Yet, even as many Christian churches continued to maintain the clear teachings of Scripture, and even as many pastors and theologians defended the Christian moral tradition and biblical authority, there were those within institutional Christianity who did everything possible to join the sexual revolution. The sexual revolutionaries found great assistance in the form of Joseph Fletcher and his book, Situation Ethics, published in 1966. Fletcher, who at one time was professor of Christian Social Ethics at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the dean of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Cincinnati, argued for a new understanding of Christian ethics that he called “situation ethics.” According to Fletcher, “The situationist enters into every decision-making situation fully armed with the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage, and he treats them with respect as illuminators of his problems. Just the same he is prepared in any situation to compromise them or set them aside in the situation if love seems better served by doing so.”
I wonder what Anglican readers make of his description of John A. T. Robinson as an unbelieving bishop. Robinson was much influenced by Tillich and Tillich’s attempt to correlate the scriptural world-view with that of the world of his day. Orthodox doctrine (with a small ‘o’) may have suffered in Robinson’s treatment, but I would not go so far as to call him unbelieving. Honest to God became a best-seller. We could do with more (good) theology doing that today.
The situationist enters into every decision-making situation blind to the ethical maxims of the Bible, and he ignores them as illuminators of his problems. Just the same he is prepared in any situation to compromise them should they address his problems or set them aside in any situation if love seems better served by doing so.
Certainly John A T Robinson’s (final I think) book on the date of the New Testament would make many liberal theologians turn in their graves.