Notes

1. . Joseph Fletcher, Moral Responsibility: Situation Ethics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967), pp. 27–28; Robert Springer, “Conscience, Behavioral Science, and Absolutes,” in Absolutes in Moral Theology, ed. Charles Curran (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Publications, 1968); Paul Ramsey, Deeds und Rules in Christian Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), pp. 104–22.
2. . Note the varied interpretations of (and thus responses to) Fletcher's notion of situation ethics in Harvey Cox, ed., The Situation Ethics Debate (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), pp. 23–49.
3. . Ramsey (n. 1 above), p. 20, n. 20.
4. . Kohlberg refers to each kind of moral judgment as a “stage” of moral. Judgment (see his “Indoctrination versus Relativity in Value Education,” Zygon 6 [1971]: 285–310). This is because each stage involves cognitive distinctions which seem to be prerequisites for advancement to higher forms of judgment. Kohlberg's phrase, “stages of moral development,” however, all too easily is misinterpreted to mean degrees of moral behavior or qualities of moral worth. Erik Erikson acknowledges the same difficulty in choosing to designate ethical strengths at each stage of the life cycle as “virtues.” He notes he does not intend to ignore the fact that “in giving to these strengths the very designations by which in the past they have acquired countless connotations of superficial goodness, affected niceness, and all too strenuous virtue, I invited misunderstandings and misuses” (Childhood and Society [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963], n. on p. 274). My judgment is that Erikson does not avoid misunderstanding or misuse and that Kohlberg's “stage” terminology invites the same. Ethically, it is important to avoid such mistaken inferences of ascribed goodness when using the term “stages of moral development”.
5. . The way differing concepts of value, sanction, etc., fall into clusters which form distinct and composite levels of moral development is demonstrated in Kohlberg's “The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years Ten to Sixteen” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1958), pp. 88‐105, 376–83.
6. . Kohlberg has also found the sequence of stages to occur cross‐culturally in Britain, Taiwan, Turkey, Mexico, and Yucatan in addition to the United States (see his “The Child as Moral Philosopher,” Psychology Today [September 19681: 25–30; and “Education for Justice: A Modern Statement of the Platonic View,” in Moral Education: Five Lectures, ed. Nancy. and Theodore Sizer [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970], p. 70).
7. . I realize that men are motivated by other than rational considerations. Kohlberg's stages are levels of ego development and from a psychoanalytic perspective are certainly subject to affective forces in their personality. Kohlberg himself notes that some college students at stage 5 retrogress to stage 2 for a period of time before returning to stage 5. Kohlberg attributes this to guilt. Yet he also maintains that such moral affect is cognitively channeled through moral thought patterns (see his and R. Kramer's “Continuities arid Discontinuities in Childhood and Adult Moral Development,” Human Development 12 [1969]: 109–20; and his “From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away with It in the Study of Moral Development,” in Cognitive Development and Epistemology, ed. T. Mischel [New York: Academic Press, 1971], pp. 188–90).
8. . Lawrence Kohlberg, “Moral Development and Identification,” in Child Psychology: 62d Yearbook of the National Society of the Study of Education, ed. H. Stevenson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 314–25; also Kohlberg, “The Development of Modes” (n. 5 above), pp. 151–229.
9. . Kohlberg, “The Development of Modes” (n. 5 above), pp. 80–105.
10. . James Rest, “Hierarchies of comprehension and Preference in a Developmental Stage Model of Moral Thinking” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1969);J. Rest, E. Turiel, an L. Kohlberg, “Level of Moral Development as a Determinant of Preference and Comprehension of Moral Judgments Made by Others,” Journal of Personality 37 (1969): 225–52. as reported by Rest, p. 9; E. Turiel, “An Experimental Test of the Sequentiality of Developmental States in the Child's Moral Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3 (1966): 611–18.
11. . For a more detailed description of the six stages and an analysis of how each is a Cognitive advance upon its predecessor, see my “The Communication of Ethical Insight 10 Moral Agents: An Assessment of Contemporary Theological Ethics” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1971), pp. 53–66.
12. . See n. 10 above.
13. . Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 344–67.
14. . Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), pp. 17–39.
15. . Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), pp. 46‐132, 153‐90, 234–325.
16. . Lawrence Kohlberg, “Moral and Religious Education and the Public Schools: A Developmental View,” in Religion and Public Education, ed. Theodore Sizer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1967), p. 173; also Kohlberg, “Education for Justice” (n. 6 above), p. 80.
17. . Rest (n. 10 above), pp. 131–41.
18. . H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper
19. . Bachmeyer (n. 11 above), pp. 87–156.
20. . Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951‐63), 3:11–106.
21. . One analysis of the developmental implications of Paul Tillich's thought is found in T. Droege. “A Developmental View of Faith” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1965).
22. . Robert P. O'Neil and Michael Donovan, Sexuality and Moral Responsibility (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Publications, 1968), p. 4.
23. . Ronald Goldman, Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (New York: Seabury Press, 1964), pp. 5‐7; and Readiness for Religion: A Basis for Developmental Religious Education (New York: Seabury Press, 1970), pp. 3–10.
24. . The varieties of meaning to the Golden Rule illustrate this beautifully. Depending on a child's or adult's perceptual readiness, “Treat others as you would be treated” may mean anything from, “Treat others as they treat you” (stage 2), to, “Treat others as the law demands” (stage 4), to, “Treat others as you would he treated” (stage 6). I show the possibilities and difficulties of teaching the Golden Rule according to one's stage of moral judgment in my “The Golden Rule and Developing Moral Judgment,” Religions Education (in press).
25. . Comparing Christian agape with Kohlberg's stage 6 raises some psychological issues as well. If stage 6 is a positive orientation and if the seeds of later stages are somehow present in prior stages, then what positive aspects of moral judgment are present in Kohlberg's stage l? In the obedience and punishment orientation is some primitive form of reward perceived apart from avoidance of punishment? B. F. Skinner claims that positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement for psychological change. Eric Berne holds that psychic growth requires nurturing strokes from the parent ego state. And Spitz's research findings on institutionalized children shows that positive handling, fondling, and attention are crucial for psychic health. Is Kohlberg missing the existence of positive factors in moral growth as his own developmental theory and other psychologists imply? Or are such factors basically affective and not cognitively perceived as part of “morality” at stage l? In understanding agape from a psychological standpoint a similar problem concerning affect and cognition exists. Is agape an affective, feeling, or intuitive orientation without concomitant conceptualization as Barth suggests? Or is it basically a cognitive orientation of moral principles and cold rationality apart from emotion as Joseph Fletcher suggests? If agape involves universal principles and it transforms persons, then it must involve a union of both cognition and affect.
26. . I realize that my position is closer to basic trends in Roman Catholic thought than to those in Protestantism I have outlined. This is due to my greater emphasis on sanctification in the Christian life than on justification–an emphasis inherited from John Wesley and shared by H. Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Note Niebuhr's ideas of the continuous revolution of faith and life which he calls metanoia (Niebuhr, n. 18 above, pp. 125–26, and The Meaning of Revelation [New York: Macmillan Co., 1962], pp. vii–ix, 137, 191).