By Michael Pakaluk
The only time Our Lord came across something that was simply flourishing, He cursed it: “In the morning, as He was returning to the city, He became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, He went to it, but found nothing on it but leaves. And He said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.” (Matthew 21:18–19)
The form of the curse was that it should only flourish and never bear fruit. For Our Lord, “simply to flourish” is a curse. Yet because flourishing (“flowering”) exists in order to bear fruit, such a curse causes the tree to wither.
If we transpose the idea to human affairs, we might say that, on the one hand, there is human flourishing and, on the other, human “fruitfulness,” and that to aspire to flourish without bearing fruit is to fall under a divine curse.
Then there is the parable of the tree that does not bear fruit:
A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, “Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?” But he answered him, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” (Luke 13:6–9)
This tree was certainly “flourishing,” but it was going to be cut down because it did not produce fruit.
The first Psalm, which gives the key to all the Psalms, says that the man who meditates on and follows the law of God “is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” His prosperity consists both in flourishing and in bearing fruit.
In fact, if one pays close attention, one can see that Our Lord is almost fanatical about fruit: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1–2)
He is so concerned about fruit that He expects even what is traditionally considered barren to bear fruit. The man who distributed the talents tells the one who had only one that he should have put it in the bank, where at least it would have earned interest. (Matthew 25) In Greek, the word for interest is tokos, which means the offspring of a womb. For the Lord, no domain of human life is exempt from the law of fruitfulness.
In light of all this, one might at least raise an eyebrow at all the recently founded programs that claim to be dedicated to “human flourishing”: the Human Flourishing Program (Harvard), the Institute for Global Human Flourishing (Baylor), the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing (Oklahoma), the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing (Notre Dame), and the Global Center for Human Flourishing (Liberty University), among others.
Do these programs, immersed in a society marked by sterility and self-centeredness, offer anything that is ultimately different? The Templeton Foundation finances many of them under its category of “Development of the Virtues of Character,” the same unit at Templeton that finances programs of “voluntary family planning” in sub-Saharan Africa, under the premise that large families hinder economic development.
What is the essential difference between the intention to flourish and the intention to bear fruit? It consists in the willingness to die for others. Our Lord teaches this principle explicitly: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24–25)
“Flourishing” is, demonstrably, a term of the Boomer generation. The men of the Greatest Generation, when they went off to war, did not conceive of themselves as people who were going to flourish. Rather, each one was willing to renounce his own flourishing for a cause that he considered just.
Justice Thomas, in a recent speech at the University of Texas at Austin, referred to this attitude as a “devotion” that inspires true courage. For this reason, he said, the last phrase of the Declaration is as important as the first:
I now realize that nothing in the Declaration of Independence matters without that final phrase. […] What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and the spirit of the people who were willing to work, sacrifice, and even give their lives —what Lincoln in Gettysburg called “the last full measure of devotion”— for the principles of the Declaration.
And he concludes: “It is that devotion that we lack today, and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.”
How did we end up with so much “flourishing”? Unfortunately, the philosophers are to blame. We were looking for a word to express in English the Aristotelian conception of happiness as eudaimonia. Our own concept of happiness seems subjective: a lasting pleasurable feeling. But Aristotle’s eudaimonia is objective (someone can be wrong about whether he possesses it), because it introduces a way of life. Eudaimonia is activity in accordance with virtue over the course of a complete life.
“Flourishing” seemed to convey that idea better. At least it was not deceptive.
The term is, in fact, deceptive with respect to the Christian understanding of happiness, which involves the willingness to make a radical gift of oneself, entailing a kind of death.
It was always deceptive, even as an interpretation of Aristotle. For Aristotle, only rational beings can enjoy eudaimonia, because eudaimonia is ultimately a participation in the life of God. “Flourishing,” by contrast, is universal and relative to the species. A plant can flourish. My goldendoodle can flourish. Eudaimonia is emphatically not the human analogue of a flourishing goldendoodle.
Aristotle was wise enough to see that the pursuit of eudaimonia must therefore lead to something transcendent:
We must not follow those who advise us that, being men, we should think human thoughts, and being mortal, we should think mortal thoughts, but we should, as far as possible, make ourselves immortal and do everything possible to live in accordance with the best that is in us. (Nicomachean Ethics X.7)
Such fruitful flourishing, for a Christian, involves the pursuit of holiness, the acceptance of a vocation, and true courage.
About the author
Michael Pakaluk, a specialist in Aristotle and ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is Professor of Political Economy at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, Maryland, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their children. His collection of essays, The Shock of Holiness (Ignatius Press), is already available. His book on Christian friendship, The Company We Keep, is already available from Scepter Press. He was a contributor to Natural Law: Five Views, published by Zondervan in May, and his most recent book on the Gospels was published by Regnery Gateway in March, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel. You can follow him on Substack at Michael Pakaluk.