This will be a somewhat difficult and meandering post, because in this I'll try to tie together several distinct theological themes I have been discussing for some time at a very high level of abstraction, e.g. Eudaimonism, God's satisfaction of creaturely desires, material power and flourishing and the self-evidentiality of the existence of God. So there will be some vagueness, handwaving, and struggling to make clear the connections.
I want to start with Matthew 6:31-33 focusing on verse 33,:
Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32 For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Mainstream theology in its eagerness to distinguish themselves from Joel Osteen and prosperity gospel types tend to render this verse into "and all these things may be added to you". For the sake of the priority of the Kingdom they have negated the promise.
The difficulty of the Gospel proclamation and evangelism to a world with creaturely needs is to be able to hold both to the prioritising and "seeking first" the kingdom, and the sure promise that all these other creaturely goods will be added unto you. This duality is not easy to navigate, efforts to protect one side tend to lead to the negation of the next, but I think there is something to be said for the thesis of the title of this post: "The Purity of the Gospel and the Gift of Creaturely Life". My thesis will be that while the message of the Gospel is "first", ultimately, and supreme, putting the Gospel first will return to us all of creaturely life and goods:
And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
Mark 10:29-30
Mark well that it is "in this time" and "in the world to come". Yet obviously there is the leaving "house, or brethren, or sisters, etc, etc" for the sake of the Gospel. Again we get the duality, the priority of the Gospel, and the promise of creaturely blessings in this life and the life of the world to come.
Western Eudaimonism and the Augustinian God Shaped Hole in the Heart
To engage the difficulty of holding together both "seeking first" the kingdom and God's promises of the fulfilment of our creaturely desires and needs, we need to dig into a very fundamental and pervasive axiom of Western culture which is sometimes called "Eudaimonism" which I will, at first brush, vaguely define it as viewing reality/epistemology through the lens of human happiness/desire for flourishing, that the universe is profoundly "desire shaped" as it were. As a rather abstract term it is not easy to define, nor is there much agreement on it. What I shall do is to use it as a term of art of my own construction.
To see Eudaimonism at work, we can look at Thomas Aquinas's objection against the idea that the existence of God is self-evident:
To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man's beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists...
Our natural knowledge of God here as such is as an object of desire for happiness, and since, as he later argues, we can misidentify what makes for happiness, ergo, we can also doubt the divine existence. Yet this contexualisation of the divine existence through the lens of happiness is nowhere argued for, it is simply assumed. This assumption that our knowledge of reality is mediated through our desires is what I shall call "eudaimonism". To hammer home this point, let's look at his rather odd argument for why Christianity is the true religion:
In this faith there are truths preached that surpass every human intellect; the pleasures of the flesh are curbed; it is taught that the things of the world should be spurned. Now, for the minds of mortal men to assent to these things is the greatest of miracles, just as it is a manifest work of divine inspiration that, spurning visible things, men should seek only what is invisible.
Aquinas makes clear that above literal miracles, the "miracle" of ascetic beliefs and practices is the "greatest" of all. Setting aside the bizarre modernist spin that the "real" miracle is that we be moral and virtuous (a claim which can be made by any liberal Christian today sceptical of the miraculous), asceticism isn't particular to Christianity, it is taught by numerous other world religions not least Buddhism. But the salient point for our discussion is again the role desire plays in evidencing Christianity as the true religion. To desire things above nature somehow evidences a transcendent reality, again, the "desire" matrix is shaping our knowledge of reality, desire itself provides knowledge and information of reality. Again, this is simply assumed, it is nowhere argued for.
If our knowledge of God is mediated through our desires, it is pretty obvious how "desiring" creaturely goods inevitably competes with our knowledge of the Gospel and God. The difficulty of holding both the priority of the Gospel and looking forward to the fulfilment of our creaturely desire will be magnified if our knowledge of the Gospel itself is mediated through desire and competes with our creaturely desire.
Naturally Aquinas is not the first to assume this, this is an assumption pervasive in Western culture as can be seen in the famous Augustinian quote that “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Thus, there is this idea that God himself is an object of desire which we can be satisfied with. Yet again, where does this assumption come from? Speculatively there may be a genealogical argument to be made that it can be traced to Plato's idea of the Form of the Good as magnetically drawing people to itself as an object of desire, but again, this is clearly just ancient Eudaimonism, that our knowledge of the ultimate reality, the Form of the Good or God himself, is mediated via human desire for happiness. Western theology, from the most high church Roman Catholic to the most low church Baptist, will simply assumed both Eudaimonism and the Augustinian God shaped hole in people's hearts.
Knowledge via the Horizon of Judgement vs Desire
Now that we have teased out the pervasive Eudaimonism in Western theology, let's as it were re-do theology without this assumption. If knowledge of God is not mediated via desire, it is then mediated by judgement. It is a matter of decision and will, not want, desire or need. Romans 2:14-16 states that the Gentile knowledge of God is mediated directly via the judging conscience which provides knowledge of God's law and thereby God himself.
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law instinctively perform the requirements of the Law, these, though not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of mankind through Christ Jesus.
The horizon of judgement and the law is the correct biblical frame for "natural" self-evident knowledge of God, it is intuitive, instinctive, and direct, not mediated nor inferred from other fundamental premises. Lest I be accused of "biblicism", other pre-Christian philosophies did not make the same mistake of Eudaimonism when it comes to knowledge of God, we can read from the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi:
Master Mo Zi said: “Those who work in the world cannot do so without standards and rules. No-one has ever been able to accomplish anything without standards and rules. Even those officers who are generals and ministers all have standards. Even the hundred craftsmen in doing their work all have standards too.
[...]
This being so, then what can be taken as a standard for bringing about order? Would it be fitting if everyone took their parents as the standard? There are many parents in the world, but few who are benevolent. If everyone took their parents as the standard, this would be a standard without benevolence. A standard without benevolence cannot be taken as a standard.
[...]
Therefore all three - parents, teachers and rulers — cannot be taken as standards for bringing about order.
This being so, then what may be taken as a standard for bringing about order? It is said that there is no standard like Heaven. Heaven is broad and unselfish in its actions, and is generous in its bestowing without considering itself virtuous. Its radiance is enduring and does not decay. Therefore, the sage kings took it as the standard. If Heaven is taken as the standard, then all one’s actions must be measured against Heaven. What Heaven desires should be done and what it does not desire should not be done. This being so, what does Heaven desire, what does Heaven abhor? Undoubtedly what Heaven desires is that there be mutual love and mutual benefit among people. What it does not desire is that there be mutual hatred and mutual harm among people. How do we know that Heaven desires mutual love and mutual benefit among people and does not desire mutual hatred and mutual harm among people? Because it is universal in loving them and universal in benefiting them. How do we know that Heaven is universal in loving them and universal in benefiting them? Because it is universal in possessing them and universal in feeding them.
At this point you may ask, aha, but doesn't Mozi say that we know that Heaven loves us by benefiting and feeding them, and thereby fulfill their desires? So doesn't desire provide knowledge of God? We need to be careful as to the premise of the argument. This isn't that we know God via a direct desire for Him that transcends all creaturely goods, this is the opposite, that we know that God is good to us because He fulfills our creaturely desires! Our knowledge of God here is not mediated as an object of desire but as a judgement that He has done good things for us. This is entirely consonant with Acts 14:8-18 where, in the context of the Greeks trying to worship St Paul and Barnabas after they performed a miracle, they expressly say in relation to natural knowledge of God:
He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.
Mozi's point that we know that Heaven is good to us by feeding us is the Biblical point that God testifies to His own goodness to us by satisfying our hearts with food and gladness. Contra the Thomistic and Augustinian idea that knowledge of the true religion comes from desires which transcends creaturely goods and for God as a direct object of desire, Mozi and the Bible points out that knowledge of the true God comes from knowing that God fulfills the desires of precisely our creature desires.
Luther and True Idolatry
Acts 14:8-18 should in fact be the decisive refutation of the Augustinian thesis that idolatry is about the object of our desire or needs. In this passage which is precisely about the Greeks committing literal idolatry by worshipping Paul and Barnabas, Paul doesn't say that God himself fulfills his desires or you know the true God by the restless desire for Him directly, Paul says that God witnesses to Himself as the true Creator of Heaven and Earth by precisely fulfilling our creaturely desires.
It is time now I think to turn to a related topic on how the Western axiom of Eudaimonism interacts with our understanding of idolatry. In popular Western theology it is an object is an idol if it competes with our affection and desire for God. But if we jettison this assumption of God as an object of desire, how would that reshape our understanding of idolatry? I think it would be useful here to turn to Martin Luther's Large Catechism.
While Luther himself is obviously a Western Christian and cannot escape the influence of Augustine, I think there are several shades of nuances of his understanding of idolatry which points to the true biblical understanding. In his Large Catechism on the First Commandment he says:
A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol.
The emphasis of what makes a god or idol of the heart is less what one's heart is satisfied by, but it is a judgement of from whom one "expects all good", from whom one judges to be the source of all of one's goods in life. This is clear when he says subsequently:
Therefore it is the intent of this commandment to require true faith and trust of the heart which settles upon the only true God, and clings to Him alone. That is as much as to say: “See to it that you let Me alone be your God, and never seek another,” i.e.: Whatever you lack of good things, expect it of Me, and look to Me for it, and whenever you suffer misfortune and distress, creep and cling to Me. I, yes, I, will give you enough and help you out of every need; only let not your heart cleave to or rest in any other.
This isn't "God himself satisfies your heart desires and demotes your desire for other things", rather this is "trust God to satisfy your lack of good things and expect Him to give you those good things you lack". This becomes even clearer when he explains how money is idolatrous:
Lo, such a man also has a god, Mammon by name, i.e., money and possessions, on which he sets all his heart, and which is also the most common idol on earth.
He who has money and possessions feels secure, and is joyful and undismayed as though he were sitting in the midst of Paradise.
This is less about that money satisfies their heart's desires, or that they have too much of an affection for it, but it is the sense of security that all their other goods are secured as long as they have money.
The fundamental thesis here is that idolatry is not so much about the heart's desires, affections, or whatever, it is about the misplaced judgement of the source of one's goods and the source of the fulfilment of one's creaturely needs. In Luther's definition, a god is from whom one expects all goods.
The "Upward Fall" of Adam and Attempting to Transcend the Creaturely State
Despite the pervasiveness of the term "Fall of Adam" in Christian theology, it is interesting that the Bible never describes the sin of Adam as a "fall". This is the product of Christian tradition which imagines Adam in an elevated state before "falling" downwards. Yet Gerhard Forde, a Lutheran theologian, suggests in inversion to this phrase. What if Adam didn't "fall" downwards but instead attempted to transcend his creaturely state to become as god, knowing good and evil? This is Forde's paradoxical "Upwards Fall" where man, discontented with living his creaturely life in creation as a creature, attempts to transcend it by affecting some sort of hyper spiritual state of despising creaturely desires and goods.
Thus, this idea that God directly satisfies the desires of the heart to the negation of all other creaturely desires is a species of the original sin of trying to be as god and rejecting one's creaturely state. Not being content that God satisfies our hearts with food and gladness, they sought forbidden higher things and were destroyed in the divine wrath instead. In fact, there is almost something blasphemous in suggesting that God can be an object of people's satisfaction. Literally Platonic Symposium gay.
Christianity as a Low time Preference Religion
There is in fact an ironic twist here that it is in fact easier to escape the anxiety, pain, and suffering, of waiting in patient groaning expectation of receiving actual empirical and material goods from God, by just going all zen and obliterating all that expectation and desire for yet-to-be fulfilled creaturely desires in one mystical moment.
The understanding that our hearts are satisfied with actual material and empirical goods to be received from God makes better sense of the often deep longing unto anguish of the Old Testament and New Testament saints, who had hoped to see the hope of Israel with their own material eyes. Thus, the benefits of the promises may be deferred, but it will surely come, and we will see it either in this world or on the next. And I am not merely speaking of the benefits of the resurrection but even here on earth, the seeds of preaching we have planted may bear fruit after we are gone, and from eternity we will see many whom we have preached without result while we were alive come to faith. And not just for the gospel, but also even for material goods, that we were promised may not be given to us personally, but will be given to our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, spiritual or biological.
Christianity as such is a low time preference religion, it promises the goodies which God will deliver, but which we may have to wait long for God to deliver on His own time table.
Ironically the Augustinian God shaped hole in our heart conception is a high time preference religion, it claims to be able to satisfy the needs of your hearts NOW through some sort of mysticism or esoteric encounter. Instead of waiting upon God in longing anguish to act upon the external objective world to succor us, to actually give us these external objective gifts, it claims to settle the heart now in a zen like fashion by negating the hope which you will see with your own eyes. Like children it demands the 1 cookie NOW instead of waiting for more cookies.
Therefore, it seems to me that by taking seriously the concept that the satisfaction of our hearts come from being satisfied with creature goods for which we were made, it makes better sense of the biblical longing for God to actually satisfy it with actual material gifts than for us to foreclose it via mysticism.
Supralapsarian Christology and the Fulfilment of our Creaturely Desires in God Incarnate
To qualify my criticism of the God-as-object-of-Desire theology, perhaps the shadow of truth of the Augustinian God shaped hole in our hearts is that we were also made for bodily fellowship with other man, and this will be ultimately and supremely fulfilled when we shall finally have bodily fellowship with the God-made-Flesh, which we will see with our empirical eyes at the resurrection.
Thus in supralapsarian Christology, the theory that creation was made for God to dwell in in bodily form, our being made for the creaturely state and for fellowship with God is perfectly reconciled, not us transcending our creaturely state via direct mysticism or esoteric experiences which "satisfies" our hearts, but God coming down to us to dwell and fellowship with us in bodily form. Him whom we do not see now with our empirical eyes, we wait with longing to hang out with at the general resurrection as a friend.
If you Love me, Keep my Commandments
I think we have spent enough time justifying maintaining the promises of material blessings in the gospels. Now let's circle back and tease out what it means to put it Gospel, Kingdom of God, and Christ "first" before all things if being "first" is not to be viewed via the lens of desire.
I've already alluded earlier to how our knowledge of God is a matter of judgement, decision, and will. I would suggest a similar matrix towards understanding how we can love God, not as a direct object of affection, but as a matter of our exercising our will to act and keep God's commandment. I would like to tie this in with theology of holiness as exercising dominion over our bodily and lower members. 1 Thessalonians 4:2-5 states:
You know the rules we gave you in the name of the Lord Jesus. This is the will of God, that you should be holy: you must abstain from fornication; each one of you must learn to gain mastery over his body, to hallow and honour it, not giving way to lust like the pagans who know nothing of God.
It seems to me that there is an intricate link between God's holiness as dominion and mastery of the lower orders, and if we are to be holy as God is Holy, as per Jesus’s reiteration of the Leviticus 19:2 injunction, and if our imaging of God is to share this dominion mandate, then there seems to be a parallel between divine holiness as dominion over creation, and mankind's imaging of that holiness as dominion over own own earthly bodies.
Thus we exercise our judgement and discernment to determine what God commands us and requires of us, and then we obey Him in the firm hope and expectation of the future fulfilment of our creaturely desires from the Creator if we keep His commandments. Thus heart of "Christian ethics" stems from knowledge of God the Creator from whom all our benefits flow and under whom we obedience are required to continue being a beneficiary of our Supreme Benefactor.
As mentioned before, Christianity is a low time preference religion, simply because we are motivated by the fulfilment of material or empirical goodies doesn't mean that we simply seek immediate satisfactions here and now in whatever form it comes. Rather, understanding the will and promise of our Creator from whom all blessings flow, we exercise our God given mandate for holiness and dominion over our lower orders, to bring it in conformity to the will of Christ, while looking forward to the reception of the promised goods from the Source which will come to the saints who obey Him and keep His commandments.
If this schema sounds "crudely material" and "transactional", then that's exactly as I intend. It is a schema which is firmly rooted in the eschatological expectation of the General Resurrection and the Life of the World to come and makes no sense outside of the divine promises of goodies annexed to the commandments. If there is no hope or expectation that goodies will come from the Creator, in this life or the next, from obeying the divine commandments, if there is no faith that God will honour His promises, then yes, this schema would make no sense. This schema only makes sense on the fundamental premise of a Supreme Benefactor from whom all Benefits/Blessings Flow, and that we were made to receive these blessings and benefits from Him the source.
The alternative to this is to ground the commandments on some "intrinsic value" to us independently of the creaturely benefits is nothing more than just Anglo pretentious moral posturing which I have discussed at length in a different post. If anything, one can tie in the original sin as seeking knowledge of good and evil and his Anglo moral affectation for doing good "for itself" rather than for expectation of creaturely goods.
Conclusion: The Purity of the Gospel and the Gift of Creaturely Life
To go back to the title of this post: What is the "purity" of the Gospel? The purity of the Gospel is simply the primacy of the truth that God made this world and us to fellow with us in bodily form. This message is simply true, divinely ordained and revealed, discerned via judgement, not subject to the lens of human desire. It is axiomatic in a way, just as the divine existence is self-evidently known. In this sense is the Gospel "pure" from all human desires and concerns, and yes, even from that alleged God-shaped hole in people's hearts for God directly or meaning or purpose.
As such, Christ is the "End", the teleos of the Law, the world was made for Christ and for Him, Christ is the supreme End. The Gospel is not a means to an end, not a means to a happier life, not a means to become a better person, etc, etc. It is simply the proclamation of the divine message from the Creator of the world that it was made for God-in-Flesh, and the fulfilment of this purpose in Christ, it as such is transcendent in this sense and to which all other desires and human concerns are subordinate.
Yet, "Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." Everything we give up to obey the Gospel and accept this message, we will receive it back in full, and with many more besides. This is ultimately the gift of creaturely life, the gift of living our life as the creatures God made to be, for the creature goods we were made to enjoy and receive from God's hands. To end off with a remark from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
I believe that we ought to love and trust God in our lives, and in all the good things that he sends us, that when the time comes (but not before!) we may go to him with love, trust, and joy. But, to put it plainly, for a man in his wife’s arms to be hankering after the other world is, in mild terms, a piece of bad taste, and not God’s will. We ought to find love in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelming earthly happiness, we must not try to be more pious than God himself and allow our happiness to be corrupted by presumption and arrogance, and by unbridled religious fantasy which is never satisfied with what God gives.