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Can Orthodox Ethics Liberate? A Test Case for the Adequacy of an Eastern Ethic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Richard R. Gaillardetz
Richard R. Gaillardetz*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Abstract

This article evaluates the adequacy of Orthodox ethics by examining Orthodoxy's response to questions of social justice as they have been raised by the churches of the third world.

The Eastern tradition is skeptical of such phrases as “structures of injustice” because it is improper to speak of sin with regard to structures. This does not mean that Orthodoxy is insensitive to questions of social justice, but rather that such questions can only be properly addressed by a personalist ethic grounded in trinitarian theology. It is trinitarian theology that provides the foundation for an understanding of love, community, and human relationship which demands relationships of mutuality and reciprocity and rejects all forms of human domination. This ethic is arrived at by an examination of the mode of being of the triune God in which all Christians participate, a mode of being that is both personal and communal. Orthodox ethics, while still in need of development with regard to the problems of concrete moral decision-making, offers a rich theological foundation often lacking in the more philosophical-ethical tradition of the West.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 60 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1990

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References

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6 Harakas, Stanley, Toward Transfigured Life: The Theoria of Eastern Orthodox Ethics (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1983), 22.Google Scholar I have reversed the order of his two qualifications for the sake of better structural continuity in this paper without, I hope, affecting the substance of his presentation.

7 Ibid., 20.

8 Harakas, Stanley, “Eastern Orthodox Christianity's Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Triune God and Theosis,” Ultimate Reality and Meaning 8 (1985): 211.Google Scholar

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11 Harakas, , “Eastern Orthodox Christianity's Ultimate Reality,” 213.Google Scholar The ethical drive is the drive to view reality according to ethical categories in a non-reflexive manner. The ethical sense is the movement of the psyche toward an evaluation of the expressions of the ethical drive. Self-determination is the affirmation of human moral freedom. See Harakas, , Toward Transfigured Life, 71, 99–100.Google Scholar

12 Guroian, 17.

13 Harakas, , Toward Transfigured Life, 183–84.Google Scholar Quite surprisingly, given the sharp differences between the two traditions, Harakas has noted the similarity between the relationship of character formation and theosis in the Orthodox tradition and that of character formation and sanctification in the writing of Stanley Hauerwas, a representative of a Protestant sectarian tradition. (Hauerwas has in conversation described himself as a “liturgical Catholic and spiritual Mennonite.”) For comparison with the thought of Hauerwas, see Hauerwas, Stanley, “Sanctification and the Ethics of Character” in Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

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18 Christos Yannaras has criticized Western Christian ethics for having separated its moral codes of behavior from “the ontological question of the truth and reality of human existence,” which in turn depends on one's understanding of ultimate reality. Yannaras, Christos, The Freedom of Morality, trans. Briere, Elizabeth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), 14.Google Scholar

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26 Ibid., 37. For a similar critique of Nygren, Niebuhr et al., from a Roman Catholic ethicist, see Farley, Margaret A., “New Patterns of Relationship: Beginnings of a Moral Revolution,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 627–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 634-36.

27 Guroian, 30. See also Chapter IV, “An Ethic of Marriage and Family.”

28 Ibid., 31.

29 Consultation on “The Church's Struggle For Justice and Unity,” 119.

30 The filioque is the Latin addition to the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople first inserted at the end of the seventh century. The addition holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In Orthodoxy, the filioque usually is interpreted as affirming that the Spirit proceeds not from the person of the Father but from some essential source shared by Father and Son, thus compromising the essential personal origin of the Holy Spirit. Along with the place of the epiclesis in the eucharistic anaphora, the filioque is commonly viewed as one of the central doctrinal obstacles to the reunion of East and West. See Lossky, , Mystical Theology, 57–59.Google Scholar

31 Harakas, , Toward Transfigured Life, 25.Google Scholar

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35 Rowan Williams has suggested that Yannaras has unnecessarily burdened his insights into the understanding of the Fathers and Byzantine theology with a Heideggerian metaphysics. He claims that Yannaras' theology of “person” stands up well within the language of the tradition. Williams, , “The Theology of Personhood,” 428.Google Scholar While withholding judgment on Williams' analysis, I shall nevertheless prescind from an exploration into the Heideggerian underpinnings of Yannaras' work, which, in any event, he does not make explicit in The Freedom of Morality.

36 Yannaras, 17-18.

37 See Zizioulas, Being As Communion for another Orthodox approach to the priority of “person” in a Christian ontology.

38 See Lossky, , The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 121ff.;Google Scholar Yannaras, 22.

39 Yannaras, 26. An apt example of the problems that follow from the West's use of nature as its fundamental ethical category can be found in a recent controversy in biomedical ethics. Some contemporary ethicists have defended the possibility of both zygote experimentation and the employment in certain situations of an early abortifacient during the time period prior to the implantation of a zygote on the uterine wall. They have appealed to the phenomena of twinning and recombination, which can occur prior to implantation, to justify a distinction between individuality and personhood. While the zygote is an individual, if it can twin or recombine it lacks the enduring uniqueness necessary for personhood. The official Catholic position rejects this argument, holding for the inviolability of human life from conception, thus betraying its emphasis on nature rather than person as the central ethical category.

40 Ibid., 23.

41 Bishop Anastasios Yannoulatos of Androussa, “Concerns and Challenges of Mission in the Orthodox World Today” in Martyria/Mission: The Witness of the Orthodox Churches Today, ed. Bria, Ion (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1980), 26.Google Scholar

42 Here used in the sense of Niebuhr's “Christ transforming culture” typology. See Niebuhr, H. Richard, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951).Google Scholar

43 Bria, Ion, “The Liturgy after the Liturgy” in Martyria/Mission, 68.Google Scholar

44 Guroian, 26.

45 Ibid.

46 Consultation on “The Church's Struggle For Justice and Unity,” 118.

47 Ibid., 118-19.

48 Harakas, , Toward Transfigured Life, 214.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 215.

50 Recent work in Orthodox ethics has begun to overcome this reluctance to treat concrete moral issues. Nevertheless, the work to date, as a corpus, is still somewhat tentative and schematic, and often reluctant to discuss the underlying methodologies to guide one in addressing such issues. Vigen Guroian's work, amply cited above, stands out as an example of this new direction. See also Harakas, Stanley, Health and Medicine in Eastern Orthodox Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 1989)Google Scholar, Contemporary Moral Issues Facing the Orthodox Christian (Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1982)Google Scholar, and Let Mercy Abound: Social Concern in the Greek Orthodox Church (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1980);Google ScholarFlorovsky, Georges, Christianity and Culture (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1974);Google ScholarWebster, Alexander F. C., “Just War and Holy War: Two Case Studies in Comparative Christian Ethics,” Christian Scholar's Review 15 (1986): 343–71Google Scholar, “Orthodox Reflections on Nuclear Defense,” St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 29 (1985): 347–50Google Scholar, and “Human Rights in the USSR: Two Views of Socialist Reality,” Religious Humanism 17 (Winter 1983): 14–21.Google Scholar One should also note the number of Inter-Orthodox ecclesiastical documents on such topics as ecology, development, creation, peace and justice that have appeared.

51 M. Farley has used a trinitarian foundation as the basis for critiquing structures and institutional relationships which are oppressive to both women and men. See Farley, 640-46.

52 Harakas, , Toward Transfigured Life, 215–16.Google Scholar