The Law of Love: Patristic Teaching on Social Ethics

by Father James Thornton

The following essay is taken from Bather James' doctoral dissertation (S.T.T.S., '90) and provides interesting insight into a much-neglected area of Orthodox studies.

 

 

In the long history of philosophical, religious, and ethical concepts, the greatest of all revolutions was that of Christian thought. As the Roman Catholic scholar Giordani, puts it:

...[Christ] established a new moral and religious order, leaving apparently intact the old social and political order. But having wrought a change in man at the very roots of his mind and heart, he made him a member of a new order, even from the point of view of social ethics and activity. [1]

It is obvious, then, that an abstract philosophy of ethical teachings is not the raison d'etre for Christian thought. Christianity is at once a matrix of beliefs about life, the worlds seen and unseen, of the Divine Creator and Benefactor, of moral precepts, and of an existence beyond the grave. Christianity, unlike the pagan systems which preceded it, is a religion which brings to bear abstract, "otherworldly" things on practical worldly concerns:

"The Church is indeed 'not of this world,' but it has nevertheless an obvious and important mission 'in this world' precisely because it [the world] lies 'in the evil.'" [2]

No one can read the Holy Gospels thoroughly and escape this conclusion. While Christ speaks of a kingdom "not of this world," [3] He insists that those who ignore those in want will themselves be judged harshly in His kingdom. [4] Christ's words in this respect are ultimately the root of the Orthodox Church's teachings on social ethics.

The Eastern Church Fathers, who express the conscience of the Orthodox Church, were exegetes par excellence, and thus followed in the footsteps of their Divine Teacher in understanding the issues of social ethics. So it is that the Orthodox Church insists that Christianity is "integral," as Father Florovsky writes, and that "faith and charity, belief and practice, are organically linked...." [5]

But what is the source of this link?

The Eastern Church, through the Gospels and the writings of the Fathers, has always insisted that the first law of the Christian religion is the "law of love." We must love God above all else and we must love our neighbors as ourselves. [6] We must, furthermore, love all of God's creatures, including our enemies. [7] Love links all creation together.

The religion of Christ and of the Fathers, then, is one which commands love, which insists that enlightened Christians serve the members of the human community and not seek to exploit them or attain power over them. [8] As Christians, we are bound to this service. The Church, in its early centuries, strove with great zeal to impart this notion of love to mankind, to a civilization utterly ignorant of the concept. It also sought to put this notion into action at the practical level.

St. John the Theologian writes that "God is love." [9] Love is an attribute of God. "The Goodness of God extends not to some limited region in the world, which is characteristic of love in limited beings, but to the whole world and all the beings that exist in it." [10] God's love is demonstrated in many ways. He created us in His image, for example. [11] He loved humankind even more than He loved His own glory, as St. John Chrysostom writes, in that He was willing to become incarnate, to live among His creatures and serve them, and to suffer and die for them. [12] St. Gregory the Theologian speaks of this in his twenty-third homily: "If someone were to ask us what it is that we honor, and what we worship, we have a ready reply: we honor love." [13] We see, then, that love is central to Orthodox Christian theology and its notion of practical living. [14]

Let us consider a particular aspect of Eastern Church theology which has great importance and bearing on the teachings of the Eastern Fathers with respect to love. Eastern Church theology differs from that of the medieval or modern Western confessions in a number of areas. One important difference is that the Eastern Church Fathers distinguish, in their understanding of the creation narrative in the book of Genesis, between the terms "image" and "likeness." The Western Church generally ignores this distinction. [15] While all human beings are born in God's image, the Greek Fathers assert, God's likeness is something towards which we must struggle. As the Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky says:

'Let us make man according to our image and likeness' (Gen 1:26). According to this design, man should not be only an image of God, his Creator, but should also bear His likeness. Yet in the description of the accomplished act of creation 'And God made man, according to the image of God he made him' (Gen 1:27), nothing is said about likeness. [16]

The image of God was given to all humankind and this, as we noted above, is proof of God's love for us. Various Fathers have emphasized various facets of the imago Dei. One of these facets is mentioned by St. John of Damascus who, because he wrote at length on the Orthodox doctrine of Icons, devoted considerable attention to this matter. He asserts that "the expression 'according to the image' indicates capacity of mind and freedom." [17] St. Gregory put it thus: "God honored man in giving him freedom, in order that goodness should properly belong to him who chooses it, no less than to Him who placed the first fruits of goodness in his nature." [18]

The image of God was retained by humankind after the Fall. However, it became obscured by evil, disobedience, discord, and pride—in a word, sin. Humans were intended for union with God, for perfect cooperation (synergia) with God, and even for eventual deification (theosis) by the Grace of God. [19] But man, in his freedom, chose another path, which involved "a rejection of the interior working of grace and a subsequent bondage to sin.... Having isolated himself from the grace of God, he became entrapped in his illusory self-worldview, which came to bear less and less resemblance either to the real world (and its corresponding potential) or to the 'image' within him...." [20]

The Fathers also teach that the individual human person is not a part of humanity, but is humanity. Just as the whole of human nature was contained in the first human being created by God, it is also contained in each of us. [21] Speaking of the first human, St. Gregory of Nyssa writes:

...The name Adam is not yet given to the man, as in the subsequent narratives. The man created has no particular name, but is universal man. Therefore by this general term for human nature, we are meant to understand that God by His providence and power, included all mankind in the first creation.... [22]

Thus, again to quote Lossky, "The divine image proper to the person of Adam is applied to the whole of mankind, to universal man." [23] Humankind, rightly seen, is united fully in this divine image which God has stamped on every individual. In the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa: "Thus man is made in the image of God, that is to say the whole human nature; it is that which bears the divine 'likeness.'" [24]

When individuals attain to perfection, they conduct themselves, in every aspect of their lives, with this unity of humankind in mind. Bonded in love to others, they act always in the interest of others, since their own self-interest is tied to that of others. When, on the other hand, humans act contrary to the manner in which all have been created, as they generally do in this fallen world, "the one nature common to all men...appears to us split up by sin, parcelled out among many individuals." [25] A person who acts in accordance with the fallen nature of the present world, instead of the image of God, becomes dominated by ego and by the worship of ego. He becomes separated from others and from his natural concern for them. The bond of love with them is broken.

Humans, while born in God's image, are not so born with God's likeness; rather, they have only the potential for the likeness of God in them. This likeness is something for which they must strive, for which they must indeed struggle more greatly. This likeness, St. John of Damascus states, "...means likeness to God in virtues (perfection)." [26]

Those who succeed in this struggle acquire, among other attributes proper to God's likeness, a facility for the utterly selfless love of all humankind:

In the love of our neighbor, philia, we come to see God in others. In community love, agape, we see ourselves in others and are united to our fellow men in the Energies of God. Being one with Christ, we are made one with all mankind. [27]

Such love must not only crown individual human efforts, but must be part of the effort from the very beginning:

If we begin the life lived in pursuit of virtue by cultivating in ourselves a love of our fellow man, we reach success in that life by dwelling in the love of God, which God has cultivated in the human heart; 'for,' writes the divine [St. John] Chrysostomos, 'the beginning and the end of virtue is love.' [28]

All charitable acts, all philanthropy, if they are not merely self-serving, are necessarily based on love. This love, in its highest degree, is acquired in the struggle for the likeness of God; or, rather, it fulfills this struggle. "For love is the 'union of all perfection.'" [29] The human being who is pure, who has acquired the Holy Spirit, who shines with God's likeness, possesses, as St. Issac the Syrian writes:

...a burning of the heart for all creation, for men, birds, beasts, demons and all creatures. And from remembrance of them and contemplation of them such a man's eyes shed tears: because of a great and strong compassion which possesses his heart and its great constancy, he is overwhelmed with tender pity and he cannot bear, or hear of, or see any harm or any even small sorrow which creatures suffer. [30]

The history of the Eastern Church is adorned with the stories of the lives of holy women and men who exemplify the teachings of the Fathers on social ethics and our responsibilities towards others. The early monastic Fathers and Mothers of the desert, in particular, have much to tell us about the love of God and of fellow humans, about charity, about equality, and, by their forthright renunciation of material things, about the true import of wealth and poverty.

As many historians have noted, with the rise of Christianity to official favor in the fourth century, the Church was inundated with nominal believers. Before the Peace of the Church under St. Constantine, Christians "...were bound to resist any attempt at their 'integration' into the fabric of the Empire." [31] With the great changes set in motion by the Emperor Constantine, another revolution of sorts appeared, spreading with tremendous rapidity throughout the Empire: monasticism. The monastic movement embodied a continued resistance to the world: "...Monks...[left]...the world in order to build, on the virginal soil of the Desert, a New Society, to organize there, on the Evangelical pattern, the true Christian Community." [32]

This "New Society" did not stand in opposition to the established Church authorities. It remained wholly a part of the Church and within Her organizational structure. This early monasticism became the ideal, the "barometer" of life for all members of the Church. In numerous battles with secular authority in the course of the centuries after St. Constantine (during the reign of the Arian Emperors of the fourth century, for example, or the Iconoclasts in the eighth century), the Church looked to the monasteries [33] for the embodiment, preservation, and protection of Christian doctrine and teaching.

One must note, in fact, that the Fathers of the Church, who insisted on faithfulness in both theoria and praxis, have nearly always been monastic saints. Thus in their adherence to the requirements of a theoretical life of renunciation and asceticism, they believed that monastics must, in practice, work. "Man was created for work. But work should not be selfish. One had to work for common purpose and benefit, and especially to be able to help the needy....Labor was to be, as it were, an expression of social solidarity, as well as a basis of social service and charity." [34] Even in their work, monastics expressed the care for their fellow man that is pivotal to Christian love.

Moreover, monasteries, by their very nature, insisted on the essential equality of all human beings, both in a spiritual sense and a material sense. Monks were enthusiastic practitioners of Christ's "law of love," and their example stands before the eyes of pious Orthodox Christians, monastics and non-monastics alike, as a genuine ideal and as a benchmark by which we might judge our own spiritual health. This "law of love" is extended to everyone. An historian, referring to the earliest monastics, writes that they were

...fathers of the people. Let disease or misfortune come: the holy man was at hand. Let land- owner oppress or bureaucrat extort: the champion of the poor was waiting. For what could an anchorite suffer at the hands of authority? The world could lose him nothing. He stood, rather, to gain a martyr's crown. [35]

For fifteen centuries, the lives of the desert monastics have inspired the Church faithful. Precisely because the Church insists that "we must find a goal and a view of life which can serve to guide human action and that can release us from a cycle of gratification that derides, belittles, and compromises our humanity," [36] it turned to the example of the Desert Fathers. As we have learned from these holy men and women the standard of many Christian virtues, so, too, we have learned from them the standard of Christian love, by which we form our social consciences as contemporary Orthodox Christians. A single excerpt from the Evergetinos gives us insight into this standard of the desert—into the standard set by those transformed in God, conformed to his image, and made like Him by Grace:

Abba Agathon was asked how sincere love for one's neighbor might be made manifest, and this blessed man, who had attained to the queen of the virtues to a perfect degree, responded: 'Love is to find a leper, to take his body, and gladly to give him your own.' [37]

 

Notes

1. Igino Giordani, The Social Message of Jesus, trans. Alba Zizzamia (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1977), 45.

2. Georges Florovsky, "The Social Problem in the Eastern Orthodox Church," chap, in Christianity and Culture, vol 2, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Co., 1974), 142.

3. Jn 18:36.

4. Mt 25:31-46.

5. Georges Florovsky, "St. John Chrysostom: The Prophet of Charity," chap, in Aspects of Church History, Vol. 4, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Company, 1975), 87.

6. Mt 23:37-39.

7. Mt 5:44.

8. Giordani, 47.

9. 1 Jn 4:16.

10. Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition (Platina, CA: St. Herman Press, 1984), 63.

11. "All of the Fathers of the Church, both of East and West, are agreed in seeing a certain co-ordination, a primordial correspondence between the being of man and the being of God in the fact of the creation of man in the image and likeness of God." Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1976), 114.

12. Pomazansky, 64.

13. Ibid., 63.

14. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, trans. Carmino J. de Catanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), 172-3.

15. Typical of the Western view is that expressed in a popular Protestant theological manual: "The terms 'image and likeness'...do not distinguish different aspects of the imago, but state intensively the fact that man uniquely reflects God. Instead of suggested distinctions within the image, the juxtaposition vigorously declares that by creation man bears an image actually corresponding to the divine original." Baker's Dictionary of Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1960), s.v. "Man."

16. Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1983), 34.

17. Ibid.

18. Lossky, Mystical, 124.

19. John S. Romanides, Franks, Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981), 46, and Lossky, Mystical, 196-216.

20. Hieromonk Auxentios, "Notes on the Nature of God, the Cosmos, and Novus Homo: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective," chap. in Contemporary Traditionalist Orthodox Thought (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1986), 11.

21. Lossky, Mystical, 120.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., and Lossky, Vladimir, "The Theology of the Image," chap.in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), 125-39.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 121.

26. Ouspensky, Icons, 34.

27. Bishop Chrysostomos and The Reverend James Thornton, Love (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1990), 54.

28. Ibid., 61-2.

29. Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, vol. 3, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Company, 1976), 206.

30. Ibid. Cf. John S. Romanides, "Jesus Christ-The Light of the World." In Xenia Ecumenica (Helsinki: n.p., 1983), 244-52.

31. Georges Florovsky, "Antinomies of Christian History: Empire and Desert," chap in Christianity and Culture, vol. 2, The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Co., 1974), 72.

32. Ibid., 86.

33. In Eastern Church usage, the words "monastery" and "monk" are entirely inclusive terms.

34. Florovsky, "Antinomies," 87.

35. Robert Byron, The Byzantine Achievement: An Historical Perspective (NY: Russell and Russell, 1964), 158.

36. Bishop Chrysostomos, The Ancient Fathers of the Desert: A Second Volume (Brookline, MA: Hellenic College Press, 1986), 13.

37. A complete translation of this work is now in process, the first volume of which appeared recently. Bishop Chrysostomos, trans., The Evergetinos: A Complete Text, vol. 1 (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1988).

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. VII (1990), No. 3, pp. 11, 16.