This extract is taken from Professor Norman Andersen’s critique of situational ethics in 9 Ethics in a Permissive Society (Fontana, London, 1971). Norman Anderson, “Ethics: Relative, Situational or Absolute,” Vox Evangelica 9 (1975):34-35.

The main thesis of many of the advocates of Situation Ethics is that there is
only one ‘absolute’ imperative, which Christians usually designate as love; and that all the other
moral laws in the Bible are no more than guidelines. So, provided a man or woman does the most
loving thing he or she can in any particular circumstance, this is absolutely right, whatever other
moral law he may have broken. This sounds all right, no doubt, and even biblical, when you first
hear it. After all, did not Jesus Himself sum up the Mosaic Law in love to God and love to one’s
neighbour; and did not St. Paul say that ‘Love is the fulfilment of the law’? Indeed they did, and
in a perfect world this would no doubt be all the instruction man needs. But how on earth are
we-ignorant, sinful, very imperfect creatures as we are-always to know instinctively what is
the course and dictate of absolute love, not only to one other person but to several, and even to
the community as a whole-especially when our own emotions are most deeply involved? It is, I
fear, mere wishful thinking to say with John Robinson that ‘Love alone, because, as it were, it
has a built-in moral compass, enabling it to “home” intuitively upon the deepest needs of the
other, can allow itself to be directed completely by the situation…. It is able to embrace an ethic
of moral responsiveness, meeting every situation on its own merits, with no prescriptive laws.’7
Surely it is much closer to the realities of life to say with B. H. Streeter ‘When passion is the
arbiter, my own case is always recognised to be exceptional…. When Aphrodite whispers in my
ear, a principle which admits of no exception may nerve me to resist; but if any exception is
admitted, my case is certain to be one.’8

Now there is a point we must certainly recognise as valid in Situation Ethics (although it is a
point which was known and discussed long before Situation Ethics were ever heard of), which
can be termed the doctrine of ‘the lesser of two evils’. This is why I do not myself very much
like the phrase ‘absolute moral laws’. I much prefer to speak of them as ‘laws of abiding
validity’ or ‘principles of intrinsic authority’. For the fact is that sometimes, in this very
imperfect world, two such principles will come into conflict, and then one of them will have to
give way. In that sense, therefore, it cannot be absolute in the full sense. But it is still a moral law
of abiding validity.

I suppose the most obvious example of this principle would be something like this. Imagine that
I was standing on a lonely heath, where a single path divided into two-the one branch winding
down into a wood and the other running up over a hill-when suddenly a little girl ran along and
took the path into the wood, followed, some two minutes later, by a man with wild eyes who
demanded to know which path she had taken. What should I do in such a situation? The ideal
solution, perhaps, would be to take him home for a cup of tea or coffee; but he might not accept

the invitation! The next best thing might be to engage him in conversation until he became calm and rational and the little girl had had plenty of time to get away. But suppose neither of these alternatives seemed feasible. In such circumstances I should
myself unhesitatingly point to the path up the hill and tell him that she had gone that
way-knowing perfectly well that I was telling him a downright lie. I hope, moreover, that I
would realise that to tell lies is to go against a principle of abiding moral validity, and that it is
intrinsically evil. Yet, in the circumstances, it would clearly be the lesser of two evils. So it
would be wrong to pretend that this was right in and of itself, but it would be the right action to
take in the circumstances-as representing, in a very imperfect world, something which,
however wrong in itself, was preferable to any practicable alternative. And one only needs to
read any book on ethics to find a multitude of far more difficult and complex examples of the
same principle, where the person concerned is faced with an agonising moral decision in which
he can easily make the wrong choice, and where he often has to balance what seems to be
beneficial or even loving in the short-term against what, in the long-term, might be neither
helpful nor really ‘loving’ at all.

Is it a mere quibble, then, to criticise the advocates of Situation Ethics in such circumstances?
Might it not be argued that I am myself saying precisely the same thing, even if in slightly
different language? I do not think so. Professor William Barclay has helpfully suggested, in this
context, the analogy of dangerous drugs. These may, he says, in certain circumstances rightly be
prescribed by a doctor and taken by a patient; but this does not mean that they are not
intrinsically poison, and that they should not be labelled as such. When J. Fletcher (a great
protagonist of Situation Ethics) pours scorn on Cicero’s assertion that ‘only a madman could
maintain that the distinction between the honourable and the dishonourable, between virtue and
vice, is a matter of opinion not of nature’, his scorn is in fact entirely misplaced.

Now it is true that even Fletcher concedes that a responsible moral decision must be ‘informed
by principles and guidance derived, not simply from your own experience, but also from the
collective experience of the human race’. But he continually insists that, while Situation Ethics is
willing to make full and respectful use of ‘principles’, they must always be ‘treated as maxims
rather than laws and precepts’. And this provokes J. W. Bowker, of Cambridge, to make the
pertinent comment that ‘it is precisely here that the weakness of Situation Ethics appears: it is so
preoccupied with saying over and over again what status principles do not have-i.e. they are not
rules-that it gives far too little consideration to the status they do have. We are told they are not
rules, but why then should we accept that they are guidance? Indeed, how do we find out what
they are? A “collective bank of human experience” would contain, to put it mildly, a great
variety of material-would it not contain, for example, what Hitler thought to be the most loving
thing in his situation, that genocide was ultimately beneficial to all concerned?’  (10)

This is, no doubt, an extreme example, but the principle is applicable over a wide range of moral
problems which I cannot discuss here. The point I want to emphasise is this: that the Bible gives
us a number of moral laws or principles of abiding validity which we must then apply, as
intelligently as we can, to all our moral problems-sex relations, euthanasia, abortion, or
anything else. It is a basic mistake to put law, in this context, over against love. If these two were
in fact antagonistic, it is obvious which we should choose. But they are not so, although it can be
made to appear that they are. In reality, however, God’s moral laws are our Maker’s Directions
as to how love is best to be exercised and expressed.

6 Honest to God (S.C.M. Press, London, 1963), p. 106.
7 Ibid., p. 115.
8 Adventure, the Faith of Science and the Science of Faith (Macmillan, London, 1937), p. 125.
9 Ethics in a Permissive Society (Fontana, London, 1971).
Norman Anderson, “Ethics: Relative, Situational or Absolute,” Vox Evangelica 9 (1975): 28-36.

10 JW Bowker in Making Moral Decisions (ed. D. M. MacKinnon, S.P.C.K., London, 1969), p. 58.