Although it is not read much today, when Joseph Fletcher first published his “new morality” in 1966, he stood the Christian world of ethics on its head. The influence of his work, which was written in an almost colloquial style and became popular among both intellectual and lay readers of the day, had far-reaching effects that in large measure shaped the way most contemporary people view ethics in the twenty-first century. Because of its ubiquitous influence in today’s culture, we wish in this section to return to Fletcher’s original treatise, Situation Ethics, and compare its tenets with what we have been studying about Christian moral foundations. While this analysis will be by no means exhaustive, it is hoped that in this section we may demonstate the inherent weakenesses of situation ethics and show that, whatever its claims to the contrary, it is not a Christian system(1) Rather than establishing itself on the solid foundations of absolutes upon which Christianity itself rests, situation ethics is in essence nothing more than a theologized adaptation of twentieth-century secular relativistic philosophy.
It is largely because situation ethics claims to be a Christian ethic that it has become so widely accepted by many religious groups in today’s world. Although in its early days situationism was espoused only by some of the more liberal elements within Christendom, through the years it has become a major influence in nearly all Christian circles and has been adapted to varying degress by not a few of even the most conservative faiths. Its impact today is particularly strong upon the young, and it is often appealed to in an attempt to retain “traditional” Christian concepts while simultaneously conforming to the ethical and moral laxities of the world.
The influence of situationism has not been limited to the liberal-minded and the young, however, since many conservative Christians who otherwise adamantly denounce such a system nonetheless lapse into situational thinking from time to time in attempts to justify various actions and behaviors. It is therefore a necessity that we examine the system closely and determine whether its tenets are true and to what extent, and to endeavor, if it is false, to erradicate its influence in our lives.
Since this present analysis will be brief, the reader is encouraged to pursue additional reading on the subject, especially if he intends to work with young people or converts to Christianity, for they are among the most highly influenced by this system. Our aim here will be to show only a few of the many flaws in the basic teachings of situation ethics.
One of the greatest appeals that situation ethics makes for all religious people is its claim of recognizing the Christian ideal of love as its only norm for behavior. The fact that love is the central message of the Gospel makes situationism appear to grow out of a biblical framework. By appealing to love and by using a number of other Christian connotation words, situationism presents itself in the guise of Christian principles. So when we approach this system we must bring to remembrance the illustration our Lord used of the wolf that disguises itself in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15).
The fact that liberal theologians would readily accept and promote this system comes as no surprise, seeing as neither situationism nor modern theology recognizes any semblance of absolute values. But the fact that so many conservative believers are also influenced by situationism’s tenets should concern us; for, as it is hoped it shall become evident, any attempts one might make to nurture oneself on situationism can only lead to ethical bankruptcy and to despair. Rudnick has pointed out that the result of adopting a situational framework is “a radical relativism bordering on anarchy. Each person feels free to decide for himself what is good and what is evil. Right and wrong are reduced to personal preferences or opinion.... To deny that God has given us clear and binding ethical guidelines is to invite ethical confusion and revolt.”(2)
Unlike genuine Christian ethics which rests on a firm foundation of absolutes, situationism’s stance is upon non-rational faith commitments. Fletcher, as the “high priest” of situationism, states that there is only one “thing” that is intrinsically good, and that is love — nothing else. In his own words, he states that “Situation ethics has only one norm or principle or law (call it what you will) that is binding and unexceptionable, always good and right regardless of the circumstances. That is ‘love’....”(3) Yet nowhere does Fletcher present a rational basis for accepting this proposition as true. He definitely does not accept this belief as a matter of scriptural revelation because his own view of Scripture cannot allow it. He does not recognize the Bible as being divinely inspired, so he therefore has no basis for accepting the proposition that love is the only norm as though it were a divinely given directive.
Fletcher claims to accept his premise on the pretext of accepting revelation as the norm’s source;(4) but while he accepts revelation in this aspect, he rejects all other revealed norms or laws except the one command to love. One might ask why we should be so selective? Why choose love as the only norm and not fear or justice or righteousness? Since there is no rational basis for choosing love above any other precept found in Scripture, Fletcher has no reason to insist that his presupposition is any nearer the truth than any other that might be selected on impulse.
Fletcher does not (and cannot) appeal to Christ in any specific way to support his system, and he thereby falls short of providing any biblical authority for his beliefs. Situationism, being based solely on such passages as “love fulfills the law,” says Henry, “excludes an objective authoritarian ethic entirely. Setting aside all positive commandments as legalistic, it accepts as ethical norms only ‘the readings of love’s dictates.’... [The] assumption that undefined love is the law finds no basis in the teaciong of Jesus and the apostles.”(5) Fletcher merely accepts the belief that love is all-important on the basis of a faith assumption. His is nothing less than a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, or the acceptance of a belief as a matter of personal preference. To paraphrase Alec Vidler, Joseph Fletcher has no more rational basis for believing in love than he does for believing in Nazism or voodooism — all are faith assumptions.
When one looks into Fletcher’s real reasons for accepting love as his only norm one can see quite clearly that his acceptance is on the basis of utility and utility alone. He states that “love must work in coalition with utilitarian distribution, spreading the benefits as much as possible.”(6) He openly admits that situationism freely joins hands with utilitarianism, and we might observe that all Fletcher really did was rewrite John Stuart Mills’ concept of utilitarian behavior by using a number of Christian connotation words. His entire work ends up being what John W. Montgomery calls a “utilitarianism with a kind of ‘Jesus flavoring’ to it.”(7)
But utility is hardly the basis for Christian ethics or even for love itself. Utilitarianism is not what Christianity is about. As Henry observes, “to be morally good is to obey God’s commands. The performance of God’s will alone constitutes man’s highest good. The rule of life is to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ (Mt. 6:33)”(8) Though Henry recognizes that there are practical aspects to Christian behavior, he sees that “the Christian life must be first motivated by spiritual considerations from which the practical issue spontaneously.”(9) “Evil,” he goes on to say, “is to be avoided because it is evil.... [T]he good is never instrumental, something to be prized only for the sake of that to which it leads.”(10)
If we accept the proposition that God does not exist, then we may as well accept situationism as our code of ethics, for without God there can be no basis for choosing between right and wrong. Everything becomes meaningless, so one might just as well accept as a non-rational faith assumption the idea that love possesses value. But one might equally accept any other belief (such as strength of arms or personal preservation) on the same criteria, since whatever one chooses is ultimately meaningless. Yet when one accepts God as an objective reality, as the Christian certainly should, one must then choose on the basis of the revealed truth of God — truth that Fletcher does not acknowledge.
Perhaps the ultimate flaw in Fletcher’s situation ethics is that in spite of telling us that love is the only norm, he never defines what love is. The failure to define terms is carried over into nearly all his arguments, in which we find also any number of befuddling contradictions, irrational faith assumptions, and wholesale confusion about and misinterpretation of Scripture. The number of flaws in Fletcher’s system should alone render his arguments suspect, but his cardinal failure to define his sole “absolute” shows him to have been less than a serious ethicist.(11)
Fletcher says that love is the only norm, but without telling us what love is, or what is means to “do love,” we are left directionless. He attempts to offer some strange kind of definition by saying that love and justice are the same,(12) but he also fails to define the word “justice.” We all would do well to learn what love and justice properly are and to form our ethics in consequence to their true meanings rather than, as Fletcher attempts to do, define our terms so that they conform to our preconceived beliefs.
We might begin by stating what love is not. Love, properly defined, is not a rule; it is a motive. That is important. Love cannot tell a person what to do, but it can tell him how to do it. It cannot serve as a norm but must instead be guided by norms. As Henry has observed, “The life of love is not self-instructing and self-directing. Love does not spontaneously and automatically disclose how it is to come to self-expression. If it fulfills the law, it neither obliterates the commandments nor is it their source.”(13) He further states that “Love is a requirement of the Law, not an alternative to it,”(14) as Fletcher would maintain. Indeed, as the hymn writer Bonar has said, “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.”(15)
Unless we allow that we can be miraculously illuminated inwardly from above, we have no other means of guiding our love impulses than by law, for love is not a law unto itself. Fletcher, of all men, could not admit to a miraculous illumination from above because he did not believe in the Hold Spirit.(16) He openly admitts that there can be no illumination to help in our decisions because he grants that “it is true that all of us are limited in how much we can know about things, and how competent we are to evaluate even what little we know or think we know.”(17)
Elsewhere Fletcher attempts to define love as the Holy Spirit, insisting that love is not the work of the Holy Spirit but that it is the Holy Spirit. Yet in an interview with Wayne Oates,(18) Fletcher said he was an agnostic on the question of the Holy Spirit. This leaves one wondering whether Fletcher was in fact an agnostic on the question of love itself. Love, he states, is the only norm, but apparently he wasn’t certain whether that norm exists at all!
As for justice, it is properly defined as rightfulness or lawfulness or the quality of conforming to accepted standards of right and wrong. Since love is actually a motive (not a norm), it therefore cannot represent the quality of conformity to an accepted standard of rightfulness — though it can be a motive for the acquisition of that quality. Any attempts by Joseph Fletcher to equate the two are as futile and as absurd as an attempt to equate fear and law. Though fear of punitive reprisals may well serve as a motive to obey a law, it can hardly be classified as the law that is to be obeyed. In like manner love, when properly defined, cannot be equated with justice, and there is therefore no rational definition of the Fletcherian concept of “love-justice.” “Love is the power that fulfills the commandments,” writes Henry, “and without it any attempt to keep the commandments will be defective.”(19)
Fletcher indefatigably attempts to get Jesus to say that love is enough and that we ought to do away with the law, but his efforts prove futile. Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). Although Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was not to legislate, He did come to teach more than an ethic of love. For instance, we might look at His teaching on adultery in Matthew 5:27,28. Here Jesus did not instruct His listeners to do away with the law against adultery; He did not tell His disciples that they instead should allow love to determine whether in a given situation adultery would be right or wrong. Instead Jesus took a law that was good and went a step further. Not only does adultery per se remain a violation of scriptural norm, but the desire to commit adultery becomes a violation of the norm as well. “The reiterated ‘but I say unto you’ does not presuppose a criticism of the earlier statement of the content of ethics in the form of law and commandments. It is a criticism of the reduction of the content of those commandments, either by relaxing their stringency, or by giving them a merely legalistic and subspiritual significance.”(20) Jesus did not place His emphasis on obedience to the letter of the law but on righteousness, because, as Rudnick points out, “only the gospel of God’s love can implement the kind of changes which God wants to bring about in us. The law has no power to change us in a way that makes us acceptable to God.”(21) In the teachings of Jesus there is a balance of emphasis on justice and love, not on some kind of indefinable “love-justice.”
Ridderbos has shown that
The nearest we may come to finding a reasonable definition of love (or justice) in Fletcher’s system is stated in his Proposition IV: “Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not.”(23) Certainly, in conjunction with the complementing ethical teachings of Jesus, this is a good principle. But without a fundamental groundwork from which to operate, the principle by itself is a valueless posit, because without the groundwork how can we now what it means to love our neighbor? Would any and every action be included? The situationist would say yes, if it willed the neighbor’s good. But are there actions that are wrong even if done in “love”? If everything can count for love, what then is love? And is there not a bottom line below which love can fall and still be called love? Galatians 5:18-21 would seem to indicate that love has its moral limitations. The proposition that love wills the neighbor’s good, then, does not tell us which neighbor’s good we are to seek, nor does it enlighten us as to what acts would indeed constitute our neighbor’s good.
Fletcher attempts to elaborate on these vital questions, but without success. In chapter six of his book he draws several illustrations in an attempt to guide the situationist in his decision-making, but after analyzing these illustrations the reader ends up only more directionless than before.
In the section titled “Calculation Is Not Cruel,” Fletcher begins by stating, “it is right to deal lovingly with the enemy unless to do so hurts too many friends”(24) (Fletcher’s emphasis). But in light of his advocation of pan-agapeism(25) (that man is to be as God and love everyone), how is it possible to draw a circle of love that leaves certain people out? Who are our friends and who are our enemies? We find in fact that in this noble-sounding sentiment, situation ethics’ only “absolute,” its only norm, is not universal at all but is highly selective. It might be asked why Fletcher did not instead state his Proposition IV as, “Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not, unless doing so hurts too many people we like.”
The first illustration Fletcher uses in his attempt to make his point concerns a bizarre situation (which nearly all his illustrations are) in which an individual is somehow confronted with the choice of saving a baby or the Mona Lisa from a burning building. Which is the person to save? Fletcher says that if the person making the decision is a personalist, he should save the baby. But could we just as well ask whether a situationist might conclude that the loss of the Mona Lisa would be a greater loss to mankind? Might not more people be hurt in the end by the loss of the famous painting than by the loss of the baby? What if the baby belongs to someone he does not know, while the museum curator happens to be his close friend? A consistent situationist could not argue with either choice because he has no transcendant base for making his decision. Hence, Fletcher offers no help in the decision-making process with this illustration.
Fletcher follows this illustraion with another, just as bizarre, in which one has to choose between saving his own father or a medical genius who has discovered a cure for a common fatal disease. In this case, Fletcher says that if one properly understands agape, he carries out the medical genius and leaves his father to die. Here the decision is not to be based on any innate Christian idea of goodness or familial loyalty, but simply on the cold, impersonal rationale of what is the most “uselful” to the most people. In this illustration Fletcher openly admits that situationism joins forces with utilitarianism.
A third illsustraion concerns an actual event that occurred in Italy during World War II. In this instance a village priest was involved in the sabotage of a Nazi train. In retaliation, the Nazi authorities began executing twenty hostages a day until the saboteur surrendered. The priest would not give himself up because he felt that he was needed to give the people absolution, since no other priests were available. After three days, however, a Communist and fellow resistance fighter betrayed the priest in order to stop the massacre of innocent civilians. Fletcher states that “One may accept the priest’s assumptions about salvation or not (the Communist evidently did not), but no situationist could quarrel with the method of ethical analysis and decision.”(26) In other words, situationism does not help a person make ethical decisions, since its tenets would decree that the priest would have done right whichever choice he made. With Fletcher it is the method that is important.
Such are the problems one encounters with the Bentham-Mill concept of utilitarianism which Fletcher adopted for his system. It cannot tell man what constitutes goodness, nor can it help one know what will necessarily result in benefitting the most people. Fletcher can give us no better idea of what constitutes the most good for the most people. He rules out any possibility of there being absolute standards to guide our behavior, and he recognizes no values of transcendent worth. He does not concern himself with the inner conscience of individuals but presents only illustrations involving the interrelation of people in a society without any apparent concern for the purpose of life as a whole, or for the relationship that man ought to have with God through Christ.
For all of Fletcher’s talk about God, it is clear that his understanding of God and man in relationship to Him is considerably different from the biblical view. It is highly questionable whether Fletcher maintained any real ideas about God at all, and it is certain that he never viewed God as the One to whom we owe ourselves through the work of the Cross. Fletcher considered man his own master, the sole proprietor of his mind and body. At no time in his work does he ever consider the question posed by C.S. Lewis, “Does it not make a great difference whether I am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real landlord?”(27)
Scripture pictures man as abiding in the latter condition. He resides in this temple of flesh, which is not his own, for only a short time. After that there is eternity. In that eternity, man is to give an account of the things done while in the body and will be granted a destiny persuant to his earthly behavior and in light of his relationship to Christ. Scripture is most clear on these points. St. Paul states unequivocally in I Corinthians 6:19 that we are not our own but were bought with a price. In consequence to that fact, we ought to glorify God in our bodies. There is therefore a higher purpose for man than strictly a utilitarian function that relates only with fellow human beings. Jesus was not just concerned with social behavor but also, and more importantly, with religious truth.
Fletcher sees man as existing in a closed universe (which means that even if there is a God out there somewhere He no longer concerns Himself with mankind but has left us on our own). Fletcher sees no need for concern with inner morality or a hereafter, his only interest being in the here and now. He likewise sees no intrinsic worth to any behavior and merely concerns himself with a “getting alongness” with those around us. His sole concern is not rocking the boat of the present, and he places all his emphasis on the externals of behavior and the external results. The only evil he understands (dare we use that word!) is death.
In the final analysis, Fletcher’s definition of love (even when applied as a motive) falls short of any biblical definition of that term. To Fletcher love is no more than a utilitarian function or mathematical formula by which one attempts to discern which action in a given situation will be the most useful to the most people. It does not seek meaning or beauty in righteousness but merely usefulness. Its value does not lie in its being an intrinsic quality of Almighty God, but lies in the utility of the moment. It is not that which draws man to God out of grtitude for the love He has shown to us, but is that which compels man to will his neightbor’s good for the sake of mutual survival.
In addition to failing to define love and justice with any appreciable meaning, Fletcher also improperly defines the terms legalism, antinomianism, and situationism. Fletcher defines as legalistic any system that recognizes transcendent rules that cannot be violated. Any system that would adhere to the concept of absolutes — any absolutes — would be classified by Fletcher as a legalistic system. In so defining legalism he has only created a Procrustean bed, modifying his definitions to fit the terms. Legalism properly defined means a reliance upon law for justification, not simply the recognition of laws or rules. The Pharisees, for example, we legalists because they believe they could be justified before God by keeping the letter of the law. They did not see that the law existed to guide their behavior and that justification could come only through the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. Henry states, “Love does not do away with the Law by destroying the propriety of conduct by obedience to revealed precepts. Legalism is not due to the law and commandments, but to a misuse of them.”(28) Such an understanding of the nature of legalism is alien to Fletcher, who says that any system of ethics that is based on Scripture is legalistic.(29) The New Testament, however, is very anti-legalistic in that it strongly criticizes any mere external conformity to ceratin moral standards. But its criticism of such a misuse of law does not imply a criticism of the law itself. Fletcher seems completely unable — or unwilling — to see beyond the externals himself, and hence any behavior that would match that which is prescribed by Scripture is deemed by him to be “legalistic.”
We may commend Fletcher at least for defining antinomianism correctly, but we wonder how he is unable to see himself as he does so. Using the Gnostics as examples of antinomians, Fletcher points out that they were “so flatly opposed to law — even in principle — that their moral decisions are random, unpredictable, erratic, quite anomalous.”(30) We ask how one could better describe the situationist. To say that Fletcher’s exemplary decisions in Situation Ethics are anything more or less than “random, unpredictable, erratic, quite anomalous” would be to fail to examine the evidence.
A prime example of this may be found in reviewing two of the situations given in chapter eight titled “Love Decides There and Then.” In one situation a ship has sunk and one of the lifeboats is carrying twice the number of survivors it is designed to hold. The first mate orders most of the men to jump into the sea so that the women and children would have a better chance for survival. When the men refuse, the mate throws them into the sea. The remaining survivors are later rescued, and the mate is charged with murder. Fletcher says that legalism determined that the mate was wrong, in spite of the loving concern he had shown for the others. “Situation ethics,” writes Fletcher, “says it was bravely sinful, it was a good thing.”(31)
But immediately following this story, Fletcher tells of Captian Scott’s expedition to the South Pole in which one of his men became badly injured and had to be carried on a stretcher. Carrying the stretcher slowed the whole crew dangerously, but Scott refused to leave the man behind. As a result, all the men died. Although Scott’s decision was the exact opposite that of the first mate, Fletcher says it “does him as much honor” as the first mate’s.(32) The choices these two men made were at complete odds with each other, yet Fletcher says both were right. On this basis how does situationism provide any guide to forming ethical decisions? Situationists, by Fletcher’s own examples, are indistinguishable from the antinomians who (again by Fletcher’s own definition) follow “no forecastable course from one situation to another. They are, exactly, anarchic — i.e., without a rule. They are not only ‘unbound by the chains of law’ but actually sheer extemporizers, impromptu and intellectually irresponsible.”(33)
It is important also to note that Fletcher commends Scott for his action only by “assuming Scott was not simply legalistic in his decision.”(34) In other words, Fletcher is not really so concerned with loving kairos as he is with the rejection of legalism; he is not so concerned with what does the most good for the most people as he is with the adherence to situationism; he is not so concerned with the promotion of love as he is with the rejection of law.
How is one to discern what action is best in a given situation when he must first reject all absolute standards? Fletcher attempts to answer by saying,
By this criteria we may accurately assume that Fletcher is not as concerned with our love for our fellow man as he is with our “free initiative.” In his own words he has shown himself to be “flatly opposed to law — even in principle,” just as he claims the antinomian Gnostics were.(36) It seems, in fact, that Fletcher would rather we made a bad decision — one that could well end up hurting people — than to rely overmuch on the advice of others or on any exteral sources (which he would define as legalism). This attitude toward legalism (even his own distorted view of it) shows that Fletcher had an outright phobia of law. He would even willingly risk abandoning his only “norm” of love for the sake of ensuring free initiative in the decision process, for he is not here pleading for love but for a total rejection of law. In this fanatical rejection, the basis of Fletcher’s final decision to act is “reduced to unprincipled action on the basis of some kind of last-minute mystic intuition.”(37) The end result is that Fletcher’s “morality” turns out to be nothing more than the very existential ethic he ostensibly rejects.(38) What he doesn’t appear to realize is that “it is untrue that external authority always involves the moral agent in blind dependence.”(39)
Another confusion of terms prevalent in Fletcher’s writings is in his constant failure to distinguish between an act that one does and the intended consequences of the act (which allegedly are the criteria by which the act itself is to be justified). As we approach the final step in decision-making within a situational framework, we immediately are confronted with the fact that it is we who are forced to make the decision of how to act, and it is we who must somehow, despite our finite limitations, determine beforehand whether the ends we expect to accomplish will justify the act we perform. In this we discover that we have to put ourselves in the position of the infinite, omniscient mind. This, of course, is an impossibility. We cannot know, and oftentimes cannot even guess, what the results of our actions will be in the long run of things. Though our actions are often well-intentioned, they frequently result in ends nowhere dreamt of in our finite speculations.
Not only are we critically limited in our vision of future consequences, both immediate and consequential, but we also must admit that as man we do not always seek the good. Situationism assumes man to be innately good as well as supernaturally foreisghted, neither of which can be borne out by history or even casual observation. William Barclay has suggested that “If all me were saints, then situation ethics would be the perfect ethics ... but man has not yet come of age. Man, therefore, still needs the crutch and protection of the law.”(40) Until man becomes innately good, and until his ability to visualize eventual consequences of his actions becomes much more actue, situational perspectives remain highly questionable at best. For now, at least, man still needs the support and help of the law. Montgomery has observed, “Psychoanalysis ... has shown in the twentieth century that people are really not aware of the degree to which selfishness strikes them in their actions.... In order to deal with the problem of selfishness, it is necessary to have external objective standards by which our selfishness can be brought in the light.”(41) Situationism presupposed an unselfish nature in man, thus exhibiting itself to be among the most naďve systems ever conceived by human imagination.
One of the most serious questions confronting a situationist is how he can know whether the action he chooses will in fact render the result he intends and will benefit the most people. Fletcher, sad to say, offers no help; he only cites situation after situation and, at best, tells some of the immediate effects of the decisions made in those circumstances. Many of the decisions he cites are contradictory, yet they are praised for the method, not the consequences of the actions. After reading through his illustrations, one is left to wonder what has happened to the proposition that we are to seek the most good for the most people. Apparently Fletcher assumes that we all know which choice in a given situation will ultimately result in the most good for the most people, just as he also assumes we know to whom we intend to provide the greatest good.
Regarding the latter, Fletcher tells us that we are to love God in loving our neighbor. But who is our neighbor in Fletcher’s view? We are told that we ought to love as a neighbor our enemy as well as our friend and to treat our enemies well, “unless to do so hurts too many friends.”(42) Now if we are someone with few friends and many enemies, what would then constitute the most good for the most people? Which are we to love more?
If we may be allowed the indulgence, perhaps we should examine this question by utilizing the typical Fletcherian technique of presenting a hypothetical and utterly bizarre situation. (It might be worthwhile to mention at this point that rarely does Fletcher present a normal, everyday situation as one of his examples, but only fantastic, outlandish situations that a person may confront no more than once in a lifetime, if at all.) In this situation we shall assume that we are a small group of Christian vacationers touring the Holy Land. One member of our group is a prominent politician and is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and has been working toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He joins us having just come from a meeting with several top-level Israeli leaders who are in hiding because a Palestinian terrorist group has threatened to assassinate them and then begin a purge of all Jews in Palestine. As our group sits in a hotel lobby it is assaulted by members of this terrorist group who kidnap the lot and demand to know the whereabouts of these Israeli leaders. The terrorists tell us that if our friend will inform them of the location, they will let us go; if not, they will kill us one by one. So if our friend talks, he will save the lives of his Christian friends, but the lives of countless Jews will be the price. If he remains silent he will save the Jews, but he will forfeit the lives of his friends.
What is the man’s decision to be? Our little group constitutes all the “friends” he has in Israel, and he is pro-Palestinian to begin with (though he opposes the use of terrorist tactics). Which group of people is he to love more, his small group of friends or his numerically superior “enenmies”?
It is impossible to know how Fletcher would answer in this situation, but it seems reasonable that he would decide that the man should refuse to betray the Israelis and allow his friends to be martyred because he would then be saving the larger number of people from death.
But what of a remotely similar situation Fletcher presents in his book in which a Negro woman has to make a choice between saving the lives of a small group of friends and an entire nation of people? In this situation Fletcher says there was a group of Pilgrims hiding from the Indians when an infant in the party began to cry. Knowing that the baby’s cries would alert the Indians to their position, the Negro woman smothered the baby to death. Her small band of friends was saved.(43)
What are we to say of this? Certainly is was true that the Negro woman’s action did that which resulted in the survival of her small party or friends; but what did her act contribute to the Indian nation? Was not her act in the long run but one small contribution to the near irradication of the entire Indian race from this continent? Surely we could parallel the Negro woman’s action with our tourist friend’s in Israel. Could we assume that our colleague’s choice should be to betray the location of the Israeli leaders so that his friends may remain safe? And all of this without even considering whether true “good” is accomplished in either case — survival, yes. But more on that in a moment.
In determining whether our action will result in the intended consequences, we might look at Fletcher’s case which he calls “Sacrificial Adultery.”(44) In this instance a German woman had been captured by Soviet Forces in World War II. Knowing that her children needed her during this trying time of fear and hunger, she asked to be released so that she could return home to them. However, there were but two conditions allowing the release of prisoners of war: illness or pregnancy. The woman decided to ask a prison guard to impregnate her so she could be freed. The guard complied, and the woman was released and reunited with her children.
Nowhere in this discussion does Fletcher ask whether any other consequences are significant except the woman’s reunification with her children. He does not ask, for example, whether the Soviet guard was respected as a person or was simply used as a tool to achieve the desired end — an end that some might consider selfish at that. Fletcher never asks whether the woman was running the risk of the guard’s conscience in asking him to impregnate her.
It is particularly striking to look at this case of “sacrifical adultery” and compare it with Fletcher’s statement that “Love is of people, by people, and for people. Things are to be used; people are to be loved. It is ‘immoral’ when people are used and things are loved.”(45) Yet was not the Soviet guard used? Was he loved as a person, or was he simply used as a thing?
In all such cases, Fletcher concerns himself only with the immediate, external consequences and judges acts on the basis of their utilitarian value. He often forgets to turn the page to see what could be on the other side, even if only from a utilitarian viewpoint. (How was the Soviet guard’s family affected? Did his wife divorce him for his infidelity? Did his children go hungry as a result? We are never told, and Fletcher seems not to care.) He also fails to consider the inner, spiritual consequences of an act. For instance, he never asks whether, in the case of the Pilgrim party, the mother of the child suffered irreparable harm as a result of the Negro woman’s action, nor does he consider the consciences of the Negro woman and the other members of the party who had to live with the knowledge that an infant had been sacrificed for their safety.
Fletcher’s real problem is that he does not distinguish between an act itself and its intended consequences. Paul Ramsey says of this that “many human actions ... may be properly re-described as, or elided into a description of, the doing of the intended consequences. Instead of ‘flicking on a switch,’ we can say ‘turning on the lights.’... There are some human actions, however, whose description cannot be elided into or re-described as the doing of the intended consequence.... A Nero cannot properly say that in his action of ‘burning Rome’ he was ‘illuminating the imperial palace,’ even though this was what he did by means of that action.... The gassing of a number of babies of Jewish women in medical research is properly called genocide, not promoting the advancement of science for the future health of mankind.”(46)
Throughout his book, Fletcher persists in redescribing an act as its intended consequence. Hence he does not call the act of sexual intercourse between the German woman and the Soviet guard “adultery” but “the reuniting of a family”; he does not call the killing of an infant “murder” but “the saving of a Pilgrim party.” If one takes Fletcher’s position seriously, he may just as well call genocide (to use Ramsay’s analogy) the promoting of science for the future health of mankind.
It is by means of this redescription of acts as intended consequences that Fletcher seeks to justify his system. But on the point of justification itself we find a grossly disparate view in Fletcher’s ethics from what Scripture presents on the matter. In Fletcher’s system an act that to a Christian is at best highly suspect may not only be the better choice but can be, in fact, a justifiable and good act. Hence, when he draws illustrations about murder, adultery, and lying he does not call these acts merely the better choice than their alternatives but says they are in themselves good. Wrong not only becomes excusable but sometimes becomes right. As Fletcher says, “...situtation ethics has good reason to hold it as a duty in some situations to break [the commandments], any and all of them”(47) (Fletcher’s emphasis). He maintains that this is possible because we ought to be concerned with “doing right rather than seeking the good.”(48) Somehow he fails to realize that doing right is seeking the good.
It is with his contention that wrong can sometimes become right that we as Christians must disagree most strongly. While we may not be able to say that under no circumstances would we ever tell a lie, for instance, we should be able to say that at no time would a lie ever be self-justifying or an examople of good Christian behavior. There is a world of difference between these two positions. When the Christian lies he knows he has done that which is contrary to his code of ethics, and he seeks forgiveness for it. When a situationist lies it is, in many cases, fully in accord with his code of ethics and is acceptable and right. In the former case the lie is forgiveable; in the latter is was never wrong to begin with. Hence, in situationism the work of the Cross is diminished, since there is rarely a need for an individual to approach it for forgiveness. The true Christian’s justification lies in the Cross alone.
The belief that certain actions that are normally wrong can become, under abnormal circumstances, somehow justifiable in themselves or in the ends thereof is perhaps how situation ethics has most impacted many Christians today, for there are many who adamantly reject the system yet still believe that there are certain situations in which our ethics can change and normally immoral actions can become moral. This is tantamount to endorsing relativism in Christian ethics. What we should realize is that though there can be circumstances in which all our choices appear to be wrong, when we choose a wrong and act upon it, it remains wrong — even though the end result may be perceived to be good. More will be said about this in Part Four of our work.
There are many other profound differences between Christian ethics and situation ethics besides the understanding of justification. Perhaps the most fundamental difference surrounds the nature of God. The Christian believes in an infinite, personal God who possesses characteristics of holiness and love, a God who is an objective reality. Joseph Fletcher’s view of God is that God is love in an almost pantheistic sense. He states that “God’s existence and belief that Christ is God in man cannot be proved.”(49) Fletcher was, as much as he may have rejected the term, a “Christian existentialist,” one who accepts matters of religious “truth” on the basis of blind, irrational faith assumptions — leaps of faith that, in his own words, “are not steps in logic or even in common sense.”(50) Fletcher’s book claims to believe in God as a personal being, but he uses the word “personal” in quotation marks.(51) It is clear both from his apparent reservation about the word and from other statements about God that he had no real concept of who or what God truly is. Even if he could somehow see God as a personal being, he would perceive Him as a being without understanding, compassion, or mercy, based on his gross misconstruction of legalism.(52) But truly, to Fletcher himself God was nothing more than a mere postulate. Love (as he “defines” it) was Fletcher’s only god.
His view of Christ was even less noble. Situation Ethics admits that a person need not accept Christ to be a partaker of the true love of God, since God gives love (equated to God Himself) to all men in the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is love (if it actually exists). “...[T]he basic challenge offered by the situationist has nothing to do in any special way with theological over against nontheological faith commitments.... (This is not to say, however, that one’s faith is without an important bearing upon the situationist’s action and decision-making.)”(53) How he arrives at the latter statement we can only guess, for elsewhere he endorses William Temple’s belief that “‘an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies.’”(54) So, according to Fletcher, wherever love is present salvation is present, whether Christ is there or not. There is therefore no need for Christ in his system, and Jesus is reduced to a mere man whose “most immediate bearing ... is that of paradigm, model, example ... that’s it.”(55) But even as a model Jesus is found wanting, for in his discussion of Mark 14:3-9 Fletcher says, “If we take the story as it stands, Jesus was wrong and the disciples were right.”(56) He maintains that Jesus taught no systematic ethic(57) because, in Fletcher’s own words, “Jesus was a simple Jewish peasant. He had no more philosophical sophistication than a guinea pig.”(58)
As a result of his subordinate view of the Holy Trinity, Fletcher’s view of man is also far from that which is spoken of in Psalm 8:4,5. Though his system presupposes that man is by nature good, Fletcher states that “Christ’s coming was not primarily to ‘make us good’ but to give us faith in the goodness of God.”(59) He does not see man as a creature that has fallen from heroic proportions and who is now being reconciled to his rightful place before God, for he rejects the Fall and seemingly pokes ridicule at those who believe in it. “People who think there was literally once a ‘Fall’ (they abound in church circles) would say that law is needed now to control us....”(60) To Fletcher, man exists in a closed system and is valuable only as a utilitarian object to keep the whole absurd machine of humanity running as smoothly as possible. There is no transcendent meaning or value to man, and he has no existence beyond what he knows in the present life.
Situation ethics recognizes no revelational content to Scripture (except the one command to love), and it rejects all revealed truth. It views the Bible as a social document drawn up by men who clouded over the ethical directive to love with a vast number of legalistic doctrines that were never part of Jesus’ teachings. If one accepts the idea that Scripture offers rules to govern our conduct, then (in Fletcher’s view) “either cheap melancholy or utter frustration will follow ... [the Bible is] an editorial collection of scattered sayings, such as the Sermon on the Mount, [that] offers us at most some paradigms or suggestions.”(61) As a result of such a view, we observe that wherever the Bible contradicted Fletcher, Fletcher merely dismissed the Bible.
It should be abundantly evident, then, even on the basis of this short examination of Joseph Fletcher’s “new morality,” that situation ethics is far from being a Christian ethic, either in method or content. Fletcher’s system may at best be called only a “ultilitarianism with a kind of ‘Jesus flavoring’ to it.”(63) We all would do well to guard against its influence, both within our churches and in our individual lives. Its pervasiveness alone has done more to promote its heretical tenets among true believers than any amount of personal teaching could ever have accomplished. Because it has become so engrained in our society, it has assumed the nature of a fog, creeping quietly and softly into our ethical framework. Just as a fog can steal into a room through a window opened only a fraction of an inch, so can situationism invade our thinking stealthily and little by little through books, lecture halls, television, and motion pictures. We ought to be on guard all the more against the influence of situationism and seek to fill ourselves with the truth of what is so that we may better stand against all errors of man. The light of God’s word can penetrate the fog of situationism and expose it for what it really is.
it is absolutely impossible, without having recourse to arbitrariness and artificiality, to deny this double significance of the law, namely, both as pedagogue to Christ and as rule for the new life, either on the one side or the other, or to distinguish aspects even terminologically from each other. One will therefore not be able to maintain that love or the Spirit or even Christ is the norm and the rule of conduct for the new life, at least if this would mean a substitution for the law.... Love functions ... not as a new Christian ideal or as a new norm, which comes in place of the law or makes it superfluous. It is precisely required here as the summary of the law (anakephalaioutai; Rom. 13:9). In other words, the law does not find its criterion in love, but just the reverse, the requirement of love is so imperative because in it lies the summary of the law.... But this detracts nothing from the significance of the law as the expression of this love and as a source for knowledge of the will of God.(22)
... in his more immediate situation he must make his own decisions, and should. If it is true that one’s opinions are no better than his facts, then situation ethics puts a high premium on knowing what’s what when we act. We are always free and often well advised to call in expert and professional advice if we choose to call upon it. But if law cuts down our range of free initiative and personal responsibility, by doing our thinking for us, we are so much the less for it as persons.”(34)
Copyright © 1983 & 2005 by Oswin Craton. All rights reserved.