The peace that comes from above

This article by Jean-Claude Larchet, drawn from a conference given in 1991, offers a theological study of the notion of peace in the light of the Orthodox Tradition. Drawing on a systematic reading of the Scriptures and the Church Fathers — notably Maximus the Confessor, Isaac the Syrian and Nicholas Cabasilas — the author develops a Trinitarian and ascetic conception of peace. The central idea is that true peace is an uncreated divine energy, a gift of the Father communicated by the Son and received in the Holy Spirit, lost through ancestral sin and restored by the salvific economy of Christ. The article shows that this inner peace, acquired through the struggle against the passions and the practice of the virtues, constitutes the indispensable foundation of all interpersonal and social peace, as opposed to the purely external forms of peace that the world offers.