His Glory, Thy Happiness

Many today struggle to find purpose and happiness. A recent study by the Harvard Graduate School of Education concluded that three out of five young adults “felt their lives lacked meaning and purpose.” Every year, the World Happiness Report gives a “happiness” ranking to nations across the world. In the most recent ranking, America fell from the top 20 for the first time, fueled largely by the discontentment of those under the age of 30.

We do try for both. We seek meaning and pursue happiness in various ways, including in our work, our political affiliations, and our romantic relationships. Nor is the search for meaning and happiness an entirely new one. Ancient Greek-speaking peoples discussed humanity’s telos—our end. Through understanding man’s purpose, we could then order our lives properly in accordance with that purpose. Moreover, philosophers such as Aristotle posited happiness as the object which all persons ultimately pursued for its own sake—the main differences being how best to attain felicity.

Turning to theology, Reformational documents gave a theocentric answer to these matters. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) stated that God created humans as he did, to “live with God in eternal happiness, to praise and glorify him.” Perhaps most famously, the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) declared that “[m]an’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

Anselm of Canterbury’s Solution

These answers did not originate with the Reformation. Among their earlier great articulators was Anselm (1033-1109), who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093-1109. Anselm is best known for his proof of God’s existence and for his “satisfaction theory” of Christ’s atonement. While important on these counts, Anselm also discussed humanity’s telos, his happiness, and God’s salvific intervention to restore as well as to further fulfill both. Two of his works in particular—Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) and his Meditations—thoughtfully developed these points.

Anselm affirmed that man’s ultimate purpose consisted of glorifying God. Share on X Anselm affirmed that man’s ultimate purpose consisted of glorifying God. In his Meditations, he told his audience that, “Thou wast created for the glory of thy Creator.” Moreover, in Cur Deus Homo, Anselm declared that humans are “to be happy in enjoying Him.”

These conclusions about what humans should pursue and how they might find contentment resulted from Anselm’s understanding of how God created them. For one, God made humanity with a rational nature. They held the capacity to reason, to think logically. God gave humanity this rational nature so that they would “discern justice and injustice, good and evil, and between the greater and the lesser good.” For humans to fail to use their reason to understand these distinctions would mean that they were “made rational in vain,” something Anselm recoiled at as contrary to God’s creative goodness and power.

Reason, Love, and Holiness

Man’s capacity to reason then held implications for his understanding of God. Man should comprehend that God is just and good. But human reasoning about God must perceive much more. In discerning between greater and lesser goods, humanity ought to see that “the supreme good…is God.” There existed no higher, more complete, more perfect example of justice, goodness—of all virtues—than God.

Anselm believed man’s rational capacity was necessary to glorify and enjoy God. For how could one glorify or enjoy what one did not know worthy of glory and enjoyment? Yet that was not enough. Anselm did not see man’s purpose as fulfilled merely through properly exercising his intellect toward accurate knowledge of justice, good, and especially of God. Instead, humanity’s use of reason existed, “for this purpose, that he might hate and shun evil, and love and choose good.” We think rightly in order to love properly. Love, then, is the goal of reasoning. Moreover, the rational distinction between lesser and higher goods should result in lesser and higher loves. Anselm wrote that, “rational nature was created for this end, viz., to love and choose the highest good supremely.” Anselm had said that man’s reason should understand that God is this highest good. Humanity then must choose God over and love God supremely in comparison to any other goods, real or supposed. Through this rational love, humanity could fulfill its purpose. Through this rational love, human beings would realize true, lasting happiness.

However, Anselm believed humans needed more than reason to think and to love rightly. He declared that, “intelligent nature cannot fulfil this purpose without being holy.” Humanity’s Divinely-given holiness gave him the ability “to choose and love the highest good”—God. In doing so, Anselm noted that humans must avoid a temptation to seek God as a means to other desires. He said that the highest good, if truly so, must be chosen and loved, “for its own sake and nothing else; for if the highest good were chosen for any other reason, then something else and not itself would be the thing loved.” We face the temptation to try to glorify and to love God in hopes He will give us material and spiritual benefits, or at least spare us from material and spiritual struggles. Anselm would have none of such calculations. Instead, humans should “desire nothing from Him but Himself.” Thus, we should pray, “that the object of thy longing may be God; the reward of thy toil, God; thy solace in this life of shadows, God; thy possession in that blissful life to come, God.” Anselm was a kind of Christian Hedonist well before John Piper.

Anselm’s Anthropology

Anselm connected this rational, holy love for God to our creation in His image. He distinguished between a person being in the Divine “likeness” versus God’s “image.” We were like God if, knowing His goodness, “we study to be good; if, owning Him the Just, we strive to be just; if, contemplating Him the Merciful, we make endeavours after mercy.” In other words, we show the likeness of God through living what might be called a virtuous life in imitation of His character.

However, the image of God looked a little different. Anselm pointed out God’s posture toward Himself, that God “remembers Himself, understands Himself, loves Himself.” In a focused knowing God, understanding God, loving God, we image Him because we will “be striving to do that which God does eternally.” We will do so imperfectly, Anselm admits. Still, he argues that, to display our being made in God’s image, “[t]is the duty of man to bend his whole being to this task; the task of remembering, of understanding, and of loving the Highest Good.”

This rational, holy likeness and image of God should manifest in righteous living. Yet the highest manifestation of glorifying and enjoying God was worship. Anselm linked glorifying and worshipping when he said that God creating humanity for His glory involved man, “making His praises thy employment.” He added at another point that, “for this wast thou created, to praise Him.” We glorify God in our worship of who He is and what He has done. In his Meditations, Anselm even pointed toward righteous living as a kind of praise. In praising God, we seek “the merit of justice in this life” and “the praise of Him yields the fruit of justice here” on earth. Anselm also brought worship and happiness together in these writings, saying that we are to “praise Him by loving.” In loving God as the highest object, we then find our ultimate happiness. In fact, Anselm extended this connection of praise and happiness into the New Heavens and New Earth. He declared that God’s “praises makes…thy happiness in the world to come.” Not just our temporal but also our eternal bliss is intimately connected to our worship of our God.

The Origin of Meaninglessness and Discontent

The preceding offered a beautiful articulation of our purpose and our happiness in light of our created state. Yet it does not account for our sin. Anselm spoke of humanity’s Fall and its effects in searing, woeful language. He declared that we were, “blinded by the guilt of original sin, and couldest not scan thy Creator’s royal heights.” We could not see aright to discern aright. Beyond the intellect, our wills were deformed. Left to itself, the human “heart is a rock of ice, for all the fires of my all-pitiful Father’s love and His love’s blessings do not avail to warm it.” Finally, the guilt we lived under for our sins, the price it required, was greater than any mere man could address, greater than “all the universe.”

From this fallen state resulted our experience of meaninglessness and discontent. Our reason and our love, now bereft of holiness, have become deeply distorted. We wallow in the “slough of lusts,” glorifying and seeking happiness in anything and anyone but the true God.

Hope in Christ

Here, Anselm offered us hope. This hope did not come in a call for us to correct ourselves, to atone for ourselves. This hope could only come in God. It came first from God’s steadfast intentions. Anselm assured that, “God will…complete what he has begun with regard to human nature,” meaning He will fulfill humanity’s, “rational existence capable of enjoying him.” This plan He would accomplish even though humanity attempted to derail it.

Moreover, God was capable of fully accomplishing that redemptive will, doing so through Christ’s incarnation. Anselm noted in Cur Deus that “none but God can make this satisfaction” for our sins. Yet that meant that, while man never could, God Himself could. Moreover, “none but a man ought to do this, other wise man does not make the satisfaction.” The need both for God’s capacity and man’s identity seemed an impossible gap. But all things are possible with God. Thus, the answer came through the incarnation—God the Son taking on human nature. Anselm explained in the God-Man “how this life [Christ’s] conquers all sins, if it be given for them.” And given it was for us, lavishly, freely, mercifully.

In addition, Anselm noted how Christ heals the sinful distortions of our created nature. He wrote that, “thy Redeemer applied the eye-salve of His Incarnation to thy blinded orbs.” Through Christ’s work, we can begin to see justice, goodness, and God—the greatest good—rightly again. Our loves receive a similar, miraculous healing. In one Mediation, Anselm admits, “turn myself to Thee I can not; I am wounded with too many and too deep wounds; I am borne down by sicknesses and even death, and am become altogether helpless.” Instead, he pleads, “[b]ut do Thou, O merciful Father, convert me, and I shall be converted to Thee.” Thus, the penalty for our sin and the distortion of our nature—all of it—God addresses in Christ by the internal working of the Holy Spirit.

To those struggling with meaning and happiness, Anselm offers them what, actually Who, they most need: God. Share on X Anslem then pointed out that Christ’s redemption is no mere recovery. It is an enhancement: “not only shalt thou recover the good things lost to thee through thy first parent, but by the unspeakable grace of thy Saviour thou shalt have far higher goods for thy possession through eternity.” One example is that to our image of God is added the residence of God. Anselm emphasized the fact that, for Christians, Jesus abides in us and that the Church is Christ’s body. If God indeed dwells in us, if we are the body of Christ, then we are knit to Him and to each other in intimate communion. Moreover, if we are restored to glorifying and enjoying Him now, unspeakably more will be our fulfillment in both when “God Himself reveal Himself to all who love Him, and raise them up for ever to enduring resting places and perpetual peace.” Then the imperfect will be made perfect; the partial, complete; the temporal, eternal.

Conclusion

To those struggling with meaning and happiness, Anselm offers them what, actually Who, they most need: God. He offers them the Creator God who fashioned them to glorify and to enjoy Him. He offers them the Redeemer God, who became man that we might realize our telos, that we might experience our intended felicity. As Anselm invited, let us know God with all our minds, love Him with all our hearts, and praise him with all our being, now and forever.

Image Credit: Gary Campbell-Hall | Flickr