This major Orthodox contribution to the study of "ethics" takes as its point of departure the concept of "hypostasis" or "person," not only as this is presented in the theology of the Greek Fathers but also as it is experienced in the worship, ascetical life and art of the Orthodox Church. In this perspective, morality is seen not as "an objective measure for evaluating character and behavior, but the dynamic response of personal freedom to the existential truth and authenticity of man." The author states that "freedom carries with it the ultimate possibility of taking precisely this risk: that man should deny his own existential truth and authenticity, and alienate and distort his existence, his being." What we call the morality of man is the way he relates to this adventure of his freedom. Morality reveals what man is in principle, as the image of God, but also what he becomes through the adventure of his freedom: a being transformed "in the likeness of God."
About the Author: Christos Yannaras, a leading Greek theologian and professor, is the author of more than a dozen books on ethics, theology, and modern religious philosophy.
Author(s): Christos Yannaras, Chrestos Giannaras, Kallistos Ware, Elizabeth Briere
Edition: 1
Publisher: St Vladimirs Seminary Press
Year: 1984
Language: English
Pages: 278
City: Crestwood, NY
Cover
Contents
Foreword
Chapter I - The Masks of Morality and the Ethos of the Person
1. Authoritative ethics and conventional ethics
2. The morality of man and the being of man
3. The freedom of morality
4. The ethos of trinitarian communion
5. The ethos of man “in the image” of God
6. Person and individual
7. Ignorance of the truth of the person and the legalistic understanding of morality
Chapter II - Sin: Existential Failure and “Missing the Mark”
1. The fall from life to survival
2. The perpetuation of the fall
3. Existential “alteration” of nature
4. “Beyond good and evil”
5. The psychological guilt complex
6. The dynamics of repentance
7. Studying freedom
8. The encounter between freedom and love
9. The “gospel” of hope
Chapter III - The Gospel Rejection of Individual Ethics
1. Holy Scripture and the fact of the Church
2. “A new creation in Christ”
3. The Law as a manifestation of truth and a path of life
4. Love, the fulfilling of the Law
5. The Gospel’s reversal of conventional values
6. Rebirth and moral restraints
Chapter IV - A Historical Example: The Challenge of the “Fools For Christ”
1. Mockery of the world
2. Taking on another’s guilt
3. Complete abandonment of the ego
4. Freedom without bounds
Chapter V - The Morality of the Church — A Liturgical Ethos
1. Faithfulness to reality
2. The manifestation of the truth of God in human morality
3. The liturgical gathering of those that were scattered
4. The realization of the New Covenant in the eucharist
5. The cosmological dimension of the liturgical ethos
Chapter VI - The Kingly, Priestly and Prophetic Ethos of the Eucharist
1. The dynamics of the eucharist
2. Eucharistic use of the world
3. The world “made word”
4. Tangible experience of salvation
5. The kingly ethos
6. The priestly ethos
7. The liturgical celebration of life and the distinction between the sexes
8. The prophetic ethos
9. The “festival of the firstborn”
Chapter VII - The Asceticism of the Church and Individual Virtue
1. Asceticism, an ecclesial way
2. Rejection of dualism
3. Rejection of individuality
4. Unattainable by nature, yet attainable by grace
5. Neglect of asceticism, an alienation of the truth
6. “Bodily knowledge”
Chapter VIII - Pietism as an Ecclesiological Heresy
1. The historical coordinates
2. The theological coordinates
3. The moral alienation of salvation
4. The moral assimilation of heresies
5. The individualistic “culture” of pietism
Chapter IX - The Ethical Character of the Mysteries
1. Fulness of life in the mysteries
2. The baptismal birth
3. The unction of royal adoption
4. Personal realization of the transformation in our nature
5. Repentance, the transformation of death into resurrection
6. The juridical alienation of repentance
7. The ministry of spiritual fatherhood
8. Marriage and the “loving power” in nature
9. The mystery of true eros
10. The ascetic character of marriage
11. The crisis in the institution of marriage
Chapter X - The Church Canons and the Limits Set to Life
1. The Church and the law
2. The canon of martyrdom and the witness of the canons
3. The canon of ascesis and the ascetism of the canons
4. The distinction between natural perpetuation and personal regeneration
5. The legalistic interpretation of the canons
6. The codification of the canons
Chapter XI - The Historical and Social Dimensions of the Church’s Ethos
1. The problem of moral “efficacity”
2. The moral inadequacy of individual virtue
3. The totalitarian dimension of objective ethics
4. Visions of “general happiness” and their cost
5. The ontological fact of communion and its existential realization
6. The communal dynamics of repentance
7. The eucharistic starting-point for transformations in society
8. The communal ethos of the eucharist and its cultural expression
9. The sole program — reconstruction of the parish
Chapter XII - The Ethos of Liturgical Art
1. Worship, art and technology
2. The asceticism of art and the art of ascesis
3. The ethos of ancient Greek and Gothic architecture
4. The ethos of technology in Byzantine building
5. Religious “naturalism”
6. The “passage” to the hypostasis of the person through iconography
7. The last hope
Epilogue - The Morality of Freedom
Index
Back cover
