ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses notions of the gift, starting from how they appear on the field, in discourses, practices and theological ideal-types that inform discourses and practices, and then from a social scientific theoretical perspective. Orthodox believers speak about their faith and Tradition in terms of a legacy given to them by the previous generations and the obligation to pass it on. Moreover, the various acts of devotion and worship and much of the parish activities are performed in the form of a gift. This empirical evidence adds to an abundant theological vocabulary centered on gift, the bedrock of Christianity: Creation, life, existence itself, salvation, the Church, etc. are all described as gifts of God and charity and worship as counter-gifts of humanity. This theologically embedded notion of the gift is analyzed in a gift paradigm key, using Mauss-inspired notions of the gift (the gift as a total social phenomenon defined by the triple obligation to give–to receive–to give back) and its recent utilization with regard to religion (Camille Tarot’s definition of religion as a triaxial system of circulating the gift vertically, between God and Man, horizontally between coreligionists and longitudinally between the living, the dead and future generations). After applying Tarot’s definition to Orthodoxy, the chapter also identifies the specificities of the Orthodox system of the gift.
