Ethics

PERRY T. HAMALIS

The term “ethics” commonly carries three meanings, all of which apply within the context of Orthodox Christianity. First, stemming from the Greek word ethos, the term refers to a community’s or person’s implicit beliefs about how to live, about right and wrong, or about what it means to flourish, as manifested through behavior. Second, “ethics” refers to a par­ticular person’s or community’s explicit teachings about how human beings ought to live. The second meaning differs from the first insofar as it shifts from implicit ethos to normative and axiological claims made explicit and recommended to others. Third, “ethics” refers to a discipline of scholarly inquiry and application. It encompasses the assessment of ethical visions held or taught by persons, commu­nities, and institutions, including the exam­ination of moral capacities (e.g., freedom, reason, conscience, will, etc.), authoritative sources (e.g., tradition, scripture, reason, experience, etc.), methods for interpreting and applying ethical claims to specific issues and circumstances, and bases for grounding and defending ethical and moral visions.

Within Orthodox theology the first mean­ing of ethics reflects the fact that Orthodoxy is more a form of existence than a form of discourse, more a lived way than a spoken word. At Orthodoxy’s core is the simple belief that to be a Christian is to be a follower of Christ (Jn. 12.24) and a member of the church (cf. 1Cor. 12 and Rom. 12). To be a Christian is to strive for holiness and perfection as modeled by God (cf. Lev. 11.44 and Matt. 5.48) and to participate fully in the sacramental life, wor­ship, and ascetical practices of the ecclesial community. According to this first meaning, Orthodox ethics pertains to the normative ethos ofthe church as a whole and, especially, the ethos of the saints as followers of Christ and exemplars of Orthodox Christian life.

According to its second meaning, Orthodox ethics encompasses the church’s normative teachings on how human beings ought to live as expressed in the Holy Scriptures, the canon law tradition, and in the writings of saints and authoritative teachers. One can speak, for example, of the ethics of the Didache or of St. John Klimakos when referring to a text’s or author’s claims about human nature, the purpose ofhuman life, and how Christians ought to live in light of the reality and revelation of God. Nearly all sermons, ascetical treatises, and works on the spiritual life by Orthodox authors are articulating an ethical vision or expressing normative and axiological teachings that both reflect and shape the ethos of Orthodox Christians as a whole.

Applying the third meaning of ethics to the context of Orthodox Christianity has been somewhat controversial during the past century. Orthodox ethics, as a discrete discipline of academic study and scholar­ship, began developing in 18th-century Russia, influenced in part by similar trends among Western Christians. A parallel discipline of Orthodox ethics developed in Greece and Constantinople beginning in the late 19th century (Harakas 1983: 8–15). Critics of this trend argue that, historically, the Orthodox Church never separated out ethics as its own discipline (that is, as discrete from theology) and that doing so subjects Orthodox thought to concepts, cat­egories, and methods that grew not out of Orthodoxy’s own tradition and spirit but rather out of the foreign mindset of western scholasticism (Yannaras 1984). Other critics also contend that the academic discipline of ethics seeks to articulate, defend, and apply universal normative principles or moral laws in a way that eclipses the uniqueness of human persons and depersonalizes the church’s teachings on the Christian life (Zizioulas 2006). Contemporary defenders of Orthodox ethics acknowledge the merits of such critiques, but argue that an authentically Orthodox discipline of ethics is both possible and necessary: possible, by approaching ethical questions and dilemmas with the fullness of Orthodoxy’s resources, with an openness to insights from natural and social science, and with an ecclesial mindset; and necessary because of the tremendous difficulties Orthodox Christians face today as their personal and family lives intersect with contemporary issues in bioethics, ecology, economic justice, sexual ethics, war, and other social challenges (Harakas 1983, 1992; Guroian 1987; Mantzarides 1995).

Drawing from the church’s scriptural, credal, dogmatic, liturgical, ascetical, hagio- graphical, canonical, and iconographic sources, Orthodox ethicists today generally agree that the church’s overarching ethical vision has as its aim the deification (Greek, theosis) of human persons through the grace of the Holy Trinity and the develop­ment of the virtues. This vision entails a movement from the fallen human condi­tion to the perfected human condition, from the reality of death and sin to the reality of resurrection and divine-human communion (Harakas 1983; Yannaras 1984; Guroian 1987; Mantzarides 1995; Woodill 1998; Hamalis 2008). Orthodox ethicists also generally agree on their own calling to acquire the mind of the church and the virtue of discernment so that they may apply the tradition’s overarching vision appropriately to the wide spectrum of personal and communal issues facing the faithful and the world today.

SEE ALSO: Asceticism; Bioethics, Orthodoxy and; Deification; Ecology; Humanity; Original Sin; Repentance; Sexual Ethics; War; Wealth

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Guroian, V. (1987) Incarnate Love: Essays in Orthodox Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Hamalis, P. T. (2008) “The Meaning and Place of Death in an Orthodox Ethical Framework,” in A. Papanikolaou and E. Prodromou (eds.) Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, pp. 183–217. Harakas, S. (1983) Toward Transfigured Life: The Theoria of Eastern Orthodox Ethics. Minneapolis: Light and Life.

Harakas, S. (1992) Living the Faith: The Praxis of Eastern Orthodox Ethics. Minneapolis: Light and Life.

Mantzarides, G. (1995) Christianike Ethike [in Greek], 4th edn. Thessaloniki: Pournara.

Woodill, J. (1998) The Fellowship of Life: Virtue Ethics and Orthodox Christianity. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Yannaras, C. (1984) The Freedom of Morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Zizioulas, J. D. (2006) Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. P. McPartlan. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.