The Art of Happiness

Happiness has become a hot topic for discussion among philosophers and theologians, and one reason for this is that it has always been a part of intellectual history. But the discussion was more or less taken over by the social sciences and it became a discussion about our inner state — answering the question “What makes you (feel) happy?”

Healing and happiness are connected; only as we are healed do we become happy. Notice these words: “Healing is learned by enacting healing behavior, not first by talking and thinking about healing as an outcome” (252). As we enact healing behaviors toward others we are ourselves healed. Obedience to God’s commands creates human flourishing and heals and leads to genuine (redemptive) happiness.

Question: Is happiness a result of love properly ordered, or is happiness something we pursue? How then does one find happiness?

In her new thorough study of happiness in the Christian tradition, Princeton theologian Ellen Charry offers a full-scale study that ought to be in every theologian’s library: God and the Art of Happiness. Her book is cut in two: a history of the discussion, which involves a very careful study of Augustine but also examines Boethius, Aquinas and Joseph Butler, with some brief sketches of others.

The second half is about “Asherism” in the Bible, her term for the “blessed life.” She takes “asherism” out of the Hebrew word for blessed: ashrey. She has full-orbed biblical and Trinitarian approach to happiness. The scope is breathtaking at times.

So, what is happiness according to Charry?

First, it is connected to salvation. “Salvation is the healing of love that one may rest in God.” This Augustinian framing of salvation may be Augustinian but it is also profoundly biblical. Furthermore, salvation works toward our healing into happiness and human flourishing: “Asherism works out that healing process in a life of reverent obedience to divine commands that shape character and bring moral-psychological flourishing and enhance societal well-being” (xi). This from her introduction, but having read the book that’s the best summary in the whole book.

Happiness has often been connected to the unbridled pursuit of self-indulgence and at the other end of the spectrum to eternal felicity. Charry sees happiness in a realizing eschatology “of growth into the beauty and wisdom of God. Happiness is enjoying life through a divinely initiated pattern of spiritual growth” (157). “It is enjoyment of ourselves, others, and the earth in itself in obedience to God’s call, and it is the celebration of that call by donating ourselves to the flourishing of creation” (229).

But Charry’s book concludes with some poetic and pastoral implications of her idea of asherism. The conclusion, if read closely and slowly, is a mini-essay on the impact of salvation on human flourishing and the conclusion is loaded with pastoral insight. I clip lines …

“… sin damages the sinner but not the victim. The sinner succeeds when the victim becomes another himself, but short of the victim’s becoming another perpetrator, the devil is locked out of the victim’s soul” (252).

“… insight and clarity follow from, rather than motivate, habits formed by practice” (252).

“Experiencing godly living or covenantal faithfulness… heals love” (253).

Here’s one: “… perhaps the best way to heal the image in ourselves is to heal the perpetrator” (253). She explores this marvelously in a thorough section on Jesus Christ as healer — who healed by entering into our sinfulness. She says he returned to the Father “to take care of those who harmed him” (258).

I finish with this: “Asherism’s realizing eschatology functions in two directions, suggesting that healing is healing: that is, being healed by Christ strengthens one’s ability to heal others. At the same time, healing others is therapeutic, because it is empowering and it is empowered by and for the beauty of holiness that is obedience to God” (268).