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

Rather the readers participate in the parabolic event and experience a language event in the
reading of the parables. The parables even interpret their readers. The parables per se create
therefore many new meanings for themselves with characteristics of autonomy and
polyvalence. 4 Even so, although when we interpret the parables, the meaning not only is
reduced but made inaccurately, I think that the parables must be interpreted for the reason that
the parables must communicate content propositionally to persuade their audience and call to
action. 5 First of all, this is largely because the attempt to apply a nonpropositional approach
to interpreting the parables leads to failure rather than success. 6 For example, in the
discussion of the parable of the Wedding Feast (Matt 22:1-10), Sallie TeSelle who tries to
apply a nonpropositional approach to interpreting the parables concludes that the “new
insight of the parable is in being brought to see that everyday situation - the wedding feast
and its guest list - in a new way: invitation not by merit but by a gracious lack of concern
about merit.” 7 But actually this is an interpretation of the story. In the Good Samaritan (Luke
10:25-37), B.B. Scott concludes that “the parables can be summarized as follows: to enter
Kingdom one must get in the ditch and be served by one’s mortal enemy.” 8 This is also an
interpretation and a proposition. In this respect, we can see that it is possible to capture partial
meaning through propositional language. 9
On the other hand, a more important reason is
because the interpretive comments in the Gospels surrounding the parables are highly
propositional in nature irrespective of whether those comments are Jesus’ original meaning or
4. Regarding overemphasis on metaphor and parable’s power as language events, A.C. Thiselton claims that
such an ability of language can be explained in the terms of performative language not in terms of word-magic,
pointing out having a one-sided concern with imperatival, conative and directive language rather than the
language of description or information. His polemic against the power of the word appears in his article, “The
Supposed Power of Words in the Biblical Writings”, JST 25 (1974), 282-99. On the line of this assertion, Robert
H. Stein articulates that what transforms the reader is not the form of this genre, but the divine truth that they
contain. Robert H. Stein, “The Genre of the Parables” in ed., Richard N. Longenecker, The Challenge of Jesus’
Parables (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 48. For more standpoints of agreement with the above
contention, see J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 26; M.A. Tolbert,
Perspectives on the Parables: An Approach to Multiple Interpretations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 42-
43; M.A. Beavis, “The Power of Jesus’ Parables: Were They Polemical or Irenic?,” JSNT 82 (2001), 3-30.
5. Craig L. Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables (Downers Grove, Inter Varsity Press, 1990), 141.
6. Ibid., 143.
7. Sallie TeSelle, Speaking in Parables, The Mysterious Parables: A Literary Study (Washington: Catholic
Biblical Association of America, 1977), 77.
8. Scott, Jesus, Symbol-Maker for the Kingdom, 29. In spite of risking a loss of meaning, he attempts to interpret
the parables.
9. A.C. Thiselton, “The Parables as Language-Events: Some Comments on Fuch’s Hermeneutics in the Light of
Linguistic Philosophy,” SJT 23 (1971), 437-468. Max Black and Wayne C. Booth suggest a possibility of
paraphrase of metaphor in particular. Max Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell, 1962), 45-46, Wayne
C. Booth, “Metaphor as Rhetoric: The Problem of Evaluation,” Critical Inquiry 5 (1978), 437-468.
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