PIETY

PIETY. The English word translates the Greek eusebeia, or-and as preferred by a number of the Church Fathers (q.v.)-eulabeia, though the latter is more accurately translated as “reverence.” Both terms were common in the pre-Christian world of Greco-Roman antiquity. They were used to signify the proper attitude toward the gods, in particular the careful observation of prescribed ritual and caution against offending divinity by neglect or by giving way to human pride (hubris). Orthodox Christianity inherits the words and infuses them, particularly eulabeia, with the sense of the biblical “fear of God.” Reverence and piety (q.v.) thus come to suggest an inward quality or turning of the soul, an inner attentiveness to the divine will and humility (q.v.) before the divine presence. More recent overtones given the word piety come to the Orthodox East from the 17th c.–18th c. religious movement “pietism,” which is something quite different. When forms of pietism aim at exalted emotionalism, a tenderness and swelling of the heart-though frequent in Orthodox devotional literature of the past two hundred years-the tendency is quite foreign to the patristic (q.v.) and ascetic tradition of the East.