The Christian New Morality by O. Sydney Barr (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 787 The Christian New Morality. By 0. SYDNEY BARR. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. Pp. 118. $4.00. According to Ban the New Morality, better described as the Situation Ethic, has four basic premises, although his primary concern is with the last one. These premises are: (I) Persons are more important than things; (!i!) Love alone is the ultimate criterion for making ethical decisions; (3) What love demands in any specific instance depends upon the situation; (4) The New Morality is biblical morality. Behind it lies the authority of Jesus Christ himself. Barr makes out a cogent case for the biblical foundation of the New Morality by establishing the priority and primacy of agape over law. His analysis proceeds this way: The New Morality is biblical morality if it can be shown that (1) the teaching of Christ is not anti-nomian: (2) Christ was committed to a respect and reverence for the law, but he was never the legalist because in the texts cited by Barr it should be evident that he always maintained the primacy of agape. Situationalism insists that love is primary and that law is thereby relativized in importance. Law is for persons and not persons for the law. Law should never be considered as an end in itself; persons should never be considered as mere means, which is evident if in every situation law is primary and love secondary. Barr's case is strong if it is confined only to this conclusion: that Situationalism, identified by the primacy and priority of agape, is biblical morality. This includes a large number of interested parties, and no complaints can be raised by Fletcher, Robinson, Brunner, Niebuhr, Ramsey, Haring, and some of the Roman Catholic writers who are doing some exhilarating writing by enlarging the ambits of their own tradition. It is more a matter of all of these writers agreeing that agape is primary and that what survives of the priority of law over love in some juridical statements of the insitutional Church will consequently be open to criticism as to their compatibility with biblical morality. But then the differences begin to appear. The problems arise in a book like Barr's when we ask the deeper question-does the biblical evidence point to anything more than the primacy of agape? In other words, does the evidence vi~dicate Situationa .lism of any one of the several kinds? Dr. Barr sees the difficulties here because he says on page 29: We have now reached the point where we can better appreciate the position of those who claim the authority of Jesus himself for their insistence that love alone is the ultimate criterion for decision-making. Admittedly, proof positive that the claim is correct is impossible. The gospels do not offer examples of Jesus' contravening every law of his day. Furthermore, there is no record of his having discussed the matter of lww versus absolutes, or of legalism versus freedom, in the technical language of, or from the perspective of, today's Situation Ethics. And 788 BOOK REVIEWS we most certainly cannot read his mind. We have, nevertheless, uncovered certain elements of the gospel picture which clearly underline the strength of the situationist's position. It is now apparent htat Jesus himself understood agape not simply as one of many guidelines for man's relationship with others, but as something in a special category ail its own. There is no question but that he held the religious laws of his tradition in high esteem. It is equally certain that he did not hesitate to go beyond these laws. He did not do this arbitrarily, but whenever and wherever a primary concern for persons and sensitivity to human need dicated. Never, as far as the gospel record is c-oncerned, did he default from this criterion, or allow any other consideration to have a higher claim. Situationalism is protean and the classifications that are helpful in this discussion are similar to the classifications employed in treating of Utilitarianism . Philosophers refer to pure-act-utilitarianism, modified-act-utilitarianism , and pure-rule-utilitarianism. As Professor Luther J. Binkley clearly points out in Conflict of Ideals, the pure-act...