The quest for human happiness is perpetual. ‘Happiness’ can mean many things, especially in contemporary culture. Warne has written an important book about what happiness meant in the thought of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritans.
This may strike some as odd since caricatures of Puritanism abound, fuelled by the 1925 comment by American journalist, H. L. Mencken, whose definition of Puritanism was ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy’ (p. 1). Yet ‘Christian eudaimonism’ (happiness) was an important strand of living for Puritans. Warne explores eudaimonism as it existed for Puritans as a vital tradition of Protestant Christianity. He especially wants to show that Christian vocation or the ‘divine calling’ of the Christian was ‘an aspect of human flourishing, illuminated from within this tradition of Christian eudaimonism’ (p. 1). His purpose is to show that ‘eudaimonism in the Puritans makes a distinctive contribution from the history of ideas, bringing a typically naturalist emphasis on flourishing and universality, with more Protestant and ecclesial concerns of individual calling’ (p. 2). Most broadly, the author hopes that ‘the tradition from which this book draws can create new beginnings out of old models of Protestant ethics’ (p. 2).
Warne sees Puritanism and happiness as inheriting elements of classical eudaimonism from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. These concentrate on ends and happiness and recognise that natural ends in living can contribute to human happiness. For the Puritans, Warne argues, these natural ends can extend to a universal human ethic ‘based on natures, which is not relegated to religious belief but extends to broader sociopolitical ethics’ (p. 15). Yet, guided by Puritan theological concerns, this ‘natural happiness’ pales in importance before the supernatural ends for which humans are intended – by their Creator – in the next life, or in ‘eternal life’. For Puritans, this supernatural happiness has only one source: the grace of God provided in Jesus Christ.
Puritans included insights from Aristotle and Augustine that ‘all motivation for actions is directed toward an end’ (p. 25). Humankind seeks ‘happiness’ as an end. For Puritans, happiness is ‘an ontologically rich concept that involves the whole of a person, both body and soul’ (p. 25). Puritans believed some amount of happiness can be attained in this life but the nature of the ‘telos of human life and action’ is spiritual flourishing (p. 26). Theologically, original sin affects all dimensions of human life for the Puritans, making the whole person prone to sin, even as the remnants of the image of God are preserved. One can distinguish natural and supernatural ends. But, for Puritans, the final ends for humanity are not natural, but supernatural. As Warne writes: ‘The happiness that is found in our work and our station in life is not the ultimate happiness. It is not the happiness that directly corresponds to our created nature. That is only found in the next life in the vision of God’ (p. 36).
The great Puritan theologian, William Perkins (1558–1602), contemplated the virtues of moral agents – sinful as they are. Perkins maintained that for different persons human virtues can take different forms and that God's universal calling to humans can result in their moral development (p. 81). But Perkins's definition of ‘calling’ becomes, for Warne, an ‘organizing principle’ for the ways in which God's particular callings provide a ‘kind of life’ in which human flourishing – and, ultimately, ‘happiness’ can be lived out. Perkins defined calling as ‘a certain kinde of life, ordained and imposed on many by God for the common good’ (p. 81).
Persons lived a ‘kind of life’ expressed as a ‘kind of character of life or being a certain kind of person’ writes Warne (p. 81). For the Christian this is formed by looking to Jesus Christ as a ‘moral exemplar’ (p. 85). This leads to a life defined by virtue (p. 113), grounded in Christ. Divine calling leads one to serve the good of humanity – with all the cardinal theological virtues that make one's ‘kind of life’. It also lifts one toward ‘eudaimonia in the vision of God in the next life’ (p. 121).
In one's ‘particular calling’, one is located in a certain place. Whereas the ‘general calling’ is common to all in the Church and moves one ‘out of the world’ into the kingdom of God – one's ‘particular calling’ is to a specific ‘kind of life’. Perkins wrote that ‘Every man must judge that particular calling, in which God hath placed him, to be the best of all calling for him: I say not simply best, but best for him’ (p. 122). In one's calling of service to God in a particular station, necessary virtues include faith in which one believes one is pleasing God. For Perkins: ‘without this particular faith, no man can please God in any calling’ (p. 123). Love is also needed. For ‘we must referre all the works of our calling, to the honour, praise, and glory of God: and here is the principle thing wherein love consisteth’ (p. 123). ‘Love thy neighbour’ was a general ethic for the Puritans that persons in all particular callings are to enact. This means, for Puritans, that a ‘eudaimonistic doctrine of calling is ontologically grounded and thus related to flourishing generally as well as particularly’ (p. 136).
Warne continues by looking at the social and political aspects of the Puritan's understanding of divine calling (ch. vi, ‘Common good’), arguing that ‘the Protestant tradition of which Puritans are a part cannot easily be drawn upon to support modern free-market capitalism, thus again challenging Max Weber's argument found in Protestant ethics [sic] and the spirit of capitalism’ (p. 145). He moves on to discuss ‘Community, friendship, and law’ (ch. vii) in looking at ‘the community's role in the development of virtue for these Puritans’ (p. 173).
This fine study shows that Puritans did not ‘live to work’ to gain happiness. For them, ‘we live for something much more, that is, God himself not only in this life, but also in the next’ (p. 203).
