The Situational Application of Ethics is NOT the Same as Situation Ethics

Being somewhat of a contrarian, I submit the following to those who question the use of lesser evil/greater good paradigms in making ethical decisions:

"[The responsible man’s] conduct is not established in advance, once and for all, that is to say, as a matter of principle, but it arises with the given situation.  He has no principle at his disposal which possesses absolute validity and which he has to put into effect fanatically, overcoming all the resistance which is offered to it by reality, but he sees in the given situation what is necessary and what is ‘right’ for him to grasp and to do.  For the responsible man the given situation is not simply the material on which he is to impress his idea or his programme [sic] by force, but this situation is itself drawn into the action and shares in giving form to the deed.  It is not a ‘absolute good’ that is to be realized; but on the contrary it is part of the self-direction of the responsible agent that he prefers what is relatively better to what is relatively worse and that he perceives that the ‘absolute good’ may sometimes be the very worst." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (Translated from German by Neville Horton Smith)

The point here is that while God's moral law does not change based on the situation (contra situation ethics), how and when we apply a moral precept certainly does.  No doubt, in many situations the application of morals or ethics is clear-cut and unambiguous.  However, in other situations - more than we would care to admit - what to do is murky and confusing.  A concrete example of this comes from Richard Baxter's Christian Directory.  He says,

“Suppose that I swear to God that I will cast away a shilling . . . here I take perjury to be a greater sin than my casting away a shilling . . . but when I question whether the oath should be kept or not, I have greater suspicion that it should not than it should, because no oath must be the bond of the least iniquity.”

Notice that by referring to perjury as the "greater sin,"* Baxter is making a judgment that perjury and the casting away of a shilling are both sins, but of the two, the casting away of a shilling is the lesser evil. Additionally, he has a  “greater suspicion” (not certainty) that the oath itself might be sinful and thus, if sinful, should not be kept. So is the answer to Baxter's conundrum here (concerning what he should do) clear and self-evident or are the lines a little blurred?  If blurred, then apparently all the wisdom we need is not simply baked into the commandments themselves.  This is because the principal function of God's law is not to provide us with the power or wisdom to obey, but rather its function is to show us what we are.  This is what Martin Luther was referring to in his Bondage of the Will when he wrote:

“'By the law is knowledge of sin,' says Paul (Romans 3:20).  He does not say: abolition, or avoidance, of sin.  The entire design and power of the law is just to give knowledge, and that of nothing but sin; not to display or confer any power; but it teaches and displays that there is here no power, and great weakness.  What can 'knowledge of sin' be, but knowledge of our weakness and badness?” (Translated from German by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston)

So in our attempts to make ethical decisions, it is imperative that we beseech the Lord to grant us wisdom (James 1:5) so as to apply His law as a situation warrants.  And frankly, how such applications can be made without some understanding of lesser evils and greater goods is beyond me.

Again from Bonhoeffer's Ethics concerning ethical situations:

"Our responsibility is not infinite; it is limited, even though within these limits it embraces the whole of reality.  It is concerned not only with the good will but also with the good outcome of the action, not only with the motive but also with the object; it seeks to attain knowledge of the given totality of the real in its origin, its essence and its goal. . . . One must risk looking into the immediate future; one must devote earnest thought to the consequences of one’s action; . . . Responsible action must not try to be blind."

*The modern-day trend of leveling sins, where all sins are said to have the same weight, defies both Scripture and reason.  Even Christ Himself spoke of “greater sin” (John 19:11).  And while some may fear that degrees of sin necessarily lead to categories of mortal and venial sin, that conclusion, in my estimation, is a non sequitur.

Addendum (12/28/20):  In true ethical dilemmas where a decision is unavoidable, I believe the lesser evil paradigm is often preferable because it has no need to “strain out the gnat” (Matthew 23:24) looking for some scheme to justify a decision made or action taken.  In other words, there is no attempt by the decision-maker to claim his/her action has some kind of moral virtue.  It is understood that the decision made is questionable at best and possibly even a sin, but still in the prayerful judgment of the decision-maker, it is likely a lesser evil than the other choices contemplated or understood.  And thus the decision-maker, while knowing all sin deserves God's wrath, does not lie “to his own conscience in order to avoid despair" (as Bonhoeffer elsewhere puts it).  Rather, he/she hopes in nothing but God's mercy for Christ's sake.  In fact, this may explain the stalwart action of the midwives of Israel in Exodus 1:15-20, who did not hesitate to both disobey and lie to Pharaoh in order to save the lives of male Hebrew newborns, one of whom was Moses (Exodus 2:1-10) and all of whom Pharaoh wanted dead.  And while the midwives likely did not have a formal ethical system to follow, it seems obvious they regarded lying and disobedience to authority as far lesser evils than being complicit in the intentional murder of babies.