How are you defining charity? The pure love of Christ?

According to Talmage (in Articles of Faith), the gifts listed in the scriptures (Corinthians, D&C, and BoM) are not the ONLY gifts of the spirit, but some common ones.

I believe charity is included because in Corinthians (chapter 13, I think), Paul responds to some poor Corinthian who had placed the gift of interpretting tongues on a pedestal as the highest gift as an idiot and states that anyone without the gift of charity has nothing worthwhile at all, even if he can interpret tongues (paraphrasing, here)–so Paul, in effect, places the gift of charity on a pedestal.

I think we can develop even those traditionally listed gifts. Charity, healing, prophecies–they could all use some polishing, right? Doesn’t everyone who receives the Gift of the Holy Ghost experience a learning curve in actually responding to the Spirit’s promptings?

“because I had a RIGHT to be angry”

Actually, Margaret, no you didn’t have a right to be angry. But that’s what charity is all about, isn’t it, realizing that we never actually had a right to be angry when we thought we did.

ARJ, I think the question of whether charity is a gift is a fascinating one. There’s a paradox there that must be worked out. I want to call it a gift, but at the same time, charity is, by definition, voluntarily willed, for charity is an orientation of the will. If God is granting you charity then it must meant that he is modifying your will. And if he is modifying your will is it really your will?

Eric is correct. We have no “right” to be angry OR to be happy. (Try C.S. Lewis’s essay “We Have No Right to Happiness”). We have tendenciees, and we rationalize easily. I don’t know that the gift of charity teaches us that we have no right to anger. For me, at least, it simply enlarges the world and shows my anger for the petty, self-centered thing it is. It shifts my focus and lets me remember the beauty of dappled things, etc.
(Another C.S. Lewis essay, “The Trouble with X” is instructive in this.)

Well, Katie, I guess it depends on what we mean by “right” and what we mean by “angry.” It is indeed possible for a person to do something genuinely wrong to another person. But I understand anger, by definition, to include a certain degree of resentment or hard-heartedness. If you conceive of a definition of anger that is free from all malice, free from all resentment and bitterness and is instead pure, humble, broken-hearted and contrite, then we are working with different understandings of the concept of “anger.”

But if we agree that there is some hard-heartedness in anger, then I insist that there are no actions, no condition, no matter how grave or how severe, that justifies that hard-heartedness. This, I believe, is what the atonement accomplished. It denied us the right to ever be hard-hearted about anything. Christ suffered injustice to an infinite degree and yet remained soft-hearted throughout. If anyone ever had a “right” to be “angry” it was Christ, and yet he overcame it. Thus proving to us that no matter how greatly we suffer, no matter how great the injustices we experience, we will never ever have any right to be hard-hearted.

And tying back to the original post, there is word for being free from any hard-heartedness: it’s charity.

ESO, that’s an interesting idea and I am inclined towards it. Particularly if we understand that capacity to be agency, which is made possible by the light of Christ.

My only reservation with this idea is that if we lacked the capacity for charity, then we must also simultaneously lack the capacity for non-charity. And that kind of dampens the spirit of the concept of the gift of charity, for me at least.

My biggest call to repentence has been in the anger arena. I wonder how many ways the word “anger” can be translated in the scriptures. If God is love, can He also be anger? It doesn’t fit, for me. The fruit of the Spirit is always love. As a mother, my greatest challenge has been to tame my anger. I have certain strategies, one of my favorites being, “If you can’t change what’s happened, why add to it with anger? Calm the waters and then proceed.” My other strategy is, “If you can’t change what’s happened, run away immediately and don’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

cadams,

If it is so obvious why is charity, which is more important than any of the items in the lists in the scriptures I mentioned, absent from those lists?

For those who did not look up cadams’ scripture:

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.”

If you define a gift of the Spirit as a change God works in our spirits, or a change God works on us via the Holy Ghost, than charity is definitely a gift of the Spirit.

The comments on this post that the original lists of gifts were not meant to be exhaustive would also be true (see definition above), but this gift is explicitly described as a gift of the Spirit, just in different locations in the scriptures.

Charity is in the list. The gift of “exceedingly great faith” (Moroni 10: 11) encompasses charity. Moroni explains this when later on he starts talking about the gift of faith and the results of its absence in verses 19 to 25. He explains that if you’ve got faith, you’ve got hope and if you’ve got faith and hope, you’ve got charity. (See verse 20.) Everything hinges on the gift of faith. As it is impossible to have faith and not have hope, he explains that if you have no hope you are in “despair, and despair cometh because of iniquity” (verse 22.) Likewise, it is impossible to have faith and hope and not have charity. So, the expression “exceedingly great faith” refers to the gift of charity and encompasses all three great principles of the gospel: faith, hope and charity.

Paul likewise mentions the gift of faith. His sermon on extolling the value of charity over all other gifts, in which he says, “though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13: 2) doesn’t mean that it is possible to have all faith and not have charity. He’s just saying a “what if” situation, as in, if it were possible to have all faith and not have charity, faith would be good for nothing. But that is an impossibility. The more faith you have, the more hope you have. The more faith and hope you have, the more charitable you are, or in other words, the more charity you obtain, as it is a gift of God. This is why he even defines charity as possessing the ingredients of faith and hope: “believeth all things, hopeth all things” (see 1 Cor. 13: 7.) This same definition is repeated in Moroni chapter 7.

Finally, the Lord also lists the gift of faith: “To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful” (D&C 46: 14.)

arj, yes, faith and charity are two different things. But charity cannot be obtain except through the gift of faith, which brings the gift of hope, which brings the gifts of meekness and lowliness of heart, all of which bring the gift of charity. Paul and Mormon and Moroni were trying to explain that the whole purpose of faith (the gift of faith) is to obtain charity. We don’t get faith to move mountains or raise the dead or any of the other things that faith does. The whole purpose to the gift of faith is so that we can obtain charity. Period. Everything else that faith gets us is an appendage to that, which is why if we couldn’t obtain charity with faith, but could obtain all other things with faith, we have nothing and are nothing, for it brings us no satisfaction to have power to do all things but not be filled with the love of God and his Christ.

When seen in this light, namely, that the gift of faith has the express purpose of obtaining charity, then the list of best gifts given by Paul, Moroni and the Lord imply the gift of charity under the gift of faith (or, as Moroni puts it, the gift of exceedingly great faith.)

The Lord and Paul and Moroni list the gift of faith and not the gift of charity because you can’t obtain charity any other way, except through the gift of faith. That is the only way to get it. He (the Lord) cannot bestow charity upon an individual devoid of faith, hope, meekness and lowliness of heart. However, once we have faith, we now have a hope of receiving that which we have faith to receive and can ask God, believing we will receive, to bestow (give) upon us charity. (See #20 Adam’s quoted scripture and the use of the word “bestowed.” It is the same as saying he gave, as in he gave a gift.)

So, as to your question, “Is it possible to develop a measure of charity without it being a gift?” the answer is no, it is impossible. Charity comes from God only and can be obtained only through the gift of faith. There are other forms of love, of course, but charity, the love of God, can only be given by Him to those of faith, which is why we must pray to Him to get it.

LDS A.,

Perhaps I’m simply too proud to grasp that.

Some of the most charitable people I know have lost their faith and barely clinging to the third sister, hope.