“It is sometimes easy to deliver an unhappy man from his present distress, but it is difficult to set him free from his past affliction. Only God can do it. And even the grace of God itself cannot cure the irremediably wounded nature here below. The glorified body of Christ bore the marks of the nail and spear.”
Saint Augustine on Felicity
In The City of God
, St. Augustine writes of the elevation of Felicity to the status of a goddess. On the value of felicity as something to be sought he writes:
Felicity, however, is certainly more valuable than a kingdom. For no one doubts that a man might easily be found who may fear to be made a king; but no one is found who is unwilling to be happy.
Later he writes:
But if Felicity is not a goddess, because as is true, it is a gift of God, that god must be sought who has power to give it, and that hurtful multitude of false gods must be abandoned which the vain multitude of foolish men follows after, making gods to itself of the gifts of God, and offending Himself whose gifts they are by the stubbornness of a proud will. For he cannot be free from infelicity who worships Felicity as a goddess, and forsakes God, the giver of felicity; just as he cannot be free from hunger who licks a painted loaf of bread, and does not buy it of the man who has a real one.
Now, in 21st Century America, we are unlikely to encounter anyone who is tempted to erect a statue to the goddess Felicity. Yet, we are in danger of worshipping felicity. Happiness seems to be the primary goal of many we interact with on a daily basis.
The church is not immune to this worship of happiness. The “name it, claim it” version of Christianity places happiness as the primary goal of the Christian life. In fact, in the extreme versions of this brand of the “word faith” movement, lack of happiness is understood to be a sin or a defect in belief and worship.
But, as Augustine points out, felicity is a gift to be enjoyed, but not a primary goal in life. We are to worship the giver of felicity, not the gift.
John Stott on Jesus’ Hour
“Despite the great importance of his teaching, his example and his works of compassion and power, none of these was central to his mission. What dominated his mind was not the living but the giving of his life. This final self-sacrifice was his ‘hour,’ for which he had come into the world. And the four evangelists, who bear witness to him in the Gospels, show that they understand this by the disproportionate amount of space which they give to the story of his last few days on earth, his death and resurrection. It occupies between a third and a quarter of the three Synoptic Gospels, while John’s Gospel has justly been described as having two parts, ‘the Book of the Signs’, and ‘the Book of the Passion’, since John spends an almost equal amount of time on each.”
John Stott in The Cross of Christ
Chesterton on original sin
“Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin – a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philospher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”
G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy
