At the heart of Christian ethics is the biblical commandment to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. But what is the meaning of love? Scholars have wrestled with this question since the recording of the Christian gospels, and in recent decades teachers and students of Christian ethics have engaged in vigorous debates about appropriate interpretations and implications of this critical norm.

In Love and Christian Ethics, nearly two dozen leading experts analyze and assess the meaning of love from a wide range of perspectives. Chapters are organized into three areas: influential sources and exponents of Western Christian thought about the ethical significance of love, perennial theoretical questions attending that consideration, and the implications of Christian love for important social realities. Contributors bring a richness of thought and experience to deliver unprecedentedly broad and rigorous analysis of this central tenet of Christian ethics and faith. William Werpehowski provides an afterword on future trajectories for this research. Love and Christian Ethics is sure to become a benchmark resource in the field.

Introduction: A Conjunctive Approach to Christian LoveFrederick V. Simmons Part I: Tradition 1. Interpreting the Love Commands in Social Context: Deuteronomy and Jesus's Sermon on the MountThomas W. Ogletree2. Conceptions of Love, Greek and ChristianTerence Irwin3. "Repellent Text": The Transition from Wisdom to Ethics in Augustine's Confessions 10Oliver O'Donovan4. The Desire for Happiness and the Virtues of the Will: Resolving a Paradox in Aquinas's ThoughtJean Porter5. Kant on Practical and Pathological LoveJohn Hare6. Kierkegaard and Kant on the "Duty to Love"M. Jamie Ferreira Part II: Theory 7. The Problematic Love for God: "Love the Lord, All You Saints" (Psalm 31:23)Edward Collins Vacek8. Empathy, Compassion, and Love of NeighborJohn P. Reeder Jr.9. Forgiveness in the Service of Love Margaret A. Farley10. Agape as Self-Sacrifice: The Internalist ViewEdmund N. Santurri11. Eudaimonism and Christian LoveFrederick V. Simmons12. Christian Love as Friendship: Engaging the Thomistic TraditionStephen J. Pope13. Evolution, Agape, and the Image of God: A Reply to Various Naturalists Timothy P. Jackson Part III: Society 14. Love, Justice, and Law: The Strange Case of Watts v. WattsM. Cathleen Kaveny15. Global Health Justice: Love as Transformative Political ActionLisa Sowle Cahill16. Love in the Vocation of Christian Sexual Ethics: A Theologico-Political MeditationMark D. Jordan17. Meditations on Love and ViolenceEmilie M. Townes18. Loving Nature: Christian Environmental EthicsHolmes Rolston III19. The Double Love Command and the Ethics of Religious PluarlismEric Gregory20. Neighbor Love in the Jewish TraditionRonald M. Green21. Neighbor Love in Muslim Discourse John Kelsay Afterword William Werpehowski

Frederick V. Simmons is the J. Houston Witherspoon Fellow in Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Center of Theological Inquiry. Previously an assistant professor of ethics at Yale Divinity School, he has also taught at Amherst College, La Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and La Universidad Politécnica Salesiana. Brian C. Sorrells has taught courses on Christian ethics, world religions, human rights, biomedical ethics, and sexual ethics at Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School, Brown University, and Amherst College.