What does Tillich mean by this word "theonomy"? It corresponds to his desire to break through "beyond naturalism and supranaturalism" to the third point of view, according to which the transcendent is not something external or "otherworldly," but is found in, with, and under the Thou of all finite relations as their ultimate depth, basis, and meaning. In the field of ethics, this means that a given concrete relation in all its uniqueness is taken as the basis of a moral judgment. It should not be subordinated to some universal norm or considered simply as a special case. It is in the depths of this unique relationship that one can meet the call of the sacred, the holy, and the absolutely unconditioned – and answer that call. For the Christian, this means accepting as the ultimate basis of our being the unconditional love of Jesus Christ, "Man to others." This is what it means for a Christian to "have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:16), to be guided in his actions, as Christ taught, only by the love with which He has loved us (John 13:34), or, in the words of the Apostle Paul, to have "the same feelings as are in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). Life in Christ Jesus, in the new being, in the Spirit, means that we have no absolutes but His love, that we are completely free in everything else, but we belong to it entirely. And this complete openness in love for the "other" for his own sake is the only absolute even for the non-Christian, as the parable of the sheep and the goats shows. A non-Christian may not recognize Christ in the "other," but because he has answered the call of unconditional love, he has answered Him, for He is the "depth" of love. Christian ethics is not only for Christians, and certainly not only for religious people. Christ can address His call to other people (and often to Christians as well) incognito; But since it is a call from our home, from the personal basis of our very existence, it cannot be alien to man. He is not heteronomous, but he is not autonomous either; He is a theonomian.

One love can allow itself to be wholly guided by the situation itself, since love possesses, as it were, an internal moral compass that allows it to intuitively enter into the need of another as if it were its own. It alone can open up completely to this situation, or rather to the personality in this situation, to open itself completely and unselfishly, without losing its direction or its unconditionality. Only love is able to implement the ethics of radical responsibility, evaluating each situation from the inside, and not on the basis of ready-made prescriptions and laws. In Tillich's words, "love alone can be transformed according to the specific requirements of each individual or social situation, without losing its eternity, its dignity, and its unconditional value." Therefore, it is the only ethics that gives a firm footing in a rapidly changing world and yet remains absolutely free with regard to all changes in the situation and over all changes. It is ready to see in every moment, in every new situation, a new creation of the hand of God, demanding its own response – perhaps completely unprecedented. And so Tillich continues: "Ethics in a changing world must be understood as the ethics of kairos" – the God of the given moment, through which we meet the eternal in temporality. "Love, realized from kairos to kairos, creates its own ethics, which goes beyond the alternative between the ethics of absolutism and relativism,"238 or, in other words, supranaturalism and naturalism.

NOTHING IS PRESCRIBED – EXCEPT LOVE

This view, expressed thirty years ago in Emil Brunner's great book, The Divine Imperative (1932), is most convincingly substantiated, as far as I know, in Professor Joseph Fletcher's article "A New View of Christian Ethics." "Christian ethics," he says, "is not a codified pattern of behavior. It is an effort to relate love to the world of relativity by means of casuistry subordinated to love." This is a radical "ethics of the situation" in which nothing is prescribed except love.

"Like classical casuistry, it is concrete and focused on the individual case, its aim being to put Christian imperatives into practice. But this neo-casuistry, in contrast to classical casuistry, rejects the attempt to anticipate or prescribe real life decisions in their existential specificity. The old saying that the Talmudists incessantly invent rules to break the rules does not really discredit them or the old-fashioned casuists who acted after them. They wriggled out of their own trap, trying to serve both love and the law. Unfortunately, the hopeless labyrinth of legalism is the only result of any ethics that tries to soften the codified law with loving indulgence. A change of roles is vital here. This love must be the constitutive principle, and the law, if it is needed at all, is only regulative."

In Jesus' teaching, the classic illustration of the principle that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, that compassion for the individual is above all law, is His shocking approval of David's actions, which he considered that human need (even if it were his own) more important than all precepts, however sacred:

"Have you not read what David did when he hungered and those who were with him? How did he enter into the house of God, and eat the showbread, which he was not to eat, nor to those who were with him, but only to the priests?" (Matt. 12:34).

Of course, this is a very risky ethic. Representatives of supranaturalistic legalism will always fear it, just as the Pharisees did in the time of Jesus (Matt. 12:14). However, I think that this is the only ethics for an "adult person". Resistance to it in the name of religious sanctions will not stop it, but will only give it anti-Christian forms. For, as Fletcher says,

"In our time, the law of the Torah is undergoing a second decline, and even more radical than during the first attacks on it by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. The fact is that the cultural environment today is much more conducive to such a decline than in the apostolic and patristic periods."243

There is no need to mourn the destruction of dilapidated installations. We should have the courage to accept this process as a challenge to Christian ethics, to free itself from the props of supranaturalistic legalism, on which it has relied too long and willingly. Of course, this release cannot go smoothly. To quote Fletcher again:

"Pope Pius XII, in his solemn speech of April 18, 1952, correctly designated this modern form of Christian ethics as 'situational' and 'existential'. He repudiated, of course, pointing out that such an unprecepted ethic could even be used to justify a Catholic who had left the Church of Rome if he seemed to be drawing closer to God as a result, or to defend birth control for the good of the individual. Four years later, on February 2, 1956, the Supreme Sacred Congregation "Sanctum Officium"244 called it a "new morality" and expelled it from all academies and seminaries in an attempt to counteract its influence on Catholic moralists.

But, of course, Protestants and Anglicans react to the new ethic with the same suspicion as soon as it becomes clear what judgments it can lead to and what rules and attitudes it threatens.