Articles on Situation Ethics – different articles
indicated by highlighted numbers
1.
Situation Ethics
[adapted from Titus, Smith and Nolan, Living Issues in
Philosophy (9th ed., 1995), pp. 131-132.]
Joseph Fletcher
(1905-1991)
Since the 1960s, especially in the United States and Great Britain, many
philosophers and theologians have been interested in situation ethics. This outlook
has appeared in various forms and has often been confused with relativism,
especially the antinomian view. Proponents of situation ethics see it as a middle
ground between two extreme approaches: legalism/formalism (“go by the book”)
and antinomian relativism (no absolutes or rules at all).
On the one hand, absolutism in its legalistic application consists of final codes,
prefabricated rules, and regulations that permit few if any exceptions. One adheres
to absolutes (general standards) and rules that are logically consistent with the
absolutes. These absolutes and rules are derived philosophically through reason;
through divine revelation; or through consensus, tradition, and laws enacted by
human beings.
On the other hand, schools of relativism stress freedom from all norms other than
what is the practiced morality at a given time in a given place. This view is
concerned not with the universal rightness or wrongness of what is chosen, but at
most with what actually has been chosen and is practiced in a given culture. An
extreme antinomian relativism calls for no norms whatsoever.
In theory, situation ethics does have an absolute norm or standard(s); this approach
calls for the selection or acknowledgment of an absolute, but a non-legalistic, flexible
application of the standard to each individual situation. The goal is to apply the
absolute as best as possible in the particular situation rather than to utilize a law
that fit difference circumstances. This norm could be love, personal power, or any
other principle around which one could build an interpretation of morality.
Guidelines that assist in the application of the selected norm may or may not be
included in a given interpretation. For example, a certain dictator views personal
power as his moral absolute; if he takes a situational approach, he reflects on every
situation in which he finds himself and involves himself such as to acquire personal
power. He may or may not have useful guides in mind as he enters new situations.
The uproar that occurred in religious circles in the 1960s was the result of a view
interpreting Jesus as a situationist. Many Christians had understood the Old and
New Testaments legalistically as containing many clear-cut moral laws. Some
Christians now understand Christian ethics as situational, not legalistically.
However, advocates of this position respect the ethical maxims and the wisdom that
have come down from the past. As Joseph Fletcher proposed in his controversial
book Situation Ethics:
The situationist enters into every decision-making situation fully armed with
the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage, and he treats them
with respect as illuminators of his problems. Just the same he is prepared in
any situation to compromise them or set them aside in the situation if love
seems better served by doing so.*
For these Christians, the only absolute is love (agape); only love is universally good.
“Anything and everything is right or wrong, according to the situation,” says
Fletcher, because the good is the most loving, concerned act.** Love can rightly be
directed only toward a person and not toward some abstract good.
*J. Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1966), p. 26.
**Ibid., p. 124. See also H. Cox, ed., The Situation Ethics Debate
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968).
See Dr. Cherbonnier’s essay “Can There Be Morality Without Rules?” in the
Cherbonnier subsite. He elaborates on situation ethics with everyday
illustrations
2.
Situation Ethics
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This is a Christian Act-based normative ethical theory
Introduced by the American clergyman Joseph Fletcher in his book Situation Ethics: the
New Morality (1966)
Background.
Organisations are particularly reactionary and traditional, and the Church has certainly been no
exception. While things changed relatively slowly in the secular world this has often been a
strength; but in the dramatic and increasing changes of society in the last 150 years, the Christian
Church has been constantly wrong-footed.
In Britain in the 1950s, the Church of England could be seen as a self-satisfied, traditional
organisation whose teachings were rule-based.
As so often happens, the Church as an official organisation was at odds with, and oblivious to,
the radical thinking of some of its members. The ideas of Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich and
Dietrich Bonhoeffer were well known among theologians in the 1950s, but would rarely (if ever)
appear in sermons. Even the 19th Century ideas that influenced these thinkers (such as
developments in Biblical Criticism, and the writings of the Christian Existentialist Soren
Kierkegaard) were largely unmentioned by clergy and unknown by their congregations in
churches which still used the 1611 version of the Bible and the 1662 Prayer-book.
Into this cosy clerical world burst Honest to God which was published in 1963. It was written by
John Robinson, then Bishop of Woolwich. It very much caught the mood of liberation, honesty
and forward thinking that was the hall-mark of the 1960s, and it rapidly became a best-seller,
selling more copies than any religious book since Pilgrim's Progress.
Joseph Fletcher and Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher was very much at the forefront of this new mood. He was allegedly inspired by a
New York cabbie who said (of the Presidential elections) My family have always been
Republican, but there are times when you have to push your principles aside and do the right
thing. However he was more profoundly influenced by the reflections on the Christian tradition
of theologians such as Rudolph Bultmann, who wrote: “Love thy neighbour as thyself” is the
ultimate duty.
Situation Ethics is, in essence, very simple. It states that there is only one ethical rule and that is
the rule of love (agape). This view is sometimes called agapeism.
In this it seeks to tread a middle way between legalism (a total reliance upon rules) and
antinomianism (a rejection of all rules, as in Existentialism. Extreme Existentialists, such as
Sartre, reject all rules as merely external constraints.).
Fletcher is not against ethical rules, or traditional religious moral values. Indeed he thinks they
are essential as guides to behaviour: The situationist enters into every decision-making situation
fully armed with the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage, and he treats them with
respect as illuminators of his problems. But he believes they are of secondary importance to the
single over-riding moral principle of agape, and the Situation Ethicist should be prepared in any
situation to compromise them or set them aside in the situation if love seems better served by
doing so.
Fletcher’s attitude to moral rules is not unlike that of Bentham and his rules of thumb. Indeed,
Fletcher saw Situation Ethics as a teleological ethical theory, and referred to the Law of Love as
the True Principle of Utility.
It is easy to see that the Christian origin of this rejection of preconceived moral rules is the clash
reported in the gospels between Christ and the Pharisees, when Christ objected to the Pharisees'
excessive legalism, their obsession with the trivia of law, which blinded them to more pressing
concerns of social justice.
Christ announced that the greatest commandments were that we love God and our neighbour:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind”. That is
the greatest, the first commandment. The second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”
Everything in the law and the prophets hangs on these two commandments. Matthew 22.37ff).
This insight is echoed by St Paul: The whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You
shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Galatians 5.14).
Hence, argue Situation Ethicists, in Christianity love is always morally prior to every other
principle and must be the determinative factor in all moral decisions. The importance of this is
that love is a response to a real, unique individual existing at a particular point in human history,
in space and time, and as every individual is unique no corpus of moral laws can specify exactly
what that individual needs in their situation.
The Gospels are full of instances when Jesus responded to individuals out of agape, and did not
slavishly follow the requirements of the religious law (eg The Woman Taken in Adultery, John
8.3; Healing a Woman on the Sabbath, Luke 13.14ff), and this meant that seemingly similar
cases received differential treatment (eg The rich young ruler was told to sell all that you have
and distribute to the poor (Luke 13. 18ff), whereas Zacchaeus’ Half of my goods I will give to
the poor was quite acceptable in his case (Luke 19.1ff).
This attitude of Jesus’ is summed up in the saying of St Augustine of Hippo Love God and do
what you will. This sounds easy, but the law of agape is not an easy option, not is it necessarily
more lax than legalism – indeed Jesus was constantly demanding higher moral standards that
those of contemporary Jewish legalism (eg in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5)
It is important to realise that agape is one type of love, and has little to do with other concepts
that are also called “love”. Agape is the love which is the theme of I Corinthians 13 (Love is
patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful…So faith, hope and love abide, these three; but
the greatest of these is love.). Agape is selfless love, concern for all others, irrespective of who
they are or what they have done. It is not a feeling; but is more concerned with reason that with
the emotions.
Fletcher summed up Situation Ethics in six fundamental principles, and four working principles.
The Six Fundamental Principles:
1. Only one thing is intrinsically good, namely love; nothing else
2. The ruling norm of Christian decision is love; nothing else
3. Love and justice are the same….Justice is love at work in the whole community
4. Love wills the neighbour’s good, whether we like him or not [v. The Good Samaritan.
Luke 10. 25ff]
5. Only the end justifies the means; nothing else
6. Love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively. Fletcher despises what he
calls: prefabricated, pretailored morality
The Four Working Principles:
1. Pragmatism. The proposed course of action must work
2. Relativism. The Situationist avoids words like “never” and “always”
3. Positivism. Situation Ethicists make a rational choice based on their faith that God is
Love.
4. Personalism. We ought to love people and use things ... the essence of immorality is to
love things and to use people. Situation Ethics is about love working for the sake of
persons.
Advantages of Situation Ethics
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It is simple
It echoes the words and actions of Jesus
It enshrines basic Christian truth in a way secular people can understand and agree with
(John Robinson called it: The only ethic for “man come of age”)
[See the advantages of Act-based Ethical Systems]
Criticisms of Situation Ethics
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It is too vague
It is too open to personal interpretation, inclination and prejudice (the Pope called it a
subjective appeal to the concrete circumstances of actions to justify decisions in
opposition to the natural law or God’s revealed will)
It is too open to contemporary cultural interpretations
It is too time consuming
It is difficult to decide on the conflicting claims of agape for different people involved
An “organised” religion needs clear rules
It might be seen to remove God from the centre of moral values. Montgomery argues that
the only ethic that could stand above human limitations and prejudices and establish
"absolute human rights" is the one that derived from the realm of the transcendent (ie
God) and not from individual finite situations.
It makes ethics relativist. For Fletcher, even human life is relative; as well as 'white lies',
he justifies 'white' theft, fornication, killings, breakings of promises: Right and wrong
depend on the situation.
Jesus was arguably more of a Virtue Ethicist than a Situation Ethicist
Jesus did not say that the law of Love replaced other laws, but are the foundation for
them; indeed, Jesus said: Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I
did not come to abolish, but to fulfil (Matthew 5.17).
3.
Moral Relativism
What is meant by a relativist ethical system?
All relativist ethical systems assert that:
1. One thing (e.g. moral values, beauty, taste or meaning) is relative to some
particular framework or standpoint (e.g. the individual subject, a culture, an era, a
language or a conceptual scheme).
2. Any standpoint is as equally valid as the others.
So, in ethics, generally all points of view are equally valid.
Distinction between moral and cultural relativism
Cultural relativism – this is only descriptive. Thus, the claims "x is considered right in Society y
at time t" and "x is considered wrong in Society z at time t" can be seen to show cultural
relativism. The claims of cultural relativism can either be true or false.
Moral relativism – this goes beyond observations and actually makes a postulate. Thus, the claim
“what is considered right in Society x at time t IS right for that Society" comes to the conclusion
that morality itself is relative.
Relativist ethical approach – Situation Ethics
Situation ethics is a system whereby the right moral behaviour can be different for different
people according to their circumstances. It attempts to move away from a blind following of
moral rules (i.e. Catholic Church teachings) and encourages people to think for themselves using
reason and common sense. Thus it is relative and cognitivist, since it uses reason and common
sense.
Situation ethics is primarily associated with the American Joseph Fletcher, but others before him,
such as Soren Kierkegaard (19th century) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1930s) emphasised the
importance of freedom of choice. Their though was influenced by a general move in the 20th
century for people to have greater autonomy and freedom to think for themselves.
Fletcher wrote from a Christian prospective, but thought that morality was not only about
following set rules indefinitely (e.g. 10 commandments), but was also about autonomy (taking
responsibility for ones own actions). He strongly rejected legalism (following concrete laws), but
also rejected its opposite, antinomianism (where there is no morality at all and no basis to judge
actions). He attempted to find the middle ground.
Instead, he said that Christians should base morality on one singe rule: the rule of agape. I.e. in
any situation, one must ask themselves: what is the most loving thing to do in this situation?
Fletcher rejected legalism on that basis that it leads people to do the ‘right’ thing regardless of
the consequences. This he said went against Jesus’ command to show compassion. He said that
Jesus was in fact a situtionist – this he concludes from stories in the Bible showing how he
showed mercy to a woman caught in adultery instead of stoning her.
Fletcher based his ideas on the thinking of St. Augustine: “Dilige et quod, fac” – “love with care,
and then what you will, do.” Agape love is not understood to depend on emotion, but rather, it
involves doing what is best for the other person, unconditionally.
There are 4 presumptions of Situation ethics:
 Pragmatism – to be right, it is necessary that the proposed course of action should work.
The end by which the success or failure of and thought or action is to be judged is love.
 Relativism – rejects absolutes such as “never”, “always” and “absolute”. Human beings
are commanded to act lovingly, but how this is to be applied will depend on the situation.
 Positivism – recognises that love is the most important criterion of all. One interpretation
is that since “God is love”, when you show agape love to people, you become a source or
channel of God himself. Thus, you are carrying out God’s will on Earth free of choice.
 Personalism – demands that people should be put first.
There are 6 fundamental principles of Situation ethics:
5. Agape love is the only absolute good. Every thing else is relatively good.
6. Agape love is the principle taught by Jesus.
7. Justice will automatically follow from love, assuming that everyone follows the principle.
8. Love has no favourites, everyone is equally valuable.
9. Love must be a final end that people seek. It must not be a means to an end.
10. The loving thing to do depends on the situation – thus it is regarded as a relativistic
approach to morality.
Strengths of Situation ethics
(i) People are able to take responsibility for their own moral decision making.
(ii) Situation ethics provides a way for people to make decisions about issues not addressed in
the Bible. I.e. birth control, genetic engineering etc.
(iii) Situation ethics is based on the teachings of Jesus and so can be considered a Christian
ethic.
Weaknesses of Situation ethics
(i) Pope Pius XII argued that Situation ethics was wrong to appeal to individual circumstances
in an attempt to justify what clearly went against the teachings of the church. Situation
ethics asserted that the individual was more important than the teachings of church and of
the Bible.
(ii) The approach can be said to expect people to have greater insight than most of us posses.
How can you know what is the most loving thing to do? Also, no one can truly be objective in
decision making.
(iii) Situation ethics gives people too much responsibility. Most people want to be told what is
right absolutely rather than deriving a conclusion themselves because they cannot always see
what the best solution is.
(iv) If two people using the approach arrived at different conclusions, it is impossible to judge
which one is right, since there is no absolute.
(v) Humans tend to be selfish.
Proportionalism
Situation ethics provides a corrective to taking the natural law approach literally. Some Catholic
theologians have developed a middle ground between the extremes of Natural Law and Situation
ethics, called Proportionalism.
Proportionalism suggests that there are certain moral rules that can never be right to go against,
unless there is proportionate reason that would justify it.
E.g. If we start from the moral rule “do not kill”, the justification to the act would be euthanasia.
In some cases, it is the most loving thing to end the life of a person to stop their suffering.
4.
Situational Ethics: Fletcher's Model
Situational Ethics, according to Fletcher's model, states that decision-making should be
based upon the circumstances of a particular situation, and not upon fixed Law. The
only absolute is Love. Love should be the motive behind every decision. As long as
Love is your intention, the end justifies the means. Justice is not in the letter of the Law,
it is in the distribution of Love. Fletcher founded his model upon a statement found in
the New Testament of the Bible that reads, "God is Love" (I John 4:8).
5.
A Critical Look at Situation Ethics
by Wayne Jackson
Christian Courier: Feature
Monday, March 1, 1999
How do you determine what is right and wrong?
Basically, there are three schools of thought regarding human moral responsibility. First, there is
nihilism. Nihilism argues that there is no God, hence anything one wishes to do is permitted.
There are no rules – absolutely none – for human conduct; according to this ideology, every
person is a law unto himself.
Second, there is relativism. Relativism contends that all conduct is relative to the circumstance.
Thus, each individual must decide what is moral or immoral in a given situation. Ultimately,
every man is his own judge of the matter.
Third, there is absolutism. This concept affirms that there is an absolute, objective standard of
right and wrong (grounded in the holy nature of God Himself), and this code of moral conduct is
set forth in the Bible – reaching its zenith in the New Testament. Elsewhere we have discussed
these ideas in greater detail (Jackson 153-160). For the present, we will address “relativism,” or,
as it is more commonly known, “situation ethics.”
There are two fundamental categories of situation ethicists. There are atheistic situationists –
those who totally reject the Scriptures as having any bearing on morality. Then, in addition, there
are religious situationists – including those who allege that the Bible actually endorses this code
of action.
Atheistic Situationism
The former category finds expression in the following statement found in Humanist Manifestos I
& II: “[W]e affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is
autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction” (p. 17).
The foregoing declaration is wholly void of reason. If man is “autonomous,” i.e., he is a selfgoverning creature, there could never be a “situation” in which he could do wrong! It is an
exercise in futility to attempt to construct any sort of ethical system apart from the concept that
man has a soul that ultimately will be accountable to God in eternity; that Heaven has revealed
that concept, and regulated human activity, through the Scriptures.
The French philosopher Pascal wrote: “It is certain that the mortality or immortality of the soul
must make an entire difference to morality. And yet philosophers have constructed their ethics
independently of this: they discuss to pass an hour” (p. 79).
In his Diary of a Writer, the Russian novelist Dostoevsky observed: “Neither a man nor a nation
can live without a ‘higher idea,’ and there is only one such idea on earth, that of an immortal
human soul; all the other ‘higher ideas’ by which men live follow from that...” (Berdyaev, p.
105).
No skeptic can consistently argue the case for situational morality.
Religious Situationism
Theological situationism has been popularly argued by Joseph Fletcher. Fletcher claims that
situation ethics is a balance between “antinomianism” (no law) and “legalism” (bound by law).
Antinomianism and legalism represent the same basic concepts referred to above as nihilism and
absolutism. For Fletcher, “love” is the sole factor in making moral judgments (p. 26).
But Fletcher’s theory is fraught with insuperable logical difficulties.
First, it is self-contradictory. This view contends that there are no rules except the rule to love.
But what if, in a certain situation, one decides that love is not the appropriate course of action?
Again, according to the situationist, there are no absolutes – except that one absolutely must love
in all situations! But what is the standard by which this mandate is defended?
Second, the situationist’s “love” is purely subjective; he decides what love is in any given
context. One writer notes that Fletcher has defined “love” in no less than a dozen ways in his
book, Situation Ethics (Thompson, p. 82). Situation ethics removes God from the throne as the
moral sovereign of the universe, and substitutes man in his place. Situationism completely
ignores the biblical view that mere mortals are void of sufficient wisdom to guide their earthly
activity (cf. Jer. 10:23).
Third, this ideology assumes that “love” is some sort of ambiguous, no-rule essence that is a
cure-all for moral problems. That is like suggesting that two football teams play a game in which
there will be no rules except “fairness.” But, fairness according to whose judgment? The
Cowboys? The Forty-niners? The referees? The spectators? The sports writers? (cf. Lutzer, p.
33). This line of argumentation is utter nonsense. Actually, when boiled down, situationism is
not substantially different from nihilism, for, as Joseph Fletcher confesses: “For the situationist
there are no rules – none at all” (p. 55).
Finally, situationism assumes a sort of infallible omniscience that is able to always precisely
predict what the most “loving” course of action is. For instance, the theory contends that lying,
adultery, murder, etc., could be “moral” if done within the context of love. Yet who is able to
foretell the consequences of such acts, and so determine, in advance, what is the “loving” thing
to do? Consider the following scenario.
A young woman, jilted by her lover, is in a state of great depression. A married man, with whom
she works, decides to have “an affair” with her in order to comfort her. Some, like Fletcher,
would argue that what he did might well have been a noble deed, for the man acted out of
concern for his friend. What a perverted viewpoint! Here is the rest of the story. The man’s wife
learned of his adulterous adventure, could not cope with the trauma, and eventually committed
suicide. One of his sons, disillusioned by the immorality of his father and the death of his
mother, began a life of crime, and finally was imprisoned for murder. Another son became a
drunkard and was killed in an automobile accident that also claimed the lives of a mother and her
two children. Now, who will contend that that initial act of infidelity was the “loving” thing to
do?
Here is another matter for reflection. During the first century, thousands of Christians were
martyred for their faith. If the rule of situation ethics is valid, why could not those saints have
lied, “denying the Lord who bought them,” and thus have rationalized that circumstance by
arguing that the preservation of their lives would grant them more time in which to proclaim the
gospel? If this dogma is true, the martyrs died in vain!
Is situation ethics biblical?
There are those who actually claim that the Bible endorses the concept of situation ethics. Some,
for instance, cite the case of the Canaanite harlot, Rahab. She lied in order to save the Israelite
spies; and yet, she is commended in the New Testament record (Heb. 11:31; Jas. 2:25). This,
they allow, is a clear argument in defense of situation ethics.
Moreover, it is claimed that even Christ sanctioned the principle of situationism when he
appealed to the circumstance of David and his men eating the showbread, normally reserved for
priests only, in an emergency situation (Mt. 12:1ff). Actually, neither of these cases provides the
coveted justification for the practice of situation ethics.
The case of Rahab does not bestow divine sanction upon the practice of situation ethics. First,
Rahab’s lie is never condoned in the Scriptures. The fact that the episode is recorded in the Bible
does not mean that it is approved. All lying is condemned (Rev. 21:8). The narrative regarding
Rahab merely provides an example of where God honored a woman due to her obedient faith –
in spite of her character flaw. This woman was a harlot in a pagan environment, but she had
developed a budding faith in Jehovah (see Jos. 2:9ff). Accordingly, she received the Israelite
spies with peace (Heb. 11:31). Her motive was right, even though her method was wrong. There
is not a word in the Scriptures that endorses the false story she told in concealing the spies, and it
is utter desperation that grasps at this narrative in an attempt to justify situation ethics.
The record in Matthew 12 is very interesting. On a certain Sabbath day the Lord and his disciples
were traveling through a grain field. The disciples, being hungry, began to pluck grain and to eat.
Certain Pharisees saw this, and charged these men with breaking the sabbath regulation within
the Mosaic law. The fact is, the disciples had violated only the uninspired traditions of the
Jewish elders; they had not transgressed the law of Moses (see Edersheim, p. 56). In order to
silence their baseless objection, Christ employed an ad hominem argument (a procedure whereby
an opponent’s inconsistency is exposed by an appeal to his own position).
Jesus cited the case of David (1 Sam. 21:6), who along with his men, once ate of the temple
showbread, which “was not lawful for him to eat” (Mt. 12:4). The essence of the Lord’s
argument is this: “You gentlemen revere David as a great king and Hebrew hero. David once
clearly broke the law by an illegal consumption of food. Yet, you never condemn him! On the
other hand, my disciples have violated only your human traditions, and yet you charge them with
sin. How very inconsistent you are!” This incident contains not a vestige of support for situation
ethics. Jesus plainly said that what David did was “not lawful.” Those who attempt to employ
this narrative in defense of situationism simply have missed the force of the Master’s argument
(cf. McGarvey, p. 104).
Situation ethics is a popular belief in a world bent on departure from God. But it does not have
the sanction of the Holy Scriptures, and, if persistently pursued, will ultimately result in societal
chaos.