This article invites readers to consider certain questions too rarely asked: What are we doing when we consider or fail to consider something or someone? What implications, especially theological implications, does our considering or failing to consider have for ethics as reflection on our moral lives? Finally, will considering our considering help us to become more considerate human beings? Three major figures from the Christian tradition—Bernard Lonergan, Bernard of Clairvaux (author of De Consideratione), and Thomas Aquinas—help us to answer these questions in ways that urge us to consider not only their own words and ideas, but also those of others, especially ourselves. As teachers, they also lead us to ask how consideration might become a more frequent focus of education, broadly understood. And in closing, the reader is asked to consider the possibility that everyone, in their serious questioning, or considering, is “theologizing” in a way.

This article explores the concept of consideration in contract law from a comparative perspective, looking at how English law and German law distinguish bargains from gifts. Contrary to the orthodoxy that consideration is unique to Common Law and absent from Civil Law, the bidirectional analysis in this article shows how English law and German law can be understood to fulfil a comparable function and can thus inform and benefit each other. The sophisticated English doctrine can be used to refine the rather imprecise German definition of gifts, whilst the understanding of English authorities can profit from reflecting inversely on the criterion of gratuitousness in German law.