When we live the way we are supposed to, God is glorified and we are blessed (happy)! Sadly, most well-meaning dutiful Christians take issue with the notion that happiness is for the here-and-now, delaying it for the afterlife. Too often they gorge themselves on an ethical diet of doing the right thing out of a sense of duty, while their taste buds for serving God out of a sense of desire become dull and desensitized.
- In
this volume, I tackle the ethical paradox between duty and desire showing
that a morality of happiness, starting with the Old Testament, accounts for
both in a complementary way.
There is so much that is morally and spiritually good and wise about the
Old Testament because God’s laws for humanity stem from his nature. Sadly, the
church, for the most part, has misunderstood the purpose of the Old Testament
viewing torah as morally and
spiritually oppressive. Contrary to popular opinion, the keeping
of Old Testament laws was not a legalistic system of obligation and prohibition.
Israel’s obedience to torah was a
reflection of God’s benevolent being and behavior.
- In this volume, I demonstrate
that obedience to torah facilitates
human flourishing.
- This is the good news (gospel) of
the Old Testament.
I have come to discover that the default ethic in the church today dictates that morality is governed by rules (i.e., obligation and prohibition) in order to foster the common good of all. It mandates that we sacrifice individual happiness for the sake of others, whenever possible. Sadly, the majority of contemporary Christians believe that the concepts of morality and happiness are counterintuitive, and thus, mutually exclusive.
- In
this volume, I argue against the notion that morality and happiness make strange
bedfellows. Far from it. Morality, which encompasses duty, and happiness, which
encompasses desire, actually fit hand-in-glove.
- Moreover,
morality and happiness are actually biblical concepts that have inspired the
production of classical[1] philosophy and religious
literature, as well as commentary (ad
nauseam) on both. As a matter of fact, the phrase “the morality of
happiness,” used by Julia Annas, is a positive expression of their
complementary nature.[2]
An exegetical approach to a morality of happiness or a
proper morality of happiness,[3] which is the biblical view
of happiness, seasons our virtuous souls to function as they were designed,
fulfilling our rational, moral, and spiritual natures. Sadly, too many
Christians today are robbed of this pleasure when they interpret true happiness
as hedonism.
- In this
volume, I demonstrate that the church is throwing the baby out with the bathwater
when, in the name of piety, the biblical view of happiness or objective
happiness is confused with subjective happiness—a merely emotional and thus
relativistic view of happiness.
- With that
said, however, happiness does involve healthy human emotions, as well as determining
how we should behave. That is, human happiness is both feeling and function.
The biblical view of happiness is cultivated by living
according to biblical virtues[4] or practices, such as wisdom
and humility, justice and righteousness, which are motivated by human
flourishing. Sadly, the church, as a whole, has got it half-right when it comes
to living in the kingdom of God: biblical practices are interpreted as moral
obligations for their own sake and not for the sake of human flourishing.
- In this
volume, I show that God inspires us to flourish via human obedience to divine
commands.
- Living virtuously,
however, is not necessarily a virtue ethic, in which virtuous living is the
end-goal. Virtuous living can be a means in a means-to-an-end relationship to
the end-goal of human flourishing.
Human flourishing (in Greek, eudaimonia), however, was never meant to be practiced in isolation
from a community of believers. Sadly, some Christians today hyper-focus on
their own prosperity at the expense of living in right relationship with one
another within the body of Christ.
- In this
volume, I explain that with a proper morality of happiness there is no room for
selfishness; rather, we look out for the good of others, as well as our own.
This enables us to flourish together in order to live life to the fullest as a Christian
community.
- When the
world witnesses this kind of symbiotic flourishing, it will come banging on the
doors of the church begging to be let in.
Ethical eudaimonism or eudaimonism (from eudaimonia), which is the view that human
ethics is grounded in the pursuit of happiness, intentionally reflects the
happiness of the Godhead. Sadly, in my experience, too many well-meaning academic
Christians believe that divine commands, which are associated with eudaimonia, are all voluntarist (arbitrary)
commands.
- In this
volume, I espouse the view that far from being arbitrary, most divine commands are
“asherist commands” (to borrow a term
from Ellen T. Charry)[5] fixed on God’s immutably
benevolent and flourishing character. Thus, when we flourish we reflect the
flourishing of the Holy Trinity.
- But far more
than mirroring divine flourishing, we are meant to be active participants in the
happiness of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit here on earth.
Biblical
Ethics (Volumes 1 and 2), broadly speaking, is an
amalgamation and culmination of over ten years of study and research in the academic
fields of biblical hermeneutics, spiritual formation, Christian apologetics, theology,
philosophy, psychology, sociology, and, obviously, ethics. [6]
The
major theme in reclaiming an exegetical approach to a morality of happiness[7] to an anemic church is
similar to that of Julia Annas’s theme in The
Morality of Happiness, whereby she retrieves happiness for classical
philosophy, and Ellen Charry’s theme in God
and the Art of Happiness, whereby she “recovers the historical trajectory
of the Western theological discussion of happiness.”[8] Our common denominator is
that we seek to restore a morality of happiness, although my method is not as
philosophical as Annas’s or as theological as Charry’s. I focus on a more exegetical
approach, as the title of my book indicates, which does overlap with the
disciplines of western philosophy and theology. Ressourcement (a French word),[9] which means “a return to
the sources”—scripture, as well as to the patristic fathers and medieval
theologians—is the main method I employ in this book.[10]
The
purpose of this type of restoration is to aid Christians in “enjoying God,
creation, and self,”[11] which means to enjoy “the
good life” (in Greek, agathos bios)
or to live life to the fullest as Jesus taught (see Jn 10:10b).
This
book is written for any and all Christian leaders, whether in a familial, pastoral,
seminary, academic, or educational setting. My desire is to see the biblically
deep-rooted moral principles that are substantiated in these volumes taught and
lived out among the leaders of today’s generation, so that their pupils—tomorrow’s
leaders—are not stymied from flourishing by the same ethical roadblocks that
have inhibited the previous generations’ calling to be blessed in order to be a
blessing.
San Clemente, California C. J. D. October 2015
[1] I use the term classical here to refer to early to late
medieval Christian thought.
[2] See Julia
Annas, The Morality of Happiness
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1993] 1995). In
her book, Annas demonstrates that the moral theories of ancient philosophers,
starting with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, contain the common denominator of
virtuous living in order to be happy.
[3] In the phrase a
“proper morality of happiness,” I use the term proper to distinguish my religiously motivated morality of
happiness from the morality of happiness of ancient philosophies. And thus it
should be clear that this pursuit of a morality of happiness is not a history of happiness, unless, of course,
we are speaking of the biblical history of happiness, starting with the Old
Testament.
[4] In order to be
clear, I want to briefly discuss what I mean by the term biblical virtues by comparing it to Aristotle’s
definition of the virtues of humanity. According to Aristotle scholar Richard
McKeon (1900–1985), the four characteristics of a moral virtue for Aristotle are
“(1) a habit or state of character, (2) concerned with choice, (3) lying in a
mean relative to us, and (4) determined by a rational principle, or the
principle by which a man of practical reason or prudence would determine it” Introduction to Aristotle, ed. Richard
McKeon, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, [1947]
1973), 333. It is safe to assume that (1) and (2) overlap naturally onto the
biblical landscape. (3) Does apply to universal virtues, such as courage,
wisdom, temperance, and justice, but I am not thinking of them necessarily as a
mean. And (4) is questionable at least for virtues such as humility and fear
(of God) that could be interpreted as irrational or imprudent. My contribution
to this multi-faceted moral matrix is to baptize (1) and (2) into theological
waters by adding that (1) and (2) are modeled after God’s character and free
will.
[5] See Ellen T.
Charry, God and the Art of Happiness
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 170.
[6] In this volume, I use the terms ethic and morality interchangeably. Although they each stem etymologically from a different language, they mean virtually the same thing: ethic stems from the Greek word êthoi, which is the plural form of ethos, while morality stems from the Latin word morês, which is the plural form of mos. Êthoi and morês mean “conduct” or “character,” while ethos and mos mean “custom” or “practice.” I am thankful to my former ethics professor David A. Horner for bringing this matter to my attention.
[7] It is my contention that when assessing the proper criteria for systematically interpreting the Old Testament, the theme of human happiness or flourishing should be considered.
[8] Charry, God and the Art of Happiness, xi.
[9] I am borrowing the term ressourcement from the literature concerning Vatican II. At the heart of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) was ecumenical theology. The spirit of Vatican II that sought to bring healing and unity was expressed in two complementary ways: ressourcement and aggiornamento (an Italian word), which means “a bringing up to date” in the context of modernizing the church via integrating the natural with the supernatural.
[10] In this volume,
I return to what the Old Testament says about a morality of happiness. In
Volume 2, I will return to what the New Testament says about a morality of
happiness with the theological assistance of the
patristic fathers (viz. St. Augustine) and medieval theologians (viz. St.
Aquinas).
[11] I follow Charry’s
lead here when she says that “happiness is enjoying God, creation, and self by
cultivating the wisdom behind divine commands that enable one to become an
instrument of the world’s flourishing. Happiness is a discipline that might be
called godly self-enjoyment.” Charry,
God and the Art of Happiness, 182
(emphases in the original).