Is _agape_ really the highest kind of love?

[j***@go.com]

About 40 years ago there appeared a
famously controversial book called
_Situation Ethics_ by Joseph Fletcher.
The book posited that there are no
hard and fast rules, but that decisions
must always be guided by _agape_.
Some of the responses the book
provoked were gathered in another
book, _The Situation Ethics Debate_,
edited by Harvey Cox. That second
book included excerpts from an essay
by Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike.
I know he was controversial too, but
let's not go down that tired byway.

I wish to concentrate on the point
Pike raised in that essay: Is _agape_
really the highest kind of love?
_Agape_ is usually understood as
doing good to people you don't like.
Pike points out that this really isn't
meeting their deepest human need,
that what they really need is not your
goods, your money, or your help, but
your *respect* -- and that is not
included in _agape_; the people you
are trying to help will sense the
implicit put-down. Romans 5:8
shows that even God has this
attitude toward us, so even God
doesn't meet our needs.

-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

[Bob Crowley]

Post by j***@go.com
About 40 years ago there appeared a
famously controversial book called
_Situation Ethics_ by Joseph Fletcher.
The book posited that there are no
hard and fast rules, but that decisions
must always be guided by _agape_.
Some of the responses the book
provoked were gathered in another
book, _The Situation Ethics Debate_,
edited by Harvey Cox. That second
book included excerpts from an essay
by Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike.
I know he was controversial too, but
let's not go down that tired byway.
I wish to concentrate on the point
Pike raised in that essay: Is _agape_
really the highest kind of love?
_Agape_ is usually understood as
doing good to people you don't like.
Pike points out that this really isn't
meeting their deepest human need,
that what they really need is not your
goods, your money, or your help, but
your *respect* -- and that is not
included in _agape_; the people you
are trying to help will sense the
implicit put-down. Romans 5:8
shows that even God has this
attitude toward us, so even God
doesn't meet our needs.
-- Jeffrey J. Sargent

God works through people. The Agape love showed by Christ was
universal for the entire human race, or at least those who are
prepared to avail themselves of it.

However on a person to person basis, you cut the cloth according to
the need. A child who needs a cuddle because he's just skinned his
knee after falling off his tricycle is in a very different position to
a woman who has just been put out on the street with her children due
to eviction, or a person who has just been diagnosed with cancer.

In that respect situational ethics is correct, in that the need
elicits a particular sort of response.

However the situation of the human race without Christ was such that
Agape love, dying for a race that doesn't deserve it, was the
solution for that particular problem. You might see, it was a case of
divine situational ethics. And since we haven't changed much, as the
media shows us every day with our endless wars, murders, tortures,
bashings, thefts, treacheries, rapes, abortion, domestic violence,
hatred, pride etc. etc., the situational need for Agape is still there.