Reviewing Peter J. Leithart’s Gratitude: An Intellectual History, Wesley Hill looks back at the virtue’s ambiguous place in ancient societies:
Gratitude starts before the Christian era, with the ancient Greeks and Romans. A wealthy patron might offer a present to a friend, but such a favor wasn’t about establishing equality. On the contrary, the recipient of the gift was expected to demonstrate gratitude by returning the favor in a correspondingly concrete way. Greek and Roman moralists fretted over the elaborate maneuvering this system required. Aristotle and his followers suggested that return gifts should outshine their originals, allowing receivers to enjoy a certain independence. Meanwhile, Cicero and Seneca, the first-century Latin authors, counseled shrewdness. Better, they thought, to use the newly established patron-client relationship for one’s own advantage.
Demonstrating gratitude by giving return gifts was a way to climb the social ladder. If you heralded your patron’s generosity by publicly showing him your gratitude, you might stand a chance of benefitting from his gifts again in the future, and thus the cycle would be perpetuated. “Paganism did not have to learn gratitude from Christians,” Leithart concludes. “Paganism knew all about gratitude, the oppressions of gratitude included.”
Hill goes on to emphasize Leithart’s argument that Christianity changed what gratitude meant – and his call for “the church to reclaim its identity as a people of gratitude”:
All this was revolutionized when Jesus interrupted the dance of gift and return gift by focusing all the attention on the one divine Giver, the one whom Jesus called “Father.” “[T]he central theme of Jesus’ teaching on gift and reciprocity,” according to Leithart, “is the revelation of the Father as the generous Patron of all his children.”
What happens to the elaborate, delicately choreographed waltz of gifts and return gifts if benefactors can look to God rather than to their friends for any reciprocation they might need? If God is ultimately behind every gesture of generosity, then the rationale for lording it over others and enforcing servile relationships is undone. Suddenly the complicated dance becomes unnecessary. Opting out becomes a possibility. Benefactors don’t have to pressure their clients to return their gifts, and recipients don’t have to remain shackled to the expectations of their patrons. “The only debts [Christians] owe are to love one another and to give thanks to God.”
The Dish 