Christian hedonism is a Christian doctrine

Christian theology

- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...

 current in some evangelical

Evangelicalism

Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...

 circles, particularly those of the Reformed tradition. The term was coined by Reformed Baptist

Reformed Baptist

Reformed Baptists are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology. They can trace their history through the early modern Particular Baptists of England. The first Reformed Baptist church was formed in the 1630s...

 pastor John Piper

John Piper (theologian)

John Stephen Piper is a Christian preacher and author, currently serving as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota...

 in his 1986 book Desiring God. Piper summarizes this philosophy of the Christian life as "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Christian Hedonism may anachronistically describe the theology of Jonathan Edwards.

Doctrine

The Westminster Shorter Catechism

Westminster Shorter Catechism

The Westminster Shorter Catechism was written in the 1640s by English and Scottish divines. The assembly also produced the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger Catechism...

 summarizes the "chief end of man" as "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Piper has suggested that this would be more correct as "to glorify God by enjoying Him forever." Many Christian hedonists point to figures such as Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...

 and Jonathan Edwards as exemplars of Christian hedonism from the past, before the term was current. Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression and was often presented as a model of prose writing...

 once said that "God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy."

Christian hedonism was developed in opposition to the deontology of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

 and the Objectivism

Objectivism (Ayn Rand)

Objectivism is a philosophy created by the Russian-American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand . Objectivism holds that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception...

 of Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

. Piper himself supported Rand's attack on Kantian altruism

Altruism

Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...

:

An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual. A benefit destroys the moral value of an action. (Thus if one has no desire to be good, one cannot be good; if one has, one can.)

British writer C. S. Lewis, in an oft-quoted passage in his short piece "The Weight of Glory," likewise objects to Kantian ethics:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and to earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I suggest that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Piper later argues:

But not only is disinterested morality (doing good "for its own sake") impossible; it is undesirable. That is, it is unbiblical; because it would mean that the better a man became the harder it would be for him to act morally. The closer he came to true goodness the more naturally and happily he would do what is good. A good man in Scripture is not the man who dislikes doing good but toughs it out for the sake of duty. A good man loves kindness (Micah 6:8) and delights in the law of the Lord (Psalm 1:2), and the will of the Lord (Psalm 40:8). But how shall such a man do an act of kindness disinterestedly? The better the man, the more joy in obedience.

Criticism

Some evangelical Christians object to Christian hedonism's controversial name. It has little historic commonality with philosophical hedonism

Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....

, however; Piper has stated that a provocative term is "appropriate for a philosophy that has a life changing effect on its adherents." Critics charge that hedonism of any sort puts something (namely, pleasure) before God, which allegedly breaks the first of the Ten Commandments

Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments, also known as the Decalogue , are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship, which play a fundamental role in Judaism and most forms of Christianity. They include instructions to worship only God and to keep the Sabbath, and prohibitions against idolatry,...

: "You shall have no other gods before me." In response, Piper states in Desiring God that "By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean that our happiness is the highest good."

Other evangelical Christians reject the doctrine because of a possible misinterpretation of Christian hedonism's premise. To say "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him" suggests that God is somehow reliant on the satisfaction of human beings for His objective glorification. It is apparent however that this cannot be the case because this is not concerning objective glorification but rather God's glorification in the lives of individuals. Evangelical theologians since the Reformation have consistently taught that God's infinite glory is a personal attribute of God, distinct and independent of the existence of any other beings, and therefore not subject to human feelings for its definition or degree. Furthermore, to delight in Him (Psalm 37:4) is to accept with delight that which a sovereign God wills for our lives. If we willingly accept His will with enjoyment, we are aligning our hearts and minds with that which He decides is best. In Romans 9:22-23, we see that the purpose clause of his mercy is to bring glory to Himself. It follows then, that our enjoyment of His will aligns with a greater will of His to bring glory to Himself as we accept His choice to be His vessels of mercy.

External links

• Articles critical of Christian hedonism