity. This isn't a causal argument that would lead me to say that "justice does not make love happen," but is instead a teleological argument, which would lead me to say that "wherever justice is happening, it is justice only because it is ultimately oriented toward caritas." (And insofar as this implies a causal argument, it doesnt make sense to set a proximate cause against an ultimate cause in this way; the proximate causes are integrated into the ultumate cause, which precludes setting them against each other. If my ultimate goal is entering a room, and a proximate goal is opening a door, opening the door is a necessary part of the sequence of causes and effects that get me into the room.) So can justice create an environment where love can grow? Or as the non-Christian Catholic Workers often say, "We want to create a society (so common good is in play here, and so perhaps an idea of justice that links up with Aquinas's) that makes it easier for people to be good." On this account of the virtues, there should be nothing surprising or contradictory here. Growth in all of the virtues, including justice, happens as the Holy Spirit infuses the virtue of caritas in us; from love, through justice, we can grow toward love, empowered in every moment (of properly-ordered growth) by the Holy Spirit.

If we start with these texts from Aquinas (A), I don't see how you get to the conclusion that "justice doesn't cultivate caritas" is Aquinas's way (point B). And even if you do convince me that your way is Aquinas's way, there's a long way from there to saying that Aquinas's way is the (only) Christian way (point C). For now, I'd be happy if you could help me understand how you get from (A) to (B). The only clear roads I can see through these texts seem to go a different direction than the one it seems you want to go.

*Oh, and I do want to talk about sovereignty in light of a contextual Bible study of the image of God!

[Michael Raburn]

Before I answer, clarify one thing for me Daniel. What did you mean by "non-Christian Catholic Workers"?

[Daniel L Heck]

I'm glad we're engaging on this . I think there is some meat to what you're saying, and I'm trying to more clearly understand which parts of it are meat.

I was being ironic when I referred to them as non-Christian. I'm challenging the notion that creating a just social order that plays a role in cultivating love is "not the Christian way." I was tossing the Catholic Workers in as one (of many) possible counter-examples who are Christian (at least in their founding beliefs), and who pursue justice (in a way that might line up with Aquinas) in a way that is driven by caritas, oriented toward caritas, and expected to help cultivate caritas.