Christos Yannaras’ The Freedom of Morality and Western Christian Ethics

This chapter offers an appreciative and critical account of Christos Yannaras’s The Freedom of Morality in relation to Western Christian ethics. Four central themes of Yannaras’s book are identified: first, Yannaras’s Trinitarian account of personhood and the image of God; second, his critique of autonomy as a central category in Western ethics; third, the ecclesial location of Christian ethics; fourth, the ethos of liturgical art and the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. For each of these themes, the chapter identifies points of contact and agreement between Yannaras’s Orthodox vision and recent developments in Western theological ethics. It also identifies areas of ongoing disagreement and debate, and areas – such as ethics and liturgical art – which are still under-developed in Western theological ethics, where Western Christian ethicists could gain much from ongoing dialogue with Orthodox authors such as Yannaras.