Love and Justice

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Love is the basic law of life. Love on the human side is an ex pression of man's distinguishing characteristic: his freedom. In fact, Love is the only final structure of freedom (no. 5, this volume). Niebuhr has consistently used the word love in his ethical analyses to mean agape, the immortal Love, forever full, forever flowing free. It is the out-going, unmeasured love of Christ on the cross. Niebuhr disagrees with Anders Nygren (agape and Eros, Westminster, however, in making the contrast between agape and the doctrines of love (eros) in classical thought too absolute. He notes that Jesus Himself does not regard the contrast between natural human love and the divine agape as absolute. (the Nature and Destiny of Man, II, n. 16, p.