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Ecstatics do not believe that specific biblical commands were literally uttered by God. Rather, biblical people had a mystical sense of divine obligation that they expressed in the thought forms of their day. Since these thought forms are constantly changing, the ethical sense takes new forms under new circumstances. As a result, ethics changes as culture changes. From an orthodox perspective, however, God literally spoke biblical commands.

"The culture changes" whenever "ecstatics" get in the saddle. For it seems to me that, at bottom, ecstatics are really saying that (1), the reality of God is contingent on human experience; and (2) thus the foundation of ethics or morality similarly devolves to human experience, to the view that "man is the measure," not God.

But it seems when man fails to recognize the sovereign, absolute authority of God, when he no longer recognizes that God's Word is the ultimate, eternal foundation of reality of which mortal man is contingent part and participant, then man can say he becomes his own authority by virtue of his imaginative experiences. And this, not because God is speaking His Word to him directly, but because he "feels God."

Which seems to be already a falsification of the divine-human relationship. For it denigrates God, and puts Him in second place to the authority of one's own direct perceptions and unaided sense of what is "right." Unhitched from the Word of God, man is less man, and human cultures increasingly become less humane.

In short, man is "under God"; it doesn't work, the other way around, without distorting life and natural reality -- which is God-given, after all, according to the Word of God, the Son, the Alpha and Omega.

RE: the statement "ethics changes as culture changes": I would say the reverse is more likely true. When ethics come off their mooring in God's Logos, then culture changes, and usually in ways that are not conducive to genuine human well-being.

FWIW

Very interesting post, xzins. Thanks so much!