I am proposing, in this paper, to discuss the place of giving, in contrast to receiving, in Christian life and worship generally; and only within this very general field, to discuss the place and function of sacrifice – and within this, in turn, of Eucharistic sacrifice. I have reached this decision with considerable hesitation, knowing my incompetence in so vast a question; but nevertheless with some conviction, partly because discussion with other contributors has suggested this division of functions, but partly also because it seems to me that a great deal of discussion on the more strictly liturgical level is confused by reason of an unrecognized confusion at the more fundamental level of the subject I have named. For instance – to take only one recent example – 1 am on almost every page perplexed by Max Thurian's suggestive and deeply devout work on the Eucharistic Memorial, because (as it seems to me) he does not first squarely face the most basic implications of the ideas with which he is associating anamnēsis, mnēmosunon, and the rest.

At the risk, then, of doing something stupid and unconstructive, I want to pose some radical questions, such as whether (despite the witness of the New Testament itself) the words ‘sacrifice’, ‘intercession’, and ‘pleading’ have any logical place at all within the language of Christian atonement-doctrine; and, as I say, to look at these questions in the light of an even more general consideration of the place of giving, as contrasted with receiving, in the Christian understanding of God and man.