Praxis

Oversimplified

• The "doing" of the Christian life — the ascetic and moral practice (fasting, prayer, virtue) that precedes and prepares for contemplation.
• In the Fathers, praxis (action) and theoria (contemplation) are the two stages of the one path to God.

Summary

Praxis (Greek, "practice, action") names the active struggle of the spiritual life — keeping the commandments, uprooting the passions, cultivating the virtues. In the patristic map, praktikē is the necessary first stage that purifies the soul, opening onto theoria, the contemplation of God.[^1]

Practice before vision

"Give blood and receive the Spirit," say the Fathers: there is no shortcut past the labor of repentance and virtue to authentic contemplation. Praxis is faith enacted — "faith apart from works is dead" (James 2.26) — not to earn God but to become capable of Him. See Spirituality, Theosis, Nous.

[^1]: Evagrius of Pontus; and St. Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Love (Centuries on Charity).