Gary Anderson Charity Summary

Gary Anderson’s book Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition sets out an argument that almsgiving is a religious offering to God throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions and texts. He makes the statement that early Christians and Jews focused on almsgiving as revealing the character of God and created world. Anderson sets up almsgiving as a sacrament, where giving to the poor becomes a way to access the kingdom of heaven. This action has such power because through showing mercy to another, one meets Christ, a view which is often repeated throughout early Christianity. Through almsgiving, people have the opportunity to imitate and share in God’s divine mercy. During the Reformation, this idea of almsgiving as a sacrament was lost, and while Protestants still believe that faith requires an outpouring of charity, there is no longer a sacramental understanding of poor people. Charity, providing material help to the poor, is meant to be understood at the most fundamental level, according to Anderson, as an expression of …show more content…
In the second half of the book, he lays out the idea that charitable deeds are storable commodities in heaven. He sets up this idea of the transferability of merits by discussing traditions and beliefs in Catholicism about purgatory and the selling of indulgences, as well as the ideas in early Judaism that actions of ancestors play a deciding role in their descendants’ fates. It is obvious to the author that merits are understood of as credits due to the metaphor throughout the Bible of sin as a financial debt. In the Sermon on the Mount, and in the story of the rich young ruler, the Gospel writers use this metaphor. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew states that the hypocrites who give for attention rather than for the glory of God have attained their full payment on earth, and will not be rewarded in