¹ See, for example, the many essays in Cox, Harvey (ed.), The Situation Ethics Debate (1968)Google Scholar.

² Among the ethidsts exhibiting these trends in one form or another are those Joseph Fletcher names as his allies in Cox, ibid., 235. For two of the more widely circulating books in which all of these trends very clearly appear, see Fletcher, Joseph, Situation Ethics (1966)Google Scholar and Robinson, J. A. T., Honest to God (1963)Google Scholar.

³ See references in n.2. In philosophy, Bentham, Mill, and the utilitarians generally equate love with beneficence. A contemporary example is Frankena, William, Ethics (1963)Google Scholar.

⁴ Understandably, therefore, John Stuart Mill has been interpreted as a ruleutilitarian by those who have become convinced that justice, promise-keeping, etc., do function as moral rules by means of which we justify our actions but which are in turn justified on the basis of some variant of the standard utilitarian formula. That rule-utilitarianism, however, does not escape the difficulties of any pure utilitarianism is ably argued by Lyons, David, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (1965)Google Scholar. See also Ross, W. D., Foundations of Ethics (1939)Google Scholar, Chapters 4 and 5.

⁵ This does, perhaps, overstate our point somewhat. Love as a display of sympathetic feeling for others is systematically and methodologically taught and cultivated by psychotherapists with considerable success. They illustrate how love as kindness can be a predictable role that one can play in the situations that call for it even when one may not otherwise feel disposed to adopt it. It is possible, therefore, to treat benevolence as a duty. See Halmos, Paul, The Faith of the Counsellors (1966)Google Scholar.

⁶ Accordingly there are appropriate differentiations to be made within moral discourse. In this essay we are using the terms “right,” “wrong,” and “duty” with reference to actions, “good” and “bad” with reference to ends, and “morally good,” “morally bad” and “morally virtuous” with reference to persons and traits of persons. The terms “goodness” and “righteousness” are used generically. One exception should be noted. It is sometimes convenient to use the term “right” in a generic sense in contexts where it should be obvious to the reader that we are doing so.

⁷ See, for example, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28.

⁸ Contained in unpublished materials.

⁹ With respect to the right- and wrong-making characteristics of actions, we are inclined to be guided by the classical discussion of prima facie duties by Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good (1930), Chapter 2Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Luke 10:29-37.

¹¹ Strictly speaking, “his people” and “his community” refer, in this biblical setting, to the Israelites. Here and in our ensuing discussion, however, we are taking the view that Jewish and Christian thought did not confine God's relationships, his concerns, and his power and desire to save and benefit man to a particular religious community: the creation narratives and the gospels are two early and powerful examples. See also n.25.

¹² Exodus 20:2; Deut. 5:6.

¹³ Exodus 20:3; Deut. 5:7.

¹⁴ Exodus 20:4-6; Deut. 5:8-10.

¹⁵ Exodus 20:7; Deut. 5:11.

¹⁶ Exodus 20:8-11; Deut. 5:12-15.

¹⁷ Nietzsche's famous attack on precisely this aspect of Jewish and Christian morality is in The Genealogy of Morals: An Attack (1887)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ See, for example, Baier, Kurt, The Moral Point of View (1958)Google Scholar, Brandt, Richard B., Ethical Theory (1959)Google Scholar, Firth, Roderick, Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952), 317–45Google Scholar, William Frankena, op. cit., Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (1963)Google Scholar, and Mandelbaum, Maurice, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience (1955)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See Firth, ibid. For Firth, “X is right” means X would be approved by an Ideal Observer, i.e., someone who is omniscient, omnipercipient, disinterested, dispassionate, consistent, and otherwise normal. Firth's “Ideal Observer” is a hypothetical being, and the validity of his analysis of the assertion that “X is right” as a certain kind of reaction on the part of such a being does not rest upon whether or not such a being actually exists. From a theological point of view it seems plausible to construe the Ideal Observer analysis as a partial description of God. In this connection, it is noteworthy that Firth's conception of the Ideal Observer, like the Jewish and Christian conceptions of God, is absolutistic. It is not possible on this analysis to get disagreement among ideal observers: any ideal observer would react in the manner that defines what it means to say that “X is right.”

²⁰ For a promising development of a more explicitly theistic version of Firth's Ideal Observer analysis, see Reynolds, Charles H., The Significance of Firth's Ideal Observer Theory for Theological Ethics (Ph.D. Thesis, Harvard, 1968)Google Scholar.

²¹ The failure to treat the racial “outsider” as a fellow human being is dramatically described by Robert Coles in the first chapter of his book, Children of Crisis (1964)Google Scholar.

²² For a discussion of methodological relativism, see Brandt, , op. cit., 275–78Google Scholar. See Chapter 2 in Richardson, Herbert, Toward An American Theology (1967)Google Scholar, for a penetrating analysis of the atheistic nature of ideological conflict and of the appropriate theistic response to it.

²³ Luther, MartinKing — Unsung Theologian, Commonweal 88 (1968), 201–03Google Scholar.

²⁴ Where Do We Go From Here (1967), 190Google Scholar.

²⁴ Ibid., 190f. In its original setting, the “love for one another” here spoken of was love for those who belonged to the Christian community. Of course, King's theological use of this passage which we are citing with approval is shaped not by strictly exegetical concerns but by that ceaseless quest to work out what our tradition can and does mean to us with all the hazards and pitfalls this venture entails. It is noteworthy that Krister Stendahl, in a startling and tightly argued exegesis of IQS x, 17-20 and Rom. 12:19–21, revealing this kind of community-restricting love within the Qumran, Old Testament and New Testament (particularly Pauline) literature, nevertheless ends by referring the reader to Mat. 5:44–48, which is consistent with King's theological position, and in which the concern for even one's persecutor is seen as a right attitude because “it is congruous to the attitude of God.” Hate, Non-Retaliation, and Love, Harvard Theological Review 55 (1962), 355.Google Scholar

²⁶ See Niebuhr, H. R., The Responsible Self (1963), Chapter 4Google Scholar.

²⁷ Recently very well documented in Elder, Frederick, Prophecy and Environment (Th.M. Thesis, Harvard, 1968)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)Google Scholar.

²⁹ We heartily concur with those who apply the just war criteria to the moral assessment of this and any other war. Since love is not the sole norm and since the consideration of consequences does not exhaust the bases for casuistry, there is no reason not to take seriously the considered, casuistic principles derived from centuries of moral deliberation concerning war. The interpretation of how the justwar criteria come out with respect to a given war will, we believe, be greatly influenced by the extent to which neighbor-love and love for God implicitly or explicitly influence each part of the analysis. See Ralph B. Potter, War and Moral Discourse (forthcoming, John Knox Press) for a just-war analysis that is considerably influenced, albeit implicitly, by neighbor-love and love for God as we have been interpreting them.

³⁰ See, for example, Wright, G. E., God Who Acts (1952)Google Scholar, and Niebuhr, H. R., The Meaning of Revelation (1941)Google Scholar.

³¹ See Chapter 2 in Herbert Richardson, op. cit. It should be noted that when we speak of “actualizing” what God approves, whether in the form of neighborlove or love for God, we are not implying that it is impossible to interpret their realization as a work of God or a gift of grace. The moral theory espoused in this essay does not prejudice our theological understanding of God's role in the processes of justifying, sanctifying, and redeeming men. All of these processes may be seen, in various degrees and in various ways, as God's doing.

³² These claims, however, tend to be our duty in any situation in which they arise because they are always right- or wrong-making characteristics as such and in that sense might be called “absolute.” We prefer, following W. D. Ross, op. cit., to speak of their prima facie rightness or wrongness.

³³ See Mendenhall, G. E., Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1955)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Suicide, of course, also has a dimension of hostility the students did not discuss. Behavioral scientists have learned that violence directed toward oneself and violence directed toward thers are closely linked. The man who commits suicide may, indeed, be trying to “kill off” someone else.

³⁵ On Liberty (1859).

³⁶ Joseph Butler has argued for the compatibility of rational self-love, benevolence, and the dictates of conscience. See Five Sermons (1950)Google Scholar. Like Jonathan Edwards, we would like more clearly to emphasize the necessity for subordinating self-love to a “regard to being in general”. The Nature of Virtue (1960), 92Google Scholar.