Between Law & Love
To the classical Christian moralist, the teachings of the church are moral imperatives that apply always and everywhere to men faced with an ethical decision. To the modern-day existentialist, all guidelines are irrelevant; he argues that any authentic decision must arise spontaneously from man's inner sense of what the moment demands. To day, a number of Christian theologians expound a third wayhalfway between the two previous pathswhich they call "situation" or "contextual" ethics.
"Situation ethics" is rapidly gaining ground in U.S. divinity schools as a way of systematic thinking about morality, and it claims an impressive array of...