A Proper Understanding of Giving Informs and Empowers Our Forgiving

{If you don't read this post, PLEASE, at the least, watch the video embedded below of Forgiveness.  There you will see how giving and forgiving work together.}

When we give, it's Christ who gives. As we think about ourselves as givers, there's something to rejoice about.  We are instruments in God's hand, and we give to delight others and to alleviate their needs.  But there's nothing to be proud of. God is doing the giving, and it is God, not us, who deserves honor and gratitude.

Consider the apostle Paul's view of gratitude....  'Your generosity,' he wrote, 'will produce thanksgiving to God through us'; the gift 'not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God' (2 Corinthians 9:11-13).  The Corinthians do the giving, but God gets the thanks!  Does that make sense?  Only if it's true that when the Corinthians give, it's God who gives.

From here Miroslav Volf comments on the letter to the Philippians which is "one long thank-you note" without any thanks directed to the Philippians.  "Most likely he doesn't thank them directly because he believes that he hasn't received gifts from them but through them.  The giver is God.  They are the channels."

So, "the Philippians received indirect thanks from the Apostle: In a letter addressed to them, he thanked God for them as supporters of his ministry (Philippians 1:3-11).  And this is exactly as it should be - provided that it's God who gives when the Philippians give."

At this point, Volf draws assistance from Seneca's work On Benefits: "Modest givers forget that they have given; indeed, they forget while they are giving, claims Seneca. Hence they resist the recipients' gratitude.  Grateful receivers, on the other hand, never forget what they've received.  Ingratitude is their worst vice."

The question now is, Can this work?  How do givers ignore, or better forget, the response of gratitude; and how do receivers consistently remember to express gratitude?  Volf summarizes Seneca's solution: 

"It's God who gives through human givers; human givers can forget their own giving.  It's from God that recipients receive; recipients can remember the gift and give thanks to God.  The vice of the giver's pride is banished, but the virtue of the recipient's gratitude retained.  Givers are not superior to recipients on account of giving, and recipients are not diminished on account of receiving.  Both are God's creatures, and both are recipients of God's gifts, even if one receives to pass on and the other receives to enjoy."

Finally, the question of dealing with ingratitude must be addressed.  Volf phrases the question like this: "How can we continue to give when the cold winds of ingratitude blow in the face of our giving?"

Volf's answer here truly humbled me because I have done more than my fair share of chafing over ingratitude!  Volf concludes:

It will not help much if we simply remind ourselves: God gives to the ungrateful, and so should we.  But it will help if we remember that it's God who gives when we give.  For then we need to deflect gratitude that comes to us anyway.  We are not its proper addressees.  God is.  And if we are convinced that gratitude doesn't properly belong to us, then ingratitude doesn't touch us.  We are not disrespected by ingratitude; our pride is not injured.  The ingratitude of recipients wrongs not us but the gift-giving God - the God whose goodness "gladly loses its good deed on the unthankful" [quoting Luther].  And so we too continue to give, even to the ungrateful.

 (Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, p. 112-115)

I have posted a handful of quotes from this book on the topic of giving via Twitter: see here.

A Proper Understanding of Giving Informs and Empowers Our Forgiving

Christian Giving: "Love and Enjoy Others in God"

"Untethered from God, self-giving love cannot stand on its own for long. If it excludes God, it will destroy us, for we will then deliver ourselves to the mercy of the finite, and therefore inherently unreliable, objects of our love. The only way to ensure that we will not lose our very selves if we give ourselves to others is if our love for the other passes first through God, if we...love and enjoy others in God.  Those who serve the poor often express such a stance by saying that they serve Jesus in the one they help.  The same is true of all Christian giving."

(Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, p. 103)

I have posted a handful of quotes from this book on the topic of giving via Twitter: see here.

Christian Giving: "Love and Enjoy Others in God"

God's Gifts Oblige Us

On New Year's Eve we give attention to past accomplishments, and new resolutions; during the Christmas season we give attention to giving and receiving; and on Thanksgiving we consider the things for which we are grateful.  I love each of these seasons for various reasons and they each hold a special place in my heart.

For this Thanksgiving season, I have taken note of a few texts of scripture that touch on the theme of gratitude.  My thoughts have been drawn particularly to Psalm 100 and 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.  I also searched throughout my library to find and read portions of books on the subject of gratitude.  The following books provided some helpful guidance: Jerry Bridges's chapter "Gratitude," in The Practice of Godliness, Nancy Leigh DeMoss's Choosing Gratitude (which came highly recommended to me by my wife), and Miroslav Volf's Free of Charge.

I found help in each of these titles and would like to share some of the lessons learned and shared in a recent sermon.

What is Gratitude?
Simply put, gratitude is the recognition of a giver's kindness.  Not all gifts are tangible.  Some are merely a complement, however, all gifts can be collected under the label of "kindness."

I am a Christian, and I want to know what gratitude is from God's perspective.  At this point I found most of the resources I consulted to offer a very similar definition of Biblical gratitude.  Jerry Bridges offers the following definition which is clear and concise: "Thankfulness is the recognition that God in His goodness and faithfulness has provided for us and cared for us both physically and spiritually."

Note these key aspects of Bridges's definition:

• God has provided for you.
• God has cared for you.
• Both physically
• And spiritually

Consider Your Very Existence

When a child is born we rightly speak of the miraculous gift of life.  Our very existence as human beings comes from God.  Adam, the first human being, was "formed from the dust of the ground and [God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living creature" (Genesis 2:7 ESV).

The Breath of Life
A quick survey of scripture's perspective on "the breath of life" will be helpful at this point.  First, Job stated with conviction, "In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" (Job 12:10 ESV). Second, Elihu affirmed the same truth in the middle of one of his speeches saying, "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4 ESV).  Third, the psalmist sang, "When you send forth your Spirit [or breath], they are created..." (Psalm 104:30 ESV).  Fourth, and finally, Paul argued in the Areogapus the "he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything" (Acts 17:25 ESV).

In chapter one, "God the Giver," in Free of Charge, Miroslav Volf argues that, 

The very existence of human beings comes from God.  We live, not so much on a borrowed, but on a given breath.  We work, we create, we give, but the very ability and willingness to work, along with life itself, are gifts from God.  They are gifts that, like breath, must be given over and over for us even to exist, let alone accomplish anything.

Take a breath; and another.  Now consider, that God is giving, and giving, and giving you each and every breath.  

Volf argues that, "Most of us don't quite 'get' the extent of God's gift giving."  We are not only created but also are being sustained by the almighty, creative Spirit of God.  "As creator, God is giver" (Volf).

Psalm 100 is a psalm for giving thanks (or a Thanksgiving Psalm) which centers on God our Creator, the giver of life and breath and every good thing.  Verse 3 declares,

Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

At the center of the worship service is found the ancient confession of faith in the One True God.  In our Presbyterian liturgy we include an opportunity to join with the Church universal in confessing our common faith using the Apostles' Creed.  We typically enter into this portion of our worship with the question, "Christian, what do you believe?"  The psalmist invites the nations to enter into confessing faith in the One True God with the word, "Know."  This simple, ancient confession proclaims that...

• Yahweh, the uncreated, self-existing One, is God alone!
• He is the Supreme Being
• He is the Strong One
• He is above all and Sovereign over all
• He has no rivals; no competitors
• He is God!

And what does he do as God? He gives life and breath.  That is, "He has made us, and we are his."

What else does he do?  He gives us every good thing.  Verse 5 declares,

For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever
and his faithfulness to all generations.

The extent of God's gifts are summed up in that he gives life, breath, and everything. So...

To What Does the Knowledge of the Extent of God's Giving Oblige Us?

Volf reflects:

To live in sync with who we truly are means to recognize that we are dependent on God for our very breath and are graced with many good things; it means to be grateful to the giver and attentive to the purpose for which the gifts are given. 

But if God is the giver and I am dependent upon his gifts every moment and am obliged to be grateful and attentive to his gifts, yet I find that I am often ungrateful and out of sync; what then am I to make of God's giving?  "God continues to give," writes Volf, "refusing to make giving dependent on our receiving things rightly.... Indeed, since our very existence is a result of God's grace, if God were to stop giving, we would stop existing."

Summary
Since God is a giver and...
since all of his gifts are good and vital to our very existence...
and especially since we are unworthy recipients of his grace...
we are obliged to return thanks! 

We find that saying "thank you" is often very difficult.  In some respects, saying "thank you" is humiliating because, as Volf notes, it places us in "a relationship of dependence and inferiority."  At times, we merely get caught up with the gift and neglect the giver.  Oftentimes this is unintentional, but nevertheless it is an egregious error.  Finally, we often chafe at the understood obligation to say "thank you" to givers (as when our parents would chastise us through their teeth to "say thank you!").

At this point, Volf cites Ralph Waldo Emerson, who although exaggerating, does not go too far when he wrote, "We do not forgive the giver.  The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten."

What benefit is there to saying "thank you"?

• Gratitude expresses appreciation not only for the gift, but also for the giver.
• Gratitude honors the giver.

God's gifts oblige recipients in a handful of ways and Volf identifies four: Faith, Gratitude, Availability, and Participation.  Here are a few highlights from Volf's development of these obligations.

1. Faith, or a posture of receptivity
• Faith is the way we as receivers relate appropriately to God as the giver.
• To receive from God in faith is the height of human dignity.
• Hence faith doesn't tell us how little we are and what we can't do.  On the contrary, it celebrates what we most properly are - God's empowered creatures - and it frees us to our greatest accomplishments.
• Faith is the first part of the bridge from self-centeredness to generosity.
2. Gratitude
• When we "give" thanks, we impart nothing to givers.
• Those who thank God tell the divine Giver that they appreciate the gifts received; they honor God for that.
• When I have faith, I affirm explicitly that I am a recipient of God's favors, and implicitly I recognize and affirm God as the giver.  When I am grateful, I recognize and honor God explicitly as the giver, and I implicitly recognize and affirm myself as a recipient of God's gifts.
• Faith receives God's gifts as gifts; gratitude receives them well.
• God's gifts establish.  They come with the message, "You are loved, and therefore you exist."  With that message, gratitude becomes easy because it is not primarily gratitude for getting what we lacked and could have acquired ourselves if we were not so insignificant, but gratitude for the wonder of just being there as fruits of God's creativity and objects of God's blessing.
3. Availability
• God gives so that we can help others exist and flourish as well.  God's gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers.
• God's gifts call on us to make ourselves available to their Giver.
• We are not doing God any favors.  We give ourselves for God's use to benefit creation, not benefit God.
• God the giver requires a living sacrifice, ready to do God's work in God's world.
• God sets the purposes and commands us to realize them.
• [A]vailability means that we don't live in the world as we see fit, but are willing to be and act in the world as we see God being and acting.  God provides the model, and we are ready to observe and imitate.
• Today most of us want to be agents, not instruments.  We want to act, not to be acted upon, not to be used by another who acts.
• To be available for God, to be made and instrument for God, is to be available for mistreatment - or so it might seem at first glance.
4. Participation
• Indeed, in addition to making us flourish, giving to others is the very purpose for which God gave us the gifts.  To pass them on, participating in God's gift giving, is the fourth thing to which God's gifts oblige us.
• [Luther argued:] "Surely we are named after Christ, not because he is absent from us, but because he dwells in us; that is, because we believe in him and are Christs to one another and do to our neighbors as Christ does to us."
• Luther described the way God works in in a memorable phrase: God never works in us without  us.
• Christ's indwelling presence has freed us from the exclusive orientation to ourselves and opened us up to two directions: toward God, to received the good things in faith, and toward our neighbor, to pass them on in love.

Volf concludes, "Every gift [we give] breaks the barrier between the sacred and the mundane and floods the mundane with the sacred.  When a gift is given, life becomes extraordinary because God's own gift giving flows through the giver."

Concluding Scripture Selections on the Above Themes
Love

• John 15:13 (ESV) - Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
• 1 John 4:8b-10 (ESV) - ...God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Gift

• James 1:17 (ESV) - Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
• John 3:16 (ESV) - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Gratitude - Nancy Leigh DeMoss profoundly summarizes the theological progression from gifts to gratitude when she writes, "Undeniable guilt, plus undeserved grace, should equal unbridled gratitude."

• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (ESV) - Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

May the Lord help us to be truly thankful! SDG.

God's Gifts Oblige Us

Miroslav Volf on The Return to Scriptures

Let me share with you a few more interesting statements from Miroslav Volf's Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010).  This book is a collection of essays which is intended to be a contribution to the recent renewal of Theological Interpretation of Scriptures (often abbreviated TIS).  In the first essay (chapter 1), Volf briefly sketches out "the set of convictions about the Bible and its interpretation that guides his reading of the Scriptures.  I found this to be fascinating on a number of levels.  The major point of amazement to me is the idea that many modern biblical and systematic theologians are recognizing the need to return to the Scriptures.  Here's how he develops this topic:

Reflecting on his career as a theologian, Jürgen Moltmann, one of the most imaginative and influential theologians of the second part of the twentieth century, told me a decade or so ago that if he were to start over again, he would interpret the Scriptures in a much more sustained way.  Why?  Scripture is the ultimate source of theology's vigor, he said.  He was right. (p. 12)

A couple of pages later, Volf writes,

In my judgment, the return of biblical scholars to the theological reading of the Scriptures, and the return of systematic theologians to sustained engagement with the scriptural texts - in a phrase, the return of both to theological readings of the Bible - is the most significant theological development in the last two decades. (p. 14, emphasis original)

In a later post I would like to highlight the key aspects of Volf's doctrine of the Scrptures, but let me close with a few more statements on the necessity of grounding theology in the Bible.

Take the Scriptures away, and sooner or later you will "un-church" the Church. (p. 10)

...a merely historical reading of biblical texts is in danger of turning into a self-referential study of inconsequential cultural artifacts from the distant past of a then insignificant corner of the world. (p. 11)

The work of biblical scholars as historians is significant precisely to the degree that the texts which they approach as historians are alive today. (p. 11)

...for systematic theology to abandon the Bible is for it to cut off the branch on which it is sitting.... Moreover, if it abandons the Bible, Christian theology will no longer engage the document that lies at the heart of the life of Christian communities, the texts on which these communities depend for existence, identity, and vitality.  The result will be a culturally and socially barren theology that hovers above concrete communities of faith - or maybe falls to the ground beside them - unable to shape either these communities or the wider culture. (pp. 11-12) 

Miroslav Volf on The Return to Scriptures

Volf on The Goal of Academic Theology

As I understand it, the goal of academic theology, as distinct from religious studies, goes beyond striving to understand the world of the Christian faith.  Theology seeks first to provide orientation to religious communities through critical and constructive engagement with their convictions, rituals, and practices....  Second, theology's goal is to shape how life is lived in the broader society, indeed on the whole globe, in the light of God's purposes for the world.  Church and society are the two main "publics" of academic theology, those for whom it endeavors to interpret reality so as to offer guidance about what  it means to live well before God.

Miroslav Volf, Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 9.

My thoughts:

1. This statement appears to be carefully crafted and broadly generic ("orientation," "religious communities,"to live well before God").  This allows for a broad consensus among a diverse readership.
2. The first and last sentences do narrow the scope to "the Christian faith" and the "church".  So, the type of academic theology in question is limited to the Christian church.  I can live with this.
3. The task of theology is typically defined as "the knowledge of God," or "the study of God."  Volf's definition is not here dealing with the task but first the goal of theology.  For Volf, the goal of theology extends beyond the internalization of facts to include behavior as a response to the knowledge of God.  This is similar to C. F. H. Henry's extended definition of the task of theology:

   "The proper task of theology is to exposit and elucidate the content of Scripture in an orderly way, and by presenting its teaching as an orderly whole to commend and reinforce the worship and service of God" (quoted by Gregory Alan Thornbury in his "Prolegomena: Introduction to the Task of Theology," in A Theology for the Church, edited by Daniel L. Akin [Nashville: B&H Academic, 2007], 54).

4. Herman Bavinck is also careful to see beyond the mere task of theology to its ultimate goal.  He writes:

   "The task of dogmatic theology, in the final analysis, is nothing other than a scientific exposition of religious truth grounded in sacred Scripture.  Apologetic defense of this truth and ethical applications to Christian conduct both are based in and proceed from divine revelation and faith; they do not ground or shape faith.  Dogmatics and ethics are a unity, though they may be treated as distinct disciplines.  Dogmatics describes God's deeds for and in us; ethics describes what renewed human beings now do on the basis of and in the strength of these deeds" (Reformed Dogmatics [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003], 26).

5. Thinking back to my reading of Barth's Evangelical Theology earlier this year, Barth addresses the task and goal of theology in a very thoughtful way.  It is no secret that Barth resisted the notion of systematic theology.  Rather, Barth was concerned with dogmatics and ethics rooted in biblical exegesis and made available to the community of faith through proclamation.  Similar to the above definitions, Barth identifies the task of theology as follows: "Dogmatics and ethics must function properly by considering the Word of God and by holding fast to the order, formation, architectonics, and theology prescribed at given times by this Word itself" (181). Regarding practical theology, Barth writes, "Theological speech is taught its content by exegesis and dogmatics, and it is given its form through the experiences of whatever psychology, sociology, or linguistics may be most trustworthy at a given time" (183).  Regarding the goal of theology, Barth writes,
   

   "the service of God and the service of man are the meaning, horizon, and goal of theological work.... If theological work is not to become sterile in all its disciplines, regardless of how splendidly it may develop at one point or another, it must always keep sight of the fact that its object, the Word of God, demands more than simply being perceived, contemplated, and meditated in this or that particular aspect.  What is demanded of theological work is the service of this word and attendance upon it.  This may not always be its primary goal, and often it is the most remote one, but it remains its ultimate and real goal" (187).

6. Having set our sights on the goal of doing theology, Volf has prepared us to consider the simple, yet essential task of engaging Scripture as the source of theology.  I'll comment on this later.
   

Volf on The Goal of Academic Theology