The Parables of the Kingdom

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Now such a simple metaphor may be elaborated into a picture, by the addition of detail. Thus: "They do not light a lamp and put it under a mean-tub, but on a lampstand; and then it gives light to all in the house"; "No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old coat, else the patch pulls away from it―the new from the old―and there is a worse tear"; "Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, without noticing the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the splinter out of your eye, when there is a plank in your own"; or to take a simile, "To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another, we played the pipes for you and you would not dance; we set up a wail for you and you would not weep!" This is the type of parable which is called by the Germans Gleichnis, i.e. similitude. It is a common type, including, for example, the Son asking for Bread, the Eye the Light of the Body, the Sons of the Bridechamber, the Fig-tree as Herald of Summer (Mk. xiii. 29), and other familiar parables.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Or again, the metaphor (or simile) may be elaborated into a story instead of a picture, the additional details serving to develop a situation. This is what the Germans call Parabel, the parable proper. The story may be a very short one; e.g. "The Kingdom of God is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened." Very little longer are the parables of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin, the Hid Treasure and the Costly Pearl, the Mustard-Seed, the Seed Growing Secretly and the Two-Sons. Somewhat longer are Two Houses, the Sower, the Importunate Friend, and some others. And finally we have full-length tales (Novellen) like the Money of Trust, the Unforgiving Servant (Mt. xviii. 23-35), the Prodigal Son, and the Labourers of the Vineyard.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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It cannot be pretended that the line can be drawn with any precision between these classes of parable―figurative sayings, similitudes, and parables proper. If we say that the first class has no more than one verb, the second more than one verb, in the present tense, and the third a series of verbs in an historic sense, we have a rough grammatical test; and this corresponds to the fact that the similitude on the whole tends to describe a typical or recurrent case, the parable a particular case treated as typical. But one class melts into another, and it is clear that in all of them we have nothing but the elaboration of a single comparison, all the details being designed to set the situation or series of events in the clearest possible light, so as to catch the imagination.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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This leads us at once to the most important principle of interpretation. The typical parable, whether it be a simple metaphor, or a more elaborate similitude, or a full-length story, presents one single point of comparison. The details are not intended to have independent significance. In all allegory, on the other hand, each detail is a separate metaphor, with a significance all its own. Thus in the Pilgrim's Progress we have the episode of the House Beautiful. It is a story of the arrival of belated travelers at a hospitable country house. Commentators even undertake to show us the actual house in Bedfordshire. But in the story the maid who opens the door is Discretion, the ladies of the house are Prudence, Piety and Charity, and the bedchamber is Peace. Or to take a biblical example, in Paul's category of the Christian warrior the girdle is Truth, the breastplate Righteousness, the shoes Peace, the shield Faith, the helmet Salvation, and the sword the Word of God. On the other hand, if we read the parable of the Importunate Friend, it would be obviously absurd to ask who is represented by the friend who arrives from a journey, or the children who are in bed. These and all the other details of the story are there simply to build up the picture of a sudden crisis of need, calling for urgency which would otherwise be untimely and even impertinent. Similarly in the parable of the Sower the wayside and the birds, the thrones and the stoney ground are not, as Mark supposed, cryptograms for persecution, the deceitfulness of riches, and so forth. They are there to conjure up a picture of the vast amount of wasted labour which the farmer must face, and so to bring into relief the satisfaction the the harvest gives, in spite of all.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The object before the writer of an allegory is of course to tell his tale so that it reads naturally as such, even when the interpretation is out sight. But this needs great skill, and it is scarcely possible to keep it up for long. The interpretation will show through. Thus to return to the House Beautiful, Bunyan has shown great skill in introducing the natural incidents of a short stay at a country house. Among other things, the ladies display, very naturally, the family pedigree, which one still sees framed and hung in some some old-fashioned houses. But here theology breaks in: the pedigree showed that the Lord of the house "was the Son of the Ancient of Days, and came by an eternal generation." With less skillful allegorists the story often becomes sheer nonsense, and to make sense of it the details must be transposed into the ideas which they signify. Thus Paul, who is not always felicitous in his use of illustration, gives an allegorical story of a gardner who lopped off the branches of an olive tree, and grafted in their place shoots of wild olive. The lopped branches, however, he kept by him, and after the wild grafts had "taken" he once more grafted the olive-branches into the stock (Rom. xi. 16-24). A curious piece of horticulture! But it is all intelligible if we bear in mind that the olive-tree is the people of God; the lopped branches, the unbelieving Jews; the wild-olive shoots, the Gentile Christians.

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[tabibito]

The seed is the Word: yet the crop which comes up is composed of various classes of people.

The seed is the word, the various types of people are the soil upon which the seed falls, the crop is produced in measure with the type of soil that the seed fell on. Where the seed fell on good ground, the word is fruitful. Where it did not, the word bears no fruit.

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In the parables of the Gospels, however, all is true to nature and to life. Each similitude or story is a perfect picture of something that can be observed in the world of our experience. The processes of nature are accurately observed and recorded; the actions of persons in the stories are in character; they are either such as anyone would recognize as natural in the circumstances, or, if they are surprising, the point of the parable is that such such actions are surprising. Thus there is no doubt something surprising in the conduct of the employer who pays the same wages for one hour's work as for twelve, but the surprise of the laborers at being treated so gives point to the story.

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[John Reece]

The seed is the word, the various types of people are the soil upon which the seed falls, the crop is produced in measure with the type of soil that the seed fell on. Where the seed fell on good ground, the word is fruitful. Where it did not, the word bears no fruit.

You are criticizing Dodd, who was criticizing Mark.

I choose to let you guys have your say without any comment by me.

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In making the distinction between the parable and the allegory, we must not be too rigorous. For if the parable is drawn out to any length, it is likely that details will be inserted which are suggested by their special appropriateness to the application intended, and if the application is correctly made by the hearer, he will then see a secondary significance in the details. But in the true parable any such details will be kept strictly subordinated to the dramatic realism of the story, and will not disturb its unity. And this is, with very few exceptions, true of the parables given in the Gospels. Here and there interpretation has intruded itself into a parable and marred its realism. But if the parables are taken as a whole, their realism is remarkable. I have shown elsewhere what a singularly complete and convincing picture the parables give of life in a small provincial town―probably a more complete picture of petit-bourgeois and peasant life than we possess for any other province of the Roman Empire except Egypt, where papyri come to our aid.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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There is a reason for this realism of the parables of Jesus. It arises from a conviction that there is no mere analogy, but an inward affinity, between natural order and the spiritual order; or as we might put it in the language of the parables themselves, the Kingdom of God is intrinsically like the process of nature and of the daily life of men. Jesus therefore did not feel the need of making up artificial illustrations for the truths He wished to teach. He found them ready-made by the Maker of man and nature. That human life, including the religious life, is a part of nature is distinctly stated in the well-known passage beginning "Consider the fowls of the air ...." (Mt. vi. 26-30; Lk. xii. 24-28). Since nature and super-nature are one order, you can take away any part of that order and find in it illumination for other parts. Thus the falling of rain is a religious thing, for it is God who makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust; the death of a sparrow can be contemplated without despairing of the goodness of nature, because the bird is "not forgotten by your Father"; and the love of God is present in the natural affection of a father for his scapegrace son. This sense of the divineness of the natural order is the major premise of all the parables, and it is the point where Jesus differs from the outlook of the Jewish apocalyptists, with whose ideas He had on some sides much sympathy. The orthodox Rabbis of the Talmud are also largely free from the gloomy pessimism of the apocalyse, and hence they can produce true parables where the apocalyptists can give us only frigid allegories; but their minds are more scholastic, and their parables often have a larger element of artificiality than those of the Gospels.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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A further point of contrast between the parable and the allegory is that while the allegory is merely decorative illustration of teaching supposed to be accepted on other grounds, the parable has the character of an argument, in that it entices the hearer to a judgment upon the situation depicted, and then challenges him, directly or by implication, to apply that judgment to the matter in hand. We need only recall a familiar and typical parable in the Old Testament, where Nathan tells David the story of the poor man's ewe lamb which was stolen by the rich man. David falls neatly into the trap, exclaiming, indignantly, "As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this is worthy to die"; whereupon Nathan retorts: "Thou art the man!" That the parables of Jesus had a similar intention is sometimes shown by the way in which they are introduced. Thus: "What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep...." "What do you think? A man had two children; he came to the first and said: My boy, go and work in the vineyard today. He answered, Yes, sir; but did not go. He went to the second and said the same. He answered, I will not; but afterwards he changed his mind and went. Which of the two did his Father's will?" But whether they are so introduced or not, the question is implicit. The way to an interpretation lies through a judgment on the imagined situation, and not through the decoding of the various elements in the story.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Jülicher and his followers, then, have done great service in teaching us how to take the first step towards the understanding of the parables. It is to accept the story as a piece of real life, and form our judgment upon it. What is the next step? Those who follow Jülicher's method tend to make the process or interpretation end with a generalization. Thus we may take the parable of the Money in Trust (Talents or Pounds). It is the story of a man whom overcaution or cowardice led into breach of trust. Such conduct is contemptible and befits no honorable man. That is our judgment on the situation. What then is the application? We must vote for the broadest application, says Jülicher; "fidelity in all that God has entrusted to us." By taking this line, he has happily delivered us from questions whether the talents represent the Gospel, the true doctrine, ecclesiastical office, or bodily and spiritual capacities, with which the earlier exegetes concerned themselves; and equally from modern attempts to make the parable into an instruction to Christians to invest their money wisely, and incidentally into justification for the capitalist system! But can we really be content with the pure generalization which Jülicher produces as the moral of the parable? Is it much more than an ethical commonplace?

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Similarly the parable of the Sower leads to the judgment that in agriculture, much labor may be lost and yet a good harvest may be reaped. Are we to apply this in the form of the generalization that any kind of religious work is subject to the same conditions? Or shall we say that the parable of the Hid Treasure teaches that one should always sacrifice a lower good for a higher; that of the Waiting Servants that one should be prepared for emergencies; and that of the Lamp and the Bushel that truth will out? This method of interpretation makes the parables to be forcible illustrations of eminently sound moral and religious principles, but undeniably its general effect is rather flattening.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Was all this wealth of loving observation and imaginative rendering of nature and common life used merely to adorn generalities? Was the Jesus of the Gospels just an eminently sound and practical teacher, who patiently led simple minds to appreciate the great enduring commonplaces of morals and religion? This is not the impression conveyed by the Gospels as a whole. There is one of his parabolic sayings which runs: "I have come to set fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" Few parables are more difficult to interpret with precision; none perhaps is clearer in its main purport. Indeed any attempt to paraphrase its meaning is both less clear and less forcible than the saying as it stands. It is exactly the phrase we need to describe the volcanic energy of the meteoric career depicted in the Gospels. The teaching of Jesus is not the leisurely and patient exposition of a system by the founder of a school. It is related to a brief and momentous crisis in which He is the principal figure and which indeed His appearance brought about.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Thus we should expect the parables to bear upon the actual and critical situation in which Jesus and His hearers stood; and when we ask after their application, we must look first, not to the field of general principles, but to the particular setting in which they are delivered. The task of the interpreter of the parables is to find out, if he can, the setting of a parable in the situation contemplated by the Gospels, and hence the application would suggest itself to one who stood in that situation.

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