We plead with Professor Fletcher to cease the irresponsible practice of sticking his thumb into sinful human situations, pulling out a plum of moral self-vindication, and saying, “What a good boy am I.”
The new morality, introduced by Joseph Fletcher as “Situation Ethics,” can be summarized by six propositions: (1) Only one thing is intrinsically good, namely, love: nothing else, (2) The ultimate norm of Christian decisions is love: nothing else. (3) Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, (4) Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not, (5) Only the end justifies the means: nothing else, and (6) Decisions ought to be made situationally, not prescriptively.
Leaving aside fascinating textual questions, such as the presence of quotation marks around “thing” in proposition one as originally sct out in 1966, and their disappearance in the 1967 restatement (a manifestation of what philosopher W. H. Dray calls “hardening of the categories”? a Freudian slip suggesting that Fletcher himself is not clear on what love is? ), we should accompany these propositions with a succinct statement of their implications (Fletcher, “Why ‘New’?”, Religion in Life, Spring, 1966):
In some situations unmarried love could be infinitely more moral than married unlove, as when the parties to a marriage exercise their legal rights of sexual access without the tenderness and concern which alone validate sexual lovemaking. Lying could be more Christian than telling the truth, sin(.’e thc only “virtue” in telling the truth is telling it in love. Stealing could be better than respecting private propcrty if, as in eminent domain, the private ownership denies the greatest love of the greatest number. No action is good or right of itself. It depends on whether it hurts or helps people, whether it serves love’s purpose (understanding love to be concern for persons) in the situation.
The new morality, in short, subordinates principles to circumstances, the general to the particular, and forces the “natural” and the “scriptural” to give way to the personal and the actual.
Criticism Easy and Difficult – The evaluation of Fletcherian situationalism might seem, at first glance, a facile operation. The ideology received its direct statement but five or six years ago, has (like its dystheologieal counterparts, the Pike-Robinson-Vidler “radical theology,” and the death-of-God movement) had virtually no serious impact outside England and America, and even in the English-speaking world has been ignored by professional philosophers (witness the absence of reviews or critical appraisals of the subject in the journals devoted to philosophical ethics). Discussion of situation morality has been limited to American and British theological circles, largely to those of liberal and neo-orthodox orientation at that; and the critic’s problems are lessened even more by the collection of a large number of the ephemeral theological reviews in parasitic—or symbiotic?—compendia that live off the original book (The Situation Ethics Debate; Storm over Ethics [1967]).
At the same time, criticism of the Fletcherian viewpoint—especially in dialogal context—is almost impossibly difficult, not merely in practice but also in principle. Here I do not refer primarily to what Custafson has accurately termed Professor Fletcher’s bent toward “verbal pyrotechnics”—the quality that a theological reporter of his dialog with molecular biologist French Anderson at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., described as having manifested itself in “nearly two hours of biting sarcasm” (Christianity Today, April 10, 1970). This roadblock could certainly be overcome by men of good will. Far more significant is the built-in problem of debating any one who holds that “only the end justifies the means: nothing else” (proposition five, it will be recalled). Here we And ourselves squarely in the philosophical quagmire inherent in situationalism—a quagmire in which the critic of the new morality finds himself inevitably stuck as soon as he offers battle.
Ends, Means, and Truth-Telling – The unsurmountable difficulty is simply this: there is no way, short of Sodium Pentothal, of knowing when the situationist is actually endeavoring to set forth genuine facts and true opinions, and when he is lying like a trooper. Why? Because deception is allowed on principle by the new morality, as long as the ultimate aim is love. Consider: if Professor Fletcher acts consistently with his premises, and if he should consider it an act of true love toward me or toward the audience (i.e., if he should consider it to om good as his neighbors principle four) to convince us of the superiority of situation ethics, he can to this end introduce any degree of factual misinformation, rhetorical pettifogging, or direct prevarication into the discussion. On the other hand, if he should solemnly promise us that under all circumstances in the present dialog he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he would suddenly become a deontological contradictor of his own propositions (for the neighbor’s good in love would no longer justify deviations from truth).
But wait! Should be assure us, by swearing on his mother’s grave, etc., that he will tell us the truth no matter what, can we even then relax our vigilance? After all, that very assurance may well be a situationally justified prevarication for the sake of “doing us good in love” by convincing us of the merits of situlationalism. This brings us necessarily to a corollary of the ancient logical conundrum, treated at length by Bertrand Russell and others: “If a Cretan tells you that all Cretans are liars, can you believe him?” Our restatement goes: “If a situation ethicist, holding to the proposition that the end justifies the means in love, tells you that he is not lying, can you believe him?”
This agonizing problem, it must be emphasized, is not of the theoretical, academic variety; it cuts to the very heart of practical existence. Beginning with the immediate, it leaves us entirely incapable of ever being sure that Professor Fletcher means what he says.
Now consider what would be involved if such situationalism became normative in principle in our society (I say “in principle,” for there are already sobering indicators of its widespread employment in practice). The very legal structures essential for the maintenance of organized community life would become inoperable, for no man’s testimony would necessarily be worth listening to. This is why even Rousseau suddenly became intensely religious in the Contrat Social when he stated (IV.8) that citizenship in his ideal state would be granted only to those who believed in God and a judgment after death; having the fortune to live prior to the onset of the new morality, Rousseau felt that belief in God would insure absolute moral standards and meaningful oath-taking in the courts. And since mutual trust is the basis not only of institutions of justice but also of economic life (money itself is little more than a symbol of mutual confidence, as every inflation and depression illustrate), community relationships, and all other societal phenomena, the adoption of the Fletcherian ethic would let loose on society in general the same dragon of chaos that is conjured up on a limited scale in a debate like this with one whose principles do not compel him to truth-telling. Paul Ramsey of Princeton has driven this point home by illustrations from the sphere of personal obligation (“The Biblical Norm of Righteousness,” Interpretation, October, 1970):
If a person genuinely means to attach an exception-making criterion to his promises or to his marriage vow, if he means to live by a rule of practice which states that the marriage covenant holds, that promises should be kept except when by a direct appeal to what Christian love requires it would be better not to keep them, he had better say so, since the one he promises or his marriage partner (unless they are Fletcherites who have been briefed) will not understand it that way! If you promise a dying friend, no one else knowing, to take care of his children, why should you do so if two other children come along who are more intelligent and whose care and nurture by you would do more good? If a person means to get married for better, in health and prosperity, and has some reservation about the worse, in sickness, poverty, and adversity he had better say so, since one’s partner will not understand it that way—unless he or she is a latter-day consequentialist whose marriage was in the first place a bargain founded upon a calculus of doing the most good on the whole. Thus, there are such things as fairness and justice, promises made, and marriage covenants established, concerning which one should do more than ask, which unique situational decision or particular action would exhibit the most love?
Not a single aspect of human society -from regular garbage collection and public library book-borrowing through friendship and marriage to equal protection under the law and the search for truth in institutions of higher learning—could survive the general onset of situation ethics.
Love as Panacea – But, it will immediately be objected, such negative possibilities are surely excluded by the fact that in Fletcherian morality love constitutes the “only intrinsic good” and “ultimate norm.” In 1984, as the author expressly declares, the end to be sought by any effective means is power; love could hardly produce a comparable cacatopia.
Here the critic of the new morality must exercise utmost care, particularly in circles where “make love, not war” stickers have proliferated. Not to hold love as the solution to anything and everything is often the equivalent in the 19705 of the denegration of motherhood and the flag in the 1870s.
Let me suggest, however, that “love,” the keystone of Professor Fletcher’s situationalism, functions as a prime example of what Richard Weaver, in his work, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953). calls “charismatic terms”; “These terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently of referential connections . . . . Their meaning seems inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds out of a popular will that they shall mean something.”
Let me suggest, however, that “love,” the keystone of Professor Fletcher’s situationalism, functions as a prime example of what Richard Weaver, in his work, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953), calls “charismatic terms”; “These terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently of referential connections . . . Their meaning seems inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds out of a popular will that they shall mean something.”
At first glance, Professor Fletcher seems to give love a degree of specific content. He makes much of the example of Jesus and seems at times to define love, much as Charles M. Sheldon did in his romanticmoralistic novel, In His Steps, or, What Would Jesus Do?, as the equivalent of Jesus’ teaching and practice. But it is manifestly clear that Professor Fletcher’s understanding of love and morality does not derive from the Bible in general or from Jesus’ ministry in particular. Professor Fletcher never tires of condemning alleged “biblical legalism,” and in spite of the extensive work done by Custaf Wingren and others in refuting the anti-law extremism of Barthian and Lundensian theology (e.g., the negative attitude toward the nomos motif in Nygren’s Agape and Eros), Fletcher remains virtually a mid-twentieth century Marcionitc. Moreover, his aeceptance of radical techniques of New Testament criticism removes any real possibility of his identifying the ethic of Jesus; were he to take the entire New Testament picture seriously, he would find -as any number of his critics have shown—that the New Testament, no less than the Old, insists on absolute moral standards.
British theologian Ernest F. Kevan (author of the significantly titled work, The Grace of Law) well summarized this point in his Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture of July 4, 1955: “There is no hint anywhere in the New Testament that the Law has lost its validity in the slightest degree, nor is there any suggestion of its repeal. On the contrary, the New Testament teaches unambiguously that the Ten Commandments are still binding upon all men.” To re-introduce an earlier concrete example, it is difficult to believe that the Jesus who called himself “the Truth,” condemned his opponents for lying, and connected prevarication with the work of the devil himself (“you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires; . . . when he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” –John 8:44), is the source of the Fletcherian assertion: “Lying could be more Christian than telling the truth, since the only ‘virtue’ in telling the truth is telling it in love.”
Alternatively, Professor Fletcher seems to give love content by equating love and justice (“love and justice are the same”—proposition three), but we quickly see that instead of allowing justice to inform love (as Socrates strove to do in Plato’s Republic) , justice is absorbed into the ambiguities of love (“justice is love distributed”). This identification of justice with love is in fact a colossal example of what contemporary philosophy terms the “category mistake”—the confusion of categories. Gilbert Ryle’s example, in The Concept of Mind, of the confusion of a legal entity (Oxford University) with its concrete component colleges ( American visitor: “I’ve seen all your colleges, yes, but where is the university?) can be directly paralleled with Fletcher’s belief that justice and love are identical. Even the hymn writer Bonar (and hymn writers are not particularly known for philosophical astuteness) understood this distinction, long before the onset of situationism:
Will they tell us what is to regulate service, if not law? Love, they say. This is a pure fallacy. Love is not a rule, but a motive. Love does not tell me what to do, it tells me how to do it . . . Love without law to guide its impulses would be the parent of will-worship and confusion, as surely as terror and self-righteousness, unless upon the supposition of an inward miraculous illumination, as an equivalent for law.
Finally, Professor Fletcher offers what seems to be the most specific description of love his situationism is capable of providing: “Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not” (proposition four). Here we suddenly discover that the Fletcherian “act-agapeism” reduces to a utilitarian ethic of the Bentham-Mill variety, with a heavy dose of theological charisma added to improve the flavor. But the bete noire that has plagued utilitarianism now leaps upon situationalism to devour it, and the theological flavoring only makes the dish more appetizing. For neither utilitarianism nor the new morality is capable of satisfactorily answering the essential questions: “which neighbor’s good?” and “just what constitutes my neighbor’s good?” Since these questions have to be answered, either explicitly or implicitly, in every ethical action, one finds the situationist continually importing answers to them into his moral decisions by way of unrecognized and unjustified value judgments. The alleged demon of explicit code ethics is exorcised by the new morality, only to return with seven of his friends—the devils of implicit, “self-evident” principles—and the last state of morality is considerably worse than the first. Let us note some specific examples.
The same implicit introduction of value judgments as to the true neighbor and what is truly good for him can be seen in Fletcher’s treatment of the ethics of abortion. Paul Ramsey observes that “even in Situation Ethics one comes upon at least one general rule of behavior, or general principle of ethics, besides love itself: . . . ‘No unwanted or unintended baby should ever be born’” (Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, 1967, p. 168). Clearly there is nothing inherent in the idea of love that excludes babies from the sphere of “neighbor” (one ought rather to argue the contrary from Jesus’ declaration that “of such is the kingdom of heaven”!); and it is fairly evident that Professor Fletcher has not checked with the babies in question to obtain their views on the subject. The principle that the unborn child is of less “neighbor value” than adult society is a gratuitous importation of value (dysvalue?) into a situation where love most certainly does not have all the answers. Love, as Bonar reminded us, requires principles to “guide its impulses”; either the principles will be explicit and justifiable, or they will be hidden and perhaps terrifying: like Caiaphas’ exclusion of Christ from the sphere of neighbor love, or the abortionist’s rejection of the unborn child.
A Radical Proposal: Morals not Mores – Ours is a time of staggering ethical crisis. Issues such as abortion and the rights of racial and minority groups arc being faced by all segments of the population for perhaps the first time in our entire national history. A new consciousness of the need for soundly-based ethical principles has arisen. Ironically, however, at this very time of need, Christian theology appears to be offering little more than what Professor Tom Driver has called the “free-floating ideal” of new morality (“Love Needs Law,” Religion in Life, Spring, 1966). The result has been the adoption of arbitrary absolutes by a revolutionary generation which recognizes its imperative need for permanent ideals, but which sees no way to justify them. Sidney Hook has observed that “‘natural law’ may be out but “absolute human rights’ are in” (Kiefer and Munitz eds., Ethics and Social Justice 1970, p. 76). Unfortunately, arbitrary absolutes are a most dangerous commodity, for the love of one moment can become the hate of the next.
What is required above all is a proper justification of “absolute human rights,” but where can this be found? If one follows the course of twentieth century philosophical ethics, one is led to a very sobering conclusion—the conclusion reached by Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Ethics is transcendental” (6.421). That is to say, all human attempts to create value are necessarily conditioned by the human predicament and reflect the limitations and prejudices from which they arise. The only ethic that could, even in principle, stand above such societal limits and establish “absolute human rights” would be an ethic that derived, not from finite situations, but from the realm of the transcendent.
This is precisely the claim of the historic Christian faith: that biblical revelation constitutes a transcendent word from God establishing ethical values once for all. The superiority of such a revelatory ethic over contemporary situationalism can be seen in at least four areas: (1) Love is expressly defined in terms of God’s nature, as revealed in Scripture, and is justified in terms of His very being. Thus love is not allowed to dissipate like a Homeric wraith through its confusion with utilitarian vagaries. (2) Absolute moral principles are explicitly set forth; these inform love and guide its exercise. Standards of truth and justice—such as the absolute equality of the races (Gal. 3:28)—are placed above the shifting sands of situational change and are guaranteed against societal and ideological pressures. (3) A final judgment on evil is assured. Thus no man ultimately “gets away” with evil, and moral struggle in history becomes something far different from “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Situations are not only judged by absolute principle in this life; they will be so judged in the next. (4) A remedy is provided for the root problem in the human ethical dilemma: man’s selfishness. Biblical revelation offers to all those who are willing to face their self-centeredness and seek Christ’s healing the gift of “new creaturehood” (II Cor. 5:17) and the living presence of God the Holy Spirit in them to conform them to the image of Christ’s holiness (II Cor. 3:18). Only a revolutionary change in man can produce a revolution in social morality; it is the great strength of biblical ethics that it offers just such a change for the asking.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the new morality is thrown into sharp relief at this point: though purportedly a theological ethic, situationism has little appreciation of the central theological verities. “Some critics,” writes Professor Fletcher in his own defense (The Situation Ethics Debate, ed. Cox, p. 256), “have been shrewd enough to recognize that situationism is, by traditional standards, a little ‘weak’ on the side of guilt, ‘sin,’ repentance, and forgiveness.” To Christian psychologist Wayne Oates, Fletcher said: “I really do not think you have said anything when you say that the Holy Spirit is at work in human decision. On this I am an agnostic.” Commented Oates: “He says he is agnostic as to the Holy Spirit. He says that love is the Holy Spirit. ]n fact, one wonders if his doctrine of God is not either Unitarian or binitarian” (“The New Morality; A Psychological and Theological Critique,” Review and Expositor, Summer, 1967). It is just such theological weakness that keeps Professor Fletcher from seeing the true significance of the ambiguous ethical situations he continually cites in opposing the absolute ethics of biblical revelation.
This, we believe, is the Fletcher tragedy; ethics has become a device for self-justification through the very sinful human situations that ought to lead selfish humans to the one source of true forgiveness and life. We plead with Professor Fletcher, in an age crying out for unambiguous ethical principles as the only foundation of human dignity, to cease the irresponsible practice of sticking his thumb into sinful human situations, pulling out the plum of moral self-vindication, and saying, “What a good boy am I.” This theological, philosophical, and social immaturity cannot be tolerated; the issues are too grave and the time to solve them too limited. Rather, may we all allow the absolute moral demands of a holy God—those expressions of His very will which stand above the flux of situational change—to drive us to the Cross, where (thank heaven!) ethical renewal is still possible.
Dr. Montgomery is professor of church history at the Trinity Evangelical School, Deerfield, Illinois, and director of its European Program at the Faculte de Theologie Protestante de I‘Universite de Strasbourg. He is the author of fifteen books, is contributing editor to three periodicals and has written for thirty-five magazines. This presentation was made at San Diego State College in dialog with Joseph Fletcher, professor of Medical Ethics at the Medical School, University of Virginia. The debate sponsored by the Cultural Arts Board of Sand Diego State. Dr. Jack McClurg, Associate Professor of Philosophy, served as moderator.
The new morality, introduced by Joseph Fletcher as “Situation Ethics,” can be summarized by six propositions: (1) Only one thing is intrinsically good, namely, love: nothing else, (2) The ultimate norm of Christian decisions is love: nothing else. (3) Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, (4) Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not, (5) Only the end justifies the means: nothing else, and (6) Decisions ought to be made situationally, not prescriptively.
Leaving aside fascinating textual questions, such as the presence of quotation marks around “thing” in proposition one as originally sct out in 1966, and their disappearance in the 1967 restatement (a manifestation of what philosopher W. H. Dray calls “hardening of the categories”? a Freudian slip suggesting that Fletcher himself is not clear on what love is? ), we should accompany these propositions with a succinct statement of their implications (Fletcher, “Why ‘New’?”, Religion in Life, Spring, 1966):
In some situations unmarried love could be infinitely more moral than married unlove, as when the parties to a marriage exercise their legal rights of sexual access without the tenderness and concern which alone validate sexual lovemaking. Lying could be more Christian than telling the truth, sin(.’e thc only “virtue” in telling the truth is telling it in love. Stealing could be better than respecting private propcrty if, as in eminent domain, the private ownership denies the greatest love of the greatest number. No action is good or right of itself. It depends on whether it hurts or helps people, whether it serves love’s purpose (understanding love to be concern for persons) in the situation.
The new morality, in short, subordinates principles to circumstances, the general to the particular, and forces the “natural” and the “scriptural” to give way to the personal and the actual.
Criticism Easy and Difficult – The evaluation of Fletcherian situationalism might seem, at first glance, a facile operation. The ideology received its direct statement but five or six years ago, has (like its dystheologieal counterparts, the Pike-Robinson-Vidler “radical theology,” and the death-of-God movement) had virtually no serious impact outside England and America, and even in the English-speaking world has been ignored by professional philosophers (witness the absence of reviews or critical appraisals of the subject in the journals devoted to philosophical ethics). Discussion of situation morality has been limited to American and British theological circles, largely to those of liberal and neo-orthodox orientation at that; and the critic’s problems are lessened even more by the collection of a large number of the ephemeral theological reviews in parasitic—or symbiotic?—compendia that live off the original book (The Situation Ethics Debate; Storm over Ethics [1967]).
At the same time, criticism of the Fletcherian viewpoint—especially in dialogal context—is almost impossibly difficult, not merely in practice but also in principle. Here I do not refer primarily to what Custafson has accurately termed Professor Fletcher’s bent toward “verbal pyrotechnics”—the quality that a theological reporter of his dialog with molecular biologist French Anderson at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., described as having manifested itself in “nearly two hours of biting sarcasm” (Christianity Today, April 10, 1970). This roadblock could certainly be overcome by men of good will. Far more significant is the built-in problem of debating any one who holds that “only the end justifies the means: nothing else” (proposition five, it will be recalled). Here we And ourselves squarely in the philosophical quagmire inherent in situationalism—a quagmire in which the critic of the new morality finds himself inevitably stuck as soon as he offers battle.
Ends, Means, and Truth-Telling – The unsurmountable difficulty is simply this: there is no way, short of Sodium Pentothal, of knowing when the situationist is actually endeavoring to set forth genuine facts and true opinions, and when he is lying like a trooper. Why? Because deception is allowed on principle by the new morality, as long as the ultimate aim is love. Consider: if Professor Fletcher acts consistently with his premises, and if he should consider it an act of true love toward me or toward the audience (i.e., if he should consider it to om good as his neighbors principle four) to convince us of the superiority of situation ethics, he can to this end introduce any degree of factual misinformation, rhetorical pettifogging, or direct prevarication into the discussion. On the other hand, if he should solemnly promise us that under all circumstances in the present dialog he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he would suddenly become a deontological contradictor of his own propositions (for the neighbor’s good in love would no longer justify deviations from truth).
But wait! Should be assure us, by swearing on his mother’s grave, etc., that he will tell us the truth no matter what, can we even then relax our vigilance? After all, that very assurance may well be a situationally justified prevarication for the sake of “doing us good in love” by convincing us of the merits of situlationalism. This brings us necessarily to a corollary of the ancient logical conundrum, treated at length by Bertrand Russell and others: “If a Cretan tells you that all Cretans are liars, can you believe him?” Our restatement goes: “If a situation ethicist, holding to the proposition that the end justifies the means in love, tells you that he is not lying, can you believe him?”
This agonizing problem, it must be emphasized, is not of the theoretical, academic variety; it cuts to the very heart of practical existence. Beginning with the immediate, it leaves us entirely incapable of ever being sure that Professor Fletcher means what he says.
Now consider what would be involved if such situationalism became normative in principle in our society (I say “in principle,” for there are already sobering indicators of its widespread employment in practice). The very legal structures essential for the maintenance of organized community life would become inoperable, for no man’s testimony would necessarily be worth listening to. This is why even Rousseau suddenly became intensely religious in the Contrat Social when he stated (IV.8) that citizenship in his ideal state would be granted only to those who believed in God and a judgment after death; having the fortune to live prior to the onset of the new morality, Rousseau felt that belief in God would insure absolute moral standards and meaningful oath-taking in the courts. And since mutual trust is the basis not only of institutions of justice but also of economic life (money itself is little more than a symbol of mutual confidence, as every inflation and depression illustrate), community relationships, and all other societal phenomena, the adoption of the Fletcherian ethic would let loose on society in general the same dragon of chaos that is conjured up on a limited scale in a debate like this with one whose principles do not compel him to truth-telling. Paul Ramsey of Princeton has driven this point home by illustrations from the sphere of personal obligation (“The Biblical Norm of Righteousness,” Interpretation, October, 1970):
If a person genuinely means to attach an exception-making criterion to his promises or to his marriage vow, if he means to live by a rule of practice which states that the marriage covenant holds, that promises should be kept except when by a direct appeal to what Christian love requires it would be better not to keep them, he had better say so, since the one he promises or his marriage partner (unless they are Fletcherites who have been briefed) will not understand it that way! If you promise a dying friend, no one else knowing, to take care of his children, why should you do so if two other children come along who are more intelligent and whose care and nurture by you would do more good? If a person means to get married for better, in health and prosperity, and has some reservation about the worse, in sickness, poverty, and adversity he had better say so, since one’s partner will not understand it that way—unless he or she is a latter-day consequentialist whose marriage was in the first place a bargain founded upon a calculus of doing the most good on the whole. Thus, there are such things as fairness and justice, promises made, and marriage covenants established, concerning which one should do more than ask, which unique situational decision or particular action would exhibit the most love?
Not a single aspect of human society -from regular garbage collection and public library book-borrowing through friendship and marriage to equal protection under the law and the search for truth in institutions of higher learning—could survive the general onset of situation ethics.
Love as Panacea – But, it will immediately be objected, such negative possibilities are surely excluded by the fact that in Fletcherian morality love constitutes the “only intrinsic good” and “ultimate norm.” In 1984, as the author expressly declares, the end to be sought by any effective means is power; love could hardly produce a comparable cacatopia.
Here the critic of the new morality must exercise utmost care, particularly in circles where “make love, not war” stickers have proliferated. Not to hold love as the solution to anything and everything is often the equivalent in the 19705 of the denegration of motherhood and the flag in the 1870s.
Let me suggest, however, that “love,” the keystone of Professor Fletcher’s situationalism, functions as a prime example of what Richard Weaver, in his work, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953). calls “charismatic terms”; “These terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently of referential connections . . . . Their meaning seems inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds out of a popular will that they shall mean something.”
Let me suggest, however, that “love,” the keystone of Professor Fletcher’s situationalism, functions as a prime example of what Richard Weaver, in his work, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953), calls “charismatic terms”; “These terms seem to have broken loose somehow and to operate independently of referential connections . . . Their meaning seems inexplicable unless we accept the hypothesis that their content proceeds out of a popular will that they shall mean something.”
At first glance, Professor Fletcher seems to give love a degree of specific content. He makes much of the example of Jesus and seems at times to define love, much as Charles M. Sheldon did in his romanticmoralistic novel, In His Steps, or, What Would Jesus Do?, as the equivalent of Jesus’ teaching and practice. But it is manifestly clear that Professor Fletcher’s understanding of love and morality does not derive from the Bible in general or from Jesus’ ministry in particular. Professor Fletcher never tires of condemning alleged “biblical legalism,” and in spite of the extensive work done by Custaf Wingren and others in refuting the anti-law extremism of Barthian and Lundensian theology (e.g., the negative attitude toward the nomos motif in Nygren’s Agape and Eros), Fletcher remains virtually a mid-twentieth century Marcionitc. Moreover, his aeceptance of radical techniques of New Testament criticism removes any real possibility of his identifying the ethic of Jesus; were he to take the entire New Testament picture seriously, he would find -as any number of his critics have shown—that the New Testament, no less than the Old, insists on absolute moral standards.
British theologian Ernest F. Kevan (author of the significantly titled work, The Grace of Law) well summarized this point in his Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture of July 4, 1955: “There is no hint anywhere in the New Testament that the Law has lost its validity in the slightest degree, nor is there any suggestion of its repeal. On the contrary, the New Testament teaches unambiguously that the Ten Commandments are still binding upon all men.” To re-introduce an earlier concrete example, it is difficult to believe that the Jesus who called himself “the Truth,” condemned his opponents for lying, and connected prevarication with the work of the devil himself (“you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires; . . . when he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” –John 8:44), is the source of the Fletcherian assertion: “Lying could be more Christian than telling the truth, since the only ‘virtue’ in telling the truth is telling it in love.”
Alternatively, Professor Fletcher seems to give love content by equating love and justice (“love and justice are the same”—proposition three), but we quickly see that instead of allowing justice to inform love (as Socrates strove to do in Plato’s Republic) , justice is absorbed into the ambiguities of love (“justice is love distributed”). This identification of justice with love is in fact a colossal example of what contemporary philosophy terms the “category mistake”—the confusion of categories. Gilbert Ryle’s example, in The Concept of Mind, of the confusion of a legal entity (Oxford University) with its concrete component colleges ( American visitor: “I’ve seen all your colleges, yes, but where is the university?) can be directly paralleled with Fletcher’s belief that justice and love are identical. Even the hymn writer Bonar (and hymn writers are not particularly known for philosophical astuteness) understood this distinction, long before the onset of situationism:
Will they tell us what is to regulate service, if not law? Love, they say. This is a pure fallacy. Love is not a rule, but a motive. Love does not tell me what to do, it tells me how to do it . . . Love without law to guide its impulses would be the parent of will-worship and confusion, as surely as terror and self-righteousness, unless upon the supposition of an inward miraculous illumination, as an equivalent for law.
Finally, Professor Fletcher offers what seems to be the most specific description of love his situationism is capable of providing: “Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not” (proposition four). Here we suddenly discover that the Fletcherian “act-agapeism” reduces to a utilitarian ethic of the Bentham-Mill variety, with a heavy dose of theological charisma added to improve the flavor. But the bete noire that has plagued utilitarianism now leaps upon situationalism to devour it, and the theological flavoring only makes the dish more appetizing. For neither utilitarianism nor the new morality is capable of satisfactorily answering the essential questions: “which neighbor’s good?” and “just what constitutes my neighbor’s good?” Since these questions have to be answered, either explicitly or implicitly, in every ethical action, one finds the situationist continually importing answers to them into his moral decisions by way of unrecognized and unjustified value judgments. The alleged demon of explicit code ethics is exorcised by the new morality, only to return with seven of his friends—the devils of implicit, “self-evident” principles—and the last state of morality is considerably worse than the first. Let us note some specific examples.
The same implicit introduction of value judgments as to the true neighbor and what is truly good for him can be seen in Fletcher’s treatment of the ethics of abortion. Paul Ramsey observes that “even in Situation Ethics one comes upon at least one general rule of behavior, or general principle of ethics, besides love itself: . . . ‘No unwanted or unintended baby should ever be born’” (Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics, 1967, p. 168). Clearly there is nothing inherent in the idea of love that excludes babies from the sphere of “neighbor” (one ought rather to argue the contrary from Jesus’ declaration that “of such is the kingdom of heaven”!); and it is fairly evident that Professor Fletcher has not checked with the babies in question to obtain their views on the subject. The principle that the unborn child is of less “neighbor value” than adult society is a gratuitous importation of value (dysvalue?) into a situation where love most certainly does not have all the answers. Love, as Bonar reminded us, requires principles to “guide its impulses”; either the principles will be explicit and justifiable, or they will be hidden and perhaps terrifying: like Caiaphas’ exclusion of Christ from the sphere of neighbor love, or the abortionist’s rejection of the unborn child.
A Radical Proposal: Morals not Mores – Ours is a time of staggering ethical crisis. Issues such as abortion and the rights of racial and minority groups arc being faced by all segments of the population for perhaps the first time in our entire national history. A new consciousness of the need for soundly-based ethical principles has arisen. Ironically, however, at this very time of need, Christian theology appears to be offering little more than what Professor Tom Driver has called the “free-floating ideal” of new morality (“Love Needs Law,” Religion in Life, Spring, 1966). The result has been the adoption of arbitrary absolutes by a revolutionary generation which recognizes its imperative need for permanent ideals, but which sees no way to justify them. Sidney Hook has observed that “‘natural law’ may be out but “absolute human rights’ are in” (Kiefer and Munitz eds., Ethics and Social Justice 1970, p. 76). Unfortunately, arbitrary absolutes are a most dangerous commodity, for the love of one moment can become the hate of the next.
What is required above all is a proper justification of “absolute human rights,” but where can this be found? If one follows the course of twentieth century philosophical ethics, one is led to a very sobering conclusion—the conclusion reached by Wittgenstein at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Ethics is transcendental” (6.421). That is to say, all human attempts to create value are necessarily conditioned by the human predicament and reflect the limitations and prejudices from which they arise. The only ethic that could, even in principle, stand above such societal limits and establish “absolute human rights” would be an ethic that derived, not from finite situations, but from the realm of the transcendent.
This is precisely the claim of the historic Christian faith: that biblical revelation constitutes a transcendent word from God establishing ethical values once for all. The superiority of such a revelatory ethic over contemporary situationalism can be seen in at least four areas: (1) Love is expressly defined in terms of God’s nature, as revealed in Scripture, and is justified in terms of His very being. Thus love is not allowed to dissipate like a Homeric wraith through its confusion with utilitarian vagaries. (2) Absolute moral principles are explicitly set forth; these inform love and guide its exercise. Standards of truth and justice—such as the absolute equality of the races (Gal. 3:28)—are placed above the shifting sands of situational change and are guaranteed against societal and ideological pressures. (3) A final judgment on evil is assured. Thus no man ultimately “gets away” with evil, and moral struggle in history becomes something far different from “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Situations are not only judged by absolute principle in this life; they will be so judged in the next. (4) A remedy is provided for the root problem in the human ethical dilemma: man’s selfishness. Biblical revelation offers to all those who are willing to face their self-centeredness and seek Christ’s healing the gift of “new creaturehood” (II Cor. 5:17) and the living presence of God the Holy Spirit in them to conform them to the image of Christ’s holiness (II Cor. 3:18). Only a revolutionary change in man can produce a revolution in social morality; it is the great strength of biblical ethics that it offers just such a change for the asking.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of the new morality is thrown into sharp relief at this point: though purportedly a theological ethic, situationism has little appreciation of the central theological verities. “Some critics,” writes Professor Fletcher in his own defense (The Situation Ethics Debate, ed. Cox, p. 256), “have been shrewd enough to recognize that situationism is, by traditional standards, a little ‘weak’ on the side of guilt, ‘sin,’ repentance, and forgiveness.” To Christian psychologist Wayne Oates, Fletcher said: “I really do not think you have said anything when you say that the Holy Spirit is at work in human decision. On this I am an agnostic.” Commented Oates: “He says he is agnostic as to the Holy Spirit. He says that love is the Holy Spirit. ]n fact, one wonders if his doctrine of God is not either Unitarian or binitarian” (“The New Morality; A Psychological and Theological Critique,” Review and Expositor, Summer, 1967). It is just such theological weakness that keeps Professor Fletcher from seeing the true significance of the ambiguous ethical situations he continually cites in opposing the absolute ethics of biblical revelation.
This, we believe, is the Fletcher tragedy; ethics has become a device for self-justification through the very sinful human situations that ought to lead selfish humans to the one source of true forgiveness and life. We plead with Professor Fletcher, in an age crying out for unambiguous ethical principles as the only foundation of human dignity, to cease the irresponsible practice of sticking his thumb into sinful human situations, pulling out the plum of moral self-vindication, and saying, “What a good boy am I.” This theological, philosophical, and social immaturity cannot be tolerated; the issues are too grave and the time to solve them too limited. Rather, may we all allow the absolute moral demands of a holy God—those expressions of His very will which stand above the flux of situational change—to drive us to the Cross, where (thank heaven!) ethical renewal is still possible.
Dr. Montgomery is professor of church history at the Trinity Evangelical School, Deerfield, Illinois, and director of its European Program at the Faculte de Theologie Protestante de I‘Universite de Strasbourg. He is the author of fifteen books, is contributing editor to three periodicals and has written for thirty-five magazines. This presentation was made at San Diego State College in dialog with Joseph Fletcher, professor of Medical Ethics at the Medical School, University of Virginia. The debate sponsored by the Cultural Arts Board of Sand Diego State. Dr. Jack McClurg, Associate Professor of Philosophy, served as moderator.