Lumen Christi Institute

cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop and the Early Christian Studies Workshop

When modern persons think about assistance for the poor the two major categories that tend to dominate are the motivations of the donor (altruism) and the effects of the donation (social justice).  Though both of these attributes were part of classical Christian thinking, they stood on a deeper foundation: a description of the type of world God had made. And so, charity was as much about metaphysics as it was morality.