Situation Ethics:

Between Law & Love

To the classical Christian moralist, the teachings of the church are moral imperatives that apply always and everywhere to men faced with an ethical decision. To the modern-day existentialist, all guidelines are irrelevant; he argues that any authentic decision must arise spontaneously from man's inner sense of what the moment demands. To day, a number of Christian theologians expound a third way--halfway between the two previous paths--which they call "situation" or "contextual" ethics.

"Situation ethics" is rapidly gaining ground in U.S. divinity schools as a way of systematic thinking about morality, and it claims an impressive array of advocates. In Europe it has found a home in the thinking of Karl Earth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann. Its chief American exponents include Paul Lehmann of Union Theological Seminary, James Gustafson of Yale, and Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass. In a recent issue of Commonweal, and in a book called Situation Ethics that Westminster will publish this spring, Fletcher offers a lively, readable defense and definition of this way to moral decision.

Principles as Tools. Fletcher argues that situation ethics avoids the pitfalls of other approaches to morality. In both the natural-law morality of Roman Catholics and the scriptural law of Protestantism, he argues, principles become inflexible and "obedience to prefabricated 'rules of conduct' is more important than freedom to make responsible decisions." On the other hand, the antinomian, or nonprincipled, approach of the existentialists leads to anarchy and to moral decisions that are "random, unpredictable, erratic, quite anomalous."

The situationist agrees with Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor who decided that it was his Christian duty to join the plot on Hitler's life, that "principles are only tools in the hand of God, soon to be thrown away as unserviceable." In the vast majority of instances, Fletcher believes, the principle will probably apply. Yet by refusing to acknowledge absolutes, the situationist can defend, for example, the World War II concentration-camp doctor who saved the lives of 3,000 Rumanian Jewish women by secretly performing abortions on them. Had she not done so, they would have been killed simply because they were pregnant. Attacking abortion, the legalist would say that acts are good or bad in themselves; the situationists would say that they take on moral value only in relation to circumstances.

Situation ethics does admit to one absolute: love. In any moral decision, Fletcher argues, the key question is: "What does God's love demand of me in this particular situation?" By stressing the demand of love, situation ethics is at once more lenient and more stringent than law morality. It can command hard decisions as well as easy ones--acceptance of martyrdom, for example, when law morality would permit surrender or compromise. It can also say that certain acts are immoral which law ethics would consider tech nically valid. To the situationist, says Fletcher, "even a transient sex liaison, if it has the elements of caring, of tenderness and selfless concern, is better than a mechanical, egocentric exercise of conjugal 'rights' between two uncaring or antagonistic marriage partners."

Playing the Game. Situation ethics has been sharply attacked by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. President David Hubbard of California's Fuller Theological Seminary complains that "we can talk ourselves into a lot of things in the name of love unless we have some ground rules to play the game." Princeton's Paul Ramsey argues that traditional Christian moral principles are authoritative and that "how we do what we do is as important as our goals." In 1956 the Holy Office condemned situation ethics for Roman Catholics as an illicit brand of subjectivism. Attacking Fletcher's presentation in Commonweal, Dominican Theologian Herbert McCabe argues that the new morality has no criteria to distinguish love from what is really self-interest. "How do you know that what you are doing is loving?" he asks. McCabe also charges that situationism fails to consider that man is always acting within a community that cannot exist without law.

Fletcher argues that his approach is applicable to social policy and is no different from that of Jesus, who rejected the complexities of Jewish law and reduced his own ethical teaching to a twofold command to love God and neighbor. Situationism, claims Fletcher, is also implicit in the thought of such formative Christian thinkers as Augustine ("Love with care and then what you will, do") and Luther, who stated: "When the law impels one against love, it should no longer be a law." He feels that situationism, new or old, "is a reflection in the field of ethics of the pragmatic, open-minded thinking which is characteristic of an age of experimentation, inquiry and question-asking.

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