Gary Anderson on the Jewish Sources of Christian Charity

Old Testament professor (and my former professor), Gary Anderson, currently Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Notre Dame, has the cover essay on the latest issue of Commonweal (Sept. 27, 2013: pp. 13-17). His essay, “The Current of Creation: The Jewish Sources of Christian Charity,” is adapted from portions of his latest book, Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition (Yale, 2013).

For those of us in biblical studies, the essay in an exemplary piece in terms of moving deftly through the history of interpretation of a biblical concept, and also connecting it with contemporary perspectives on that issue. In the present case, the issue at hand is the Jewish and Christian notion of charity, and Gary ranges from Proverbs, to Ben Sira, to Rabbi Gamaliel, to John Chrysostom, to Basil in order to provide an explanation for how a particular view of the importance of charity developed within Christian circles, when it failed to do so in “pagan” circles in antiquity.

Gary also moves easily to the present day and considers charitable acts of Bill and Melinda Gates as compared with those of Mother Teresa. In the end, Gary concludes that Jewish and Christian charity is ultimately a practice which makes a statement about the way the world is; the practice of acts of charity affirms this world as God’s world. Distancing the biblical and early Christian concept from that of contemporary prosperity theology, Gary concludes: “The important point was not so much what they would gain from charity but what acts of charity say about the character of the world God has created” (17).

NOTE: For those attending the annual meeting of the Societyof Biblical Literature in November, an entire session has been dedicated to a review of Gary’s book on 11/25/2013 from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM (Convention Center 321)