Another framework of Christian ethics is natural law. This maintains that human reason reflecting on human nature can arrive at moral wisdom and knowledge. Natural law is considered to be a moral code existing within the purpose of nature, which is created by god who said ‘law is nothing else than an ordination of reason for the common good promulgated by the one who is in charge of the community’. The idea is for the followers to do what is good and avoid evil, to do the ‘natural’ thing and not the unnatural that is not mentioned in the bible. I.e., no one is to kill, therefore abortion is wrong. It is to act with reason. The idea was that people had a kind nature and evil thoughts didn’t enter people’s minds. They were loving, and therefore that would mean that their reason was positive and good.
The final framework of Christian ethics is situation ethics. Situation ethics, popularised in the 60s by J. Fletcher, stated that there was only one rule or absolute; agape love. This type of love is not the type of love for a boyfriend or an actor or a singer, it is the kind of love that Jesus mentioned when he said, love thy neighbour as yourself’. Agape is the active concern for others well being. The idea of this was that when someone is faced with a situation, the action that they will take should be the most loving thing that you can possibly do. This would mean that the actions themselves may not be good or bad but it all depends on whether love is being provided. Killing is wrong, however, in a certain situation it may be all right or justifiable. I.e., if a man killed Hitler, than that would be justifiable even though he had committed murder because he did the most loving thing by killing the man who brought on suffering to hundreds of thousands of people.
In conclusion, it is very clear that agape love has a very prominent and substantial role in Christian ethics. It is fair to say that all the actions have to love and think of the welfare of other beings. The principle is to treat others, as you would like to be treated. I think that natural law and especially situation ethics got their bases from Jesus’ teaching ‘love thy neighbour as thyself.’ The unconditional and universal love.
To what extent are Christianity and utilitarianism consistent?
Utilitarianism is derived from the Latin word utilis, which means;’useful’ the concept of this theory is the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. The idea is that when someone is making a decision, that person has to consider the consequence of the action and to see whether there is a greatest balance of happiness instead of unhappiness. Therefore a right action is the one with the best consequences. For example, stealing is wrong, however, if a man steals food for his starving family then it is not wrong. This is where we can see that Christianity and utilitarianism is consistent.
Situation ethics state that one should do the most loving thing that our actions ought to be loving. Well the example of the man stealing for his family is consistent with situation ethics. He steals, which is wrong, but in that situation, he is doing the most loving thing for his starving family by giving them food. It is the same with the example with Hitler. If a man kills Hitler, it would not be considered wrong by both utilitarianism and situation ethics. By killing Hitler, you would be doing the most loving thing as you would be killing the person who caused and would probably have continued to have brought suffering to hundreds of thousands of people, and therefore killing him brought about the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.
However, even though situation ethics is consistent with utilitarianism, the other frameworks of Christianity are not quite consistent. Natural law states that action must have reason, to aim for good and avoid the evil, following the natural that rather than\n the unnatural way. If the same example of Hitler were used here, than is would not be justified completely. Killing Hitler, for a utilitarian, is doing the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, however, when we reason with is its clear that no matter what the intention or the consequence, when it comes down to it, we would be murdering a fellow human being and this would not be avoiding the evil as the action is taking a human life. Reason is supposed to prevent us from sinking to the level of Hitler.
This is the same case with biblical ethics. This is the inspiration from the bible. To learn the teachings of Jesus and his golden rule; ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. By killing halter, we would be doing something that we wouldn’t like to have done to us, we want to be treated the same way and even though he doesn’t treat people well and caused suffering it doesn’t justify you taking an action that you, yourself would not like being done to you. Also, the bible states that ‘thou shall not kill’ if we kill Hitler, we are clearly disobeying the rules of god, in addition, Jesus taught his disciples to ‘pray for the enemy’ he also said ‘I say to you, love your enemies’, by killing Hitler we would be disobeying his orders. However it can be argued that since we are god’s people, he himself would want the majority of us to be happy and therefore in this way it can be justified.
In conclusion, we can never really argue to what extent Christianity and utilitarianism is consistent. This is because there are many arguments that we can bring up to try and justify an action. Utilitarianism does seem to be slightly consistent with Christianity.
