How should we understand what it is to give thanks?

We read in Cicero that “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” And it is in the work of his successor Lucius Annaeus Seneca (in his De Beneficiis  “On Benefactions), composed between 56 and 62 AD that we find the most sustained treatment of this topic among the texts of the ancient world (that survive). That work opens with another memorable line stating that “Among the many and diverse errors of those who live reckless and thoughtless lives, almost nothing that I can mention…, is more disgraceful than the fact that we do not know how either to give or to receive benefits or gifts (beneficia).”

This was so very important because, to the Roman mind, the giving and receiving of beneficia —was “the chief bond of human society” as Seneca puts it, where what matters is not the magnitude of the gift but “the disposition of the giver or doer” and “A small gift given nobly surpasses a great gift given grudgingly.” He famously goes on to employ in his discussion the image of the Three Graces, dancing in a circle, to illustrate how, what one might call the benefit economy, should flow: where one gives, another receives, a third returns so that the cycle continues and multiplies. This image presents that of a circularity of gift-giving that creates and sustains the human community. For Christians readers, needless to say, the three central figures of the Graces create an image evocative of the mutual relations within the Trinity – a key point to which I shall return shortly.

Yet this weekend, when the great national holiday of Thanksgiving invites us to think with gratitude about all that has made America the great nation that it is, we do well to ponder the sources and ideas that so shaped the minds of the nation’s constitutional founders. And one of the interesting facts about many of the American founders is the degree to which their thought was shaped by classical sources and perhaps more surprisingly by Roman rather than only Greek (with the exception of Jefferson).

John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson were probably the most profoundly and directly influenced by ancient thought, yet each channelled that influence in highly distinctive ways: Adams as a political theorist, Madison as a constitutional architect, and Jefferson as a philosopher of liberty. While George Washington very clearly sought to embody the Roman ideal of civic virtue in his public conduct as personified by Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. And that model was rooted in the histories of Livy, according to whom Cincinnatus was a farmer who was granted supreme power in Rome to defend the republic from invasion – but then (almost uniquely in the annals of those ascending to supreme power) upon achieving a swift victory, voluntarily relinquished his authority and returned to his plough – which is not a model widely followed by other powerful leaders since that time!

But looked at more widely the founders deployed their classical resources to highly practical effect for creating the new republic, as we see in their use of Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus, as well as the political theories of Aristotle and Polybius, not to mention the oratorical tropes of Cicero, the better to understand the principles behind successful republics and the causes of their failures. This classical influence lives on in the very vocabulary of political discourse and institutions down to this day when we speak of “republic,” “senate,” and “liberty”.¹

But what about gratitude in particular upon which the Romans had such an interest where did Christianity bring to our understanding? After all, thanksgiving and gratitude seem to be concepts universally – and thus quite wonderfully – affirmed across all manner of cultural, religious and other divides.

Yet despite that very large point when it comes to thinking through what is meant by these concepts we soon run into some complex terrain. From the times of ancient Greece and Rome as well as Biblical sources – all the way through medieval Christianity and on to the Enlightenment, and even now in contemporary moral psychology—thinkers have been challenged when it comes to how we should best to understand with the nature of thankfulness, its moral status, and its role in human flourishing. 

The English word “gratitude” takes us again back to Rome as it derives from the Latin gratia, signifying grace, favor, or kindness, and is thus etymologically linked to gratus, meaning pleasing or thankful. This linguistic root reveals an essential feature of gratitude which is that it involves recognition of something freely given, a benefit conferred without strict obligation. 

The Greek term eucharistia, from which the Christian theological term Eucharist derives, similarly denotes thanksgiving—as a grateful acknowledgment of divine grace. While in Hebrew, the word todah encompasses thanksgiving, praise, and even confession – which indicates that gratitude in the biblical tradition involves both acknowledging what has been received and testifying to the character of the giver.

All of which brings us to the uniquely Christian perspective upon thanksgiving itself. 

As we think further about this whole concept of thanksgiving, a modern distinction can be helpful whereby we can separate prepositional gratitude — by which is meant being grateful to someone for something—and propositional gratitude – where we are grateful that something has occurred. The former has the important characteristic of being essentially interpersonal as it involves a three way relationship between the recipient, the giver, and benefit or gift conferred.

Propositional gratitude is all about appreciation or our response of happiness at a favorable state of affairs, so it is prepositional gratitude that is the phenomenon most requiring explanation, since it alone captures the distinctive moral and relational dimensions of thankfulness or thanksgiving.

But if we go back for a moment to the ancients, Plato’s Crito addresses whether citizens owe a debt of gratitude to the laws and state that have nurtured them, with Socrates arguing that his acceptance of Athens’s benefits creates obligations that extend even to accepting unjust punishment – as he famously did to the point of death. And in the case of Aristotle, while he did not list gratitude as a distinct virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics clearly recognized it as integral to justice and proper social relations since he states “we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it.” And his concept of the magnanimous man (megalopsuchos) most definitely included proper conduct in matters of giving and receiving.

While in addition the Greeks connected gratitude to religious observance and such festivals as the Thesmophoria, dedicated to Demeter. Such observances represented communal expressions of thanksgiving for agricultural abundance in a manner that we would recognise today and which we see also in Deuteronomy in the Old Testament.

But to return to my opening point and Cicero with his observation that gratitude is the parent of all other virtues, that is a sentiment echoed through centuries of later moral and indeed specifically Christian reflection even though the Christian perspective was ultimately transformative through situating thankfulness within the doctrine of grace (gratia). 

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) articulated a theology in which nothing less than all human goodness is a gift, which therefore requires of us as the appropriate response, perpetual acknowledgment of dependence on divine beneficence. His great work of autobiography the Confessions is an extended meditation on his own life that becomes effectively an exercise in gratitude. Thus he recognized that even his survival through infancy and childhood warranted thanksgiving: “I would still thank you even if you had not willed me to live beyond boyhood… Even then I existed, I lived and I experienced.”

And in a stark and yet compelling image, Augustine insisted that we as God’s creatures are all fundamentally God’s “beggars,” dependent recipients of grace, and dependent therefore upon God’s continuing act of creation at all times to sustain us in existence. 

Hence his explanation that: “When you say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ you profess yourself to be God’s beggar. But be not ashamed at this; how rich soever any man be on earth, he is still God’s beggar.” 

This framing places gratitude at the very heart of the Christian life — not as one virtue among others, but as the most fundamental and appropriate posture of creatures before their Creator.

The Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity then adds to this an understanding of how the Holy Spirit can be understood as the “Gift of God,” thereby grounding the concept of gift-giving in the very being of the Triune God himself. 

All of which enables us to understand Christian faith as all about giving thanks – not just as some concept of polite gratitude, but as a whole way of seeing reality: for everything that exists at all times  is the gift from the Father, fulfilled in Christ, received in the Spirit. 

Giving thanks, in Christian terms, is thus a response to grace specifically, that becomes worship, trust, and self-offering – even in suffering. All elements that we see powerfully elaborated in the great act of Thanksgiving that is the Eucharistic Prayer itself

Thus do we and should we each and always give thanks through worship of the God who is the ultimate creator and giver of our lives and all that they contain. Moreover, Christian thanksgiving is directed not to a vague feeling of gratitude but to the living God, confessed as the source of every good and perfect gift.

To “give thanks” is therefore an act of worship returning praise to the One from whom all blessings flow and through whom in the person of his Son, and his ultimate sacrifice for us on the Cross,  brought redemption to each and every one of us who accepts his offer of forgiveness and salvation. 

Thanksgiving is thus fundamental and rooted in grace, not circumstance. And so it is that we are called to give thanks “in all circumstances,” not for all things in themselves, but in all things, trusting God’s wise, sovereign and most generous love. Could there possibly be a more profound basis therefore upon which to dwell at this time of national Thanksgiving?

1. All this ran most deeply perhaps in the thought of John Adams (who is sometimes referred to as the “American Cicero”). His most significant contribution to political thought was A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, which is a monumental survey of republican governments throughout history, that relied heavily on such sources as Livy and Polybius. And it was that knowledge that led him to advocate a classically rooted theory of  “mixed government,” that balances the monarchic (the executive), aristocratic (the Senate) and demotic (the House) elements in the constitution to ensure stability – and draws directly from Aristotle and Polybius and his thinking was also central in this very city to the structure of the Massachusetts ConstitutionAnd it should be added that James Madison, as the “Father of the Constitution,” was notable before the Constitutional Convention, for undertaking an intensive study of ancient confederacies, including the Achaean League and Lycian Confederacy, to understand their structural flaws and successes as we see in his contributions to The Federalist Papers. Thus, for example, in Federalist No. 10, we find  his celebrated analysis of the dangers of faction, where he implicitly draws on Aristotle’s warnings about the instability of pure democracies and argued that a large, extended republic (contrary to the teachings of Montesquieu, who believed republics must be small) was the best defense against the tyranny of a majority faction, a direct refutation of the failures he observed in the small city-states of ancient Greece. While in Federalist No. 63, he discusses the necessity of a Senate as a stabilizing “anchor” for the government, referencing the long-serving senates of Sparta, Rome, and Carthage. While, in the case of Thomas Jefferson there was a particular emphasis on Greek, rather than Roman, thought and in particular upon the moral philosophy of Epicurus, whose focus on attaining tranquility (ataraxia) and rational pleasure was considered by Jefferson to result in a purer ethical system than the Roman-influenced Stoicism favored by many of his contemporaries. (And it has been argued that his preference for the language of “the pursuit of Happiness” for “property” in the Declaration of Independence is seen by many scholars as reflecting this Epicurean and Aristotelian influence. (Indeed, such was his command of Greek that he corresponded in Greek with Adamantios Korais, a leading figure of the modern Greek Enlightenment, about the future of a free Greece).