Theological Journal – February 22 What’s Joy Got To Do With It?
Here are some of the thoughts of Orthodox theologian John Behr: In this interview at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Father John Behr discusses the implications of a theology of joy for our living today. Indeed, joy, for Behr, is ultimately joy of life, the joy of being alive, a comprehensive intellectual, physical, psychical, and spiritual mode of being. As such, joy is much more than a matter of acquisition; it requires a work of cultivation, a work eminently figured in the life of Christ. God is the giver of life, and Jesus claims that he is life. Life is, therefore, not something we possess or try to grasp, but something to receive in joyous thankfulness, something in which we can dwell, the highest expression of which is to give life in return. We enjoy life by giving life, in living for others. For Behr, this sacrificial way of living was instituted in Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. The feast of Easter celebrates Jesus’s radical inversion of life, ...