Joy to the World. It’s a phrase/lyric so common we almost look past the meaning. What gives a person joy? The world would tell us many things on Earth can bring us joy and happiness. There’s almost a plethora of options to choose from. These same numerous joys that the world invites us to enjoy, continually, are in the end superficial and after the initial feeling of happiness passes away, we often feel a bit unfulfilled and even somber. So maybe these pleasures are not indeed what would lead us to true joy and fulfillment as human beings. Then the question arises, what brings us true joy and happiness? This paper aims to explain exactly this, making the contention that true, lasting, happiness is experienced when the human being focuses more on the virtues from his spirit, rather than his vices of his body; essentially aligning one’s will with God’s will. To say it another way, human beings are only truly happy when they live their lives on Earth with the ultimate purpose of pleasing God, the Almighty Spirit and giving Him all the glory.
This claim is both philosophical and theological: Philosophical because it is a claim that rested on human being’s ability to reason, one of which some of the oldest philosophers held, before the real study and formal existence of Theology (and before Christ); Theological because it ties one’s life study to be the subject of God and how to become closer to Him through faith. I will support this claim by providing various evidences of its authenticity throughout. These resources mentioned will be from Holy Scripture, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, many books on philosophy, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, some of Fr. Hardon’s publication form the web, as well as his Catholic Dictionary, and some lecture notes from PHS 607 – Philosophy for Theologians.
This paper will be organized into the following pieces of supporting information: (1) Defining Happiness and quoting Holy Scripture (2) The supporting views held by Pre – Christian Philosophers, Socrates and Aristotle, (3) The evidence of this claim in light of Christian Philosophers, St Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and (4) The perspective of the modern-day Catholic Church and recent Pope John Paul II. Finally, we will close this essay by summing up the claim while also notating its importance and value in every human being’s life.
So, to begin, what is happiness? It would be all too easy and far too broad to describe joy and/or happiness as a feeling of pleasure. This definition will not do, even if the world wants it to hold its place of reference, simply because it invites too many follow up questions and is too subjective. For instance, if happiness is feeling pleasure, why wouldn’t humans just continually eat, drink, have sex or any other activity that brings them pleasure, over and over and over again until they die? Another way to phrase the question, How come this feeling of pleasure has to be felt again through continual action, why does the pleasure not last? And another question – If Happiness is the feeling of pleasure, then what about those humans who state that they get pleasure out of other’s pain or detriment? Does that make them happy? Certainly not, says the sane one. No, this definition won’t do.
In his Modern Catholic Dictionary, Fr. John Hardon defines happiness as, “Any contentment in the possession of a good. Implies a state of well-being and not some single experience, and a relative permanence and constancy. Hence regularly used in Scripture to describe the lot of those who are blessed by God for doing his will, and the reward of the just for their faithful service on earth. Happiness is a divine gift but requires man’s co-operation to be gained.” [1]
This definition is specific in its distinction between lasting happiness and a moment’s pleasure, while also stating our claim in its reference to doing God’s will. Man, as a rational creation from God, can see why this definition suits us. Holy Scripture says, “Wisdom, knowledge and joy, God gives to those who please him, but on the sinner he lays the task of gathering and storing up for someone else who is pleasing to him.” (Ecclesiastes 2:26 NJB) While knowing we need to align our will with God’s to find lasting happiness and joy, this also requires continual reminding that God gives us this chance for happiness in the first place by granting us the ability to understand, the ability to search for this wisdom freely. It is because of God that we ultimately exist, and therefore, it is our duty to place God, the Creator, and his will above our own selfish desires. Recognizing this, also known as the Fear of God, is the “beginning of knowledge.” (Pr 1:7)
Even philosophers almost certainly without the influence of The Old Testament spoke about the importance of pleasing God with their lives. Socrates, arguably the father of Ancient Philosophy, said, “Athenians, I cherish and love you. But I shall obey God rather than you.” [2]
Socrates knew the importance of placing his duty to God above all else, something that took courage and ultimately cost him his life (even though ironically one of the charges brought against him was atheism). But he viewed the soul as the better part of the man, and worked to subdue his body and his passions to the virtues that stemmed from his soul. A wise man, Socrates knew that true happiness was not in pleasing the material side of man, but in connecting with the spiritual side of man. Paul Johnson sums this up nicely when he writes about Socrates philosophy, stating “The body pursued pleasure, hoping to find happiness. But happiness was to be found, in this life, only by allowing the soul to direct the body in the path of virtue and wisdom.” [3]
Aristotle builds off of Socrates philosophy and also places a large amount of emphasis on the spiritual side of man. He was brilliant in what he contributed to the field of Philosophy. Besides his numerous, intellectual works, he also divided Philosophy into two parts, Theoretical, and Practical, and of the Theoretical, he knew that Metaphysics was the most important of them all, the science of being, of existence. Aristotle characterizes Classical Philosophy, as summarized by man coming to know the world first through his senses, and then because of this, coming to know himself. This is entirely different from the Cartesian method, which places the emphasis on insisting that oneself exists and that the world and its reality is uncertain.[4] Aristotelianism, or Classical Philosophy, instead sets Man up to the task of experiencing life and coming to know Truths through his experience. These Truths are objective, and it is the acquiring of this wisdom, that helps Man come closer to lasting happiness through his continual learning of Truth, of which God instilled. To put this in a philosophical syllogism:
- Man comes to knowledge through his experience with the World as Reality.
- The World and its knowledge (Truths) is made by God
- Thus, Man comes to know God by experiencing the World.
This supports our claim that Man’s true happiness comes from God and his Truths.
Aristotelianism sets the stage for future Philosophers to build on, and some of its main contributions relevant to our topic of happiness at hand include: the postulate that every living being has a principle of life, which in man is the rational soul; the proof of an eternal unmoved Mover, to explain the existence of a world that is changeable, and the identification of this eternal unmoved First Mover with the god or gods of popular religion; and the definition of the ethical good as that which corresponds to man as rational being and consists in the subordination of the senses to reason and in the exercise of reason to search for and contemplate the truth. [5] We can see how Aristotle viewed the world and our senses as lower in the hierarchy of our composition, with the soul and spiritual side of man holding the true value and man’s ultimate destiny towards truth, or in other words, happiness.
Now let us consider two philosophers of the Post- Christ age /Medieval period of history, when Christianity and its teachings were already born and influential in almost all parts of society. We’ll first consider St. Augustine. Once a humble farm boy and later a man of High Power in Milan, Augustine wrote of many inspiring works following his conversion to Christianity. He was highly intellectual, and it is through his writing that we can see his unique talent of being able to share lofty and complex concepts in analogous ways to make it easer to understand. In arguably his most famous work, Confessions, he proclaims, “Nevertheless to praise you is the desire of man…you stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[6] Augustine understood (after some time) that his purpose was not to lose himself in earthy pleasures and indulgences. He said, “When I seek for you, my God, my quest is for the happy life. I will seek you that ‘my soul may live’ (Isa. 55:3), for my body derives life from the soul, and my soul derives life from you.” [7]
Saint Thomas Aquinas in many of his writings notates this very same attention to a level of hierarchy when considering the journey of knowing God and the World. He writes, “..since the perfection of things descend in a certain order from the highest summit of things – God – man may progress in the knowledge of God by beginning with lower things and gradually ascending.” [8] Aquinas knew that Man was called to be in relationship with God, the Creator of all things, the Unmoved/Prime Mover, and it was through the Preambles of Faith and Divine Revelation that this relationship carried on.
Philosophy being the love of wisdom, and wisdom being at first the fear of God based on the understanding of Objective Truth, it can be said that a wise man is a fulfilled man in relation to his feeling of purpose on Earth. In Article 6 of his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas dictates this thought well, stating, “Again, in the order of all human life, the prudent man is called wise, inasmuch as he directs his acts to a fitting end: “Wisdom is prudence to a man” (Proverbs 10:23). Therefore he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise. Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says (De Trin. xii, 14).” [9]
Now what does the modern Church say in relation to this claim about man’s happiness stemming from God’s will, praise, and glory? The Catechism of The Catholic Church makes many references to this. “The Human person: …with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul…can have its origin only in God.” [10] Everything leads back to God, including our dependence on True happiness. Peter Kreeft says in one of his talks about the existence of God that if everyone really examines themselves truthfully, they will find that they are not really happy. Yet there is this hunger for happiness, for fulfillment, that nothing can ever satisfy, at least not here on Earth, but there must exist something to fulfill the desire, or else it would be counterproductive to have the desire in the first place. [11] This something is God. This ultimate desire of man is a sign that we were made for another world, a spiritual realm, which we are brought closer to as we use our faith, as well as our reason, to grow our relationship with God. The Catechism also states that The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. “This desire is of divine origin: God placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it.” [12] The beatitudes are of course at the heart of Jesus’ preaching and with all of these in perspective, we are better able to align our will with God’s will.
One of the most recent canonized Saints, Pope John Paul II, (Karol Wojtyla brilliantly leaves behind many remarks about this ultimate desire for Man to happiness rooted in God. Saint John Paul II wrote that happiness springs from the knowledge of the truth, from the vision of God face to face, from sharing in His life.[13] The Church, as well as its faithful evangelical clergy and laymen, have continued to stand behind this claim and add to it.
Man is only happy when his life is geared towards God. It’s the claim that has, and continues to stand the test of time. We’ve covered the time from Socrates to the Present day and see that all the evidence points to this Truth. Man has the freedom by the love of God to choose his path and if he comes to understand the truth , the objective reality, then he can come to know himself and God in the process on the journey towards eternal happiness.
Even if we know this, we have the freedom to completely go against the tide. We must not only know this and be continually aware and reminded of it to live in this secular world, but we must do our best to abide by it and live by it; not only for ourselves, but for the entire community and human race. We are told to love our neighbors – this involves the responsibility of living according to the Truth, to God. As humans, as created beings, as the children of God, we are faced with four main philosophical questions in life according to Peter Kreeft in his book, “The Philosophy of Jesus”, (1) What is real? (Metaphysics), (2) How do we know what is real (Epistemology), (3) Who are we? Who is the Human Person? (Philosophical Anthropology), and (4) How should we act based of this? (Ethics) [14] God is the Answer and the beginning point for all of these questions. Through our Faith and Reason, we can come to discover the answer to these inescapable questions and live our lives, although not perfectly happy, attuned to the closest frequency of happiness and peace, that we can find on Earth, until we are ultimately united with God in his Holy Kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Life – Eternal Fulfillment.
Bibliography
Aquinas,Thomas. ‘Summa Theologiae’ Online Edition by Kevin Knight (2017), https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm
Augustine, A New Translation by Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 1991
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000
Hardon, Fr. John. The Real Presence. 1999, http://www.therealpresence.org/
Johnson, Paul. Socrates: A Man of Our Times, New York: Penguin Group, 2011
Kreeft, Dr. Peter. “Dr. Peter Kreeft on the Existence of God,” YouTube video, from Catholic Diocese of Arlington, posted on 20, March 2013, at http://www.youtube.com
Kreeft, Peter. The Philosophy of Jesus, Saint Augustine Press, 2007
McInerny, Ralph. A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1990
Paul II, Pope John. Crossing the Threshold of Hope Alfred A. Knopf, 1994
The New Jerusalem Bible (New York: Doubleday,1990)
[1] Fr. John Hardon , Modern Catholic Dictionary, “Happiness” (1999), http://www.therealpresence.org/
[2] Paul Johnson, Socrates: A Man of Our Times, (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), 39
[3] Paul Johnson, Socrates, 39
[4] Ralph McInerny, A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1990), 32, 34
[5] Fr. John Hardon , Modern Catholic Dictionary, “Aristotelianism” (1999), http://www.therealpresence.org/
[6]Saint Augustine, Confessions: A New Translation by Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 1991), 3
[7] Augustine, Confessions,196
[8] McInerny, A First Glance at St. Thomas, 63
[9] St. Thomas Aquinas, ‘Summa Theologiae’ Online Edition by Kevin Knight (2017), https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm, Article 6
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 33
[11] Dr. Peter Kreeft, “Dr. Peter Kreeft on the Existence of God,” YouTube video, from Catholic Diocese of Arlington, posted on 20, March 2013, at http://www.youtube.com
[12] CCC, 1718
[13] Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 73
[14] Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Jesus (Saint Augustine Press, 2007), 6