With reference to other aspects of human experience, comment on the claim that relativism in ethics poses serious problems for Christians. Justify your answer.

Authors Avatar by erinruth99gmailcom (student)


With reference to other aspects of human experience, comment on the claim that relativism in ethics poses serious problems for Christians. Justify your answer. [15]

Ethical relativism is the theory that states morality is relative to culture and circumstance, meaning the same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For example, most societies believe the act of sacrificing either people or animals is wrong, but there are tribal cultures that perceive it as part of normal life. If one takes this approach there are no such things as moral absolutes, and this can pose problems for Christians.

For most Christians ethics are dependent on rules recorded in the Bible. Paul instructs, “Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.” In the Old Testament especially there are many empathic statements such as, “Do not kill,” which do not leave much room for ethical relativism. They reject the idea that the ends could justify the means, because sin is sin no matter what the intentions behind it were. Slick wrote on this topic, “I consider moral absolutes to be real because they come from God and not because they are determined by the whims of mankind.”
Join now!


One of the main criticisms of ethical relativism from within Christian circles is how it leads to a subjective view on morality. If there are no fixed moral truths then that leaves the individual as the supreme moral agent. Under this theory it could be argued the Holocaust was moral – after all, it was the view of that culture that Jews should be exterminated. Anti-Semitism was a societal norm. Groothuis put forward this view: “Surely any morally sane person must ethically condemn Nazi atrocities as evil … but relativism cannot permit such judgments. The morality of everything ...

This is a preview of the whole essay