Lehmann's Contextual Ethics and the Problem of Truth-Telling

Abstract

“Ethics cannot be born out of any concrete ‘whole’ without the moral requirement or claim of ‘wholeness.’ Nor, for that matter, does the indicative theological statement, ‘God forgives,’ imply the injunction, ‘Forgive one another,’ without the intervention of a normative statement in theological ethics, ‘Men should deal with one another as God deals with them.’ Neither in a secular context nor in a Christian context is it possible to formulate the ethical question as ‘What am I to do?’ Any ethics, in any context, must ask, ‘What ought I to do?’”