Agape-justice conflicts generally require collective action because many of them, especially the more intractable and complicated ones, are at the community level. This is fortuitous because the resulting requisite group action becomes the occasion for growth in collective virtues. Collective virtues are those qualities that people exemplify qua members of the group. These actions and predispositions are central to their collective self-identity, and by extension, to their individual, personal self-understanding. Collective virtues are the building blocks for the common good and are essential for heading off collective-action problems. Agape-justice conflicts paradoxically create opportunities for community building and mutual solicitude.

Social philosophers and theologians prioritize the demands of justice whenever they conflict with agape’s claims. They do so based on the following implicit rules, namely: (1) Perfect duties take precedence over imperfect duties. (2) Subsistence test—whatever is critical for society’s existence has primacy. (3) Legal debt takes priority over moral debt. Both economic history and praxis validate the need to prioritize the claims of justice. After all, it provides critical legal institutional preconditions for the creation and protection of markets. It provides the economic guardrails to prevent anti-social preferences and transactions. It is essential to getting around collective-action problems.