[537] the level of WISDOM^a, then it's law as a preliminary answer to the experiences of mankind. But it is NOT law in the form of something unconditional. I told you already last time that Prof. Bennett^b in Union Seminary has called this the realm of the "middle axioms." The ultimate axiom is love, and love refers to the concrete situation here and now. But between the ultimate principle and the concrete situation, there are the laws which are not unconditional demands, or commands, but which are the result of human experience with the application of love TO the concrete situation, and which are formulated on this basis. These middle axioms are those about which most moral theory is going, but if they are not understood as the middle between the ultimate principle of love, and the concrete application of it, then they become the principles of all legalism---and then they become wrong. Now let's look at this in terms of concrete principles which have been brought forth

in order to describe and define this middle sphere which I call the sphere of wisdom. Take the principles, the principle of equality and of freedom. What about these principles? How can they be understood? Autonomous ethics would tell us they are the principles of justice, and if you have love without justice, then you have not even love, and you have violated the fundamental character of the moral imperative^c. So you must have a second principle: justice^d; the principle of love alone doesn't do. What do we answer to this? My answer is that justice^e, as formulated in the middle area, is the STRUCTURE of love^f, the backbone, that which makes love applicable to the concrete situation; or even profounder: that which makes it possible that we acknowledge the person of the other one as person---this is the principle of all justice, as we have seen when we spoke about Kant^g's categorical imperative. The other one is that which we meet, which we cannot overcome, which is the limit for ourselves, against which we run if we try to make him into an object, and to the degree in which we succeed, we destroy him and ourselves. This is the principle of justice.