the role of the lukan parables in terms of the purpose of luke's gospel

Jesus, he categorizes prayer in the early church into four groups in order to analyze it.
Subsequently, he argues that prayer in Acts is also a practice with a belief in Jesus, thereby
enabling Jesus’ disciples to know the purpose of God and to commit to its service. His
conclusion to be drawn here is that “prayer is fundamentally a matter of recognizing to whom
one is praying.” 25
It turns out that the underlying idea of prayer in Luke and Acts is a
practice with belief of God as the faithful Father. His contention is properly oriented toward
the significance of a practice in prayer.
The conclusion, therefore, can be briefly stated as follows: The theme of prayer is one of
the major theological themes of the Lukan parables, and is in congruence with the theme of
prayer of Luke’s theology which runs through Luke-Acts.
25. Ibid., 201. Apart from these arguments, for the relationship between prayer in Luke and biblical
hermeneutics, see Craig G. Bartholomew and Robby Holt, “Prayer in/and the Drama of Redemption in Luke,”
350-75, who insist that prayer is mandatory to the interpretation of Scripture, since prayer in Luke is an
indispensable way to seize and live within the drama of redemption. On the other hand, Geir Otto Holmas, “‘My
house shall be a house of prayer’: Regarding the Temple as a Place of Prayer in Acts within the Context of
Luke’s Apologetical Objective,” JSNT 27 (2005), 393-416, holds that the narrative presentation of the temple as
place of prayer in Acts is a part of the apologetical strategy so as to define the Christian church against Judaism.
Luke portrays, he argues, the temple as place of prayer in both the continuity as the place of worship and prayer
with the expectation of salvation and the discontinuity as the focal point for Jerusalem’s rejection of the Messiah.
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