Situation Ethics
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· 30 viewsA critical examination of the Joseph Fletcher system of ethics
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I) Ethical relativism described
I) Ethical relativism described
This is somewhat difficult to define, because all believe in some relativism (kissing another person – )
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.
There are no absolute rules (ironic that is an absolute rule) – circumstances must be considered, cannot force anything into preset forms
Rules: 1- love persons and use things, 2- the end justifies the means – – some accused Paul of the same
But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.
II) Situationists arguments
II) Situationists arguments
II) Situationists arguments
Mrs. Bergmeier – German held POW camp in Russia – husband has children – she learned that she could be released only for illness or pregnancy, so she seduced guard to impregnate her
Two problems – she used (not loved) the guard – and those were not the only two ways that God could have released her (Job’s wife also saw only one option) –
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Situational ethicists raise moral dilemmas similar to that in schools – who is allowed in life raft, etc., using limited human logic to set aside God’s absolute moral standard (Fletcher had a very weak God)
Jesus disciples eating grain – – Fletcher opines that Jesus raises the story of David eating consecrated bread as a parallel – – but there is a problem with his comments:
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.
Eating grain was lawful –
“If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
David’s act is not parallel, but a contrast raised by Jesus to show the Pharisees accept an unlawful act, yet condemn the innocent – v.7 – Jesus said David was guilty – – by calling it “unlawful”
And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due.”
III) Biblical ethics
III) Biblical ethics
Sin is transgression (lit. lawless) of God’s law –
Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
Bible is our absolute authority – – Jesus’ words are the judge
The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
Jesus appeals to Creation Law to define right and wrong, not circumstances or popular opinion – esp. vs.4, 6, 8
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Concl: Ethical relativists deny absolute authority – ; – and as a consequence deny an absolute God – – man cannot be trusted to set his own standard.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.