Orthodox Christian Ethics

This course (CEMT 602) surveys a few of the leading contemporary ethical systems in the west and offers a perspective that shifts away from deontological, consequentialist, and quandary ethics and towards virtue ethics. Utilizing virtue ethics offers one step in the direction towards developing a Coptic Orthodox Christian ethic, but not without its mitigations. The acquisition of virtue for Coptic Christians is a result of a primary ethic of the pursuit of unity with God through grace-enabled spiritual struggle. This model will be dissected into three basic tiers based on Gregory of Nyssa’s theory of epektasis and will help make sense of a number of contemporary Coptic Christian practices of transformation, including a liturgical ethos, fasting, asceticism, monasticism, hagiography, and martyrdom.