Christian Ethics

While the field of ethics, understood as a discipline of academic enquiry, does not have a long history within the Orthodox world of scholarship, scholars argue that a rule-governed approach to ethics which aims at presenting an abstract and universal normative vision is incompatible with Orthodoxy’s ethos of freedom and personal uniqueness. Rather, ethics takes place within the context of the ekklesia. Through the help of her rich liturgical worship, her offering of the Word of God, her rich Tradition (beyond the scriptural and liturgical, also the creedal, dogmatic, patristic, ascetic, prayer, hagiographical, canonical and iconographic), the church enables persons to be gifted with an ecclesial mindset [phronema] that guides them as they seek to live out their salvation in the world.