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A discussion of Maximus' ecclesiology from the viewpoint of union and distinction. Themes such as diversity of members, ranks, hierarchy of the gifts of grace, and the Eucharistic liturgy are discussed.

This chapter describes Bhat relationships to the ritualized village patron-client “gift” economy found throughout northern India called jajmani. It is shown that the Bhats’ skill as bards, and their perspectives on caste relations more generally, emerge from the manner in which this social economy places value on exchanges between patrons and clients. In particular, this chapter explores Bhat understandings of virtue, and thus also of caste hierarchy, through a consideration of Bhat praise- and insult-poems which celebrate gifting and generosity. It is argued that views of caste emphasizing the importance of patronage and kingship — as opposed to purity, pollution, and priesthood — better explain Bhat relations to the Indian institution of caste.

This chapter explores whether a domestic religious orientation, engaged with the personal and the particular, can be observed in the context of precolonial South India. It focuses on the period between the 9th to 13th centuries in the part of India known today as Tamilnadu. The chapter draws on the resources provided by the thousands of inscriptions written in the Tamil language and engraved in stone on the walls of Hindu and Jain temples during this period. These inscriptions record actions, particularly the making of gifts to temples by a wide variety of people. It is argued that although men's and women's activities recorded on temple walls had distinctive colorings, the contexts, roles, and motives for these actions were overlapping and often congruent.

Psychological experiments and other empirical data seem to show that good traits of character (even if real) are frail, rather easily overcome by some types of temptation, and are dependent on social context and social support (and thus on ‘moral luck’) for their development, continuance, and behavioural manifestation. It is argued that excellence is not incompatible with fragility, and that the excellence of virtue is no less valuable for being in large part a gift rather than an individual achievement.

Ecumenical dialogue allows the churches to receive the gifts they need, but it also demands a readiness for such reception. This chapter considers receiving gifts in ecumenical dialogue in four steps: ecumenical gift exchange as reception; different ways of exchanging gifts; gifts offered but not received; and ecumenical partners and reception.

This chapter begins with a detailed account of the critiques of Calvin emerging from the Gift discussion. It then states the book's central thesis in response to these critiques, and briefly considers key issues in Calvin studies related to this thesis. It argues that Calvin's doctrine of justification, and hence part of his theology of participation in Christ, is unmistakably ‘forensic’; a righteousness from outside ourselves (extra nos) is received both in being united with Christ and simultaneously through God's free and gracious pardon. It further argues that one cannot simply label Calvin's doctrine of the double grace (duplex gratia) wholly forensic or simply reducible to a non-forensic account of ‘union with Christ’. His view is irreducibly forensic, but a courtroom analogy of an external, forensic decree is not the exclusive image for his theology of union with Christ and the double grace. Rather, Calvin's theology of union with Christ is articulated with reference to participation, adoption, imputation, and the wondrous exchange. It is a multifaceted doctrine, utilizing both legal and transformative images.

This concluding chapter presents thoughts from the author that God come to rescue his human creatures from the mystery of evil and restore them to their full enjoyment of his gift of humanity. Martin Luther found answers to life's most pressing and oppressing problems that God's Word delivered in oral, written, and sacramental forms, a word of forgiveness and salvation.

This chapter examines grandparenting as an integral part of intergenerational relationships in stepfamilies. It argues that rather than creating a new order of relationships between generations, divorce and family change may represent solidarity with the past, whereby family solidarity is required for survival rather than a matter of free will or lifestyle choice. The care of elders, gift giving and inheritance, and relationships with ex in-laws and step in-laws are discussed.

The analysis of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit establishes its Christological and soteriological grounds first and compares them with the sections of the treatise where his inner‐Trinitarian origin, identity, and properties are dealt with more systematically. The Holy Spirit is gift. In the case of the Holy Spirit, the notion of gift acquires a crucial connotation: not only does it evoke the fact that the Holy Spirit is given, but also that he is freely given and at the same time that he freely gives himself. If freedom is one of the defining features of a gift, the Holy Spirit fulfils this condition in the highest conceivable degree. Then, the fact that Scripture presents the Holy Spirit as belonging to the Father and to the Son, as being the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the common charity through which Father and Son love each other. The answer to the question of how crucial is the doctrine of the filioque to Augustine's Trinitarian theology is just as crucial as the understanding of inner‐Trinitarian life as life of love.

Book 8 of the De Trinitate deals with the proper way of formulating the epistemological issue: love, which is at the heart of Christ's Incarnation, mediation, and sacrifice, the property of the Holy Spirit, and the ‘content’ of inner‐Trinitarian life, also plays a crucial role in knowledge of God. The Trinity, object of faith, is ‘seen’ through love, i.e. the actual love for God and for our neighbour made possible by Christ's salvation and the gift of his Holy Spirit. From this acknowledgement, Augustine determines that the issue of knowledge of God can only be approached from the viewpoint of its actuality.

John Milbank is not interested in an analysis of Cappadocian theology for its own sake. Rather, he is usually more interested in how Gregory fits into the a broader spectrum of Christian writers and to what extent those writers can answer the questions posed by the contemporary context. This chapter shows that although questions of the origin and nature of language do come into Milbank's analysis, his primary interest in Gregory revolves around the more basic questions of theological language — how is it possible to speak of that which is other? — and (especially) ontology — in what way are humans related to that which is other? In order to answer these questions, Milbank appeals to the notion of gift and, in particular, his own notion of gift as ‘purified gift-exchange’. It is argued that Milbank's reading of Gregory is best understood as the discovery (in the sense of an uncovering) of a theology of purified gift-exchange in a pre-modern writer. This background explains his focus on various elements in Gregory's theology (reputation, generation, growth, and embodiment), which he thinks are characterized by a particular notion of reciprocity.

This chapter examines the historical and metaphysical aspects of Calvin's ‘background’ used to support the claim that Calvin systematically opposes the divine and the human, thus rendering superfluous his language of ‘participation in Christ’. It begins with a brief historical account of Calvin's academic training and context, evaluating the common arguments for considering Calvin to be a ‘dialectical’ theologian who opposes the divine to the human. It argues that the late medieval influences upon Calvin are frequently misunderstood, and that the ‘nominalist’ tendencies are exaggerated. Rather, through a gradual and eclectic appropriation from various church fathers, Calvin developed theological presuppositions which do not neatly fit into the generalized categories of ‘Thomist’, ‘nominalist’, or ‘voluntarist’. Following an introductory account of Calvin's use of the church fathers, the chapter proceeds through a series of queries related to participation and Calvin's appropriation of the fathers on particular points. It sketches a metaphysical account of God's saving relation to humanity in Calvin's theology. The chapter shows the way in which Calvin develops a theology of participation that builds upon the Pauline themes of participation and adoption, as well as upon the Johannine themes of indwelling, engrafting, and union. While Calvin avoids expansive metaphysical speculation, it is argued that Calvin has a metaphysic that affirms a differentiated unity of God and humanity in creation and redemption, such that humanity may participate in God through Christ; union with God is not only the eschatological end, but a paradigmatic feature of the God-human relationship.

This chapter shows how attention to the development of Calvin's ‘programme’, as carried out in the Institutes and the biblical commentaries, can illuminate the theme of participation in Christ in Calvin's theology. In spite of recent attention in Calvin studies to the development of his thought, there is no current account of how the nexus of themes related to participation fits into Calvin's overall theological development. It is shown in this chapter that the theme of participation receives a great deal of expansion and intensification through the course of Calvin's work.

This chapter argues that the place of the human is illuminated in Calvin's theology of participation via a Trinitarian account of the duplex gratia used as the framework for participation. For Calvin, participation in Christ must emphasizes the legal and the transformative language in the ‘double grace’ of justification and sanctification. In prayer, believers act in ascetic struggle to pray rightly, yet the foundation for their active struggle is a recognition of God's free pardon. Likewise, in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, believers act in response to God's justifying act in a way that incorporates them into a Trinitarian soteriology: the Father is revealed as gracious and generous through his free pardon of believers in their union with Christ; this union also involves the activation of believers by the Spirit — toward a life of piety and love, requiring ascetic effort and activity.

This chapter briefly assesses the significance of the preceding chapters for the ongoing Gift discussion, as well as evaluates the criticisms and promise of Calvin's theology of participation in Christ. It argues that Calvin's theology of participation in Christ emerges from an exegesis of scripture that gives an important place to the images of participation, adoption, and engrafting. Calvin weaves these images together with a Pauline logic developed from his reading of Romans, and extends his use of these images of participation through his exegesis of other scriptural books and his reading of the church fathers. His theology of participation is also distinctive in relation to contemporary discussion because it brings together what are usually held apart: organic images of transformation into Christlikeness by the indwelling of the Spirit with forensic images of God's free pardon; a strong account of humanity's sin with a soteriology based on the restoration of a primal uniting communion with God.

This chapter discusses the capacity needed to give and receive gifts. It considers the restrictions imposed by legal systems on gift giving by minors, adult incompetents, those suffering civil death, married women, government entities, and business associations. The chapter then examines the limits imposed by legal systems on the ability to receive gifts. In civilian systems, the limitations raise some of complex questions. There are three principal concerns. First, capacity to receive is denied to individuals or entities that do not exist, or are not determinable, at the moment the gift is made. Second, capacity is denied to implement protective or penal policies. Finally, gifts are prohibited within specified relationships.

This chapter extends the analysis of earmarking by emphasizing the distinctions between three categories of monetary payments: gifts, entitlements, and compensation. It documents two points that matter significantly for this book's general themes. First, payers and recipients attach great importance to both the form and meaning of the payment and even grow indignant if confusion among types of payment arises. Second, a reciprocal relationship exists between the form of payment and the relationship at hand: the treatment of a payment as compensation already defines the relationship as different from one where a gift is appropriate, and different relations demand different forms of payment.