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

is, Divine Initiative, Conflict, Sin/Sinners, Repentance, Wealth/Possessions, Forgiveness,
Table-Fellowship and Joy, Reversal, Climactic Pronouncement, and Christological Emphasis.
For him all these denote the presence of salvation which is made by Jesus. He gives attention
in particular to the transformation of social values and the ethical demands. Jesus in the
Gospel of Luke challenges predominant social and religious values by embracing in his
fellowship sinners and outcasts, particularly through table-fellowship. In other words, the
Lukan conversion stories are not simply a challenge or reinterpretation of temporary socio-
religious values, but a reversal. Repentance is manifested especially in a changed attitude to
possessions, which is all the more serious on account of a matter of allegiances, which as the
result of conversion, move inevitably from loyalty to mammon to loyalty to God. 41
Yet I am
left with misgivings about the paradigm of conversion in Luke which is asserted by him,
because he has simply created too much out of too little evidence. There seems to be
theological themes throughout the Gospel of Luke rather than peculiar features of conversion
in Luke as paradigm.
Joel B. Green begins his study of conversion in Luke-Acts with cognitive science that
emphasizes not only somatic existence as the basis and means of human existence, but also
42
unconsciousness and metaphor which embody thought. In doing so, he attempts to dismiss
the issues raised by recent discussions of conversion in Luke-Acts as the helpful insights of
cognitive science, under four headings: Repentance versus Conversion, A New Conceptual
Scheme, Conversion and Socialization, and Community Formed and Forming. 43 To put it
another way, he objects to the distinction between repentance for Jews and conversion for
Gentiles and elucidates conversion as a new conceptual scheme which leads to a new way of
seeing things, an opening of the mind so as to understand what was previously
incomprehensible. Furthermore, conversion, he contends, is not only an ongoing process of
socialization, but also autobiographical reconstruction which shatters one’s past and
reassembles it in keeping with the new life of the converted. Fruits worthy of repentance
represent especially in the community of the converted through the community practices,
such as economic koinonia, prayer, and witness. For him conversion is believed to be the
human experience of embodiment, that is to say, “the convert one who has undergone a
redirectional rotation and is on the move in faithful service to the purpose of God.” 44
He
41. Méndez-Moratalla, The Paradigm of Conversion in Luke, 71-214, 217-22.
42. Green, “Conversion in Luke-Acts: The Potential of a Cognitive Approach,” 5.
43. Ibid., 11-20.
44. Ibid., 28.
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