John Mureithi

MOTHERS, NEIGHBORS AND STRANGERS

Another Look at Agape

Sally B. Purvis

It may be a biographic accident that my richest and most powerful

experience of agape, of unqualified, unconditional love for another, has come

with my experience of being a mother. The two experiences are not identical;

there is much in my mothering that is not agapic, and my experience of

intensely other-regarding attitudes and activities is not confined to my

relationships to my children. While there may be mothers who experience

agape more fully with their spouses or friends, the most sustained and

trustworthy embodiment of agape in my life is my experience of being a

mother to my two sons.

There is dissonance, even contradiction, between the traditional charac-

terization of agape as "disinterested love" and my experience of agape as

intensely interested. The tradition has articulated a deep suspicion of the

role of "special relations" for agape; 1 my experience suggests that the "special

relation" of being a mother can serve as a model for agape. As a Christian

feminist ethicist, I claim the priority of women's experience, including my

own, over a tradition that has excluded women's accounts of their own

experience. 2 Furthermore, I share with other feminists the suspicion of

1 From Augustine to Garth Hallett s recent study (Christian Neighbor-Love: An Assess-

ment of Six Rival Versions [Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1989]) the tradition

has focused on the relationship between love for God, love for self, and love for others.

Whether, as in Augustine's case, special relations are easily accommodated in the ordo

amoris (Christian Doctrine, trans. J. Shaw in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2), or

as with Gene Outka (Agape: An Ethical Analysis [New Haven: Yale University Press,

1972]) and Soren Kierkegaard (Works of Love: Some Christian Reflections in the Form of

Discourses, trans. Howard and Edna Hong [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962]) they

are viewed with suspicion, to my knowledge there has been no articulation of a specifically

positive role for special relationships in the understanding of agape. 2 Feminist methodology exposes the standpoint-dependent nature of all knowledge and

explicitly develops the centrality of women's experience for our reflections. The literature

that articulates this methodology is vast; I will note some central texts in theology and

ethics. For two classic treatments, see Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion,

ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), especially

section I, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist

Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), especially chapter 1. See also Sallie McFague,

Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,

20 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

"disinterest" as a normative feature of human relationships in general and

love in particular. Writing within the "tradition" of Christian feminist ethics,

I will use my experience of being a mother as an evaluative tool to critique

the tradition and as a creative tool to revise it. 3

As a starting point for my critique of the traditional interpretation of

agape as "disinterested love," and as a counterpoint to the model I will offer,

I will briefly investigate Soren Kierkegaard s discussion of agape in Works of

Love 4 and will submit it to a general critical inquiry. I will then describe the

contours of mother-love as I have experienced it, noting its constitutive

features. I will consult a scriptural account of agape, Lukes parable of the

good Samaritan, to demonstrate that exegetical evidence supports an inter-

pretation of agape as "intensely interested." Finally, I will note some of the

strengths and weaknesses of mother-love as a model for agape and suggest

some normative implications for Christian ethics* stance toward the well

being of women.

The Problem in Extremis

In his influential analytical survey of Christian interpretations of agape,

Gene Outka writes,

The normative content most often ascribed [to agape] I have called equal regard, involving in Barth s words, "identification with his [sic] interests in utter independence of the question of his [sic] attrac- tiveness."

5

O n this account, agape is other-regarding, impartial, nonexclusive. 6 Self-

i n t e r e s t is, if not a b s e n t , at least minimal and p e r i p h e r a l . 7 Agape is r e s p o n -

sive to g e n e r i c r a t h e r t h a n to idiosyncratic characteristics of p e r s o n s . 8 I n

1987), Beverly Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984).

3 For other critiques of "radical disinterest" as a model for human relationships, see

Christine Gudorf, "Parenting, Mutual Love, and Sacrifice," Ruth Smith, "Feminism and the Moral Subject," and Catherine Keller, "Feminism and the Ethic of Inseparability" in Women's Consciousness, Women's Conscience: A Reader in Feminist Ethics, ed. Barbara Hilkert Andolsen, Christine E. Gudorf, and Mary D. Pellauer (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985). Also see Caroline Whitbeck, "A Different Reality: Feminist Ontology" in Beyond Domination: New Perspectives on Women and Philosophy, ed. Carol C. Gould (Totowa, N.J.: Roman and Allanheld, 1983), Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psycho- logical Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), and Jean Baker Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978).

4 See note 1.

5 Outka, 260.

6 Ibid., 9.

7 Ibid., 55-74.

8 Ibid., 12.

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 21

other words» persons are recipients of agape not based on who they are but

only on the feet that they are. Soren Kierkegaard is an influential representa-

tive of the traditional interpretation of agape as disinterested love. In Works

of Love Kierkegaard writes:

Therefore, among the works of [agapic] love, let us not forget this, let us not forget to consider THE WORK OF LOVE IN REMEMBERING ONE WHO IS DEAD . . . The work of love in remembering one who is dead is thus a work of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. Therefore go out and practice it; remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully. In the relationship to one dead you have the criterion whereby you can test yourself [as a Christian lover].

9

Kierkegaard claims that in order to purify love of all of the complications that

ordinarily surround it, to eliminate the dizzying diversity of life in which love

is found, 10

we focus on the practice of "remembering one who is dead" as a

model for Christian agape. His exemplification of agape captures in an

extreme form the traditional interpretation of agape as equal regard. Is this

the richest source of understanding of agape?

Within the traditional definition of agape, Kierkegaard's claim is plausi-

ble. He characterizes this "work of love" as the most disinterested, the

freest, and the most faithful example available in human experience. First,

there is no possibility that the love will be reciprocated because the dead one

is utterly inaccessible to the person who is alive. The lover can expect no

return on her or his love, no repayment of any sort. This love is utterly

disinterested. Second, there is nothing in the beloved that calls forth our

love. In Kierkegaards terms, there can be no "compulsion" to love because

the "dead has no rights in life." 11

Time will work to make the memory fade;

remembering is an act of free choice with no influence from the reality of the

beloved. The object of the love has effectively disappeared; in his or her

absence the love is perfectly unconstrained by anything outside the lover.

Third, this love is the most faithful. The dead do not change, or at least not in

any way that affects the relationship. Therefore if change occurs, it must

occur in the living. Thus remembering one who is dead becomes a perfectly

controlled laboratory for measuring the fidelity of the living. It seems that

Kierkegaard has captured some essential features of agape as equal regard. If

pushed to its logical limits, agape as "equal regard," the love that emphasizes

"generic characteristics" in impartial and totally other-regarding attitudes

and activity, the love that makes no distinction and accepts no reward and

9 Kierkegaard, 328. Caps in the original,

io Ibid., 317. ii Ibid., 323.

22 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

that eliminates as illegitimate the lovableness of the object, may be perfectly

experienced only when the object of the love is utterly inaccessible and thus

functionally irrelevant.

Kierkegaard s analysis suggests serious discontinuities between at least

some features of traditional interpretations of agape on the one hand and

persons' intuitions about and experiences of love on the other. It is surely the

case that the love command is unconditional and that agape cannot depend

for its obligating power upon the vicissitudes of the individual preference of

the agent or the charm of the recipient. However, agape as the tradition

described by Outka has interpreted it ends by erasing the persons that are

supposed to be beloved. Radical impartiality mustered in service of radical

equality may, and in Kierkegaards thought does, render invisible and even

irrelevant the life that agape is presumably supposed to celebrate and sup-

port.

What are some of the philosophical and psychological assumptions of the

tradition? Space limitations preclude my doing more than indicating them,

but they are widely discussed and have been developed in more detail

elsewhere. First, as Outka notes, there is deep suspicion on the part of the

traditional agapist of the extent and effects of self-interest. Underlying that

suspicion is an understanding of the human person as essentially separate

from and in some fundamental way in competition with other persons. 1 2

Each persons "interests" are understood and described in metaphors of

conflict; the picture that emerges is the now familiar Western liberal individ-

ualistic anthropology.

Whence this characterization? It may be suggestive at this point to note

the substantial overlap between the depiction of agape as equal regard and

the Kantian principle of respect for persons which is one articulation of

Kants emphasis on autonomy as the distinctively moral feature of human

being. 1 3

The traditional agapist whose shadow can be discerned through his

impartiality and detached magnanimity is brother to if not identical with the

"liberal man" of John Rawls or Alisdair Maclntyres liberal tradition. 14

As

with Kant and his descendants in the Western liberal political tradition, the

emphasis on autonomy and detachment from specific features of specific lives

brings with it a concomitant deemphasis on relationality and particularity.

While acknowledging that there is indeed material overlap between the

1 2 See works cited in note 3 for a critique of this conception of t h e human person.

1 3 Outka notes numerous times the resemblance between Kant and his own understand-

ing of agape, but h e does not articulate the ontological or anthropological commitments a

Kantian position entails.

1 4 The masculine language is intentional. The "liberal man" is not a generic concept. See

Whitbecks article cited in note 3.

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 23

content of agape and the Kantian principle of respect for persons, we must

still question the effect of the Kantian ontology on normative formulations of

agape. 15

The second range of questions raised by Kierkegaard s analysis has to do

with the appropriateness of detachment as the fundamental attitude for

loving. Kierkegaards position is extreme, but by its very exaggeration it

alerts us to the issue of the dissonance between our experience of love on the

one hand and the traditional features of and obligations entailed by agape on

the other. Between any ordinary human experience of loving and the nature

and demands of agape lies a thicket of complex theological issues; I claim no

necessarily direct access from the one to the other. What I am suggesting is

that the traditional interpretation of agape as detached and disinterested

raises questions about what can loosely be called moral psychology. As Gene

Outka articulates so well, one of the tasks of any presentation of normative

agape is to hold together impartiality and uniqueness, or in other words, to

uphold the fundamental value and dignity of every concrete human life. That

fundamental value and dignity are prior to any judgments we may make

regarding the content of that life, and they make demands and place con-

straints upon our attitudes and actions toward every human person. Yet the

shape and occasion of our responding in Christian love are always dependent

upon a context, always embedded in the messy, rich, deeply invested

moments of human experience. Given the inevitable conjunction of immedi-

ate reality with its immediate obligation to love and the potentially universal

scope of that obligation, it may be the case that a better description than

detachment can be found to characterize the attitude that agape enjoins and

that is better able to facilitate persons responding with Christian love.

Jumping ahead of the argument, the nursery might better replace the

graveyard as agapes school room.

The agapic normative tradition represented by Outka and exemplified in

the extreme by Kierkegaard is very uneasy about special relations. In Outkas

words,

. . . obligations pertaining to [special relations] may become the effective center of gravity, so urgent and really ultimate that they swamp universal human dignity as such.

16

He goes on to say that the agapists suspicion of human nature and special

relations lead "him" to "begin at the other end, with the negative restraints

and positive injunctions applicable in any human relation." 17

These suspicions are persuasive. They appeal to our experience of the

is Whitbeck, 67. i 6 Outka, 272.

1 7 Ibid., 273.

24 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

difficulty humans have in loving anyone well, never mind the towering obstacles to loving everyone well. One could multiply ad nauseum examples of and reasons for love s inadequacy to perform or produce what love has promised. Furthermore, when love fails us, our own or another's, the tradi- tional agapist correctly points out that we tend to pull back, shorten our reach, become more defensive and less responsive to neighbors as well as to strangers. We are self⇧referential creatures, and the other regard that agape enjoins is indeed difficult.

These are not so much philosophical claims as they are insights of moral psychology. Their persuasive power develops at the level of human experi- ence, not in the realm of conceptual abstractions. At the level of human experience, at its best and at its worst, one can share the traditional agapist's suspicion of the human ability to love truly and well and be equally sus- picious of the picture of the lover to which the agapist would have us refer. That is, we need not hold an elevated opinion of human nature or the possibilities of human love in order to question and even to reject the exegetical and experiential adequacy of the traditional agapist s picture of the agapic lover.

It is to experience that we all must appeal for the persuasive power of our claims about what is humanly possible. If we reflect on different experiences, we shall develop different notions of and models for agape. This fundamental insight of feminist methodology applies to Kierkegaard and other traditional interpretations of agape as it does to contemporary feminists.

In the love command itself there is reference to human experience: "as you love yourself." Outkas study offers an excellent summary and analysis of the ways in which various Christian thinkers have interpreted the role of self⇧ love in relation to agape.18 I will not engage that conversation but will offer instead another experience of human love that can function as an experiential model and foundation for agape: a mothers love for her children.19

Mother⇥love as a Model for Agape

Prior to describing some of the features of mother⇧love that are helpful in identifying an alternative to Kierkegaards model for agapic love, some qualifications are in order. First, I am aware of the danger to mothers of romanticizing them, us, and it is not my intention to do so. I am convinced of

7» Ibid., 55⇧74. 1 9 I am not arguing that mother⇧love ought to replace "love of self" as the experiential

referent for the love command, only that it can offer another experience of human love that is a valuable source of information about agape. How one characterizes the relationship between self⇧love and mother⇧love will largely depend, of course, on how one interprets the nature of self⇧love and its role in agapic love for others.

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 25

the value of the distinction between the implacable ideal of "motherhood, "

which all too often bludgeons real mothers with their shortcomings, and the

difficult, challenging and often confusing work of mothering. 20

I need, however, to make a further distinction, that between "mother-

ing" and "mother-love." Borrowing a term from classical ethical theory,

"mothering" as discussed by Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick

and others 21

is a "practice," a rich assortment of attitudes and behaviors that

coalesce around intrinsic goals and values. 22

The concrete experience of

"mothering" covers a much broader spectrum of attitudes and behaviors than

I will address in my discussion of mother-love; in other words, "mothering"

involves a lot more than loving. There is much in my experience of mother-

ing that is more informative about the nature of resentment, or boredom, or

the panic of being trapped, than about love. The mix is beautifully captured

by this entry from Adrienne Rich s journal:

To be caught up in waves of love and hate, jealousy even of the child's childhood; hope and fear for its maturity; longing to be free of responsibility, tied by every fibre of ones being.

23

To speak of mother-love is not to encompass the experience of mothering.

However, if I am to avoid the danger of courting the very romanticism about

mothers that I formally reject, I must place mother-love in the broader

context of mothering with its panoply of feelings and attitudes. It is not the

experience of mothering per se that offers a model for agape but only the

mother-love which in my case undergirds the practice and explodes with

intensity and clarity only sporadically in the midst of so much else. The

mother-love that I will describe is a love experienced to a greater or lesser

degree, and my experience offers glimpses of a love that I often fail to

embody and enact. It is not, then, a romantic impulse that generates my

discussion of mother-love as a model for agape. Rather it is the fragmentary

and awkwardly expressed but nonetheless powerful experience of that love

that impels my analysis.

Is it legitimate to isolate mother-love, even analytically, from the rest of

what mothers do and to use that love as a model for agape? I can answer

20 The distinction was made by Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experi-

ence and Institution (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), see especially chapter 10, pp. £56- 80 and by Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 28-57.

21 Rich, Of Woman Born, Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1978). 22

As cited in Allen Verhey, 'The Doctors Oath—And a Christian Swearing It," in On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, ed. Stephen Lammers and Allen Verhey (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 74.

23 Rich, 22.

26 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

affirmatively because it is my experience that mother-love announces itself

with a voice that is not drowned out by the inevitable chorus that surrounds

it, a chorus composed of other feelings, immense distractions, deadening

trivia. The voice is not always audible, certainly, but the occasions when I

hear it, when I am speaking with it, are full of energy and clarity. Love never

happens apart from the lively chaos that is the tangle of a busy day, but it

cannot be reduced to that tangle. Mother-love is not all there is in my

relationship with my children, but it is there, and it is distinctive and

recognizable. 24

With the above qualifications in mind, let us explore the possibility that

mother-love can function as a model for agape. What are the common

features of a mothers love for her children that are relevant to agape? First,

mother-love is inclusive. It is dependent upon the mother-child relationship

but is independent of the specific characteristics of the child. There is a

disposition on the mothers part to devote herself to the well-being of the

child from birth and for its lifetime without knowing the particular talents or

future achievements of that small person. The mother is prepared to and in

fact does love that child whoever she or he turns out to be. Her regard for the

child is both predicated upon the child's uniqueness and unmediated by the

specific qualities of that child. Furthermore, mothers with more than one

child often love them all "the same" even though they are quite different and

may not be equally appealing by any number of "objective" standards. The

inclusivity of mother-love must be juxtaposed to the preference that many

mothers feel for one of their children over another. I do not always like my

children equally, but my fundamental commitment to their well-being does

not depend upon the appeal of their personalities at any given time. 2 5

Second, the love is both intensely involved and other-regarding. At

2 4 A further qualification may be indirectly relevant regarding my claims. In the Chris-

tian tradition, the command to love one's neighbor is embedded in a thoroughly

theological context: the context for agapic love for neighbor is total love for God, "with all

your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." The

mdoubtedly complex relationship between the two parts of the dual love command is not

specified by the command itself. What we can establish is that love for one s neighbor is

normatively fashioned as inexorably tied to love for God. Thus, on the experiential level,

claims about agape are confined to those who love God. Agapic lovers are not, of course,

exclusively Christian. They are, however, theocentric. Thus the perspective becomes

definitive. From the perspective of God-lovers, no one is exempt from the command to

love God, and thus the population of those who are required to love the neighbor

encompasses everyone. On the other hand, if one does not love God, then the require-

ment to love the neighbor will not be experienced as an obligation, though neighbor-

regarding obligations may be established on philosophical grounds. 2 5

See Adrienne Rich's discussion of the particular difficulty feminists in this culture may

face in liking their sons (pp. 205-217).

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 27

times there is no clear line between the needs of the lover and the needs of

the beloved. The needs of the child as expressed in cries of different volume

and tone are experienced by the mother as in some sense internal to her own

being. Her child s hunger is as demanding of her response as her own, or

more so. While the needs of the child may conflict with the needs of the

mother, and often do, there are instances when the interests of the child and

the interests of the mother coincide. That is, the mothers need may be to

feed the child, comfort her, rock him, etc. There is no inevitably competitive

structure between the mother and child, though competition can and does

arise. The relationship is basically cooperative. Furthermore, the mothers

actions with regard to the child are primarily and fundamentally responsive

to the child's needs, though she may initiate activities. She is acting largely

on behalf of the other in response to the others signals of need. As a corollary

to the intense and other-regarding nature of mother-love, it is important to

note that the acts of love must change constantly and rather dramatically, at

least in the childhood years, in response to the rapidly changing nature of the

child, and that this change is accommodated nicely by the constancy of the

love itself. 26

Modern psychology in many forms envisions the process of human

maturation as one of "separation" from ones parents and particularly from

ones mother. That conceptualization might suggest that the intensity of

mother-love would diminish as the child grows and that in its mature state,

agape would be transformed from intensity into detachment. My experience

suggests that while the needs of the child change, and thus the deeds of love

change, the sense of connectedness, the commitment to the well-being of

the child (of whatever age), and the intensity of the love do not diminish. My

children are now teenagers, so I cannot speak personally about the experi-

ence of being mother to an adult. I do know that thus far their needs shape

my response, including their need for freedom. I experience both the joy of

their growing competence to manage their own lives and the anguish of

watching their failures, stifling my urge to rescue them (or trying to) on

behalf of their need to learn that they can survive failure and remain intact.

Their growing independence does not engender my detachment.

Third, mother-love is unconditional. It is not dependent upon nor can it

be cancelled by the behavior of the child. A mother can experience intense

pain as a result of her child's activities. She can and does suffer with a

suffering child. She can and does attempt to correct attitudes and behaviors

that do not accord with her values or her understanding of what her child's

well being entails. Even if all her efforts fail, and when her child fails, she

continues to love no matter how far her child departs from her interests and

For an expanded discussion of the role of change in mothering, see Ruddick, 8 9 - 9 3 .

28 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

her plans for her or his life. The interest that the mother has in her child's

"success" on her own terms does not destroy her love for the child, though it

certainly causes pain and probably strained relations. It may be that her love

leads her to understand and accept the projects of her child, or conflict may

continue. In any case, the difference does not destroy the love. Further-

more, the love is not "located in the agent" as Kierkegaard's account would

have it; it remains intensely other oriented. It is that child with all the joy

and the pain that is the focus of the love.

It may be important to reiterate at this point that mothers do not manage

in any sustained way what I am describing as mother-love. Under the best

circumstances, mother-love is only one feature of mothering, a complex of

feelings and attitudes and behaviors and relationships many of which have

origins very different from love in any form. Furthermore, rarely is mother-

ing done "under the best circumstances." Perhaps nowhere is the conjunc-

tion of the personal and the political experienced more powerfully than in

the practice of mothering. The distortions, the evils, of racism, classism,

sexism, heterosexism, poverty, isolation, drugs, disease, powerlessness that

often characterize the context of mothering in our culture can, I would

argue, be so powerful as to eradicate mother-love. The love is not magical.

Yet there are moments, even whole stages of life in many less than ideal lives,

where the other-directed, intensely caring mother-love is experienced by

mothers, and the experience has heuristic value in relation to agape.

Both the traditional interpretation of agape as disinterested equal regard

and my model of mother-love claim to be expositions of Christian love, love

whose narrative roots are in Scripture. Which description of agape better

accounts for the features of Christian love?

Agape in Scripture

What do the Scriptures tell us about the normative content of agape?

Specifically what can we learn about the relationship between love for

specific, concrete persons who may have special claims on us and the other-

regarding "love in general" that is abstracted from and independent from

anyone in particular? 27

2 7 Agape was not invented by Christians. The love command as articulated by Jesus has

its origins in the Old Testament. (I am aware of the problems associated with the

terminology of "old" and "new" testaments, but I have found no satisfactory replacement.)

The first part of the love command, the command to love God, is found in Deuteronomy

6:4-6. The second part, the command to love one s neighbor as oneself, is in Leviticus

19:18. While one could argue that the entire Hebrew Scriptures are a statement and an

explication of the first part of the love command and an attempt to work out its relationship

to and implications for the second, the commands are explicitly stated only these two

times, and never together. It is interesting to speculate whether Jesus was the first to

combine them. The noun agape and forms of the verb agapeo together appear over two

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 29

In contemporary discussions, "love command" may refer to one, or

more, of three New Testament formulations: love your neighbor, love your

enemies, and do to others what you would have them do to you. Illese three

agapic commands are related, but it is important not to conflate them. They

are not identical, and the most important formulation in our dialogue with

the ethical agapic tradition is "love your neighbor."

The prominent formulation upon which discussions of neighbor-love are

based is found in all three synoptic Gospels. Here is Marks version, closely

paralleled in Matthew and Luke:

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength/ The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than'thèse/' (Mark 12:28-31)

28

The command to love the neighbor is strongly tied to the command to

love God, though the contours of the connection remain unclear. 29

I will

avoid the complexities of the relationship between love for God and love for

neighbor; however it will be necessary to note, though not to explore, the

theological context of the command to love our neighbors.

How should we interpret the command to love our neighbor? For-

tunately Scripture offers an answer, or at least a response to that question, in

the famous story of the good Samaritan found in Luke 10:29-37.

The story is prompted by the question of a lawyer, "seeking to justify

himself," presumably seeking to establish the conditions under which it

could be said that he had obeyed the dual love command. "And who is my

neighbor?" he asked, questioning the scope of the command. Jesus, as is so

often the case, answers a slightly different question from the one he is asked.

It has been widely noted that while the lawyer's question is posed in terms of

the recipient of agape, Jesus answers in terms of the agent. 30

There is

hundred fifty times in the New Testament; the importance of the concept is suggested if not demonstrated by its frequency.

28 Luke s version (10:25-28) does not use the "first . . . second" language, but it does

include the much fuller specification of commitment to God found in Marks and Mat- thews formulations; Matthews text follows Mark in using the "first . . . second" distinc- tion. All scriptural quotes are from the RSV.

29 The command to love the neighbor is found once in the New Testament apart from the

command to love God, Matthew 19:19, in a context reminiscent of its setting in Leviticus. That is, it appears in a short list of negative and positive obligations to other persons. All of the other injunctions in Matthews list are from the Ten Commandments.

3 0 See, for example, Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Luke, trans. David

E. Green (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1984), 169.

30 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

another shift as well. With his description of the indifference of the priest and

the Lévite, Jesus dismantles any expectation that "neighbor" can be defined

on ethnic or religious grounds. On the other hand, it is important to notice

that Jesus assumes that the listener understands "neighbor" as a social

category, and based upon that understanding s/he brings certain expectations

to the story upon which Jesus can then play. Jesus had to assume an

understanding that he could then subvert; the commonsense understanding

is logically prior to its revision.

Jesus then introduces the Samaritan, an unexpected exemplar for neigh-

borliness to his Hebrew audience. The Samaritan goes on to illustrate the

behavior that constitutes the definition of a neighbor. It turns out that

"neighbor" as a social category has been replaced in this story by "neighbor"

as a behavioral category, and Jesus', or Lukes choice of a Samaritan to

exemplify the behavior underscores the transition. Furthermore, the be-

havior that becomes the content of the category "neighbor" also becomes

normative, at least for the lawyer; at the end of the story Jesus says to him,

"Go and do likewise."

We know that Jesus' revision of the commonsense understanding of

"neighbor" begins by claiming that "neighbor" is not a social category but a

behavioral one. That is, a neighbor is someone who acts like a neighbor. Did,

then, the Samaritan fulfill the behavioral expectations for a neighbor? He

begins that way, with compassion and attention to the stricken mans imme-

diate needs. He binds his wounds and delivers him to an inn where he could

be cared for. But then the story goes on to say that he stayed overnight at the

inn with him, gave the innkeeper money to cover what had already been

spent, and promised to pay whatever additional expenses the wounded man

incurred, without limit.

The second part of the story mirrors and intensifies the first. Just as the

expectations for identifying a neighbor based upon social categories are

broken by the priest and the Lévite, so the expectations for identifying a

neighbor based upon a commonsense understanding of neighborly behavior

are broken by the Samaritan, not by unfulfillment but by overfulfillment.

The Samaritan was not behaving like a neighbor in incurring unlimited

liability for the expenses and needs of the wounded man; he was behaving

like a lover.

Notice again what has happened to the lawyers original question about

whom he should love as a neighbor. It has been augmented with a response

to the question of how he is to love his neighbor, and the response goes well

beyond anything he would normally expect a neighbor to do. This parable

exhibits a feature common to all of Jesus' parables: extravagance. Jesus has

begun with everyday, ordinary expectations about who people are and how

they are to behave and has undermined those expectations in the direction of

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 31

extravagant, compassionate, dedicated care based not upon specific "idio-

syncratic" features of the wounded man but only on his need.

Where would Jesus' listeners have encountered such care, either as

agents or as recipients? They would know of this love in their most intimate,

loving relationships, with family members, friends, lovers—the "special

relations" about which the agapic tradition that Kierkegaard exemplifies is so

suspicious. Just as people feel shock when priests and compatriots are callous

and uncaring, so there is shock value in seeing neighbors act like lovers. And

that shock depends upon knowing the difference between neighbors and

lovers.

Far from positing an inevitable conflict between the content and scope of

agape on the one hand and that of "special relations" on the other, Jesus'

parable reports the closest connection. Far from indifference to the par-

ticularity of the recipient of agape, the injured mans needs provided the

pattern for the Samaritan s care. One point of the parable is that there was

nothing about the identity of the wounded man that obligated in particular

the attitude and behavior of the Samaritan. This is the point that the agape

tradition has chosen to emphasize. However, there is at least one other point

to the story: the neighbor is to behave like a lover. Rather than suggesting

that special relations are in substantive conflict with the demands of agape,

this parable suggests that the one is the model for the other. 31

Mother-love Revisited

Luke s parable is not describing mother-love, but it is possible to draw

some significant parallels between it and the love shown by the Samaritan.

Like the Samaritan, a mother responds in love to whatever children she may

have regardless of their individual characteristics. Like the Samaritan, her

acts of love are primarily responsive to the needs of her children; they are

other-regarding in nature even when responding to the child's needs inter-

feres with some agenda of her own. 32

Like the Samaritan she is a lover when

she can be, unconcerned about what legal requirements there may be with

regard to her behavior but rather focused on the immediacy of the demands

3 1 Of course it is the case that the demands of a special relation will conflict with the

demands of agape in terms of finitude. The Samaritan would have neither the time nor

presumably the money to treat every mugging victim in first century Palestine the way he

treated the man in the story. The Scripture simply does not deal with that issue. 3 2

The problem that mothers have balancing their own needs and the needs of their

children, particularly small children, has not received the professional attention I hope it

will. We know of it largely through the "child care crisis," a phrase that masks much

anguish and a litany of lived tragedies, large and small.

32 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

that she attempts to meet. Like the Samaritan, her attitude toward those she

cares for is not one of detachment but of intense involvement. Detachment

might fail to reveal what it is she needs to see in order to respond in love.

At this point we may begin to hear echoes of Outka s concern that the

demands of special relations "may become the effective center of gravity, so

urgent and really ultimate that they swamp universal human dignity as

such." 33

Is it not odd to recommend as a model for agape a form of love that

can be as consuming, physically, emotionally, psychologically, even morally

as mother-love? Does not mother-love so eclipse concerns for others that

there is in fact a conflict between mothers' love for their children and

considerations of the needs, even rights of others? Is not mother-love the

narrowest rather than the broadest scope love could have?

The objections would be fatal were I equating mother-love and agape.

That is not my position. Rather I am suggesting that mother-love can provide

an excellent model for the content of agape. I am suggesting that agape fully

experienced would be similar to mother-love extended to the whole of

humanity. Put another way, I am suggesting that the second part of the love

command could fruitfully be restated as, "Love your neighbor as a mother

loves her children," with the caveat that the mother-love be healthy and

unimpeded by social discrimination of any number of kinds. I will return to

this point.

The problems of scope that the mother-love model highlights can be

related to the problems that Jesus responded to in his parable of the good

Samaritan. The type of activities that mothers engage in on behalf of their

children go as far beyond our ordinary expectations of neighborly behavior as

did the actions of the Samaritan. If the person lying wounded in the road

were her child, we would expect that the mother would respond with

whatever care the child required that it was in her power to provide. But if it

were not her child? Then the requirements of agape would tell her that she

was obligated to respond, and her experiences of mother-love would provide

the information she would need about what the response would entail. She

may learn from her love for her children how she is to respond to the

stranger.

If the "self that the mainstream agapic tradition has described as the

model for agape is remote, distant, detached, the self that expresses mother-

love is present, connected, involved, intensely caring. The problems that the

former model has in expressing the content of agape in any experientially

meaningful way are paralleled by the problems the latter model has in

moving agape beyond her small circle to encompass all the persons she

meets or could ever meet. 34

3 3 Outka, 272.

34 It is an unjustifiable exaggeration to extend the demands of the love command to "all

Purvis: Mothers, Neighbors and Strangers 33

It is appropriate at this point to invoke skepticism about the possibility of

responding to all persons whose needs we encounter with the love with

which we respond to our children when we respond to them in love. It is one

of the strengths of the mother-love model that it confronts us with the real life

difficulty we do in fact experience as we attempt to live out the love

command. The challenge of agape as a normative claim is not to empty our

consciousness of the particularities of persons around us nor to devise some

way to love persons generically. The challenge is to be fully mindful of the

concrete realities of persons and to respond in love.

There are legitimate limits based on human finitude that the traditional

understanding of agape has allowed. Those limits would apply to mother-love

as a model for agape and would in fact be taken with great seriousness as part

of the emphasis upon the concrete realities of concrete persons. Nonethe-

less, loving everyone as we love our children is a hard command; that

formulation focuses on exactly the difficulties that the story of the good

Samaritan exemplifies. Thus, the mother-love model for agape is in funda-

mental agreement with the tradition outlined and represented by Outka in

identifying the problem of self-absorbed persons trying to live out the

command to love our neighbors. However, the analysis of the problem and

the proposed solution are different. Rather than rejecting special relations as

hopelessly contaminated by self-interest, the mother-love model offers an

experiential instance of intense and very special love that nonetheless has

heuristic value for agape. No perfect examples are experientially available,

but the fragments are sufficient to sculpt the agapic model. 35

Does mother-love have heuristic value for those who have not been

mothers? Probably not. I am not claiming that mother-love functions well as a

model for nonmothers. It may be that persons who have received mother-

love, however imperfectly, can form the moral consciousness engendered in

the experience of mothering, but perhaps not. It is my experience as a

mother that has given birth to this model. In any case, I am not arguing that

mother-love is the only agapic model in human experience; it is not even the

persons," though it does apply to all the persons with whom I come into contact. What could "love" in that case possibly mean? On the other hand, in this shrinking world in which the actions of persons especially in developed nations have such impact on persons in other nations, the demands of agape can be extended to include all those who could be affected by my actions.

35 Questions about the extent to which persons can, do and will actually fulfill the

demands of the dual love command can only be partly addressed in the realm of moral psychology or ordinary human experience. Those questions return us to the theological context in which the command is given, and heard. Does the lover of God see the neighbor differently so that the neighbor is easier to love? Is the lover of God somehow enabled by the practice of loving God to love the neighbor? Does the lover of God experience God s love in ways that ease or even impel love for the neighbor? This tangle of questions and others that could be raised are beyond the scope of this investigation.

34 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion

only model in my experience, though it is the most powerful. Rather it is one

rich example of a special relation that is a partner, rather than a threat, to

agape. Mother-love is embedded in the practice of mothering; the practice of

mothering is embedded in the institution of motherhood. If mother-love is

one window to agape, as I have argued, then Christian ethics is required by

the centrality of agape to dismantle the institution and to reform the practice

so that mother-love can be nurtured, not stifled or assassinated by the

oppressive context in which it is lived out. 3 6

There is no inherent contradic-

tion between mother-love and agape; in fact, there are significant and inform-

ative parallels, both conceptual and experiential. Christian ethics need not

continue to gaze with a suspicious stare on the "special relation" between

mother and child but rather needs to be engaged in eliminating the distor-

tions, the evils, that make the ongoing experiences of mother-love seem

miraculous. 37

Mother-love requires from Christian ethics neither control nor

tempering; it demands the simple step of nurturing, with justice as well as

love, women who are mothers, which requires, of course, nurturing all

women. Unfortunately, the tradition often seems not to understand the

connection between the well-being of all women and the well-being of

mothers and thus nurtures neither, in spite of its centuries of preoccupation

with agape.

In this essay I have sought to clarify the content of the obligation to love

the neighbor, not to render a verdict on its power or possibility. My argu-

ments are in concert with those of feminists who have challenged the

interpretations of agape that would characterize it as exclusively or predomi-

nantly self-sacrificial and who have stressed instead its mutuality based upon

women's experience of loving. Likewise mother-love presents itself as a more

fruitful model for agape than "the work of love in remembering one who is

dead." Based upon both exegetical and experiential evidence, indifferent

universality is eclipsed by caring intensity as the ethical focus of agape.

36 See the last chapter of Rich's Of Woman Born (cited above) for one case study of the

institutional annihilation of mother-love. 37

It would be interesting to investigate the relationship between the Christian tradition s suspicion of sexuality in general and its homophobia in particular as they relate to traditional interpretations of agape, but I am unable to pursue the issue here.

^ s

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the

copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a

violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission

from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal

typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,

for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.

Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific

work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered

by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the

copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,

or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS

collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association

(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American Theological Library Association.