Joy, Happiness, and the Christian End: Scripture and Aquinas in Proper Order
Modern Christianity is often confused about happiness. Some traditions implicitly promise it. Others quietly treat its absence as spiritual failure. Both mistakes come from the same error: collapsing categories Scripture keeps distinct.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism opens with the right question: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Notice what is and is not promised. The end is God himself. Glorifying him is obedience. Enjoying him is relational delight. Neither term is “happiness.” The catechism’s framers, steeped in Scripture, knew the difference.
The Bible does not command us to seek happiness. It commands us to seek God. Joy in the Lord is required. Happiness is not.
That distinction matters.
Blessedness: The Primary Category
Consider the Beatitudes. Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount with a series of statements that would be absurd if “blessed” meant “happy” in any ordinary sense. Blessed are those who mourn? Blessed are those who are persecuted? No one experiencing grief or persecution feels happy in that moment. Yet Jesus does not say they will be blessed. He says they are blessed, present tense, in the midst of conditions that exclude happiness.
This is not a translation problem. It reflects something in the original categories that English flattens. The Hebrew ‘ashrêand Greek makarios do not map neatly onto “happy.” They name an objective state of right alignment with God, a condition of divine favor that obtains regardless of subjective experience. A person can be blessed and suffering at the same time without contradiction. Job was blessed. Jeremiah was blessed. Paul was blessed. Christ himself was blessed. None of them were happy in any straightforward sense during their afflictions.
The Beatitudes make this structure visible. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4, WEB) holds together a present condition and a future resolution. The mourner is blessed now, even in grief, because divine favor rests on them. They will be comforted then, when the eschatological promise is fulfilled. Both claims are true simultaneously.
If makarios meant simply “happy,” the Beatitudes would be incoherent. If it meant only “objectively favored with no experiential dimension,” the promise of comfort would be superfluous. Why promise future experience if the category excludes experience entirely? The term holds together precisely because blessedness is a real state that may or may not coincide with present emotional experience but will be vindicated eschatologically.
Joy: Covenantal and Volitional
Joy, by contrast, is commanded. But biblical joy is not the same thing as happiness. Joy is covenantal and volitional. It is grounded in trust, allegiance, and hope, not circumstances. That is why Scripture can command rejoicing even in affliction: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations” (James 1:2, WEB). Happiness, understood as emotional or circumstantial well-being, is nowhere commanded in Scripture and is never guaranteed. There is wisdom in that silence. Joy can be commanded because its ground remains accessible even in suffering. Commanding happiness in the midst of affliction would be either empty or cruel.
Paul makes the distinction vivid in Romans 5:1-5. Believers have peace with God now. Access into grace is present. Hope is oriented to future glory. Suffering is present. The Spirit is given now, pouring God’s love into hearts. Present communion is real (peace, access, Spirit given, love poured out) but incomplete (hope of glory, suffering present, groaning). Joy coexists with suffering because its ground is not threatened by loss.
This is not thin or bloodless. Biblical joy includes delight, satisfaction, and even pleasure rightly ordered. The difference is that joy is anchored in covenant rather than circumstance. It can coexist with grief because its ground is not threatened by loss. The psalmist can say “my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness” (Psalm 63:5, WEB) while hiding in the wilderness from those who seek his life.
Three Errors to Avoid
This framework protects Scripture from three distortions, not two.
Prosperity theology promises happiness as a sign of divine favor. When suffering comes, it implies spiritual failure or insufficient faith. This inverts the biblical witness. The apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ (Acts 5:41). Paul catalogued his sufferings as credentials, not deficits (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). If prosperity theology were true, Paul would be disqualified.
Stoic denial treats emotional experience as spiritually irrelevant or even suspect. Suffering is to be endured with indifference. This misses the biblical witness equally. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35). He was “sorrowful and troubled” in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37). The Psalms are saturated with emotional expression, including lament, anger, and confusion. Scripture does not commend emotional flatness.
Therapeutic Christianity occupies a third position between prosperity and stoicism. It does not promise material prosperity but treats emotional flourishing as the implicit metric of spiritual health. The goal becomes wholeness, healing, integration, peace. When that emotional resolution does not arrive, the same brittleness sets in. “I prayed and went to counseling and read the books, but I still feel broken. What did I do wrong?”
This third error is arguably more prevalent in contemporary evangelicalism than explicit prosperity theology. It is also more subtle. It speaks the language of grace while quietly measuring sanctification by emotional outcome. The framework blocks this error as effectively as it blocks the others. Emotional flourishing is neither commanded nor required. Faithfulness may yield it. Faithfulness may not. Neither outcome defines obedience.
Aquinas: Description, Not Prescription
Where does Aquinas fit into this?
For Thomas Aquinas, happiness must be divided into two kinds. Perfect happiness (beatitudo) consists in the direct vision of God and belongs only to the life to come. Imperfect happiness (felicitas) is what is available in this life given our embodied and rational nature. English collapses what Latin keeps separate.
Aquinas’ account of imperfect happiness is often misread as a prescription. It is better read as a description.
He observes that human beings function best, ceteris paribus, when intellect and will are rightly ordered. Contemplation of truth, moral virtue, bodily health, friendship, and a stable material life all tend to support human flourishing. None of these constitute the ultimate end. All of them are fragile, partial, and losable.
Aquinas is explicit about this. Imperfect happiness never satisfies the will completely. It can coexist with sorrow. It can be interrupted by suffering. It always points beyond itself.
When Thomas discusses the “ingredients” of imperfect happiness in Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 4, he is careful to note that external goods (health, wealth, friends) are neither constitutive of happiness nor simply irrelevant. They are instrumentally useful for the operation of virtue. A starving man contemplates poorly. But the absence of these goods does not negate the possibility of virtue or even of imperfect beatitudo. It makes them harder to exercise.
This is why Thomas can say that the martyrs possessed perfect happiness in the moment of their death, not because suffering ceased but because their wills were perfectly united to God’s will. The subjective experience was agony. The objective state was beatitude.
Read properly, Aquinas is not telling Christians what to pursue as an end. He is explaining what tends to accompany a well-ordered human life under created order. Scripture assumes much of this anthropology without formalizing it.
The Danger: Reversing the Order
The danger arises when the order is reversed.
If Aquinas’ account is treated as a goal, Christianity becomes moralized self-optimization. Virtue becomes instrumental. Contemplation becomes therapeutic. Faithfulness quietly gives way to flourishing as the metric.
If Scripture is treated as promising happiness, Christianity becomes either triumphalist or brittle. When happiness fails to appear, faith is questioned. Disappointment turns inward.
The correct synthesis keeps both in their place.
Scripture provides the teleology. God himself is the end. Joy in the Lord is obedience expressed as trust and delight, regardless of circumstances. Happiness is neither commanded nor required.
Aquinas provides the anthropology. Human faculties tend to operate more coherently under virtue, truth, and order. When flourishing appears, it is a blessing. When it does not, nothing essential has failed.
Why This Matters Pastorally
The pastoral stakes are high. A person suffering from chronic illness, persistent depression, or unrelenting grief needs to know that their experience does not disqualify their faith. The therapeutic model quietly suggests otherwise. If spiritual maturity leads to emotional wholeness, then persistent emotional struggle implies spiritual immaturity.
Scripture says otherwise. The saints can be joyful and miserable at the same time. Christ can be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3, WEB) without defect. The hope of full fulfillment is not psychological but eschatological.
This does not mean Christianity offers cold comfort. It offers something better than happiness. It offers God himself. The reason Scripture does not guarantee happiness is not because God is indifferent to human experience but because happiness, understood as circumstantial well-being, is too small an end. To promise happiness would be to promise less than what is offered.
Moreover, joy, the commanded response, is not austere. It includes delight, satisfaction, and even pleasure rightly ordered. The difference is that joy is anchored in covenant rather than circumstance. It can coexist with grief because its ground is not threatened by loss.
The Synthesis
Put simply:
The Christian is commanded to seek God and rejoice in him.
Happiness may follow. It may not.
When it does, it is gift, not achievement.
When it does not, obedience remains intact.
Perfect happiness is promised.
Imperfect happiness is provisional.
Joy in the Lord is non-negotiable.
Obedience is the measure. Not experience.
That framework explains why the saints can be joyful and miserable at the same time, why Christ can be “a man of sorrows” without defect, and why the hope of full fulfillment is not psychological but eschatological.
Soli Deo Gloria