Relating the Gospels: Memory, Imitation, and the Farrer Hypothesis by Eric Eve (review)

Abstract

profligacy, the steward bests his master. While still in the master’s employ, the steward consumes more of the master’s property by liberality to debtors with a view to securing his future. In contrast to the younger son’s example of change, the consistently unrighteous steward corners his master into magnanimous debt reduction, so that the master commends his shrewd behavior, and Jesus holds up for emulation his reckless liberality with unrighteous mammon as faithfulness in little that merits much: eternal habitations. The shrewdness and liberality of the steward meet their negative counterpart in the rich man of 16:19–31, who fails to display such to Lazarus. Linking this parable to the prior two by highlighting their similarities, B.-R. also rehearses the variety of classical views on the rich and poor. Then, through attention to narrative details, such as Lazarus’s place in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man’s permanent separation therefrom, B.-R. maintains that Luke characterizes Lazarus as righteous and the rich man as unrighteous for his failure to heed the Law and Prophets’ summons to reckless liberality such as Jesus himself enacts. The rich man’s irreversible fate contrasts with the elder brother’s situation: the father’s invitation to him to enter the party signals the open-ended nature of his destiny. In addition, Abraham’s refusal to send Lazarus to the rich man’s brothers does not signify the irreversibility of their exclusion from the party; rather, it emphasizes the greatness of the risk they run by not adopting a liberality consonant with Jesus’s ethic. Brobst-Renaud’s study is well researched, thought-provoking, and eminently needed. Whereas NT scholarship has explored heretofore the relationships of rhetoric to moral formation and of rhetoric to characterization, it has largely neglected to explore the connections of the three. This is a praiseworthy start. But there are puzzlements. If 15:11–16:19 is to be considered a rhetorical unit, as B.-R. maintains, then why comment only in passing on the closely related parables of 15:4–10 and the intervening unit of 16:14–18? Why initially diagnose the father as suffering from the Aristotelian vice of prodigality if in the larger context of Luke he consistently exhibits “reckless liberality”? Should liberality truly be qualified as “reckless” if it excludes the unrighteous rich man? Finally, does not the blurring of form-critical distinctions by the category of “fable” not run the risk of turning all announcements of God’s kingdom by parables into example stories demanding moral imitation/avoidance? If all is moral exhortation, where is the good news?