ABSTRACT
This quotation from Orthodox theologian Dimitri Sta˘niloae provides a different perspective on the world from that of a capitalist economy by envisioning our lives as gift events. They are characterized by actual relationships of receiving and giving dependent on the givenness of the original gift of the world by God. That seminal gift event was pre-original to our emergence and its givenness made our emergence possible. For it contains what Sta˘niloae calls the ‘undefined potential’ that, through our freedom, love and labour, we and all living beings transform into gifts to God. We, however, can and are encouraged to do this consciously, seeing this divine-human interaction in and through the stuff of which the world and we ourselves are made. This is the perspective from which a theology of gift events based on a divine economy of love can be envisioned.
