The nineteenth-century pastor George Washington BurnapQuote also attributed to Alexander Chalmers. clearly was not an early Christian writer, yet his three grand essentials offer a succinct synopsis of the early church’s understanding of human flourishing, a topic that permeates the writings of the early church fathers and mothers.
For the early Christians the Wisdom literature, particularly Proverbs, was the launching point for their consideration of human flourishing. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10, NIVAll Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™) is the persistent theme of Proverbs. This wisdom is necessary for the practical realization of human flourishing, that is, a life lived well. Furthermore, it is a wisdom that originates in God and makes God known to us. The following selections illustrate early Christian reflections on wisdom.
Jerome (c. 347–420), the fourth-century Bible scholar best known as the translator of the Latin Vulgate, writes:
Almost all bodily excellences alter with age, and while wisdom alone increases all other functions decay. Fasting, sleeping on the ground, moving from place to place, hospitality to travelers, pleading for the poor, perseverance in standing at prayer, the visitation of the sick, manual labor to supply money for almsgiving— all acts, in short, of which the body is the medium decrease with its decay. . . .
When men have employed their youth in commendable pursuits and have meditated on the law of the Lord day and night, they learn with the lapse of time, fresh experience and wisdom come as the years go by, and so from the pursuits of the past their old age—their old age, I repeat—reaps a harvest of delight. Hence that wise man of Greece,Theophrastus. perceiving, after the expiration of one hundred and seven years, that he was on the verge of the grave, is reported to have said that he regretted extremely having to leave life just when he was beginning to grow wise.Jerome, Letter 52.3.4, ACCS OT 9:33. (LCC 5:316–17.)
Much of what we consider as necessary for happiness and human flourishing fades as we grow older, yet, as Jerome suggests, wisdom continues to grow.
The knowledge that produced human flourishing for the early Christians was particularly the knowledge of God revealed in Christ. The fourth-century commentator Ambrosiaster, whose work was mistakenly identified by Erasmus as the work of the great Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, wrote:
When Jews believe in Christ, they understand that he is the power of God. When Greeks believe in him, they understand that he is the wisdom of God. He is God’s power because the Father does everything through him. He is God’s wisdom because God is known through him. It would not be possible for God to be known through anyone who was not from him in the first place. No one has seen the Father except the Son and whomever the Son has chosen to reveal him to.ACCS NT 7:15.
As John Chrysostom (344/354–407), the eloquent pastor to the Roman elite, illustrates, human flourishing is found in a full-hearted trust in the goodness of God as revealed in the cross of Christ:
True wisdom is the gospel, the means of salvation through the cross of Christ. The perfect are those who believe. They are indeed “perfect,” because they know that all human things are utterly helpless, and therefore they ignore them, being convinced that they have nothing to gain from them. This is what true believers are like. (Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians 7.1.3)ACCS NT 7:21.
Human things are powerless because they are irrelevant to who we really are. What is relevant to our well-being is the wisdom of God made known in the cross of Christ, which is simply that we are the deeply beloved of God.
Augustine, in his classic work of Christian spirituality, The Confessions, writes,
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O God, who are the Truth, you, my God, my true Light, to whom I look for salvation. This is the happiness that all desire. All desire this, the only true state of happiness. All desire to rejoice in truth. . . . O Lord, far be it from the heart of your servant who confesses to you, far be it from me to think that whatever joy I feel makes me truly happy. For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy. Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and, because of you. This is true happiness and there is no other. (10.22.)Saint Augustine. The Confessions, Penguin Classics, R. S. Pine-Coffin, trans. (New York: Penguin-Putnam, 1961), 23.
For Augustine and other early Christian writers knowledge of God is an engaged knowledge, which expresses itself in delight, or in the practical life of Christians as worship. We are wired to love. Christian worship, when practiced well, is an act of love.
What is Christian hope? Early Christian writers found in 1 John 3:2–3 a succinct description of Christian hope: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (NIV). Two complementary aspects of Christian hope are illumination and purification. In Christ it is revealed we are children of God, and that our ultimate destiny is to become like Christ and to be in community with Christ in the kingdom of heaven.
In his bestseller The Life of Anthony, Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, the second largest city in the Roman Empire, describes the emergence of Anthony into public view after years of purification through silence, solitude, fasting, prayer, and vigils.
Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. Then for the first time he was seen outside the fort by those who came to see him. And they, when they saw him, wondered at the sight, for he had the same habit of body as before, and was neither fat, like a man without exercise, nor lean from fasting and striving with the demons, but he was just the same as they had known him before his retirement, And again his soul was free from blemish, for it was neither contracted as if by grief, nor relaxed by pleasure, nor possessed by laughter or dejection, for he was not troubled when he beheld the crowd, nor overjoyed at being saluted by so many. But he was altogether even as being guided by reason and abiding in a natural state. Through him the Lord healed the bodily ailments of many present, and cleansed others from evil spirits. And He gave grace to Antony in speaking, so that he consoled many that were sorrowful, and set those at variance at one, exhorting all to prefer the love of Christ before all that is in the world. And while he exhorted and advised them to remember the good things to come, and the loving-kindness of God towards us. (14)NPNF 6:200.
Echoing themes of God’s covenant faithfulness to the people of Israel in their testing in the wilderness (see Deuteronomy 29:4), Anthony emerges from his desert dwelling no worse for wear. He emerges not only physically fit but also emotionally healthy and spiritually mature. Anthony, as described by Athanasius, emerges as a fully formed human being in the image of Christ. And through the Lord, Anthony healed, comforted, taught, and encouraged those he encountered. He is, in other words, a living image of Christ in his fourth-century Egyptian context.
Anthony, the desert cave-dweller living at the boundaries of the known world, may not be the favored portrait of human flourishing for twenty-first-century North Americans, but he does provide counsel for those who want to live well. First pursue wisdom. The wisdom necessary for human flourishing is made available to those who prefer the love Christ before all that is in the world, meditate upon the loving-kindness of God, and hold on to the fact that this life provides only a taste of human flourishing and only in the life to come will we experience the fullness of life in Christ. Second, our growth in wisdom, that is “emotionally connected knowledge of the knower to the known,”Ellen T. Chary, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 4. will be marked by worship (delight in God), emotional constancy, and loving service to those we encounter. In short: something to do (pursue Christ over all else), someone to love (delight in the loving-kindness of God in Christ), and something to hope for (to become like Christ, that is, we will love like Christ loved us).
Michael Glerup, PhD, served as Research and Acquisitions Editor for the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS), a twenty-eight-volume patristic commentary on Scripture. The ACCS, published by InterVarsity Press, is an ecumenical project promoting a vital link of communication between the varied Christian traditions of today and their common ancient ancestors in the faith. Read more at ancientchristian.com.