By Michael Pakaluk

But first a note from Robert Royal: As Professor Pakaluk explains today, there's all the difference in the world between mere 'flourishing,' and bearing fruit. At TCT, we constantly strive to do the latter. If you agree with that goal, please help. You know the drill. There's TCT, there's the button, there's you. Support TCT. Today

Now for today's column...

The only time Our Lord came upon something merely flourishing, he cursed it: "In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside he went to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only. And he said to it, 'May no fruit ever come from you again!' And the fig tree withered at once." (Matthew 21:18–19)

The form of the curse was that it should flourish only and never fructify. For Our Lord, "May you simply flourish" is a curse. Since flourishing ("flowering") is for bearing fruit, however, such a curse makes the tree wither.

Transpose the idea to human affairs, and we might say that on the one hand there is human flourishing, and on the other, human "fructification," and to aim to flourish without fructifying is to be subject to a divine curse.

Then there is the parable of the tree which is not bearing fruit:

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, "Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?" And he answered him, "Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down." (Luke 13:6-9)

This tree was certainly 'flourishing,' but it was to be cut down because it did not yield fruit.

The first Psalm, which gives the key to all the Psalms, says that a man who ponders and follows God's law, "is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." His prosperity consists in flourishing and fructifying both.

Indeed, if you pay close attention, you can see that Our Lord is almost fanatical about fruit: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:1-2)

He cares so much about fruit that he expects even what traditionally was regarded as sterile to bear fruit. The man who distributed the talents tells the man who had only one that he should have taken it to the bankers, where at least it could have earned interest. (Matthew 25) In Greek, the word for interest is tokos, which means offspring of a womb. For the Lord, no domain of human life is exempt from the law of fructification.

In light of all this, one might at least raise an eyebrow at all the recently founded programs which say they are devoted to "human flourishing": the Human Flourishing Program (Harvard), the Institute for Global Human Flourishing (Baylor), the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing (Oklahoma), the Center for Theology, Science and Human Flourishing (Notre Dame), and the Global Center for Human Flourishing (Liberty University), among others.

Do these programs, embedded in a society marked by sterility and self-centeredness, offer anything ultimately different? The Templeton Foundation funds many of them under its "Character Virtue Development" heading, the same unit in Templeton which funds "voluntary family planning" programs in sub-Saharan Africa, on the premise that large families impede economic development.

What is the essential difference between an intent to flourish, and an intent to fructify? It consists in the willingness to die for others. Our Lord teaches this principle explicitly: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Jo...