Xάρις: in support of the idea of grace
Jul. 9th, 2011 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In the course of my required reading last week, I ended up between the covers of a volume called Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. In a lengthy discussion about reciprocity between gods and humans, and between citizens and the citizen body, the word χάρις kept reoccuring.
The process of linguistic evolution has brought our English charity from the lineage of Greek χάρις. It's certainly a related concept: χάρις carries the connotation of delight, pleasure, a favour done; something done in the spirit of graciousness and not, necessarily, from obligation; something done in the spirit of relationship, not necessarily from the motive of reciprocal gain.
In translation, χάρις is often rendered as grace.
And that got me thinking. Grace is a term with a long history of use in Christian theology from Augustine on, generally to describe the mechanism by which an omnipotent deity extends salvation to a sinful humanity. But how often, outside of narrow theological contexts, does anyone consider the value of graciousness*?
Grace is the gift that demands no return. It may hope for one: it may even expect one, at some indefinite future point, but it does not require one. Grace is the welcome unlooked-for, the gift that need not be requited; the delightful favour, the pleasing moment between friends or strangers.
I'm an atheist, so the idea of the grace of God is no more than an interesting thought experiment to me. But the idea of grace between people?
Maybe acts of grace are things to strive for. Maybe the possibilties of a life lived in grace, like those of a live lived in mindfulness, are worth bearing in mind.
And I like the possibilities of the word grace. Of χάρις.
One of the other translations of χάρις, after all, is kindness. I don't think the world is ever lessened by striving for more of that.
*My Oxford Concise defines gracious as: 1. kind, indulgent and beneficent; 2. dispensing grace, merciful, benignant (arch.) agreeable, pleasing; (poet.) kindly, courteous.
The process of linguistic evolution has brought our English charity from the lineage of Greek χάρις. It's certainly a related concept: χάρις carries the connotation of delight, pleasure, a favour done; something done in the spirit of graciousness and not, necessarily, from obligation; something done in the spirit of relationship, not necessarily from the motive of reciprocal gain.
In translation, χάρις is often rendered as grace.
And that got me thinking. Grace is a term with a long history of use in Christian theology from Augustine on, generally to describe the mechanism by which an omnipotent deity extends salvation to a sinful humanity. But how often, outside of narrow theological contexts, does anyone consider the value of graciousness*?
Grace is the gift that demands no return. It may hope for one: it may even expect one, at some indefinite future point, but it does not require one. Grace is the welcome unlooked-for, the gift that need not be requited; the delightful favour, the pleasing moment between friends or strangers.
I'm an atheist, so the idea of the grace of God is no more than an interesting thought experiment to me. But the idea of grace between people?
Maybe acts of grace are things to strive for. Maybe the possibilties of a life lived in grace, like those of a live lived in mindfulness, are worth bearing in mind.
And I like the possibilities of the word grace. Of χάρις.
One of the other translations of χάρις, after all, is kindness. I don't think the world is ever lessened by striving for more of that.
*My Oxford Concise defines gracious as: 1. kind, indulgent and beneficent; 2. dispensing grace, merciful, benignant (arch.) agreeable, pleasing; (poet.) kindly, courteous.
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Date: 2011-07-10 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-10 01:58 am (UTC)