The Parables of the Kingdom

[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In all the cases we have so far considered there is no difficulty in seeing that the parables had a contemporary reference, and this reference has been generally recognized in the exegetical tradition. I want now to suggest that many other parables originally had a similar reference, but this reference has been more or less obscured in our Gospels through the influence of readily recognizable motives arising out of the changed situation after the death of Jesus. First, however, we must try to see how the standpoint of the Church changed, and then illustrate the effect of this change on the interpretation of parables.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The early Church, which preserved the tradition of the teaching of Jesus, long kept the vivid sense of living in a new age which is implied in His declaration, "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." Beginning with the apostolic preaching, as we can recover it fragmentarily from the Acts of the Apostles, through the epistles of Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, on to the Fourth Gospel, the testimony of the Church is unanimous, that it is living in the age of fulfillment.* God has acted decisively in history, and the world is a new world.

*This is admirably enforced in Hoskins and Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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Nevertheless the situation of the Church was different from the situation in which Jesus taught. When the apostles made their proclamation, within a few weeks of the death of their Master, they may still have had the sense of living within the crisis, as they had lived during His brief ministry, though at a more advanced stage of it. They confidently expected that the whole meaning of the crisis would reveal itself before all eyes in the shortest possible time. But as the months and years passed by, the sense of crisis faded. Not all the things of which the Lord had spoken had come to pass. The Jewish community had not collapsed, and the temple stood. For years things went on, outwardly as they had always been. The Lord had died, and He had risen again, and by the eye of faith they saw Him 'on the right hand of God"; but where was the promise of His coming on the clouds of heaven?

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In course of time the better minds of the Church, under the guidance of such teachers as Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel, arrived at an interpretation which did justice to the deeper meaning of the teaching of Jesus. But meanwhile those who took his words literally built up a new Christian eschatology on the lines of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. It is that which we have in our outline of the "Little Apocalypse" of Mk. xiii., elaborated in Matthew, and it is brought to its completion in the Revelation of John. The assumption is that at a date in the future (which the Church continued to the end of the first century to hope would soon come) the interrupted eschatological process will be resumed. The great tribulation will fall upon the Church, Jerusalem and the temple will fall, and the Son of Man will come on the clouds to judgment. Meanwhile the Church had its life to live in this world, and it gradually worked out in a way of life which became more and more independent of eschatological expectations.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The result of this development was that the original unity and continuity of the eschatological process was broken up. This is the profound and significant difference between the outlook of the sayings of Jesus and that of the formed tradition of His teaching as it entered into our written Gospels. The sayings were uttered in and for a brief period of intense crisis: the tradition was formed in a period of stable and growing corporate life, conceived as the interval between two crises, one past, the other yet to come.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In this position, the Church, looking for guidance in the teaching of the Lord, would naturally tend to re-apply and re-interpret His sayings according to the needs of the new situation; and that in two ways: (i) they would tend to give a general and permanent application to sayings originally directed towards an immediate and particular situation; and (ii) they would tend to give to sayings which were originally associated with the historical crisis of the past, an application to the expected crisis of the future.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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These two motives, which we may describe as "homiletic" or "parᴂnetic," and "eschatological," respectively, can be shown, by comparison in one Gospel with another, to have been at work during the period in which the Gospels were written, and it is reasonable to suppose that they worked during the earlier period of oral tradition. Let us then examine some parables for traces of the influence of these motives.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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We may find a convenient starting-point in a parable which occurs in Mt. v. 25-26 and Luke xii. 57-59, and which we may call the parable of the Defendant. The two evangelists have evidently taken the parable from a common source. The differences between the two versions are few, and merely verbal. In its Matthean form the passage reads as follows:

"Come to terms with your opponent quickly, while you are with him on the way, lest your opponent should hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the constable, and you should be thrown in prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the last farthing.

It is clear that this is one of the parables transmitted without any application; neither evangelist has explicitly supplied one. The contexts however in which they have placed the parable indicate how they intended it to be applied.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In Matthew it forms part of the Sermon on the Mount, and more particularly that section of the Sermon (v. 17-48) in which various precepts of the old Law are criticized and either reinterpreted, supplemented or suspended. The precept "Thou shalt not kill" is cited. This is shown to be inadequate. The law of Christ equally forbids anger and contempt. On the positive side, reconciliation with a "brother" must take precedence even of the worship of God. It is the phrase "be reconciled with your brother" (v. 24), that forms the link introducing the parable. What if your "brother" is your opponent in a law-suit? Well, even common sense suggests that you should "come to terms with your opponent quickly." It is clear that Matthew understood the parable to teach the importance of being always ready and anxious to take the first step towards the healing of a quarrel between neighbors. It is in this sense that it finds a place in the Sermon on the Mount, which is in fact a compilation of religious and moral maxims, drawn from the teaching of Jesus, for the guidance of Christians.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In Luke the context is different. In the preceding passage we have first a series of parables which we must later consider in detail―the Waiting Servants, the Thief at Night, the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants―and then another little parable about the punishment of disobedient servants. Then comes the great saying, "I came to set fire on the earth," introducing a description of the breakup of families. All this circles about the central idea of a crisis which provides a decisive test of men's dispositions and determines their destiny. Then follows the saying about the sights of the weather, the purport of which, in this context, is clearly to suggest that men ought to have the wit to see that the crisis is upon them. Then follows our parable.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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In this context the emphasis clearly falls upon the situation in which the defendant finds himself. He is being arrested for debt; in a few moments he will find himself in court, and he will no longer be a free man: sentence and imprisonment will inevitably follow. For the moment he is free to act. What will he do? Common sense dictates: settle the case out of court with all speed. It is another picture of crisis, bringing out the urgent necessity of immediate action. Luke has suggested the application of the idea to the situation to which the preceding verses have pointed the words, "Why do you not form a right judgment from yourselves?"―that is, either out of your own sense of what is fitting, or from the example of the behavior set forth in the parable, which is that of any man of ordinary common sense. In any case he understands the parable to refer to the urgency of taking the right step in face of the tremendous crisis which he has depicted.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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If now we take the parable out of its context, as it was handed down in tradition, we must surely judge that Luke has come nearer than Matthew to its primary significance. It is not upon reconciliation as such that the emphasis falls. More telling illustrations of the importance of reconciliation could be found than a case in which it is, after all, only a matter of expediency. But it provides an admirable foil to the incredible folly of men who, faced by a tremendous crisis, have not the wit to see that they must act, now or never. If now we recall the preaching of Jesus was focused upon the point that "the Kingdom of God has come upon you," we are surely safe in concluding that the parable as He spoke it was meant to be applied by the hearers to the situation in which, then and there, they stood, faced by the supreme crisis of all history. This was the original application. Luke, naturally enough, applies the same lesson to Christians awaiting the future crisis of the Lord's second advent, while in Matthew the "paraenetic" motive has brought the parable into a quite fresh setting.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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A more complicated example is the treatment by several evangelists of the little parable about Salt. This parable is found in all three Synoptics, and as Matthew and Luke agree in significant variations from the Marcan form, we may safely conclude that they found it in a common source independent of Mark. The Marcan version is the simplest:

"Salt is good; but if the salt becomes saltless, with what will you season it?" (ix. 50).

A comparison of Matthew (v. 13) and Luke (xiv. 34-35) suggests that their common source has a form of the parable somewhat as follows:

"If salt decays, with what will it be salted? It is good for nothing; they throw it away."

Both Matthew and Mark explicitly indicate the application which they intend. Luke gives no explicit application, but the context in which he has placed the parable suggests the way in which he understood it.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The Matthean application (v. 13) is the clearest: "You are the salt of the earth." The parable then becomes a warning to the followers of Christ. Upon them lies the solemn responsibility of exerting a purifying and preservative influence in the world at large: if they fail to do so, they have missed the end of life, and will be utterly rejected by God.

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[John Reece]

The Parables of the Kingdom

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The Marcan application (ix.50) is given in the words, "Have salt in (or among) yourselves, and live at peace with one another." The meaning is not altogether perspicuous; but in any case "salt" is not the Christian community itself but some quality which it should possess; and it is a quality somehow associated with "peace." Hence the salt-parable is employed to close a series of sayings introduced by a scene in which the disciples quarrel about precedence. Perhaps we should find an allusion to the widespread idea of salt as a symbol of hospitality, and so of the permanent relation of friendship set up between two who have partaken of each others salt. This cannot be regarded as a very felicitous application; for the main point of the parable is the worthlessness of salt that has lost it savor, and it is just this point which is left vague in the application.

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