Damien Casey Australian Catholic University In search of the preferential option for “the other” in Origen and Augustine Concern for the poor in the Hebrew Scriptures is often closely associated with concern for the stranger, the other in one’s midst. 1 That one’s concern for justice should extend beyond one’s own is a demand taken up by Matthew in Jesus’ exhortation to go beyond pagan reciprocity. 2 As Jonathan Sacks argues: We encounter God in the face of the stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible’s single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics. God creates difference; therefore it is in the one-who-is different that we meet God. 3 It is Emmanuel Levinas who has been the most influential and persuasive advocate for situating the other at the centre of biblically-based ethics. According to Levinas, it is the face of the other that represents the supremely personal dimension that is irreducible and unique, and hence is unable to be appropriated to either an impersonal abstraction or my own self-understand- ing. It is through the face of the other that God commands us and is the beginning of ethics. The first word of the face is the “Thou shalt not kill.” It is an order. There is a commandment in the appearance of the face, as if a master spoke to me. However, at the same time, the face of the Other is destitute; it is the poor for whom I can do all and to whom I owe all. 4 1 See especially Lev 23:22; Deut 24:17-21. 2 Matt 5:44-48. 3 J. Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London and New York 2002) 59. 4 E. Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversation with Philippe Nemo, trans. R.A. Cohen, Eng. edn (Pittsburgh, PA 1985) 89.