ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES OF MONISM
DEFINITION
Webster's says ethics is "the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment."¹ Baker's Dictionary of Theology says:
Ethics is the science of conduct. It is a systematic attempt to consider the purposeful actions of mankind, to determine their rightness or wrongness, their tendency to good or evil.²
Bernard Ramm says, "Ethics concerns not only the right act, but the attitudes or principles that make for right action, which are deeply established in one's personality."³ Harold Lindsell talks about ethics as a "life-style" that one chooses.⁴
The usage of the word ethics in this paper is consistent with these definitions.
Focusing upon the principles that make for right action, the primary concern here is not on the details of behavior, but upon what cause and effect there is between one's concept of God and his subsequent conduct and lifestyle. So the definition of ethics in this paper is the overall plan for living, or formula for choosing one's way of relating to the world.
What to Expect from Monistic Ethics
Understanding that everything is made of the same basic substance, it follows that everything is basically the same as everything else, and of the same value, basically. There can be no fundamental difference between things or actions in the universe.⁵ For instance, if the universe is constructed from atoms all made of the same substance, the monist must explain all behavior by the nature or activity manifested by those atoms. The forms of behavior may be as pluralistic as are the variety of elements and molecules and compounds found in the material world made of atoms. The monist calmly recognizes that, pluralistic as they may appear to be, the various behaviors are all manifestations of the same atomic activity.
Some activity may be inorganic, like the steamy eruptions of Old Faithful; some activity may be organic, like apples growing on a tree or flowers blossoming; some activity may be animal activity, like a fox chasing a rabbit; some activity may be human activity, like a man praying in a temple. The monist looks beneath the appearance of all forms of activity and sees that the same atomic substance can be manifesting itself in a variety of ways, yet remain as atomic substance.
Ethically or morally, the monist sees that there is no basic difference between the various forms of behavior. The atoms are merely manifesting themselves according to the situation in which they find themselves. Underneath all the behavior are the basic forces that are implicit in the atomic substance.
The monist must then take the next step and say that basically there is no difference between good and evil; they are made of the same thing. This can be illustrated by letting a jar of sand represent the universe of all things pertaining to ethics. The grains of sand represent the variety of ethical matters. Each has a different appearance, but each is made of sand. Let one grain stand for "good"; let another stand for "evil." Now, what is the difference? Nothing is really different. Even if one grain represents Jesus, and another grain at the other pole of the universe represents Satan, the monist can quickly see that they are made of the same thing. In a monistic system there is no difference when you get right down to the bedrock. They may be located poles apart; one may be negative and the other positive, but in an electrical system, poles may be reversed. The polarity, in monistic ethics, of good and evil is merely relative; one could be changed into the other because they are both basically the same thing. What really is bad if it belongs to the monism of the good?
A monistic view of God united with the universe can recognize no basic difference in value between various ethical systems arising in the system. Monistic systems can be either pantheistic or atheistic; there is no basic difference; the only difference is whether personality is ascribed to the totality of the system.⁶ Any goodness or badness of the ethics arising out of such monisms must be judged by their unity and consistency with the nature of the system in which they arise. The monism may be materialistic or idealistic; the ethics arising out of it must be a manifestation of the basic substance. If there is any true evil, it must be some form of inconsistency with the nature of the monism producing it.
Some activity may be organic activity, like apples growing on a tree or flowers blossoming; some activity may be animal activity, like a fox chasing a rabbit; some activity may be human activity, like a man praying in a temple. The monist looks beneath the appearance of all forms of activity and sees that the same atomic substance can be manifesting itself in a variety of ways, yet remain as atomic substance.
Ethically or morally, the monist sees that there is no basic difference between the various forms of behavior. The atoms are merely manifesting themselves according to the situation in which they find themselves. Underneath all the behavior are the basic forces that are implicit in the atomic substance.
The monist must then take the next step and say that basically there is no difference between good and evil; they are made of the same thing. This can be illustrated by letting a jar of sand represent the universe of all things pertaining to ethics. The grains of sand represent the variety of ethical matters. Each has a different appearance, but each is made of sand. Let one grain stand for "good"; let another stand for "evil." Now, what is the difference? Nothing is really different. Even if one grain represents Jesus, and another grain at the other pole of the universe represents Satan, the monist can quickly see that they are made of the same thing. In a monistic system there is no difference when you get right down to the bedrock. They may be located poles apart; one may be negative and the other positive, but in an electrical—
system, poles may be reversed. The polarity, in monistic ethics, of good and evil is merely relative; one could be changed into the other because they are both basically the same thing. What really is bad if it belongs to the monism of the good?
A monistic view of God united with the universe can recognize no basic difference in value between various ethical systems arising in the system. Monistic systems can be either pantheistic or atheistic; there is no basic difference; the only difference is whether personality is ascribed to the totality of the system.⁶ Any goodness or badness of the ethics arising out of such monisms must be judged by their unity and consistency with the nature of the system in which they arise. The monism may be materialistic or idealistic; the ethics arising out of it must be a manifestation of the basic substance. If there is any true evil, it must be some form of inconsistency with the nature of the monism producing it.
GNOSTICISM'S MONISTIC ETHICS
The ethics of the Gnostics derived quite clearly from their concept of the divinity of all spirit. Gnostics saw the world of spirit as good, and the world of matter as evil. In this sense it was dualistic: good spirit against evil matter.⁷ But within the universe of spirit, everything was an ultimate monism. It was all related to God through emanations radiating out from Him. The farther out they got, the more corrupted they were by matter. In this theological system, the basic ethical principle of "spiritual" people was to be more spiritual. The goal of Gnosticism was for man to be joined to this God through "enlightenment."⁸
Most Gnostics divided mankind into "spiritual," capable of salvation, and "material," who could not receive the message. Valentinus, who made such an impact upon the church, divided people into three categories:
(1) spiritual — they could attain "knowledge";
(2) psychical — they were capable of faith and a degree of salvation; and
(3) material — they were hopeless.
Since men are made of spirit and flesh, the problem is to free the spirit from the contamination of the flesh. There was no one way; Gnostics varied greatly from asceticism to licentiousness, but it was really one ethic of trying to experience a gnosis of spirituality. Some practiced rites and rituals in mystery cults; some were strictly ascetic (e.g., Marcion had a strong testimony in this regard); some claimed to be spiritual by nature (they felt they could not be corrupted no matter what their flesh did, and they were accused of indulging in free orgies).
MONISTIC TREND IN ETHICS OF WESLEYANISM
Subjective Standard of Sin
When Wesley changed his doctrine of sin from the reference of an absolute standard to a relative standard, he was making it possible for himself and others to believe in the possibility of "Christian perfection." In so doing, and no doubt unwittingly, he began to cut off his obedience to a transcendent God and His ethical control. In its place was substituted an absolutizing of whatever concept of ethical standards might be held by the perfected person; each person was to be perfected according to his own "light."
It certainly was not Wesley's desire to obscure the light of God's absolute law; Wesley was primarily concerned to bring a renewal of godly living to a church deadened by ungodly and unlawful living. And his teaching has been strong in its emphasis on the authority of the Word, so that believers experiencing Christian perfection should love and seek new light from the Word. But the real authority of the Word for Wesleyans tends to be cut off at the other end—that is, at the beginning of the experience—when one decides that God is only going to hold him responsible for that part of the law which he knows.
Although Wesley did actually believe there is an absolute standard of perfection which, to fall short of in any way, is to sin, he trusted that Christ's atonement unconditionally covered that which man cannot keep. He believed that "by the merits of Christ, all men are cleared from the guilt of Adam's actual sin."¹⁰ On one occasion he did say, "All deviation from perfect holiness is sin," so that even those who are "perfect in love" may fall short of the absolute law.
But Wesley did not like to use the word sin in this absolute sense. He said, "This is a mere strife about words. You say, 'None is saved from sin' in your sense of the word; but I do not admit of that sense."¹¹ Therefore, he did not contend for the word sinless (i.e., the term sinless perfection) because of the two definitions of sin. If sin is a voluntary transgression of a known law of God, Wesley considered the term sinless perfection defensible. But if sin is any shortcoming, then sinless perfection is not defensible.
Wesley's basic definition here was, "Sin is a willful transgression of a known law."¹² Known is the key word; Wesley insisted that sins of ignorance were not sins. "Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God."¹³ He rejected any other definition as leading to the positionalism of Calvinism:
Therefore every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin; and nothing else, if we speak properly. To strain the matter farther is only to make way for Calvinism. There may be ten thousand wandering thoughts and forgetful intervals without any breach of love, though not without transgressing the Adamic law. But Calvinists would fain confound these together.¹⁴
Sin, "properly so called," was only that for which man could be held responsible, and "Wesley would say that man, limited as he was, could be held responsible only for those moral issues of which he was aware."¹⁵ To him, any sin involving guilt involved intelligent freedom of choice; otherwise it was not sin.
This limited concept of sin became an integral part of the Wesleyan message as it has been taught in the classroom and preached by the evangelist. Dr. Daniel Steele, an advocate of the Wesleyan holiness movement who taught at Boston University in the late 1800s, taught that infirmities (definition: "Infirmities are failures to keep the law of perfect obedience given to Adam in Eden"¹⁶) are not sin. Steele distinguished between sin and infirmity by such statements as:
Infirmities have their ground in our physical nature, and they are aggravated by intellectual deficiencies. But sin roots itself in our moral nature.
Infirmities in well-instructed souls do not interrupt communion with God. Sin cuts the telegraphic communication with heaven.
Infirmities, hidden from ourselves (Psa. 19:12), are covered by the blood of Christ without a definite act of faith, in the case of the soul vitally united with Him.
Infirmities are without remedy so long as we are in the body. Sins, by the keeping power of Christ, are avoidable through every hour of our regenerate life.
A thousand infirmities are consistent with perfect love, but not one sin.¹⁷
Since sin is not absolute in Wesleyan theology, it follows that perfection is not absolute perfection. If the standard is relative to our knowledge, sin is relative, and perfection is relative.
God Can Be Experienced by Mysticism
In a previous chapter, the mystical influences upon Wesley were noted. Especially important were the Pietists in Germany who stressed an experiencing of God in one's life. Mystical writers who stressed the vision of God and the ideal of the experiencing of a perfect attitude toward God had their impact upon his concept of the ideal relationship between man and God.
So we have now surveyed two aspects of Wesleyan theology that caused it to move toward monistic ethics:
Belief in the possibility of a mystical experiencing of God.
Acceptance of one's own knowledge (of standards or law) as the criteria of perfection, thus cutting one off from awareness of being judged by the absolute law of a transcendent God.
Ethical Consequences
Following are some symptoms in the Holiness–Pentecostal movement (resulting from Wesleyanism) that indicate a monistic ethic. A mystical way of life appears in many manifestations. Later, there is a growing trend toward relative ethical standards.
"Divine Union" controls lifestyle.
The theme of the union of the soul with God appears again and again. This is the primary goal of Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. This perennial favorite, although not produced by any recognized theologian (note also that Mrs. Smith was a Quaker), has been promoted uncritically among holiness people as a classic; first published in the 1800s, it has sold several million copies, and is still very popular. In Chapter 18, "Divine Union," Mrs. Smith speaks very monistically of the union of God and man:
All the dealings of God with the soul of the believer are in order to bring it into oneness with Himself...
This Divine union was the glorious purpose in the heart of God for His people, before the foundation of the world...
All the previous steps in the Christian life lead up to this...¹⁸
Mrs. Smith is aware of no theological problem to such a union because her concept of God committed her to believe that He is the God manifested by all religions. Apparently Wesley's "Christian Perfection" is to be equated with "Divine Union," which is the culmination of all religious aspirations (no matter what religions):
I do not want to change the theological views of a single individual. The truths I have to tell are not theological, but practical. They are, I believe, the fundamental truths of life and experience, the truths that underlie all theologies, and that are in fact their real and vital meaning. They will fit in with every creed, simply making it possible for those who hold the creed to live up to their own beliefs, and to find in them the experimental realities of a present Savior and a present salvation.¹⁹
That Mrs. Smith is not just talking about different denominations in the Christian church is clear in the next paragraph. The "Divine Union," it appears, is available to people of all religions. "Most of us acknowledge that there is behind all religions an absolute religion, that holds the vital truth of each; and it is of this absolute religion my book seeks to treat."²⁰
Hannah Whitall Smith’s book shows how she uses the Bible to teach the idea of man's union with God. The language and lessons of Scripture are used to develop a progression that results in union:
The usual course of Christian experience is pictured in the history of the disciples. First they were awakened to see their condition and their need, and they came to Christ, and gave in their allegiance to Him... and yet how unlike Him...
They knew Christ only "after the flesh," as outside of them; their Lord and Master, but not yet their life.
Then came Pentecost...
They were made one with Him. One will animated them. You have left much to follow Christ... Allegiance... and confidence you know, but not yet union. There are two wills, two interests, two lives...²¹
How, then, is this problem of two wills resolved by Mrs. Smith? Her answer is “union”:
All you need, therefore, is to understand what the Scriptures teach about this marvelous union, that you may be sure it is really intended for you.²²
This union is obtained through a "surrender" of self to God which results in allowing God to take over control of our lives:
Its chief characteristics are an entire surrender to the Lord... [It] causes us to let the Lord carry our burdens and manage our affairs for us, instead of trying to do it ourselves.²³
She uses the illustration of a man carrying a heavy burden on his back as he walked along a road. A wagon driver gave him a ride. Gratefully accepting the ride, he continued to hold the burden on his back.
"Why don't you lay down your burden?" asked the driver.
"Oh!" replied the man, "I feel that it is almost too much to ask you to carry me, and I could not think of letting you carry my burden, too."
Christians need to learn to have such a union with God that all the burden of self is unloaded upon Him. Faith is the next step: "Faith is the next thing after surrender."²⁴
Faith is presented as a leap in the dark. She uses the illustration of a man obliged to descend into a deep well by means of a rope which did not reach the bottom. The man did not have enough strength to climb back, so he held onto the rope until his strength was utterly exhausted, then he dropped, assuming he would fall to his death on the rocks below.
"He fell—just three inches—and found himself safe on the rock bottom."²⁵
This union involves seeing God in everything.
"One of the greatest obstacles to an unwavering experience in the interior life is the difficulty of seeing God in everything."²⁶
This is overcome by seeing second causes as being under the control of God. God's control extends even to the control of our impulses. We need to develop the confidence and awareness of His guidance in our lives.
through our impulses. These impulses should be consistent with the Scriptures, providential circumstances, and the convictions of our own higher judgment.
"A Christian who had advanced with unusual rapidity in the Divine life gave me, as her secret, this simple receipt: 'I always mind the checks.'"²⁷
Although recognizing that it is possible to be deceived by inward impressions, our basic confidence should be developed in the working of the Holy Spirit upon our minds and feelings:
The way in which the Holy Spirit, therefore, usually works, in a fully obedient soul, in regard to this direct guidance, is to impress upon the mind a wish or desire to do or to leave undone certain things.²⁸
It all leads up to, and sums up in, the divine union:
The steps are but three: first we must be convinced that the Scriptures teach this glorious indwelling of God; then we must surrender our whole selves to Him to be possessed by Him; and finally, we must believe that He has taken possession, and is dwelling in us.²⁹
Mrs. Smith uses many phrases from the apostle Paul, speaking of the Christian's life in Christ, that give her book an air of authenticity. She identifies this victorious life experience with the teachings of the holiness movement, and evidently her book has had a remarkably good acceptance. Even though she uses such terminology as "divine union," the monism of a man with God does not sound like she intends .it to be pantheistic. Her ethic is simply that of a trusting surrender to the sweet will of God. This brings happiness. Her confidence in people's knowledge of God's will as it is revealed in Scripture is almost assumed. Just surrender to it, she says.
Is she too optimistic about man's ability and willingness to surrender to God? Is she trusting in the experience of the surrender, or is she trusting in the finished work of Christ? Has the ethic of the holiness movement shifted the authority from a transcendent God who speaks through His Spirit-enlightened Word to the authority of an immanent God whose Spirit is known by the movings of one's own self as it is given to this Spirit?
This depreciation of head knowledge and theology is in itself theological; God's nature is such that it is not known by the head but by the heart. Daniel Steele, the holiness seminary professor of the 1800s, developed the theme of the human spirit (rather synonymous with "heart" and "soul") being the instrument for contacting and uniting with God:
This doctrine of the immediate contact of God's Spirit with my spirit, without the medium of symbol or sacrament or absolving priest, does not rest upon one, two, or three cardinal proof texts, but upon a wide variety of Scriptural proofs, such as the communion of the Holy Spirit, the revelation of Christ within the soul, the knowledge of God...³⁰
Although men like Steele would probably not think of themselves as monists, and would try to guard against pantheism, it may be significant that the seminary at Boston University, where he taught, later became a stronghold of liberalism, which is more clearly Korean monistic.³¹
Another holiness leader, Joseph H. Smith, wrote a brief essay on "Divine Union," in which he said in the first sentence, "Divine union is the high calling of man." He tried to guard against a pantheistic meaning by distinguishing this union from "fusion, or amalgamation, or absorption, as though one lost his identity," and he used the analogy of marriage as an illustration of man's unity with God. This unity is broken by sin, he said. The unity is restored when we become "partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." This divine union of the soul tends to provide the ethical standard by which one lives in the world.
Tendency Toward Subjective Love Ethic
Love, in Wesleyan theology, was seen to be the ethic of the holy life. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and love is what the Spirit writes on the heart. "Do you know what holiness is?" asked Samuel Brengle. "It is pure love."³²
understood in various ways, depending upon the concept of God held by the individual. It may be significant to observe that the Salvation Army's manual does not show any reference to the Ten Commandments or the law of God. It is built upon an ethic of love, but today it may take for granted the biblical definition of love.
Pentecostalism's Ethical Signs
"There are signs of the immanence of a new age of mystical consciousness," said the preface to a holiness booklet published in 1930.³³ Mysticism has marked the ethic of the holiness–Pentecostal movement in the 20th century.
Toward the end of the last century, S. A. Keen had written that the gift of the Holy Ghost affects a difference in the appearance of a person:
The gift of the Holy Ghost as a presence imparts a kind of physical transfiguration to the child of God. It illumines the face, brightens the eye, sweetens the voice, hallows the manner. It shines him up.³⁴
Such physical manifestations tended to be expected, even though the principal sign was that of love. The emphasis upon the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit tended to develop an ethic of its own. The sign of His coming came to be very important. In this context, the tongues movement—otherwise known as Pentecostalism—developed in the early part of the 20th century and has developed into the modern Charismatic movement.³⁵ "Tongues" have been the sign of receiving the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal movement.³⁶ Tongues are the "hot line," as advocate Rod Williams put it, or the direct line to God. This is a direct contact with the Holy Spirit, and it surely suggests something about His nature as His nature is conceived by those experiencing the phenomena.
J. Rodman Williams, a neo-Pentecostal theologian, stresses that Pentecostals are committed to a theology that is true to a concept of God which assumes that He is known through an experience:
Pentecostals are basically people who have had a certain experience; so they find little use for theology or doctrine that does not recognize and, even more, participate in it. They are convinced that the shape and content of their experience, which they believe to be of the Holy Spirit, is essential to the life and thought of the whole church.³⁷
Williams goes on to quote other Pentecostal theologians who stress statements which assume that God has such a nature that man can in some way touch Him or be touched by Him. He quotes Riggs as saying, "Thus yielded to our Christ, we are taken into His wonderful charge and submerged into the great Spiritual Element which is none other than the actual Person of the Holy Spirit..."³⁸
And the Catholic neo-Pentecostal theologian, Edward D. O’Conner, compares traditional Catholic mysticism with the "baptism in the Spirit" of Pentecostalism:
...it is not rare for it to be marked at one joint or another by some very manifest operation of grace—perhaps a great inrush of heavenly consolation following upon a long period of darkness and anguish; perhaps a kind of revelation of the glory of God transfiguring all creation; perhaps an experience of being immersed in the presence of God as if in a river. These experiences can serve as points of comparison for the "baptism in the Spirit" that figures so prominently in the Pentecostal movement.³⁹
Wesley would be surprised at some of the mysticism expressed in the movements that are traced to him. "Tongues," as a sign of the Holy Spirit's baptism, is a different sign than the "perfect love" that Wesley looked for in his followers. The way of life for the typical Holiness–Pentecostal person is that of decision, surrender, and self-emptying; the language of steps to union with God is often heard.
Unity Ethic Developing
The methods for receiving the Holy Spirit tend to be consistent with a concept of God that is monistic enough for man to physically experience God's presence. The ethical outworking of this experience in the life of the person experiencing God depends upon his concept of what he thinks God wills him to do and what God will enable him to do.
For Wesley, it was to do the love the law pointed toward; for Hannah Whitall Smith, it was to live in the happiness of a life surrendered to the will of God; for S. A. Keen, it was to live a shining life glowing with a holy affection. The Pentecostals retain some of this ethic, but their stress on tongues as the sign of direct connection with God may be expected to have more emphasis upon physical (rather than moral) values and ethics. Perhaps this is to be seen in their stress upon physical healing and living healthy lives.
Their concept of the Holy Spirit as the great "Spiritual Element" (to use Riggs’s term), into which people are baptized in a spiritual baptism, suggests a strong reason why the Charismatic movement is so ecumenical. Ethically speaking, the transcendence of the authority for these groups is not an ontologically other (wholly other) transcendence; it is a kind of transcendence that can be experienced, and results in unification with the Spiritual Element wherever that Spirit may be experienced.
In recent years, that spiritual element has been sought in churches, often in major denominations. In this baptism they are finding that they are one in the Spirit. Unity is now the ethic.
ALBERT SCHWEITZER, HEIR OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY
His Monism
Monism is quite clearly affirmed by Schweitzer in his book, Indian Thought and Its Development. He is quite clearly speaking of monism when he speaks of "mysticism" as the ultimate world-view. He identifies the Indian world-view as "monistic and mystical," and contrasts it with the European, which he calls "dualistic and doctrinaire."⁴⁰
Mysticism is the most perfect world-view, he says, because by it man arrives at a spiritual relationship with the Infinite Being to which man "belongs as a part of Nature." Spiritual unity with Infinite Being—mysticism—is the perfect world-view because it corresponds with the facts of reality. Reality, to Schweitzer, is not dualistic. Therefore, European philosophy has repeatedly revolted against dualistic thought.
"Spinoza, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are concerned with the spiritual union of man with infinite Being."⁴¹
These philosophers may not consider themselves mystics, but Schweitzer says that their philosophy is mystical in essence. "It is monistic thought under the influence of modern natural science that undertakes the great forward push against dualism."⁴²
So convinced is Schweitzer that monism is the only satisfactory world-view that he says:
"In actual fact the monistic method of thought, the only method in harmony with reality, has already gained the victory over the dualistic."⁴³
His Admission That Monism Offers No Ethical Authority
Schweitzer, trying to develop ethics consistent with his monistic world-view, confessed that he saw no ethical goal written into the natural universe. For this reason, dualism prevails in many variations. For instance, in the Jewish prophets and in Christianity, the happenings of the universe are interpreted as a battle between the supernatural ethical power and the natural non-ethical power. The supernatural ethical power, he says, is conceived as a personality who guarantees that everything that happens in the universe works toward an ethical goal.
But Schweitzer says this dualistic world-view does not correspond with reality:
"No ethics can be won from the knowledge of the universe," he says. "Nor can ethics be brought into harmony with what we know of the universe."⁴⁴
This produces the paradox that, while thinking that agrees with the facts of the universe cannot justify and affirm a life-affirming (ethical) world-view, ethical thinking must assume a Creator who has an ethical character of whom the universe gives no knowledge. Naive thinkers are not troubled by this paradox, but the ethical-dualistic view begins to seem unreliable when a man begins to think more maturely, Schweitzer says. That is why monistic thinking—from neo-Platonism to Hegel and company—has persistently arisen. Monism is the only method in harmony with reality, and mature thinkers must come to monism, he believes.
This leaves Schweitzer without any ethics unless he borrows them from the dualism that affirms a Creator. It provides an instructive perspective to Schweitzer's famous "reverence for life" ethic.
Significance of Schweitzer
Why is Albert Schweitzer important? Here was a liberal Protestant who, in the train of Strauss, wrote a famous book about The Quest for the Historical Jesus,⁴⁵ and concluded, true to his liberal presuppositions, that not only was the divinity of Jesus to be questioned, but also the facts of His humanity. Nothing is left but the idea of Jesus.
Consistently, he applied his monistic theological assumptions to ethics and found no guidance. Here was an heir of Strauss and the liberal movement, an admitted monist, who frankly stated that monism provides no authoritative ethic for life. Yet he tried to retain his concept of reality, which was limited to the totality of the monism of the universe.
JOSEPH FLETCHER'S SITUATION ETHICS
His Liberal Heritage
Joseph Fletcher (b. 1905), another heir of the liberal movement in Protestantism, and slightly a junior to Albert Schweitzer, is Joseph Fletcher. In 1966, his book, Situation Ethics: The New Morality, burst upon the American consciousness and sold 150,000 copies in the first two years.⁴⁷ It was an idea whose hour had come, said Harvey Cox.⁴⁸
Actually, both terms—new morality and situation ethics—had been developing in concept during the previous half-century. In 1928, a book called The New Morality was published by Durant Drake of Vassar College. It was an aggressive attack upon authoritarian and supernaturalistic ethics. It espoused pragmatic naturalism.
Another book, also called The New Morality, was published a few years later in England. Written by G. E. Newsome of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to the King, the book opposed the libertarian sexual ethics being advocated at that time by Bertrand Russell. Thus, it was naturalistic pragmatism that was advocating a new morality, and the church was seen as being against it. In 1952, the Pope issued a statement (Acta Apostolicae Sedis), warning against moral judgments that were based upon considerations of situations alone. That same year, the phrase "the new morality" was used by the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in a pronouncement which warned against this approach to moral decisions, and sought to stop its influence in the academies and seminaries of the Catholic Church.
So Bishop John A. T. Robinson attributed the phrase to Pope Pius XII, who had authorized the pronouncement against the "situational" approach of the "new morality."⁴⁹
In 1963, a posthumous publication of H. Richard Niebuhr's The Responsible Self advocated relational ethics. That same year came Paul Lehmann’s Ethics in a Christian Context, advocating a situational approach to decision-making as being the only acceptable manner of doing Christian ethics.⁵⁰ During that same year of 1963, Bishop Robinson, in his controversial book, Honest to God, entitled his chapter on morals, "The New Morality." This term now began to have the attention of the public. Then came Fletcher's book by this name.
Evidence That Fletcher Promotes Monistic Ethics
There are three lines of evidence that Fletcher’s book is promoting a monistic concept of ethics.
Identification with a Monistic Movement
First is the association of the author with the liberal wing of the Protestant church, and especially with the school of thought associated with Bishop Robinson. While Bishop Robinson tries to avoid a thorough-going monism in his book Exploration into God, he there advocates what he calls panentheism, which is hard, for practical purposes, to distinguish from pantheism.⁵¹ Bishop Robinson accepted Joseph Fletcher’s book as “the most consistent statement” of the new morality. They appear to be in the trend of the generally monistic movement of liberalism in Protestantism.
Rejects Law-Giver God; Adopts Undefined Love as Being God
Fletcher seems satisfied with atheism; his concept of God is such that whatever a person believes in, or does not believe in, does not make much difference. He would like to say that love is what counts, not what you believe about God. For instance, he uses a quote about the “atheist who is moved by love is moved by the spirit of God”; and he goes on to say, “an atheist who lives by love is saved by his faith in the God whose existence (under that name) he denies."⁵² Fletcher’s acceptance of monism is indicated by this acceptance of atheism. He freely criticizes the Law-giver concept of God. He advocates love as his ethic. "Love Monism" is the name given to Fletcher’s ethic by James M. Gustafson, a professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School:
“Love,” like “situation,” is a word that runs through Fletcher’s book like a greased pig. Nowhere does Fletcher take the trouble to indicate in a systematic way his various uses of it. It refers to everything he wants it to refer to. It is the only thing that is intrinsically good; it equals justice; it is a formal principle, it is a disposition, it is a predicate and not a property, it is a ruling norm.⁵³
Accepting “love” or any other name as being equally satisfactory for God leads either to pantheism or its atheistic counterpart which says the world is not God. Fletcher, it must be admitted, speaks sometimes of God, but this does not mean that he at any point appears to be favoring belief in the existence of a personal God who is other than the universe. Even the back of the dust jacket seems to be confessing that this book is to be associated with some kind of radical departure when it speaks about “these books which introduced the world to the revolution in theology.” Fletcher equates love with God to an extent beyond the recognition of a personal God. Love is accepted as being God equally in a Christian and in a non-Christian:
"The Christian situationist says to the non-Christian situationist... 'Your love is like mine, like everybody's; it is the Holy Spirit.'"
Fletcher goes on to more clearly equate God and love:
“Love is not the work of the Holy Spirit, it is the Holy Spirit—working in us.”⁵⁴
At this point he is not monistically identifying God with everything, but he is identifying God monistically with all love, and calling it the Holy Spirit. And his concept of love is broad and vague, for he can say:
“Love is of people, by people, and for people.”⁵⁵
Again, he can say:
“Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.”⁵⁶
Where does his concept of love end? Fletcher's reference to a personal God does not raise much confidence that he is indeed speaking of a personal God who exists separately from man. Persons derive from society; the particular derives from the whole situation. He states:
“There is nothing individualistic about personalism.”⁵⁷
If there is nothing individualistic about personalism for man, is there anything individualistic about God? Personalism sinks into the situation.
"Situation" Defined to Exclude Final Authority of Scripture
“Situation” is the key word revealing Fletcher’s monistic assumptions. Situation means contextual,⁵⁸ fitting (“We have to find out what is ‘fitting’ to be truly ethical,” he quotes H. R. Niebuhr as saying.⁵⁹)
The four working principles of situationism, according to Fletcher, are:
Pragmatism (meaning expediency, or what works);
Relativism (meaning contingent, contextual);
Positivism (meaning arbitrarily posited faith in love); and
Personalism (meaning that ethics deals with human relations).
Other synonyms for situationism are occasionalism, circumstantialism, and actualism.
“It is empirical, fact-minded, data-conscious, inquiring.”⁶⁰
“Situation,” for Fletcher, evidently does not include the instructions of Scripture. In his concept of the “situation,” such a word would evidently be unethical because it would not be part of the situation.
Fletcher derives his ethics from his monistic view of the “situation.” The situation determines the ethics. No outside force or authority should be interjected. The law of a transcendent God he sees as unacceptable as an ethic because it would not always result in a loving response to the situation. Situations may arise when any of the Ten Commandments would not be the ethical way to respond to a situation. Agape love is to serve as the guiding principle.
SUMMARY OF ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MONISM
When people lose sight of the authority of a transcendent God, they must seek their ethical authority either within themselves or in their relationship to their environment. Schweitzer admits that this provides no clear and certain ethic. Fletcher postulates love as the ethic for such a situation, but he cannot define love, and he must admit that it is postulated. He cannot prove that one behavior is more loving than another.
This monistic approach to ethics is found to be consistent with the monism of liberalism in which the authority of Scripture was seriously questioned—on the assumption that God is to be found in nature.
Wesley would be shocked to see the movement he started so unaware of his emphasis upon an ethic of love that fulfilled the law. But there is evidence that his definition of sin as being only the transgression of a known law was a knife that began to cut his followers away from a consciousness that sin also involves the transgression of laws yet unknown; there is an absolute standard that there is an absolute standard that is to be associated with the transcendent Lawgiver and Judge.
With the parallel development of mysticism in the Wesleyan movement, the monistic unity of man with God has developed a more subjective authority for ethics than Wesley would have accepted.
Footnotes
David B. Guralnik, ed., Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (Second College Edition) (Cleveland: William Collins and World Publishing Co., 1976), p. 481.
Albert Victor M'Callin, "Ethics," Baker's Dictionary of Theology, ed. Everett F. Harrison (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1960), p. 199.
Bernard L. Ramm, The Right, the Good and the Happy (Waco: Word Books, 1971), p. 17.
Harold Lindsell, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Washington: Canon Press, 1973), p. 36ff.
Charles Manson's statement, "If God is One, what is bad?" is hard to argue against on purely monistic grounds. See Os Guinness, The Dust of Death (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973), p. 192.
See Tucker N. Callaway, Japanese Buddhism and Christianity (Tokyo: Protestant Publishing Co., 1957), p. 212ff.
Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), p. 54.
Ibid., p. 54.
Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), p. 124.
John L. Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956), p. 42.
Ibid., p. 42.
Peters, p. 192.
John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, Vol. V (in 14 vols.) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, [n.d.]), p. 322.
Peters, p. 39.
Ibid., p. 39.
Daniel Steele, Mile-Stone Papers (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, [n.d.]), p. 33 (reprint).
Ibid., pp. 34–35.
Hannah Whitall Smith, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life ([n.p.]: David C. Cook, 1883), p. 219f.
Ibid., Preface, p. Vi.
Smith, Preface, p. vi.
Smith, pp. 220–221.
Ibid., p. 221.
Ibid., pp. 37–38.
Smith, p. 51.
Ibid., p. 56.
Ibid., p. 144.
Smith, p. 98.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid., p. 227.
Daniel Steele, The Gospel of the Comforter (Rochester, Penn.: Reprinted by Rev. H. E. Schmul, 1960), p. 120.
Joseph H. Smith, Holiness Text-Book (Cincinnati: God's Bible School and Revivalist, 1922), pp. 72–73.
S. L. Brengle, Helps to Holiness (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, Ltd., [n.d.]), p. Iv.
Maude A. Price, Receiving the Holy Spirit (Fort Wayne, Indiana: Glad Tidings Publishing Co., 1930), p. 3 (pamphlet), quoting Bishop George A. Miller, They That Hunger and Thirst ([n.p.]: Doubleday, Doran, 1930).
S. A. Keen, Pentecostal Papers (Cincinnati: Revivalist Office, 1895), p. 40.
See Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), where the Pentecostal movement is traced to the Wesleyan Holiness movement.
J. Rodman Williams, The Pentecostal Reality (Plainfield, New Jersey: Logos International, 1972), p. 50.
Ibid., p. 60.
Williams, p. 73.
Edward D. O'Conner, The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1971), p. 206.
Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought and Its Development (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1951), p. 10.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 13.
Schweitzer, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 12.
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1910).
Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966).
Ibid.
Harvey Cox, The Situation Ethics Debate (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), p. 9.
Edward LeRoy Long, Jr., “The History and Literature of the ‘New Morality,’” in The Situation Ethics Debate, ed. Harvey Cox (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), p. 102.
Ibid., pp. 103–104.
Ibid., p. 105.
Fletcher, p. 52, quoting William Temple, Nature, Man and God ([n.p.]: The Macmillan Company, 1934), p. 416. Fletcher once wrote a biography of Archbishop William Temple and was an admirer of him, according to Harvey Cox, p. 10.
James M. Gustafson, “Love Monism,” in Storm Over Ethics, ed. John C. Bennett (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1967), p. 33.
Fletcher, p. 51.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 99.
Ibid., p. 50.
Fletcher, p. 29.
Fletcher, citing H. R. Niebuhr, The Responsible Self ([n.p.]: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 60–61.
Fletcher, p. 29.
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