Alastair's Adversaria - Good Samaritan Politics

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

The following is a reading from this post: https://argosy.substack.com/p/25-good-samaritan-politics. Follow my Substack, the Anchored Argosy, at argosy.substack.com/. See my latest podcasts at adversariapodcast.com/. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3…3O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alast…d1416351035?mt=2.

The following is a reflection entitled Good Samaritan Politics from the substack, the anchored argosy that I share with my wife Susanna. In his 2017 book, The Political Samaritan, How Power Hijacked a Parable, Nick Spencer examines various ways that the parable of the Good Samaritan has been deployed in British political discourse, especially for generations that grew up with a basic biblical literacy, the parable of the Good Samaritan is a morally resonant part of a shared cultural canon, while not being explicitly connected with Christianity's more particularist features. Spencer considers some of the contrasting ways the parable has been directly referenced

and subtly alluded to in British political speech over the past 50 years. For Margaret Thatcher, he argues, the Good Samaritan illustrated her claim that you need to have in order to give, or perhaps that you need to give from yourself and don't ask the state to give anything. New Labourites advance different readings. For many of them, the point was to do something, not to pass by on the other side of the road. If the Thatcherite reading emphasised the importance of the private prosperity

and self-sufficiency encouraged by capitalist free enterprise and the moral dangers of dependence upon government, the new Labour reading served to justify a range of individual, interventionist and activist policies, from increased social welfare to military action against ISIS. Terms and expressions drawn from the parable and its retellings, especially Good Samaritan or passed by on the other side, have been absorbed into popular parlance. People speak of a Good Samaritan or an individual who acts selflessly on behalf of a stranger, while passing by on the other side, refers to morally culpable indifference to visible need, when we would be able to assist.

Yet, as Spencer suggests, the Good Samaritan might appear to be a half-dead metaphor lying on the edge of our linguistic highway, its biblical source forgotten. As the parable has been forgotten, and as expressions and images drawn from it have become familiar, they have lost much of their arresting power, and, in their more cliched uses, can even serve to dull our thinking with their platitudinous quality. The familiarity of the expressions drawn from the parable imply a simple reading of it that essentially renders it a fable, for whose moral they are shorthand. Read in such a manner, the parable is a general story about taking concern and action for strangers in need whom we encounter,

occasionally with the added suggestion that this should be done even for those who are outsiders or from undesirable classes of persons. Abstracted even further, it can become a story about the morally obligatory character of interventionist action and policy. The generality and abstractness of the moral of the story so construed allows it to serve as something of a wax-nose justification

for a wide variety of different and sometimes even contradictory positions. Within its biblical context, the so-called parable of the Good Samaritan, as Spencer notes, is little over 100 words in Greek. His import, however, is not so readily abstract. from its textual and cultural context, as that of a moral fable might be. Rather, it is dense with intertextual illusion and association, with significant historical and geographical reference, and with symbolic features.

It also assumes and operates upon an extensive body of cultural and religious beliefs, values and understanding in its primary hearers. While some might suppose that the value of such a parable in our contexts requires that be able to slip its original cultural moorings. This is misguided. Rather, revisiting and reconsidering the parable in its historical, cultural and textual context might help contemporary readers to discover new areas of political salience that it might have in their own worlds. While we need not censure all abstraction of general morals from specific biblical narratives, this is not the most fruitful or faithful route to discover illuminating biblical perspectives of

our issues. We will be much more benefited in our study of scripture when we diligently seek to hear it on its own terms, and, having attended to the fullness of its voices, bring them into conversation with those concerns and issues that are native to our own contexts. In Luke's Gospel, the only gospel within which it appears, Luke chapter 10 verses 25 to 37, the parable of the Good Samaritan is part of a longer conversation with a lawyer, someone skilled in the interpretation and teaching of the Mosaic Torah. This individual, seeking to test Jesus, asks him what he should do to inherit eternal life, in verse 25. In response, Jesus asks him what is written in the law and what his interpretation of

it is, verse 26. The lawyer's answer is a model one, in verse 27, indeed, with its reference to the first and second great commandments given in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5 and Leviticus chapter 6, 19 verse 18, it anticipates the answer that Jesus himself gives later in his ministry, which we read in Matthew chapter 22. Jesus approves the lawyer's answer, telling him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. The lawyer, however, seeking to justify himself, asks a further question, and who is my neighbour? Contrary to much popular Protestant exegesis of this and other such passages over the centuries, we should not read into this exchange theological convictions about the impossibility of law-keeping. No evidence of such reasoning is to be found here. While the lawyer's response might reasonably be

interpreted as intended to absolve himself from onerous moral duty and to present himself as being in the right and in good covenant standing, the impossibility of the moral duty is nowhere suggested. It is in response to the lawyer's follow-up question that Jesus tells the power. that the parable is framed by a conversation about the keeping of the Torah rather than being a standalone moral fable is far from unimportant. Indeed, it is a key to discerning much of the parable's meaning. The question of true law-keeping is a dominant one in much of Jesus' teaching, as it is also in his controversies with the religious leaders of the day. It appears in disputes about Sabbath healings, in his teaching concerning the fulfillment of the law in the sermon on the Mount and

elsewhere and in various other Halakic debates during Jesus' earthly ministry. The law, we should recall, was the charter of Israel's existence, given at Sinai after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. In observing the law, Israel lived out its freedom and identity and enjoyed the right standing into which God had brought them. Alert to this framing, our ears might begin to hear certain key undertones of the parable, although the questions of ceremonial purity may not be quite as prominent as some have suggested. In the figures of the priest and the Levite, we might recognise a form of religion

that is narrowly focused on ritual purity to the neglect of compassion. Perhaps they fear that contact with a body that is either dead or near death might render them impure and thereby temporarily disqualified from discharging their religious vocations. In his Sabbath healings,

Jesus emphasised both the priority of compassionate action over narrow halakic concerns for purity and ritual observance, and the fact that the Torah was chiefly fulfilled in transforming loving initiative. Without opposing ritual observance, purity concerns, and scrupulous attention to the minutiae of the Torah, Jesus made clear that these are ordered and subservient to higher ends. Something similar is evident in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, where a loving moral initiative and pursuit of righteousness is the fulfillment of the law that the Lord desires, not merely a superficial avoidance of sin in which the heart is uninvolved.

The lawyer's question concerning the identity of his neighbour is one that might be indicative of a desire narrowly to circumscribe the scope of his moral obligations, rather than taking the sort of loving moral initiative that Christ exemplifies and to which he calls his disciples, the sort of creative and recreative initiative characteristic of the kingdom of God, transforming, restoring and forging shalom, the lawyer is seeking a sort of sterile moral purity and standing. Like the priest and the Levite in the parable,

the lawyer is preoccupied with his legal and ritual standing in a manner that makes him averse to loving initiative. Rather than seeking to form and extend relations with neighbours as an expression of love and compassion, he perceives such relations as liabilities. Here it is important to note that the conversation of love, Luke chapter 10 has several parallels with the conversation that we find later in the central section of the gospel, one which Hobart Farrell has suggested is chiastically paired with it. Luke chapter 18

to 23. And a ruler asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honour your father and mother. And he said, all these I have kept from my youth. When Jesus heard him, he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me. But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Once again, the question of inheriting, note not earning, a eternal life is raised, and the law is summarized in response, hereby Jesus rather than by

his interlocutor. The underlying point is not that law-keeping is impossible, nor that something else overrides it, but that the law is fulfilled in love for God and neighbour. Recognition of the importance of the theme of true law-keeping and the nature of the fulfilment of the Torah in the Gospels will greatly colour our reading of the parable. The attentive hearer might also discern echoes of certain Old Testament narratives. Peter Williams, in his recent, the surprising genius of Jesus, suggests the possibility of a subtle allusion back to Genesis chapter 42, verse 18, in Jesus' statement, Do this and you will live. In Genesis, Joseph speaks these words to his brothers, who had earlier stripped him and left him half dead. There is a further Old Testament narrative that many

commentators have heard in the background of Jesus' parable, a narrative whose importance for our interpretation might be suggested by specific details which it shares with the parable. In Second Chronicles chapter 28, the southern kingdom of Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the northern kingdom of Israel and their Syrian allies. The men of Israel took captive 200,000 Judahites and were bringing them to Sumeria. However, while doing so, they were confronted by a prophet, Odad, who warned them that they were calling down judgment upon themselves by taking these captives. The captives, Oded stressed, were their own relatives, and like their brethren from the

southern kingdom, Israel too faced divine wrath for their unfaithfulness. In verse 15 of the chapter, the ears of anyone familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan should start tingling. And the men who have been mentioned by name rose and took the captives, and with the spoil they clothed all who were naked among them. They clothed them, gave them sandals, provided them with food and drink and anointed them, and carrying all the feeble among them on donkeys, they brought them to their kinsfolk at Jericho, the city of palm trees. Then they returned to Sumeria.

The parallels should readily be apparent. Men coming up from Jerusalem had been taken by opponents, beaten and stripped. Men of Samaria, obedient to the word of the Lord, recognized the beaten Jews as their brothers, and showed compassion to them, in a manner closely resembled. the compassion shown by the Samaritan in Jesus' parable. Later the men of Judah were brought back to Jericho. The man caught among thieves was on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. In discussing the parable, many have considered the Samaritan

as a paradigmatic marginalized, distrusted or even hated outsider. Tensions between Jews and Samaritans are implied at various points in the Gospels, not least in the preceding chapter of Luke, whereas Samaritan village would not receive Jesus, because he was bound for Jerusalem. I believe that the parallels with Second Chronicles chapter 28 might suggest a greater degree of significance to the Samaritan's identity. The Samaritans were not merely foreigners who lived near to Judea.

They were also claimants to Israelite identity and heritage with their own form of worship and religion that contrasted with that of the Judeans. As Jason Staples points out, they were regarded by many as Hebrews and could claim to Israelite heritage, but were not Jews, Jews being narrower terminology, focused on Judeans, whose origins were in the Southern Kingdom. The Samaritans were people largely descended from remnants of the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

that were defeated by the Assyrians and admixt with various other peoples, see Second Kings, Chapter 17. Luke mentions Samaritans on several occasions in his Gospel. However, the most notable appearances of Samaritans in Luke's writings are in the Book of Acts. In Acts chapter 1 verse 8, Jesus declares, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. The movement of the Gospel mission is from Jerusalem to the wider province of Judea, then to Samaria, and then to all the Gentile nations.

Samaria is not here treated as one of the Gentile nations. Indeed, the mission to the Samaritans in Acts chapter 8 receives its own treatment, and proceeds the gospel going to the Gentiles. Implicit in Luke's account, I believe, is a theology of the restoration of Israel, of the reunification and regathering of a divided and scattered people. The Samaritans are a key element of this greater picture. In 2 Chronicles chapter 28, unbeknownst to the men of Samaria,

Israel was only a couple of decades away from devastation. In the events of that chapter, Israel was called back to itself, reminded of their covenant kinship with their brethren from Judah, with whom they had been at war. For one fleeting moment in the Samaritan's act of compassion to the people of Judah, that kinship was seen in action, and the hearer might perceive a glimmer in the gloaming of Israel's history, a possibility that was never truly realized. The parable of the Good Samaritan, with its allusion to Second Chronicles chapter 28, and its focus on the figure of the Samaritan, is, among other things,

parable about the restoration of Israel. Questions of observance and fulfillment of the Torah were bound up with questions of Israelite identity and destiny. In the parable, there is a recollection of that brief appearance of Israelite brotherhood in the final years of the Northern Kingdom. The lawyer's question, who is my neighbor, is reframed by another event of compassion in which the joining of divided people is seen. In the message of Odette in 2 Chronicles chapter 28,

The way of compassion for brothers in need stands as the alternative to the broken brotherhood of kingdoms, alienated from each other and standing alike under divine wrath. As following the message of Odette, the men of Samaria practice brotherhood towards their relatives from the southern kingdom, there's a brief flickering hope of national restoration in humble repentance, faithfulness and love. The Good Samaritan presents a similar vision, one with resonance that is not merely, about private morality. In the Good Samaritan's act of compassion, we see a small image of a people restored through the loving initiative by which the law is truly fulfilled, a people who find their identity in the receiving and the showing of mercy and grace. To refuse the way of compassion

is to exclude oneself from the great work of national restoration that God is performing. The kingdom of God is characterized, not by people who justify themselves, but by helpless recipients of mercy, show mercy in their turn. Jesus turns the question of the lawyer on its head. Questions about neighbours are most typically considered in the context of settled life. However, Jesus situates the question in the context of the road, a place where the existing bonds of community are weakened or absent and where people chiefly engage with strangers. For the lawyer, it was the status of potential neighbours that was in question. Jesus turns the question against him, essentially asking the lawyer whether he was a neighbour.

Jesus also takes a question focused on stable relations and presents an alternative ethic that focuses on creative action and the dynamic formation of new neighbour bonds through love. The Samaritan was not a neighbour, but became a neighbour through his compassionate action. A Christological reading of the figure of the Good Samaritan, one appreciated by many earlier church readers of the parable, is strengthened by recognition of the chiastic symmetry

of the central section of Luke. At the end of Luke chapter 18, Jesus is walking on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. The reversal of the direction of travel on the same road strengthens the chiastic relation. There is a blind man calling out by the side of the road. While the crowd is passing, those going before Jesus rebuked the blind man

and instruct him to be silent. However, Jesus does not pass by on the other side. He brings the man to him and heals him. The shape of the parable of the Good Samaritan is, of course, the shape of the story of the gospel. We are those helpless and left for dead by the side of the road, and Christ is the one who becomes a neighbour to us in our distress, committing himself to our healing. In such a Christological reading, other aspects of the parable might appear more piquant. For instance, the figure of the innkeeper, who plays a key role at the conclusion of the parable,

might stick out to us. The innkeeper is given money and entrusted with a task until the one who gave him the money would return to inspect his work and reward him. The figure of the innkeeper might remind us of the parable of the ten minors in Chapter 19. In him we might see an image of the church as a minister of the compassion of Christ to whose care Christ has committed recipients of his grace. Considering the parable in its own world, it should soon become apparent that political meaning was always integral to it. The question of the identity of our neighbour is one that will always be entangled with political considerations for us, and if anything, it was even more so in Jesus' day. And in Jesus' answer, the politically freighted character of the lawyer's question becomes far more overt.

Part of the challenge of Jesus' parable is the judgment that it implies. The priest and the Levite did not prove to be neighbours. In the final assessment, those whose standing in Jewish community might be considered the most secure, might find themselves outside of the restored Israel, while Samaritans and abandoned members of the Jewish community might find themselves within. The parable of the Good Samaritan has often been understood to teach that everyone is our neighbour.

While such a reading might capture something of the parables import, it greatly oversimplifies it. The parable presents us with surprising new neighbour bonds, formed and sustained in the receiving and giving of mercy, and with parties who, perhaps preoccupied with sacrifice over mercy, have tragically excluded themselves from this new solidarity. This new solidarity, it seems to me, is most manifest in the church. The church is formed by the receipt of God's mercy in Christ

and the extension of this mercy to others. The church is chiefly formed of half-dead recipients of mercy, of those who follow the example of the Samaritan, and of those who minister the mercy of the Archipald Samaritan, Jesus himself, to others in the inn of the church. This solidarity trespasses the bonds of our old solidities of flesh, cutting across family, ethnic or national ties. It is a solidarity of the way,

a dynamic solidarity epitomized in loving initiative taken in chance encounters. It is a solidarity in which the intent of the law is fulfilled in mercy and grace shown to others on our path beyond existing ties. This new solidarity does not disband the old solidities of flesh and blood, however it consistently unsettles and cuts across them. In this new solidarity, which as followers of our Samaritan Lord, we are actively to advance, we are called to make neighbours of outsiders and of strangers, and these new bonds of the solidarity of the way will inescapably colour and transform our perception and practice of the settled and given bonds. of the flesh, those bonds of family of kin, of people and of nation. Oliver O'Donovan, in the ways of judgment, expresses well the challenge we must all face.

To each particular identity, then, is put the question, how can the defence of this common good, focused around this common identity at this time and in this way, be brought to serve that common good, which belongs to the all-embracing identity, individual and collective of God's kingdom. As Christians, we celebrate the compassion of Christ who cross over from the other side of heaven to meet and aid us in our distress. In God's gracious coming to us in Christ, the pattern of God's kingdom is revealed. We must go and do likewise. We have been thrown into community with each other within the church, like a motley group of travellers in an inn, like the innkeeper Christ entrust the church with the care of new neighbours.

Considering the concluding notes of the parable of the Good Samaritan, we should reflect upon Christ's promised return. We are also recalled to our duty to extend and minister the Samaritan compassion of Christ to others, as those who will one day give account. Thank you very much for listening. You can find this and other reflections over on the anchored Argosy, my substack, which I share with my wife Susanna. You can also support my work should you want to using the links in the show notes below. God bless and thank you for listening.