Social Justice as a Spiritual Revolution: An analysis of the relation between love, justice, and divinity.
This paper argues for divine command ethics, by first reviewing arguments for moral and ethical responses to social inequality from Pope Pius XI (1931) and Rienhold Niebuhr (1932). Taking up Niebuhr's argument, that morality must appeal to an irrational source in order to be distinct from social politics, the divinity of this relation is foregrounded as the source for moral and ethical change. This paper considers traditional conceptions of divine command and re-introduces the Ideal of love as the basis for divinity, not obedience. Morality is incompatible with social ethics, and as such, must appeal to a difference conscience. The religious imagination is described as having the potential for a revolution that could realize social change. 20 pgs. Bibliography lists 4 sources.