Biblical Ethics: An Exegetical Approach to a Morality of Happiness

By Chester J. Delagneau BA MA MA

Christians must reclaim the true definition and thoughtful explanation of biblical happiness in order to live abundant lives. Biblical Ethics restores to the church the way she should live: as morally happy beings created in the image of God to enjoy glorifying him.

The modern church has forgotten the biblical role of happiness according to a Christian worldview. The bride of Christ today faintly reflects the beauty of her Hebraic genesis. She has fallen fast asleep under the spell of deontological (duty-based) ethics that fails to take into account God-given aspects to her humanity, such as personal desires. Three key Hebraic words have the hermeneutical power to transform the church back to her radiant self: esher (i.e., happy, happiness), barak (i.e., bless, blessed), and shalom (i.e., peace, prosperity, health, well-being, favor, friendship, security, and salvation). These terms collectively prescribe a proper morality of happiness to be lived in Christian community.

This book is meant to be used as an academic text and/or supplementary study guide evidenced by end-of-chapter review questions, as well as questions for personal reflection and spiritual growth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973658962

Chester J. Delagneau BA MA MA

Chester J. Delagneau is a breath of fresh air as a poet of prose in the world of inspirational Christian living. With extensive biblical, philosophical, and ethical training from three prestigious Christian institutions (Azusa Pacific University, Talbot School of Theology, and Fuller Theological Seminary) and with three earned degrees (Bachelor of Arts in human development (psychology-sociology), a Master of Arts in systematic theology with an emphasis on biblical languages, and a Master of Arts in philosophy of religion and ethics), Chester provides exactly what the modern church needs in order to find true (moral) happiness in a broken (immoral) world.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Chester J. Delagneau, BA, MA, MA.

Photographer: Emmanuel Petkas

Location: Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, Atlanta, Georgia

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5897-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5898-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5896-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019904620

WestBow Press rev. date:     05/14/2019

Scripture quotations marked HCSB are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from The New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition). Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Scripture quoted by permission. All scripture quotations marked NET are taken from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2016 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible, Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

All Scripture quotations marked ISV are from The Holy Bible: International Standard Version. Release 2.0, Build 2015.02.09. Copyright © 1995-2014 by ISV Foundation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC.

This book is dedicated to

my two joys in life:

Nathanael—my sun,

and Sari—my flower.

I have asked one thing from the LORD; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the LORD and seeking Him in

His temple.

—Psalm 27:4 (HCSB)

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the following people for proofreading my manuscript in preparation for publication: Sari Delagneau, Jeremiah Courter, and Jeff H. McCrory. A special thanks is in order to Jeff for writing the Foreword to this volume and to Charles Chico Jones for assisting me with the soundness of the philosophical arguments in Chapter 6.

Preface

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 classical¹ 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 virtues⁴ 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 happiness⁷ 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

Endnotes

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).

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

PART I

1.   The Pursuit of Happiness

2.   A Proper Morality of Happiness

PART II

3.   Happiness in Scripture

4.   Happiness in Scripture, Continued

5.   Happiness in Scripture, Continued

PART III

6.   Theological Happiness

7.   Theological Happiness, Continued

PART IV

8.   Happiness and The Good Life

9.   Happiness and The Good Life, Continued

PART V

Afterword

PART VI

Appendix A:   Berakah (Promise of Blessing) and Charam (Utter Destruction)?

Appendix B:   Sacred and Secular?

Appendix C:   Main Objections

Works Cited

Foreword

A Brief Bio on Chester Delagneau

Chester was one of my students in a class on Hebrew Prophets at Fuller Seminary. He had come to class as part of his Ph.D. work in Systematic Theology under Professor Oliver Crisp. Immediately, I noticed that he kept asking questions about what I identified as YHWH criteria (justice, righteousness, steadfast love, peace) in the Old Testament. He was fascinated as to how we could live within the Kingdom of God in the presence of the biblical God through engaging such a lifestyle.

After having Chester as a student, we began to meet regularly. He had by this time taken a break from Ph.D. studies and was teaching Bible and Theology at a local Christian School, raising a family, and attending to his aging parents. During these meetings we discussed the Old Testament, and in particular how one could live in the personal presence of a God who exhibited such criteria as outlined above. From these discussions, Chester began to write what would become Volume 1 of his Biblical Ethics. It is this book that I introduce to you, the reader.

Why This Book?

Delagneau tells us why this book in the opening of his Preface: 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. What Delagneau proposes to do is take on misconceptions about happiness both in culture and in academics, and offer a way forward. His major sparring partners in the culture are those for whom happiness takes on the guise of hedonism or duty; within the academy, he references the discussions around voluntarist, asherist, and divine command ethics, giving particular attention to the work of Julia Annas on a morality of happiness, and Ellen Charry on asherist commands.

This book represents over ten years of study, discussion, and thinking. Although there are many target audiences for the book, anyone who desires to live a flourishing human existence will profit from reading Delagneau’s analysis.

Organization of the Book

This book is Volume 1 (Volume 2 will examine the New Testament) of Biblical Ethics, focusing upon the Old Testament’s teaching on the topic of happiness. Delagneau on pp. xxx—xxxiv gives you his plan of attack. I summarize it here to help you navigate the discussion.

Part I: Chapters 1–2

Here the author introduces his theme, which is the pursuit of a proper morality of happiness. He basically sets the table for the rest of the book.

Part II: Chapters 3–5

Here the author looks at biblical passages using the YHWH criteria as the Bible presents them, namely happiness, giving attention to Pss 1 and 112; blessing, giving attention to Genesis and Deuteronomy; peace, giving attention to many passages, but in particular offerings from Isaiah and Malachi.

Part III: Chapters 6–7

From exegetical analysis, the author moves on to theological analysis engaging the philosophical arguments around ethics, divine commands, voluntarist, and asherist approaches.

Parts IV & V: Chapters 8–9, and Afterword

Finally, the author returns to the cultural discussion regarding living a flourishing life. Here, he also references ancient discussion in Greek and Hebrew thought on what it takes to live a good life.

The Readers for this Book

Who will benefit from reading this book? In early discussion with Chester regarding the audience of this book, we talked about the multiple targets in his writing. (Chester is by the way a first class blogger on culture and faith.) I even suggested splitting this book into a street-reader version and an academic version. With this said, anyone who is interested in what it takes to live a flourishing life will gain from entering these discussions. There is enough here for the academic scholar, for the sensitive spiritual reader, for the Christian who finds that dutifully doing what God said leaves them emotionally unsatisfied, and for any person who wants to live the best life possible.

—Rev. Dr. Jeff H. McCrory, Pastor,

Professor, and Spiritual Director

Introduction

Ideas have consequences. For example, the invention and devastation of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II, started with an idea of atomic fission. Likewise, beliefs have consequences. For example, the Columbine school massacre on April 20, 1999—the 110th anniversary of Adolph Hitler’s birthday—was in part the result of one of the shooter’s (Eric Harris) nihilism with its four-fold beliefs: (1) life is meaningless;¹² (2) morality does not exist;¹³ (3) reality does not exist;¹⁴ and (4) the belief that nothing can be known.¹⁵ What we believe about life, morality, reality, and how we come to learn about life, morality, and reality affects how we live our lives.¹⁶

In this book, I focus on a biblical view of morality that best explains people’s persistent pursuit of happiness and the positive consequences involved. All men seek happiness, says philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). This is without exception.¹⁷ Pascal is unequivocally correct. Whether one is religious or non-religious, it makes no difference. The primal reason why we, say, spend time in the yard gardening or break bread with friends and family or even worship God is because we enjoy it. We instinctively care for our own wellbeing and that is the way God created us to function.¹⁸ Consider Proverb 9:12, If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you… . (NIV). We are designed not only with an intrinsic motivation for survival, but also for flourishing.¹⁹ It begs the question, however, as to how we flourish. And it is at this point that the religious and the non-religious differ, generally speaking.

For the majority of church history, most Judeo-Christians have believed that the only way humanity can be truly happy is by living according to God’s objective moral standards found in sacred scripture.²⁰ Conversely, for most secular humanists, happiness is living according to their own subjective moral beliefs (moral subjectivism) or the subjective moral beliefs of the culture (cultural relativism).²¹ But the motivation for why we all do what we do is the same—the pursuit of happiness. Listen to philosophical theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758): [Jesus] knew that all mankind were in the pursuit of happiness, he has directed them in the true way to it, and he tells them what they must become in order to be blessed and happy.²² Protestant apologist Edward John Carnell (1919–1967) speaks boldly about self-interest or self-concern being the motivation for why we do what we do: The Christian ethic, let us remember, is premised on the self’s love for the self. Nothing motivates us unless it appeals to our interests.²³ For example, when we love others we are demonstrating that we love ourselves because we are all part of the same spiritual body (of Christ) that is meant to be healthy, beautiful, and to function well. And anyone who is part of something larger than herself wants to see it flourish. But as Carnell rightly warned, If a system of ethics fails to blend self-love and duty into one vital unity, it is large with the elements of its own destruction.²⁴ Joseph Butler (1692–1752), another prominent Protestant apologist, demonstrates convincingly, in his first sermon of fifteen preached at Rolls Chapel, that our motivation to what he calls our private good—our own preservation and happiness—is far from selfishness; it is self-interest, which is de facto self-love by being true to oneself and acting in submission to God. According to Butler, submitting to one’s conscience for personal fulfillment is not only compatible with promoting one’s private good, it works harmoniously with the flourishing of the community or, what he calls, the public good: private and public good mutually promote each other.²⁵

To be clear, Edwards, Carnell and Butler are not prescribing that the purpose of life revolves around us always getting what we want or that we should think more highly of ourselves by always putting our needs above the needs of others. Nor are they reducing God to a cosmic vending machine, who exists to serve our every whim. Undoubtedly, they are thinking of the apostle Paul’s command to "not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others" (Phil 2:4, NASB, emphasis added)²⁶ and Jesus’s response to "love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39, NIV, emphasis added).²⁷ Or to put it colloquially, Randy Alcorn states, If we only think of our interests, we’re wrong. If we think of both others and ourselves, we’re right. Why should a man be a good husband? For his wife’s sake? Yes. For God’s sake? Yes. For his own sake? Yes."²⁸

And the opposite is equally true: when a man is not a good husband, and, say, he repeatedly commits adultery, he not only hurts his wife and his God, but also his own wellbeing. In this sense, sin is a form of self-hatred.²⁹ Evangelical minister Gary Thomas discusses the consequence of sin vis-à-vis to living the good life: Name a sin and you identify a serious threat to true, abundant life. Name a spiritual failing and you recognize a vicious attack on a fulfilling life.³⁰

Make no mistake, the starting point and ultimate end of human flourishing is for the glory of God.³¹ John M. Frame, Calvinist theologian, says it best: "The highest goal, the summum bonum, is the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).³² But a salutary self-interest cannot be avoided; it is a will for life" that should not be suppressed. Listen to these words by Swiss reformed theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968):

The will for life is also the will for joy, delight and happiness… . In every real man the will for life is also the will for joy. In everything that he wills, he wills and intends also that this, too, exist for him in some form. He strives for different things with the spoken or unspoken but very definite if unconscious intention of securing for himself this joy.³³

Unlike Friedrich Nietzsche’s will to power being the driving force for everything we do, Barth sees it correctly as the will to joy.³⁴ He goes on to show that anyone who rejects this ethical truth is a hypocrite and disobedient person:

It is hypocrisy to hide this from oneself. And the hypocrisy would be at the expense of the ethical truth that he should will to enjoy himself, just as he should will to eat, drink, sleep, be healthy, work, stand for what is right and live in fellowship with God and his neighbour. A person who tries to debar himself from joy is certainly not an obedient person.³⁵

If God created us for fellowship with himself, and God is the most supreme happy being, we can rationally conclude that we should get some enjoyment from pleasing God.³⁶ In Psalm 16:11, the psalmist sums it up perfectly: in Your presence is abundant joy; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures (HCSB).³⁷ So if we reject this belief for something seemingly more dutiful and selfless, then maybe Barth is correct: we are being disobedient. As we can see, beliefs have grave consequences.

The purpose of writing this book originated in a seminary classroom at Biola University’s graduate school program, Talbot School of Theology, in La Mirada, California, during the Spring of 2010. My History and Normative Systems of Ethics professor, David A. Horner, systematically won me over to the classical³⁸ approach to ethics (ethical eudaimonism), which I believe best represents the biblical model. Moreover, he demonstrated that the popular deontological ethic associated with the idea of duty or responsibility in the church today is myopic and only tells part of the story. Ethical eudaimonism, which holds that human flourishing, wellbeing, or happiness is the highest moral good necessary for living the good life, makes room for both duty and desire. That got me thinking. Maybe the reason why the church today has been so ineffective in both its responsibility to restore God’s creation and emulate kingdom flourishing is because it teaches and models a mistaken doctrine of, what I call, a pious morality of happiness. What is needed then is a restoration to the church of, what I call, a proper morality of happiness.

I have met countless Christians who believe that we must obey and serve God from a sense of duty without a modicum of desire. The consequence to this erroneous belief system is always the same—un-fulfillment—not to mention being cheerless and melancholic. But when we obey and serve God out of a sense of duty and desire, we practice and experience true happiness because the purpose for which we have been designed—to glorify God by experiencing his pleasure and propagating his joy—has been satisfied. My inexorable conviction is that a fulfilled and satiated body of Christ would be a juggernaut in making disciples and healing a broken world.

Since my studies at Talbot, I have incessantly thought about not only the correct ethical model for the church, but also how that model fairs with the reality of suffering. My contention is that a biblical model of happiness that does not take the problem of suffering seriously is not the correct model of happiness.³⁹ In Volume 2: New Testament Flourishing, I will analyze the relationship between happiness and suffering in light of scripture. It is my persuasion that a proper doctrine of a morality of happiness that is tethered to a biblical approach to suffering can aid the church in changing the world. But first, it must change the church.

I have written this book because the modern church has forgotten the biblical role of happiness according to a Christian worldview. The bride of Christ today faintly reflects the beauty of her Hebraic genesis. She has fallen fast asleep under the spell of deontological (duty-based) ethics that fails to take into account God-given aspects to her humanity, such as personal desires.⁴⁰ Three key Hebraic words have the hermeneutical power to transform the church back to her radiant self: אֶשֶׁר ‘esher (i.e., happy, happiness), בָרַךְ bârak (i.e., bless, blessed), and שָׁלֹם shâlôm (e.g., peace, prosperity, health, wellbeing, friendship, favor, security, and salvation).

In Volume 1, I discuss the LORD’s ubiquitous moral message to his people: obey and be blessed (happy)! Here is an outline and summary of the chapters in Volume 1: Old Testament Flourishing:

I. Chapters 1–2: The Pursuit of Happiness and a Proper Morality of Happiness

A. Happiness is a pervasive pursuit that has been misinterpreted by