"St Paul, in his second letter to Corinth, spells this out further in the important eighth and ninth chapters, where he urges some of the Christian communities to be generous to others so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return"
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Williams is doing something quietly radical: reframing charity as infrastructure, not impulse. By reaching for 2 Corinthians 8-9, he’s not quoting Paul for decorative piety; he’s invoking one of the New Testament’s most practical arguments about money, obligation, and social design. Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem church was an early translocal welfare project, a way of binding scattered communities into a single moral economy. Williams highlights that architecture: generosity isn’t a one-way transfer from the saintly to the needy, but a circulation meant to create capacity.
The telling phrase is “so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return.” That’s not just reciprocity; it’s dignity. Williams is allergic to the charity model that freezes people into permanent receiver status, because that model smuggles in hierarchy: the giver gets virtue, the recipient gets managed. Paul’s point (and Williams’s) is closer to equity than almsgiving: resources should move until everyone can participate as a contributor. The subtext is a critique of both Victorian philanthropy and modern “compassion” branding, where giving can become a performance that secures the giver’s identity.
Context matters, too. As a clergyman shaped by Anglican social thought, Williams is threading scripture through contemporary debates about welfare states, austerity, and global inequality. He’s using Paul to insist that Christian ethics isn’t private generosity sprinkled on top of an unjust system; it’s a demand to build communities where mutual provision is normal, and where the end goal of aid is agency.
The telling phrase is “so that they may also have the chance to be generous in return.” That’s not just reciprocity; it’s dignity. Williams is allergic to the charity model that freezes people into permanent receiver status, because that model smuggles in hierarchy: the giver gets virtue, the recipient gets managed. Paul’s point (and Williams’s) is closer to equity than almsgiving: resources should move until everyone can participate as a contributor. The subtext is a critique of both Victorian philanthropy and modern “compassion” branding, where giving can become a performance that secures the giver’s identity.
Context matters, too. As a clergyman shaped by Anglican social thought, Williams is threading scripture through contemporary debates about welfare states, austerity, and global inequality. He’s using Paul to insist that Christian ethics isn’t private generosity sprinkled on top of an unjust system; it’s a demand to build communities where mutual provision is normal, and where the end goal of aid is agency.
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| Topic | Bible |
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