Presentation by Zachary Armstrong at the 16th annual MOYA seminar 2024
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Orthodox Ethics and Stillness
There are two fundamental questions that weigh on the mind of anyone in any period of time.
- What is the good life?
- How do I live it?
Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato observed that every person in some way is trying to attain the good, the difference is in how clear their perception of the good is. We can easily see corruption of this for example in people who make wealth and material satisfaction the ultimate good that they are trying to attain. Such people can easily end up committing all sorts of evils in the name of that good, for example indentured slavery could be a way to further the amount of wealth that you have.
I can see that many of you instantly recognised how this fits in with our theme of “is Orthodoxy Still Relevant Today?” I want to show you how Orthodoxy answers those two questions, “what is the good life, and how do I live it?”, and I want to show you that nothing else can.
Virtue Ethics
I’m going to talk from the perspective of something called “ethics.” In Orthodoxy, broadly, we would subscribe (although perhaps not exclusively) to something called “virtue ethics.” The whole idea behind this is to answer the two questions about the good life. In a vacuum, we are unaware of what good is and we are unable to measure the success of our lives against anything. Fundamentally, humans cannot live in a vacuum.
Therefore, in virtue ethics, we are looking at how certain “exemplars” have lived either in the past or in the present day. These people have lived the good life and have obtained virtue. What is virtue? It is a habit of doing the good, it is a lifestyle where you prefer doing the good to anything else and it comes to you as easily as breathing. We shouldn’t get confused though, obtaining virtue is something that requires blood sweat and tears. However, we all would be familiar with the power of habits, whether they are good or bad. Anyone who has tried to overcome a bad habit has realised that after the first immense effort, it becomes easier and easier to avoid slipping back into that bad habit. However, we cannot just remove bad habits, we also have to replace them with good ones. Again, building a good habit is hard to start, and then gets easier and easier as we commit ourselves to it.
Who are the “exemplars” in Orthodox Christian virtue ethics. First of all, we look to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour Who was truly human in all ways like we are except for sin. So, what was the pattern of His life, how did He live it? He loved all of mankind, even to the death on the Cross. He raised up the poor, cared for orphans, widows and beggars. He was strict on not allowing idolatry of the things of this world to get in the way of our relationship with God. Here, in Jesus Christ, we have the perfect “exemplar,” the perfect role model, who we are called to emulate in all ways. In Jesus Christ, we most clearly see what the good life is.
Our other “exemplars” in Orthodoxy are the saints. Perhaps also our Spiritual Fathers and outstanding members of our community are also exemplars. That could be someone who works in the library, the sisterhood, a particularly loving couple of parents, whatever it may be. But lets focus on the saints. Here, we see how to live the good life, even when we cast it aside. We see the ways in which they repented. Orthodoxy truly offers a model of how to live a life that is good for us and how to get back to it when we fall. This is why it is relevant to today.
The best way to learn these stories is to read the lives of the saints. No time for reading? I highly recommend putting on something like the Trisagion Films YouTube channel which has in depth lives of the saints. These are extremely well produced and can be listened to or watched with beautiful animations. You learn a lot about the pattern of the good life, and especially in the lives of saints living closer to our time, you can start to see ways in which you can clearly live it too.
Failure of Secular Ethics
So why Orthodoxy specifically? Surely something else in the world can offer us a vision of what the good life is? I have to say that the answer is an emphatic no. Let’s work first of all from a ‘secular’ or ‘atheistic’ framework. The first problem we run into here is, what does ‘good’ even mean? For Orthodox Christianity, we have a consistent framework from the Bible, Ecumenical Fathers, Lives of the Saints, and Teachers of the Church, that show us exactly what ‘good’ means. In essence, ‘good’ for us is summed up in the beatitudes of Christ, but we can see this fleshed out in more detail. Our ultimate ‘good’ that Christians search for is a relationship with God and to be deified or achieved theosis. That means communion with God and eternal growth in love and knowledge of Him throughout eternity. It means becoming the person we are truly meant to be.
But for atheism and secularism, there is a pervasive philosophy called ‘post-modernism.’ This philosophy says that what is good is subjective. But how can that be a moral framework for us to live our lives? How can I compel myself to do what is good for myself, even if it is painful, unless something outside of myself is motivating me? I’m not going to go to the gym and lift weights unless I know that I’m going to get bigger muscles. I’m not going to go on a diet of less tasty foods unless I know that I’m going to achieve my health goals.
The issue is, is that secularism and atheism say that my actions don’t really mean anything, and are only good if I think that they are good, or if the community as a whole thinks they are good. What if the community as a whole thinks that slavery is good, as it did in the ancient world? Similarly in the modern age, why shouldn’t I go out and party and try and get lots of wealth to satisfy my material desires? After all, it’s what is easiest and I can fit in the best that way. Well this path of life doesn’t get us anywhere, and there’s no reason to call it good over a life of self-denial and service for others. In fact, instinctively, we can tell that self-denial and service for others is what is good, but we never do it unless we are extrinsically motivated by something else to do it. That something else turns out to be a someONE else, God, Who gives us the strength to deny our self will and to serve others instead.
Another thing to consider, is that from a year to year basis, or even on smaller timescales than that, our idea of what the good life is changes. It all turns out to be very short-sighted as well. When we’re young, maybe the good life is hanging out with friends and playing games. Maybe when we’re older, it’s getting a good career so I can finally be happy. Well those haven’t worked so far, maybe when I get a promotion I’ll be happy. Maybe when I buy this nice house I’ll be happy and so on. None of this works. The good life has to be a goal that is not made by us, because we are never going to agree with ourselves from yesterday. Instead, we have to agree with the objective ‘good life’ that is given to us by those “exemplars” that I mentioned earlier.
So we can see, that by denying that a true and objective good even exists, secularism and atheism fail in answering the question, “what is the good life,” which means that they can’t even attempt to answer the question of “how do I live the good life.”
Stillness
Before I end this talk, I want to cover one last thing, the concept of stillness. In our modern life, we are constantly pulled in all directions by all sorts of commitments and wants. There is barely a moment to sit still and collect your thoughts. In fact, the modern world incentivises you not to do this. It’s telling that no one talks about the necessity of confronting your inner self. While something like therapy is often encouraged in modernity, it can be quite vapid and it rarely challenges deep rooted passions within yourself. Instead, it can often be focused on what is outside yourself that is hurting you, rather than how you are hurting yourself by indulging your passions. By passions, I mean those drives that push you towards certain things. Maybe that is a passion for material comfort, a passion that drives you to anger and hatred of others. It could be jealousy or one of hundreds of different things.
Orthodoxy provides the solution in stillness, or hesychia. It is a stillness found in God. When Elijah ‘defeats’ the prophets of Baal and shows God to be the one True God, he does this with this magnificent display of fire. However, God then shows Elijah and us, that we won’t find Him in earthquakes, fires, roaring winds or any such displays of force. Rather, we will find God in a “still small voice,” a barely perceptible whisper. God is a God of rest. Christ tells us to take His yoke and burden because it is easy and light. In Orthodoxy, we are encouraged to be still and to confront ourselves. That is what the whole concept of dying to the old man is. In Orthodoxy, we are called to silently sit before God in love and repentance, contemplating Him in a stillness. Of course, that’s not to say that the “smells and bells” as it were are not important, of course they are. However, the only true stillness and rest that can be found in modernity is in Orthodoxy.
So from all of this, what we’ve seen is that Orthodoxy offers us the answer to the questions, what is the good life and how do I live it? The answer comes from ‘virtue ethics,’ and is found in Jesus Christ Who showed us what the good life is, and the saints and exemplars in our communities show us how we can live it, especially when we fall away from it. Finally, Orthodoxy’s relevance in modernity can be seen in that it is the only place in which we can find stillness and rest in an ever more busy world.
Zachary Armstrong
12 / 10 / 2024
