Human Happiness vs. God's Glory? - Setting Up the Question
Human Happiness and the Glory of God Pt. 1
This article is Part 1 of a series based on my Durrington Award-winning essay — Human Happiness and the Glory of God: Does the Pursuit of Man’s Highest Good Fulfill His Chief End?
The essay begins with a notion that quietly shapes a lot of Christian thinking: the idea that to truly glorify God, you must set aside your own happiness. It assumes that, in fulfilling one’s purpose, happiness is, at best, unrelated, and at worst, in competition. This series will challenge that assumption from the ground up. But before the argument can be made, the terms have to be understood. What is meant by “highest good”? What is man’s “chief end”? And what does it actually mean to glorify God? Part 1 of this series lays that foundation.
Introduction
There is a suspicion in modern-day Christian living that the pursuit of one’s own happiness is opposed to the pursuit of God’s glory. This assumes that, in aiming to show God as glorious, one must neglect his own pleasure. Under this view, a very devout man may surrender nothing short of all he has for the sake of accomplishing his pursuit to glorify God through obedience. As he does this, he will not find himself seeking what will make him happy, but rather, what the Creator demands. This understanding does not claim that happiness is a sinful or worthless experience. Rather, happiness would instead be regarded as nonessential and therefore not an aim in man’s purpose. In holding to this perception, one interprets the pursuit of happiness to be a self-centered pursuit, and the pursuit of glorifying God to be a God-centered one.
This paper argues that this understanding is mistaken because it 1) does not properly interpret man’s highest good and, by this, 2) wrongly separates the pursuit of man’s highest good from the pursuit of achieving his chief end. On the contrary, this essay claims that the pursuit of man’s highest good–rightly defined as delight in God himself–does not oppose the pursuit of his chief end, but rather, fulfills it.
The essay includes four major areas to establish its thesis. First, it defines key terms, connects them to their historical origins, and relays their theological purpose. Second, it reveals man’s highest good as God himself. Third, it showcases how one pursues his highest good. And lastly, this essay displays that a delight in God logically results in his glorification, and therefore fulfills man’s chief end. This progression should ultimately conclude that man’s highest good and the fulfillment of his chief end do not run in opposite directions, but instead, are mutually dependent.
Defining the Terms and Their History
The phrase “highest good” is the English translation of the Latin phrase “summum bonum.” The highest good is a philosophical concept that describes the proper object toward which all desires and their resulting actions should be ordered. Historically, the concept was conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. In 350 B.C.E., he composed his primary work, Nicomachean Ethics, in which he examined virtue ethics and sought to discover the “eudaimonia” (the highest human good). In his opening statements, he claims,
“every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim…But where such arts fall under a single capacity…the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued…If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good” (Aristotle, Book 1.1).1
In essence, Aristotle notes that every pursuit, by desire or by action, aims at meeting some good in its completion. He determined that there must be some final good for which every other good is pursued. Additionally, that which is the highest good is the object which is in itself most valuable, and, therefore, is not instrumentally valuable as a means to pursue some other end. Later, this concept was popularized by Roman orator and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who wrote a book titled De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (On the Ends of Good and Evil). Daniel Dal Monte, Ph.D., observes Cicero’s understanding of the highest good, stating,
“It is not as though we move from good to good, with no higher unity connecting our various experiences…Underlying all these activities is an aspiration towards a state of complete flourishing and beatitude, i.e. happiness” (Dal Monte).2
Dal Monte affirms Cicero’s argument that for any of our pursuits toward happiness to have actual meaning, they are contingent on the existence of a singular highest good, an end in which all desires properly ordered will rest as satisfied. Therefore, the highest good is the resting place of desire because it supplies the best possible state of being for man, and the pursuit of it is equal to the pursuit of true and final happiness.
The phrase “chief end” describes man’s ultimate purpose. To name something “man’s chief end” is to name that thing the very ground for which he exists. Thus, man is living out his purpose when he ultimately pursues what he was created to accomplish. Although the roots of its concepts tie back to Aristotle’s writings in Nicomachean Ethics, this exact phrase was conceived by the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “a summary of Christian doctrine…written by the Westminster Assembly in London over 350 years ago” (Beveridge, Banner of Truth).3 The first placement of the Catechism states, “What is the chief end of man?… Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever” (Westminster Assembly).4 The Catechism suggests then that man exists for a purpose: glorifying God and enjoying him. Later, Jonathan Edwards, an American Puritan preacher and one of the leading figures of the First Great Awakening, explored and developed the catechism in more detail. In his dissertation titled, The End for Which God Created the World, Edwards argues that God’s purpose for creating the world rests in the pursuit of his own glory. From this, Edwards concludes that, if God’s aim in creating the world was to bring about his glory, man’s chief end is to glorify God. In other words, the world and everything in it exists for the purpose of glorifying God. In conclusion, man’s chief end is rightly understood as man’s ultimate and final purpose for existence.
Glory, as it pertains to God, describes his majesty, dignity, and honor. In this sense, God’s glory is not something that is given, but rather is possessed and preserved only by God’s own merit. Separate from this, when the scriptures speak of man giving glory to God or glorifying him, the words typically refer to the recognition of God’s glory. According to Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “God is glorified, when such his excellency, above all things, is with due admiration acknowledged.” Consequently, God is worthy to be glorified because of his glory. Thus, if it is to be said that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, then his ultimate aim, rightly ordered, should be to acknowledge God as he is, and therefore glorify him accordingly.
So, we now have the vocabulary: the highest good, the chief end, and what it means to glorify. But vocabulary alone doesn’t resolve the tension. The real question remains — What exactly is man’s highest good? In Part 2, I attempt to answer this question, as it changes everything about how we understand true happiness.
Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics, Book I.” The Internet Classics Archive, translated by W. D. Ross, MIT, classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.
Dal Monte, Daniel. “Cicero’s Summum Bonum and the Greatest Commandment.” OnePeterFive, 26 Sept. 2024, onepeterfive.com/ciceros-summum-bonum-and-the-greatest-commandment/.
Beveridge, William. “What Exactly Is the Westminster Shorter Catechism and Why Memorise It.” Banner of Truth, 16 Feb. 2004, banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2004/what-exactly-is-the-westminster-shorter-catechism-and-why-memorise-it/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2026.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism. Westminster Assembly, 1647. Orthodox Presbyterian Church, www.opc.org/sc.html.