The Analogy of Love

This work examines the ethical dimensions of St Maximus the Confessor's theological synthesis in order to understand an authentically Christian sense of virtue. Author Demetrios Harper considers the legacy of Immanuel Kant for contemporary approaches to morality, which tend to see morals as abstract imperatives divorced from the flow of human existence. Against this background, he argues that Maximus provides us with the alternative of a quintessentially Christian approach to morality: one in which love constitutes the core of both the nature of being and morals, enabling the gathering of the splintered parts of human nature into a single, consubstantial whole, initiating them into the cosmic Ecclesia of Christ.