Gratitude as a Tree of Life

This article explores four dimensions of gratitude prominent in the philosophy of gratitude – affective, intellectual, communicative, and conative – and reconstructs them in a theological light. One might understand gratitude, in theological terms, as something that involves gladness and discernment and that traverses word and deed. Despite common assumptions to the contrary, however, gratitude is not an unqualified good. Gratitude can be used as a weapon of domination, for creating relations of obligation and debt, and as an excuse for blinding oneself to morally problematic aspects of one's situation. Since gratitude is not an unqualified good, some means for evaluating better and worse forms of gratitude are required. The article elaborates David Kelsey's account of faithfulness to God's creation, imaged as a Tree of Life, which characterizes such faithfulness as work for the wellbeing of the creatures in one's orbit. This notion of a Tree of Life helps clarify differences between better and worse forms of gratitude. Gratitude gains worth to the extent that it works within the larger framework of discerning and acting for the wellbeing of others in God's creation.