Fletcher and Agape
Agape is the key to situation ethics.
Christianity is based on love both in terms of God’s love for creation and the command that people love their neighbours.
Flecther is pearly drawing on previous writers, such as Willaim Temple, who had argued for an ethic based on love.
Agape vs Legalism and Antinomiansim
Fletcher argues that there are three different approaches to ethics and situationism attempts to make a middle ground between the two main errors in ethical thinking: legalism and antinomianism.
Legalism | Situationism | Antinomianism |
Legalism is an over reliance on rules. By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had 613 specific rules or precepts to uphold. Fletcher argues that Natural Law is also guilty of excessive legalism. Protestants who take the Bible literally are no better. | Situationsim is, for Fletcher, the right approach between the two extremes. This involves taking the principles of your community and using them to ‘illuminate’ situations. For Fletcher, this means knowing when to apply the principle and when to recognise exceptions. Like tactics in a game, the expert player knows when to ignore the general rule. They know what agape requires in that situation. | The word ‘antinomianism’ literally means ‘no laws’. Antinomians believe in freedom to act as one sees fit in any circumstance. Some Christians may claim to act ‘as the spirit leads’. Yet to have no rules at all leads to anarchy as we do not know what to do from one situation to the next. |