Therefore, as the inspired Scriptures and our fathers, who are wise from hearing the Scriptures read read in the divine mysteries, confirm “joy” is the most appropriate term to refer to the life that is to come. – Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7
My brief reflection:
Joy as man’s chief end, that is to say as the final and greatest expression of satiation in the divine, is a near universal understanding of proper theological anthropology. Having first been exposed to John Piper’s view that our “chief end is to glorify God by enjoying him forever” (a modification of the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s articulation that our chief end is “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”), I cannot help but note the place of joy as the end of human existence is shared by both Piper and Maximus. Indeed the ultimate satisfaction of rightly ordered desires is, for Maximus, the undoing of the disorder brought in by Adam—the proper place of joy is as the end of human existence.
I think that, while on a thousand other counts perhaps Piper and Maximus might disagree, here they find common ground: joy as the final and ultimate end of man for eternity. That the redeemed person will be in a state of eternal joy is itself a declaration, as clear as the resurrection, that death and sin are defeated. God is glorified by (and in) joy being our end.
