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{"id":8166,"date":"2012-11-19T15:28:04","date_gmt":"2012-11-19T15:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1900"},"modified":"2012-11-19T15:28:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T15:28:04","slug":"the-pharisee-and-the-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2012\/11\/the-pharisee-and-the-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pharisee and the gift"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

<\/p>

Caputo ( The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) <\/a> , 217 $\"\"$ ) points to Derrida\u2019s discussion of Matthew 6 as the initiation of \u201cthe duel between Christian and Jew.\u201d Caputo sums up Derrida\u2019s characterization: \u201cThis duel is always cast by Christianity as a war between the New Law of the Gift and the Old Law of pharisees, between the spirit of love and cold commerce and money changers . . . , between the living word (Word) and the dead letter, between the supple breath of the Spirit . . . and the wooden inflexibility of the Law, between the alienated, duty-bound legalistic religion of slaves and the religion of Love (for God is Love), between an eye-for-an-eye credit and debit system and for-give-ness, in short between the pharisee and the gift.\u201d <\/p>\n

One must content the \u201calways\u201d in the first sentence. Derrida is right: Matthew doesn\u2019t post this <\/em> contrast, and Peter Brown\u2019s Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD <\/a> $\"\"$ demonstrates that early Christians were much in Matthew\u2019s mold. The duel as stated is really the duel between a certain, post-Kantian form of liberal Protestantism. <\/p>\n

Making allowances for the historical overstatement, I would turn Derrida\u2019s description of the duel on its head: Christianity\u2019s structure is more <\/em> foundationally reciprocal, more \u201ccircular\u201d than Judaism\u2019s. With his secular hyper-Judaism, Derrida quite consistently imagines dissemination without end, bread cast on the waters without harvest or hope of harvest. Christians believe that the Messiah has <\/em> come. This is not, strictly, the close of a circle, since the Messiah\u2019s Advent, and even His future final Advent, open out even as they close up. Yet, in believing that the Messiah has come and will come again, we confess that hope is rewarded and that exiles return. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"