Intermediate Goods

one

God is the Supreme Good. But is He the only thing we should pursue and choose?

St. Augustine famously wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

God has made us for Himself, and He is the only good who ultimately satisfies the will. Which is why if we don’t pursue Him, eventually everything else will decay, will rot.

Every other food, every other form of physical or spiritual sustenance will, apart from God, eventually turn to ashes in our mouth.

But even though God is the only Supreme Good and the only indispensable Good – He hasn’t decreed that He is the only good we should pursue at all.

In fact, He’s put us in this world precisely so that we can pursue the good things in life to become excellent humans and by this prepare to be perfectly fulfilled by Himself.

two

We need a roadmap to organize all the good things in life so that we pursue them in a way that leads us to the ultimate happiness of Union with God.

At the lowest level we need External goods like food and drink – especially coffee and bacon…houses and cars, books and the internet. These are a means to higher goods and not ends in themselves.

Then we need Internal goods, goods of the body and soul. That means physical health, good relationships with family and friends, knowledge, achievement – some way to contribute good to the world, and beauty. We pursue these to help us become an excellent human who is well rounded and fully alive.

Then, finally, we need Divine Good – Union with God. We need to share in His life.

We pursue the lowest level, External goods like coffee and education and walks in nature, to reach the Internal goods of being a physically and mentally healthy person who is excellent in relationships and responsible in work and knowledgeable and wise and filled with beauty – in short, a well-rounded excellent human. And we seek to be a well-rounded human who is fully alive so that we can be perfectly united to God – the Supreme source of happiness and peace. 

three

Ends in Their Own Right

We don’t require any further justification for wanting to possess some appropriate excellence of body and soul. To pursue goods of the body and soul is just to try and develop ourselves according to our nature, our design – according to the way God made us.

If someone asks, “Why are you trying to be knowledgeable? Why are you trying to be in good shape? Why are you trying to be a good friend? Why do you always consume food and hydrate yourself?” These kinds of questions would indicate that the person is only asking what it means to be human.

You don’t need some further justification for pursuing truth, or for eating something nutritious. You pursue the truth just because it’s good to know the truth and you eat just because it’s good to be nourished. Period. The same goes when choosing to pursue love and health and inner peace.

These are basic perfections of the human person. To try and perfect ourselves, fulfill our design, just means to fulfill our nature as God made it – to be the kind of people God created us to be.

The problem is, as we’ve seen, neither our body nor our soul can give us total fulfillment or satisfaction. We need something other than ourselves to be thoroughly complete. We need God.

four

Created Perfections of the Body and of the Soul are not enough.

God designed us to seek goods of the body and soul, good health, relationships, achievement, knowledge and beauty. These created perfections of the Body and Soul, even though they are legitimate goals in their own right, are not enough to make us happy. We know bodily perfection isn’t enough to make us happy. We can be perfectly fit, perfectly healthy, and have all the sexual gratification we want – and yet our souls can still be miserable, starving.

Think of all the unhappy, sometimes suicidal, sports stars. They’re healthy human animals, with who knows what sensual pleasures – and plenty of them are a total mess.

We may be very intelligent, or self-disciplined, or we may meditate a lot, or cultivate plenty of aesthetic experience. But it’s not enough. Our souls are not enough for our souls. We always long for goodness we don’t have, and for truth we don’t know.

So even though perfections of the body and soul are really good, and there’s nothing wrong about pursuing physical and psychological excellence – we know that we need to reach a higher good outside of ourselves, if our souls or bodies are going to reach the perfect permanent happiness we all desire.

five

Intermediate Ends

We may say, then, that the perfections of body and soul are intermediate ends. That means they are goods in themselves, and they can be legitimate goals or ends in themselves. But because they aren’t enough, we decide which perfections of body and soul to pursue based on a general strategy for getting to Heaven. Those excellences which do not fit in with our personal strategy are therefore those we should leave for someone else to cultivate.

A Christian is just like anybody else in the sense that we are all called to pursue some forms of flourishing, and not others. After all, nobody can pursue every human mode of perfection in this life. The difference is that the Christian doesn’t pursue goods willy-nilly, by caprice, or based on what excellences he thinks will make him impressive to other people.

A Christian pursues goods of the body and the soul, always trying to serve God and grow nearer to Him. This is awesome, because it means our job as Christians is to enjoy the best things of this life – the delights of bodily and psychological perfection – life and love and truth and beauty, and all kinds of goods – and then to come to the source and summit of goodness and joy itself.

That’s a good setup. That’s the kind of program we should buy into. That’s a wonderful strategy for directing the exercise and fulfillment of our wills.