Applying and evaluating situation ethics

Overview

Recall questions on whether Fletcher's agape is genuinely religious, situation ethics as a method for real decisions, the charges of subjectivity and consequentialism, the churches' reaction, whether it is a Christian theory, John Robinson's contribution, its strengths, and how it compares with natural law on moral certainty.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Is Fletcher's agape genuinely religious, or does it amount to no more than wishing someone well?

   Model answer

   Those who say it is religious point to its origin in Christian teaching, to Fletcher's insistence that love is posited as an act of faith, and to the fact that it is owed unconditionally rather than earned. Those who deny it note that Fletcher himself later described his position in non-theistic terms, that nothing in the method requires God, and that stripped of doctrine it looks like ordinary benevolence with a Greek name. The issue is whether a norm keeps its religious character once its theological content is removed.

2. 2

   How would a defender argue that situation ethics is a helpful method for real moral decisions?

   Model answer

   It fits how people actually deliberate, weighing the individuals in front of them rather than consulting a rulebook. It handles cases that no code anticipated, it can adapt as medicine and technology change, and it puts human wellbeing rather than institutional conformity at the centre. Supporters also argue it is genuinely Christian in temper, since the Gospels show Jesus setting aside religious rules where they harmed people.

3. 3

   What are the strongest objections to situation ethics as a decision-making method?

   Model answer

   It demands knowledge of consequences that we rarely have, so the most loving outcome can only be guessed at. It offers no protection to the vulnerable when someone sincerely judges that harming them serves love overall. It is slow and impractical when a decision is urgent. And because it rules nothing out in advance, it can be used to justify almost anything by someone determined to do so.

4. 4

   Can an ethical judgement really be based on how well agape is served in a given situation?

   Model answer

   For: love directs attention to the actual people affected, is recognisably the heart of Christian ethics, and gives a single clear criterion instead of a tangle of competing rules. Against: agape is too vague to settle disputes, since two sincere people can reach opposite conclusions about what love requires and neither can be shown wrong; and outcomes are unpredictable, so the judgement rests on speculation. What turns on it is whether a single flexible norm is a strength or a licence.

5. 5

   Does rejecting absolute rules leave moral decision-making entirely individual and subjective?

   Model answer

   The charge is that with no fixed rules the decision rests on one person's assessment, so what is right becomes what the agent believes is loving, and there is no way to correct a self-serving judgement. Fletcher's reply is that love is an objective norm about the neighbour's good, not a preference, and that the working principles discipline the reasoning. Whether that answer holds depends on whether a norm can be objective while every application of it is contested.

6. 6

   Why did some churches react against situation ethics when it appeared?

   Model answer

   Roman Catholic authority had already criticised approaches that judged acts purely by circumstances, and church leaders objected that a method allowing every rule to be suspended undermined the possibility of teaching morality at all and removed any protection for intrinsically wrong acts. Critics also argued it made the Church's moral tradition redundant, since a rule that can always be set aside is no longer a rule. Supporters within the churches replied that it recovered the priority of love over legalism.

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