Why gift? Gift, gender and trinitarian relations in Milbank and Tanner

Abstract

AbstractThe category of ‘gift’ has become one of the central constellating themes for discussion in recent post-modern theology. This paper (originally given as an address at the AAR meeting in Atlanta, November 2003) first sets out to explain how and why the theme has come to exercise such fascination since the original appearance of Marcel Mauss's anthropological monograph, The Gift, in 1924. It goes on to provide a critical comparison of the recent treatments of ‘gift’ in the systematic work of John Milbank and Kathryn Tanner. Arguing that questions of economic justice, inner-trinitarian relations and human gender hang together in Milbank's and Tanner's rather different approaches to ‘gift’, a critique of both authors is then essayed from this systematic perspective. Whilst Milbank's attempt to ‘ground’ the gender binary in the Trinity causes question-begging claims about gendered ‘difference’ in God, and a texture of seeming assent to economic inequalities, Tanner's obliteration of any sense of reciprocity or exchange within the divine economy veers in the opposite direction, seeking merely the suppression of difference. Returning finally to the New Testament, to the Cappadocian insistence on radical donation to the poor, and to Augustine's insistence that donum applies specifically to the Spirit, it is concluded that the patristic heritage presents a more demanding and subtle account of divine ‘gift’ and human response than is found in either of these contemporary authors, for all their insight and flair.