Faith, Love, and Hope in an Ordered Christian Life: Orthodoxy, Orthocompassio, and Orthopraxis in Dialogue with Aristotle and Augustine

This article asks how authentic Christian faith holds together right believing (Orthodoxy), right being (Orthocompassio), and right doing (Orthopraxis), and how this triad relates to the theological virtues of faith, love, and hope. It argues for an ordered yet reciprocal grammar in which the gospel grounds the Spirit’s reordering of desire and issues in hopeful practice. Aristotle and Augustine are related through asymmetrical retrieval rather than a simple doing–being contrast, Aristotle supplies an account of habituated character, practical wisdom, friendship, and contemplation, while Augustine relocates these capacities within creation, sin, grace, and beatitude in God. In dialogue with Aquinas and contemporary work on infused virtue, the article distinguishes acquired capacities from faith, hope, and love as gifts of grace without severing divine action from embodied practice. Its Trinitarian account is a limited appropriation grounded in the missions of the Son and Spirit and the Father’s sending relation, while maintaining the inseparability of divine action. South African engagement with ubuntu, relational personhood, hospitality, and public witness tests the proposal contextually. The result is a constructive Evangelical account of doctrine, desire, and action ordered towards communion with God and faithful participation in God’s promised future.