What's happiness got to do with ethics Aristotle ? Aristotle's enquiry of man's chief end. .

In one of Aristotle’s most influential works the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle begins his ethical enquiry by his search for the highest good, the end or goal for which we should direct all of our activities. He says if we knew what we are to achieve we can lay down laws to the attainment of its end. The highest good has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable
for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake. Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms “eudaimonia” (“happiness”) and “eu zên” (“living well”) designate such an end.

By enquiring into our ecclesial literature I observe how our ecclesial writers note how in common human experience this true happiness that Aristotle talks about eludes us.  C.S. Lewis says “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” Blaise Pascal one of the prominent figures of the 17th century scientific revolution writes "And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us and, from misfortune to misfortune, leads us to death, their eternal crown. What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that
there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place."
                                                                                                         
                                                                                                         
One of the profound patristic figures Augustine(354-430 AD) ascribes man's chief end to be God himself. Augustine writes "The highest good, than which there is no higher, is God, and consequently He is unchangeable good, hence truly eternal and truly immortal. All other good things are only from Him." Augustine again goes on to write chiding the philosophers "It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men desire to be happy. But who are happy, or how they become so, these are questions about which the weakness of human understanding stirs endless and angry controversies, in which philosophers have wasted their strength and expended their leisure. To adduce and discuss their various opinions would be tedious, and is unnecessary.For we made selection of the
Platonists, justly esteemed the noblest of the philosophers, because they had the wit to perceive that the human soul, immortal and rational, or intellectual, as it is, cannot be happy except by partaking of the light of that God by whom both itself and the world were made; and also that the happy life which all men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy love
to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God. " For Scripture says "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." (Psalm 16:11)

Ecclesial literature is replete with our affirmation, Dutch 19th century theologian Herman Bavinck wrote  “God, and God alone, is man’s highest good.” And its Scriptural warrant found herein,  "For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things." (Psalm 107:9). Jesus also says  “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me
shall never thirst.”

Scripture says "But your iniquities have separated you from your God: your sins have hidden his face from you " (Isaiah 59:2). One of the immediate effects of the Fall was that mankind was separated from God. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had perfect communion and fellowship with God. When they rebelled against Him, that fellowship was broken. They became aware of their sin and
were ashamed before Him. They hid from Him (Genesis 3:8-10). John Owen one of the prominent puritan figures writes "By nature, since the entrance of sin, no man hath any communion with God. He is light, we are darkness; and what communion hath light with darkness?." Thus "God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” (Mere
Christianity, CS Lewis)

Aristotle says " Since happiness is an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue" and Jesus endorsing the teaching of the 'Golden rule' by Rabbi Hillel(110 BC-10 AD) reduced our ethical requirements to two commandments. "Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40). Augustine writes “When therefore the will...cleaves to the immutable good…. man finds therein the blessed life…. For if God is man’s supreme good…it clearly follows, since to seek the supreme good is to live well, that to live well is nothing else but to love God with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind. Ethics are here, since a good and honest life is not formed otherwise than by loving as they should be loved those things which we ought to love, namely God and our neighbor”

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"It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while medievals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else.The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian "
 - GK Chesterton(1874-1936 AD), Apostle of Common Sense

The Law and the Gospel - Explicit Gospel

The Law and the Gospel - Explicit Gospel

Natural Law 

Natural Law is the knowledge of right and wrong availed by natural reason without the aid of special revelation. A definition of a 1st century BCE jurist, statesman and orator Cicero to our aid "True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment." (De Republica, 3.33.  Cicero)

Greek ethical philosophy stressed on the aid of right reason (orthos logos) in the attainment of the good life, eudaimonia the Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare. These two ends don't always meet. Sir William Blackstone who wrote a commentary on the laws of England writes "the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this(natural light of reason). But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience; that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of ignorance and error." Sin has darkened our senses and our minds, thus corrupting knowledge availed by natural light (John Calvin, Institutes 1, IV). This concerns the doctrine of original sin which we shall treat subsequently. The natural light thus corrupted can be distorted and sometimes perverted as Thomas Aquinas notes "are distorted by passion, evil habits, or evil natural disposition. Thus Julius Caesar remarks that the Germans once did not regard theft as evil." Thus natural reason aided by a special help & revelation becomes fit to its attainment of its ends. As Blackstone writes "when a workman forms a clock, or other piece of mechanism, he establishes at his own pleasure certain arbitrary laws for its direction; as that the hand shall describe a given space in a given time; to which law as long as the work conforms, so long it continues in perfection, and answers the end of its formation. This then is the general signification of law, a rule of action dictated by some superior being: for its(creature's) existence depends on that obedience."

A digression into Divine law is wanting here but I have just a tad bit more to say on natural law so just hang in there. In Romans 2:14-15 Paul makes reference to this natural law which is by means which God judges those he hasn't handed over the letter of the law.

So how did it go with those of received the letter of the law. Not too Great. Here we go !!

Divine Law

God in his sovereignty with no obligation towards the fallen man, called a nation by grace to be separate unto him. Varro (116 BC – 27 BCE) the Roman scholar extolled the Jewish image-less practice of worship (frg 8 Cardanus, City of God 4.31). Tacitus the 1st century CE Roman historian says "The Jews. . . conceive of one god only and that with the mind only; they regard impious as those who make from perishable materials a representation of gods in man's image" (Tacitus, Histories 5.5.4). Hypocrisy though didn't evade this special nation, Tacitus writes  "Circumcision was adopted by them as a mark of difference from other men.  They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart, and though, as a nation, they are singularly prone to lust, they abstain from intercourse with foreign women; among themselves nothing is unlawful. "

The Verdict

Then Verdict then, "Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins." Ecclesiastes 7:20.  In Romans 11 Paul declares they are declared guilty both those under natural and divine law. In the instance of the women caught in adultery, Jesus said 'He who is without sin can cast the first stone' and the crowd withdrew. In a reading from eastern (Vedic) literature, the Vedic writer confesses

"Whatever law of thine, O God, O Varuna, as we are men, Day after day we violate."  - Hymn 25  Varuna , Rig Veda

The pious devout zealous adherents to the law among us are quick to the confession 'our  righteousness is like filthy rags'. Our failings go beyond us, it's in our nature to err. We inherit this sinful nature from our common progenitor who by his one act of disobedience steeped us all in sin (Romans 5:19). The Indian succession act 1925 credits both debts and assets of the father to the son.

"After the heavenly image in man was effaced, he not only was himself punished by a withdrawal of the ornaments in which he had been arrayed—viz. wisdom, virtue, justice, truth, and holiness, and by the substitution in their place of those dire pests, blindness, impotence, vanity, impurity, and unrighteousness, but he involved his posterity also, and plunged them in the same wretchedness. This is the hereditary corruption to which early Christian writers gave the name of Original Sin, meaning by the term the depravation of a nature formerly good and pure" - Theologian John Calvin On Original Sin

Our philosophers are humbled by fallibility. We are easily prone to false beliefs and our judgments fallible. David Hume writes "In all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible; but when we apply them, our fallible and uncertain faculties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error. We must, therefore, in every reasoning form a new judgment, as a check or control on our first judgment or belief; When I reflect on the natural fallibility of my judgment, I have less confidence in my opinions, than when I only consider the objects concerning which I reason; and when I proceed still farther, to turn the scrutiny against every successive estimation I make of my faculties, all the rules of logic require a continual diminution, and at last a total extinction of belief and evidence" *(A Treatise of Human Nature). Yet "Nature by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel." This is definitely a very pitiable state; this is our state. If at all there is salvation christian theologians note it has to come from outside, B B Warfield the Princeton theologian writes "man naturally cannot rise above himself, and unfortunately the self above which he cannot rise is a sinful self." Blind don't lead the blind. Philosophical concerns overflow into other areas; Scientists about human errors that creeps into their experiments, jurists about fallibility of human justice and socio-political administrators of fallibility of human socio-political organizations

Means of Grace

As the old adage goes 'To err is human to forgive divine', the only way God could be just benevolent and gracious all at the same time is by offering himself up on a cross in a levitical type penal substitutionary atonement as an appeasement to God's wrath. "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" Romans 5:8. This is the paradox of Christianity we are saved from God by God for God, that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved "    Romans 10:13

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."         Romans 10:9

"In the unrevealed religions God is known only as He has revealed Himself in His acts of the creation and government of the world. Natural religion is of course good in its own proper place and for its own proper purposes. Nobody doubts — or nobody ought to doubt — that men are by nature religious and will have a religion in any event. There is nothing "soteriological" in natural religion. It knows nothing of salvation.  It grows out of the recognized relations of creature and Maker; it is the creature's response to the perception of its Lord, in feelings of dependence and responsibility. When the creature has become a sinner, and the relations proper to it as creature to its Lord have been superseded by relations proper to the criminal to its judge. Natural religion is dumb. Of course Christianity does not abolish or supersede this natural religion; it vitalizes it, and confirms it, and fills it with richer content. But it does so much more than this that, it transforms it, and makes it, with its supplements, a religion fitted for and adequate to the needs of sinful man. " * 

                                                -B B Warfield, early 20th century Princeton Theologian 

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*Quote not ordered the same way in the original, but authorial intentions I hope are preserved in its quoting