"Situation ethics basically states that other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served; as theologian Paul Tillich once put it: ‘Love is the ultimate law’.
The moral principles Fletcher was specifically referring to were the moral codes of Christianity and the type of love he is specifically referring to is ‘agape’ love.
Fletcher believed that in forming an ethical system based on love, he was best expressing the notion of ‘love thy neighbour’, which Jesus Christ taught in the Gospels.
He believed that there are no absolute laws other than the law of ‘agape’ love, meaning that all the other laws are only guidelines on how to achieve this love, and could be broken if an alternative course of action would result in more love."
By my reading Situation Ethics is a distortion of biblical ethical teaching. It is, in short, heresy. But it is a heresy that appears to be very much alive and well amongst British evangelicals in the 21st century. No more clearly is it evidence than in the shifting views and lack of clarity amongst evangelicals about sexual morality and the shedding of innocent blood.
Interestingly, Fletcher later identified himself as an
atheist and was active in the Euthanasia Society of America and the American
Eugenics Society and was one of the signatories to the Humanist
Manifesto. When he started out, his position was barely distinguishable
from orthodoxy. But he finished up in a very different place altogether."
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