Contrast with Legalism and anti-nomianism.

Legalism.

This is an approach to moral decision-making which applies accepted rules to any and every situation that the moral agent or person is faced with. The consequences and circumstances are ignored-the rules are held to be absolute,, supreme and unchangeable. A person’s motives are irrelevant to the morality or otherwise of the action.

Anti-nomianism.

This is the rejection of any kind of force of rules. What is right is what your conscience tells you. In its extreme form in some Christian sects it has been superseded by the Gospel, God’s grace makes it impossible for a person in a state of grace to commit any sin - they are above the law. It is rejected by the vast majority of Christians.

Legalism. Anti-nomianismSituation ethics.

‘do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets: I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.’ Matthew 5:17

• The twentieth century Christian theologian Joseph Fletcher described the system in a book called Situation Ethics (1966).

• Fletcher wished to avoid the dangers of the ‘anything goes’ approach of complete relativism.

• But also hated “legalistic” morality which dictates mindless rules to people

• For Fletcher, there is a middle way….

LoveLove

• Fletcher took as his starting point Jesus’ summary of the law in Mark 12:29-31.

• ‘The most important (commandment) is this - hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord with all your body, with all you heart, with all your soul, with all tour mind and with all your strength.

The second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment

greater than these.’

FLETCHER

ONE ABSOLUTE RULE IN MORALITY.

• In making any moral decision, you do not ask what the rules or the laws say, but how

love can best be served.

LAWS

• The word for love in English often becomes swappable with romantic, sexual love. It includes this, but it Christian teaching it is much more than this. C.S.Lewis describes four different aspects of love.

Affection. Friendship. Sexual. And…..

• Fletcher analyses love in terms of its three directions.

Love that is directed towards oneself is egocentric. The person wants what is best for themselves. When this kind of love exists in isolation from any other kind of love, it becomes selfish.

Love that is directed towards self and others is seen as a kind of contract. People show concern and respect for other people because they would like the same in return.

Love that is directed solely towards others. This is love in its highest form, resembling agape described by Lewis. A moral agent operating with this kind of love, does not consider the benefits of his actions to himself. There are no conditions attached, and love is purely given for the sake of the person to whom it is given.

In Christian theology, it is paralleled with Jesus’ self-sacrifice as the suffering servant Messiah, and is held to be the highest action that a human being is capable of. Fletcher claims that this love must be at the heart of any system of morality that is described as situationist.

• Fletcher maintained that we can either use

Reasoning.

Position of faith

Commitment.

Morality.

Faith.

commitment

Morality.

Reasoning.

Assisted by our

Fletcher believed the second way to be the better of the two.

• In Ephesians 2:15 St. Paul says that Christ destroyed the gap between God and humans

• by abolishing…., the law with it’s commandments and regulations.’

• a situation ethicist does not take this to mean that Christian rules can now be ignored, but that they can no longer have a stranglehold on people trying to be good and godly.

• They are used for guidance, not unquestioning obedience.

TASK ONE.

Is it more moral to stick by the rules regardless than to decide for yourself what is moral in each case? Or vice versa? Why?

• Pride of place in the system of situation ethics goes to Christian love.

• This is referred to as agape in Greek, meaning loving - kindness, charitableness.

• All other rules are meant to compliment it.• When ever a person is faced with a particular

situation in which he has to make an ethical choice, the choice has to be made by considering all the relevant factors involved in this situation, and trying to work out how to serve love best.

• No two situations will be identical, so there cannot always be simple straightforward answers.

• Dr. Fox had an elderly woman patient, Mary, who was suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis. Mary’s joints were so inflamed and swollen that she was totally bedridden, and spent most of her waking hours in pain, despite the pain relieving medication. She confided in her two sons who regularly visited that she had had enough and would dearly like to die. Mary had lived life to the full and did not want to spoil it by a year or more of useless, pain-ridden existence. She spoke to Dr. Fox, whose training was to maintain her life, not to end it. However her sons reinforced her wishes to the doctor, he agreed to administer a drug that first sent Mary to sleep and then stopped her heart. Death would be painless. Dr. Fox gave Mary the drug. However what he did was illegal -the drug was intended to kill her- and he was prosecuted.

TASK TWO.

Write down your reactions to the situation.

Were Dr. Fox’s actions morally right or wrong?

Give justifications for your view.

Specify and justify the opposite point of view.

• One of Fletcher’s justifications for his system was that God did not make us like automatons- we have been given free will to make moral choices and we must exercise that will not hide behind the rules.

• It would be much easier just to rely on a set of external rules - a sort of moral auto pilot - but this does not make us grow as moral agents, which is what God wants of us.

• Instead of taking Christian morality as a ready made package, Fletcher suggests that we should develop a moral way of working.

• His suggested six fundamental propositions …….

CHRISTIAN MORALITY.

The only thing that is good in itself is love. No action is good or bad morally within itself - only its effects on people are good or bad.

Love must be the over-riding consideration.

Love and justice are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin. Justice can be described as love distributed.

Love is wanting good for the other person.

The end justifies the means. There is no moral value in carrying out the action- it is the ends or effects aimed for that count.

Love sets you free to decide in each moral situation. You always do what is loving.

TASK THREEIn order to understand and write about situation ethics, it is useful to learn Fletcher’s suggested principles.

Summarise each principle into two words, then devise your own mnemonic to remember them by.

Situation ethics.

Consequentialist theory.

Planned or foreseen outcome is the guiding principal.

There is no action that is good or bad per se, or in itself.

•Stealing for example, it is wrong because it usually hurts people, including possibly the lowering of the self esteem of the thieves themselves.

•However, if greater overall benefit could come out of stealing than any negative consequences, then it can be justified.

•Robin hood was presumably a situation ethicist, even if he was unaware of it.

Task four.

A mother saw her three year old son with his foot trapped in a railway line. She tried desperately to free him but to no avail. To her horror, she heard an approaching train. Unable to free her terrified son. She put her arms around him and laid down with him on the track. She deliberately gave her life so that he would not die feeling abandoned.

It is hard to imagine such courage, let alone achieve it. However, looking at the situation purely from the view of moral philosophy, one can see that it can be analysed as both right and wrong.

Analyse the ethics from A) a deontological point of view.

B)a teleological point of view.

Task five.Fletcher wrote that situation ethics ‘relativises the absolute, it does not absolute the relative’.

Write down what he meant by this.

Situation ethics focuses on individual situations: the situationist will not say such and such is immoral, but, ‘in a particular situation, this action is moral or immoral. It depends on the situation concerned.’

Imagine and describe a situation when each of the following could be justified, according to a situationist: (give your justifications)

•A doctor lying about a patient’s condition to the patient.

•A spouse lying to the other.

•Someone stealing from a supermarket.

•Write down your ideas and justifications. Discuss them with the class.