Situational Ethics

Constantine the Sinner said:

I haven't read Bonhoeffer, but I've read Tillich's The Dynamics of Faith, and in it he says Christianity's truth is unimportant, and that Christ's death and Resurrection can be largely understood symbolically. How this mendacious viper got to be so esteemed I will never know, but it is frightening.

Click to expand...

Yeah, he was a liberal and a rationalist. But Bonhoeffer was not. While "situational ethics" is often associated more with liberals, it isn't exclusively so..

Interesting. I was unaware that situational ethics had a religious context. I had always assumed the term was synonymous with casuistry. Which is the very pragmatic concept that all ethical decisions are ultimately made on a case by case basis depending on the circumstances. With the proviso that if the circumstances are the same at 2 different times, then the same ethical decision should be made each time.

Jesus said that the entire law and everything the OT prophets said were summed up in 2 commands:

1. Love God
2. Love Others

The 10 commandments can be broken down into a failure to either love God, or love others. All sin, at its root, is either a failure to love God, or love others.

Morality is objective in the Christian worldview because we hold God as both omni-benevolent and immutable. So God's character does not change, and morality is based upon the character of God.

What's interesting though, is to see that play out in real life. Meaning, we are told to obey our parents. Yet, we are also told that we should love Christ so much that it looks like we hate our family. We are told to obey the government. Yet, we have Daniel refusing to in the OT. We have Rahab hiding spies and lying. We have the Egyptian midwives lying about the births.

But Daniel wasn't wrong to disobey the government. Jamal who coverts to Christianity in defiance of his Muslim father is not wrong.

There seems to be a clear hierarchy in Scripture when it comes to ethical dilemmas.

But the important thing about Christianity and its teachings is that this hierarchy is objective. The hierarchy itself is based upon the immutable character of God and His call for us to love Him and love others.

FireDragon76 said:

yet he also realized we live in a world where ethics is more complicated than simply trying to escape guilt through avoiding sin.

Click to expand...

Avoiding sin to escape feeling guilty is inherently sinful - the sin of selfishness.

jayem said:

Interesting. I was unaware that situational ethics had a religious context.

Click to expand...

I have a hard time imagining a non-religious context ....

Constantine the Sinner said:

For those who are not aware, "situational ethics" is a doctrine--which has its roots in the 19th Century--that in Christianity, love is the highest ethical principle, and always trumps all others. An example of this is in Moby Dick, Ishmael joins Queequeg in worshiping a pagan idol, because he says in Christianity love is the most important ethical principle, and he does that out of love for Queequeg; the principle of love overrides the injunction against idolatry.

My issue with situational ethics is that "love" here seems to be conceived in purely secular terms. This is not "love" in the mystical sense of God's energies, this is love in a very pedestrian, secular sense. For instance, situational ethics is often used today to justify churches conducting homosexual marriages.

Click to expand...

Mark 12:28-31 God first; others second. These two commands are in that order for a reason.

28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Dave-W said:

Avoiding sin to escape feeling guilty is inherently sinful - the sin of selfishness.

Click to expand...

I think Bonhoeffer was speaking of a more Augustinian view of the human condition. Each of us is guilty before God just by the nature of what we are, so escaping that guilt through doing good is impossible. Ethics becomes making the best of a bad situation.

Constantine the Sinner said:

Not doing wrong because your conscience is working, is wrong? What?

Click to expand...

That is twisting what I said.

We avoid sin because we love and want to obey HIM. Doing that with the motive to stop feeling bad (which has NOTHING to do with loving God) is doing the right thing from the wrong motive - and that is sinful in and of itself.

To my knowledge, situational ethics was primarily a Christian concept. The difficulty is that it by definition required making isolated decisions, that depended only upon the current situation. This made it hard to consider long-term consequences such as fidelity to promises and long-term effects on relationships. For that reason, as far as I know, pure situational ethics didn't really continue its original form.

The most compelling rationale was unusual situations where standard rules would lead to harmful results. Clearly ethics can't always be dictated by rules. That was a major theme of Jesus' teaching. But still, rules and long-term consequences have to be considered. So realistically, we have to balance rule-based ethics and long-term concerns with situational concerns.

Constantine the Sinner said:

My issue with situational ethics is that "love" here seems to be conceived in purely secular terms. This is not "love" in the mystical sense of God's energies, this is love in a very pedestrian, secular sense. For instance, situational ethics is often used today to justify churches conducting homosexual marriages.

Click to expand...

The Bible says that the world knows what love is. Jesus says that the world will know his own for the love they have for one another. This wouldn't be possible if the world didn't understand what love means.

So, this line of reasoning is not in the line of what Jesus teaches.