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Title: Situation - Ethics
Author: John Warwick Montgomery
Narrator: John Warwick Montgomery
Format: Original Recording
Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-08-16
Publisher: 1517 The Legacy Project
Genres: Religion & Spirituality, Religious Thought

Publisher's Summary:
A live recording of the historic debate between the late Joseph Fletcher, father of "situation ethics", and John Warwick Montgomery at San Diego State University. A devastating critique of all attempts to base morality on contexts, situations, or relativism.

Members Reviews:
A FASCINATING DIALOGUE BETWEEN FLETCHER AND A MAJOR CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST
John Warwick Montgomery (b. 1931) is one of the major philosophical apologists of the 20th century. He is also a trained lawyer, which influenced his "historical/legal" approach to Christian apologetics. He is perhaps best known as a writer for his bookHistory and Christianity, as well as for his debates with the infamous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1967), with the "Death of God" theologian Thomas Altizer (reprinted inThe Suicide of Christian Theology).
This book is a transcript of the February 11, 1971 dialogue between Montgomery and Joseph Fletcher (who wroteSituation Ethics: The New Morality). Here are a few examples of their exchanges:
FLETCHER: "I think there are no normative moral principles whatsoever which are intrinsically valid or universally obliging.... If we are, as I would want to reason, obliged in conscience sometimes to tell white lies, as we often call them, then in conscience we might be obliged sometimes to engage in white thefts and white fornications and white killings and white breakings of promises and the like." (pg. 15)
FLETCHER: âI want to suggest that methodologically there are basically only three alternatives strategiesâ the three options open to conscience at work are to be simply labeled as legalism, antinomianism, and situationismâ In between these [first] two extremes lies situationismâ and a mediating position in the spectrum. The situationist enters into troubling moral situations armedâ [with] some reflective generalizations about what is ordinarily and typically the right thing to do. But unlike the legalist he refuses to absolutize â any normative principleâ he is prepared to depart from a usually applicable generalization if in the particular case the consequence of following the rule is to minimize rather than to optimize â the first-order value to which heâs committed.â (Pg. 19, 23-24)
MONTGOMERY: âThe insurmountable difficulty is simply this: there is no wayâ of knowing when the situationist is actually endeavoring to set forth genuine facts and true opinions, and when he is lyingâ Why? Because deception is allowed on principle â .as long as the ultimate aim is love. Consider: if Professor Fletcher acts consistently with his premisesâ he can to this end introduce any degree of factual misinformation, rhetorical pettifogging, or direct prevarication into the discussionâ Our restatement goes: âIf a situation ethicist â tells you that he is not lying, can you believe him?ââ [This leaves] the audience entirely incapable of ever being sure that Professor Fletcher means what he says.â (Pg. 31-32)
MONTGOMERY: âThis is precisely the claim of the historical Christian faith: that biblical revelation constitutes a transcendent word from God establishing ethical values once for allâ Absolute moral principles are explicitly set forth; these inform love and guide its exercise.â (Pg.