Having made his argument for translating makarios as "flourishing" in the Beatitudes, Jonathan Pennington goes on in The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary to describe how his translation choice contrasts with traditional interpretations of the Beatitudes.
At issue here is how most of the Beatitudes don’t look very much like flourishing. Meekness. Mourning. Poor in spirit. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Persecution. Doesn’t look a whole lot like your best life now! And yet, if Pennington is right, Jesus describes these states as flourishing.
So, stepping back, how have the Beatitudes been traditionally interpreted?
Pennington describes three approaches:
-
God’s favor
-
Eschatological reversal blessings
-
Wisdom and virtue-ethics reading
The first view of the Beatitudes—that they are statements regarding God’s favor—Pennington rejects on the grounds of his analysis we’ve surveyed over the last two posts. How makarios is related to asre rather than brk. That is to say, the Beatitudes are descriptions of a flourishing/blessed/happy state of being rather than statements about divine conferral. As Pennington goes on to point out, this contrast helps to negate legalistic and mechanistic "if/then" applications of the Beatitudes, in which, if we do X, God will bless us with Y. For example, if we were to read "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" in this manner, I would assume that I need to go out there and make myself sad in order to secure God’s blessing or favor.
The more common interpretation of the Beatitudes is that they are "eschatological reversal blessings." In this reading, the sad aspect of the Beatitude is embraced—the mourning, the meekness, the poverty of spirit, the hungering and thirsting, the persecution—but it proclaims a future, eschatological reversal. The sadness, poverty, and pain will be overcome. The Beatitudes are expressions of encouragement, consolation, and hope. "In this world you will have trouble," Jesus said, "but take heart, for I have overcome the world."
Obviously, there is some friction between this reading of the Beatitudes and Pennington’s choice to translate makarios as "flourishing." Simply put, according to the eschatological reversal interpretation, the present state of existence is not going well. Our "flourishing" is a future hope, not a lived and present reality. We will circle back to this issue in a moment.
The third way of reading the Beatitudes, Pennington continues, is to approach them through the perspective of the Old Testament Wisdom tradition and the lens of virtue ethics. Recall, Pennington has made the case that makarios corresponds to the Hebrew vision of asre, which is primarily found in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In the Beatitudes Jesus is describing a vision of human thriving, happiness, and flourishing. Jesus is presenting in the Beatitudes a picture of eudaimonia, the good life. Accordingly, the Beatitudes describe virtues that help us achieve a life well lived. This view, obviously, resonates with Pennington’s choice to translate makarios as "flourishing." As Pennington puts it, in the Beatitudes Jesus, as a teacher of Wisdom, gives his "answer to the great human question of happiness."
Trouble is, as should be obvious, Jesus’ vision of happiness doesn’t look very happy—at least not on the surface. Jesus’ description of the good life is paradoxical and provocative. To resolve this, Pennington argues that the best way to read the Beatitudes is to combine the second and third approaches: eschatological blessings combined with a vision of human flourishing. According to Pennington, Jesus really is describing a vision of asre in the Beatitudes, a vision of human happiness. And yet, this vision of happiness is eschatologically inflected. There is a "now" and a "not yet" quality to this vision of flourishing. This is important for Pennington because eschatological interpretations tend to lean into the "not yet" and come to ignore Jesus’ provocative teaching about our flourishing "now." Phrased differently, the eschatological reading of the Beatitudes turns Jesus into an apocalyptic prophet at the expense of seeing him as a rabbinic teacher and sage. Jesus isn’t just foretelling a cataclysmic reversal of fortunes. Jesus is sharing a vision of the flourishing and happy human life, which Pennington thinks is too often missed.
As confirmation of this reading, Pennington points to the end of the Sermon on the Mount with the contrast between the wise and foolish builders. That contrast—Wisdom and Folly—goes right to the heart of Scripture’s Wisdom tradition. And it links the start of the Sermon—a wisdom-inspired meditation upon asre, makarios, and flourishing—with its conclusion. The Beatitudes really are about happiness and flourishing here and now.
