Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/511

 PARABLES

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PARABLES

The Hebrew genius, unlike that of the Hellenes, was not given to myth-making; it abhorred the personifi- cations of nature to which we are indebted for gods of the elements, for Nereids and Hamadryads; it seldom pursued an allegory to any length; and its "realism" in treating of landscape and visible phenomena strikes most forcibly on the modern imagination. Theism was the breath of its nostrils; and where for a moment it indulges a turn for ancient folk-lore (as in Is., xiii, 21) it is far removed from the wild Pantheon of Greek na- ture-worship. In the parables we never come across enchanted stones or talking beasts or trees with magi- cal virtues; the world which they describe is the world of every day; not even miracles break in upon its es- tablished order. When we consider what Oriental fancy has made of the universe, and how it is depicted in cosmogonies like that of Hesiod, the contrast be- comes indescribably great. It is in the world which all men know that Christ finds exemplified the laws of human ethics, and the correspondences on which His kingdom shall be carried to its Divine consummation. Seen with purged eyes nature is already the kingdom of God.

No language is more concrete in its presentation of laws and princiiJles, or more viv-idly figured, than that which the Old Testament affords. But of parables strictly taken it has only a few. Jotham's apologue of the trees choosing a king (Judges, ix, 8-15) is more properly a fable; so is the scornful tale of the thistle and the cedar in Lebanon which ,Ioas of Israel sent by messengers to Amasias, King of Juda (IV Kings, xiv, 8-10). Nathan's rebuke to David is couched in the form of a parable (II Kings, xii, 1— t;) so the wise woman of Thecua (ibid., xiv, 4); so the Prophet to Achab (III Kings, xx, 39); and the song of the vine- yard (Is., V, 1-8). It has been suggested that chap- ters i-iii of Osee must be construed as a parable, and do not contain a real history. The denunciation of woe on Jerusalem in Ezech., xxiv, 3-5, is expressly named a mashal, and may be compared with the Gospel simil- itude of the leaven. But our Lord, unlike the Proph- ets, does not act, or describe Himself as acting, any of the stories which He narrates. Hence we need not take into account the Old-Testament passages. Is., xx, 2-4; Jer., xxv, 15; Ezech., iii, 24-26, etc.

That the character of Christ's teaching to the mul- titude was mainly parabolic is clear from Matt., xiii, 34, and Mark, iv, 33. Perhaps we should ascribe to the same cause an element of the startling and para- doxical, e. g., in His Sermon on the Mount, which, taken literally, has been misunderstood by simple or again by fanatical minds. Moreover, that such a form of instruction was familiar to the Jews of this period cannot be doubted. The sayings of Hillel and Sham- mai still extant, the visions of the Book of Enoch, the typical values which we observe as attaching to the stories of Judith and Tobias, the .4pocalypse and the extensive literature of which it is the flower, all be- token a demand for something esoteric in the popular religious preaching, and show how abundantly it was satisfied. But if, as mystical writers hold, the highest degree of heavenly knowledge is a clear intuition, with- out veils or symbols dimming its light, we see in our Lord exactly this pure comprehension. He is never Himself drawn as a visionary. The parables are not for Him but for the crowd. When He speaks of His relation to the Father it is in direct terms, without metaphor. It follows that the scope of these exquisite little moralities ought to be measured by the audience whom they were designed to benefit. In other words they form p.art of the "Economy" whereby truth is dispensed to men as they are able to bear it (Mark, iv, 33;John,xvi, 12). Since, however, it'is the Lord that speaks, we must reverently construe His sayings in the light of the whole Revelation which furnishes their ground and context. The "real sense of Scripture", as Newman points out in accord with all the Catholic

Fathers, is "the scope of the Divine intelligence", or the scheme of Incarnation and Redemption.

Subject to this Law, the New-Testament parables have each a definite meaning, to be ascertained from the explanation, where Christ deigns to give one, as in the sower; and when none such is forthcoming, from the occasion, introduction, and appended moral. In- terpreters have differed importantly on the question whether everything in the parable is of its essence (the "kernel") or anything is mere machinery and acci- dent (the "husk"). There is an obvious negative rule. We must not pass over as unmeaning any de- tail without which the lesson would cease to be en- forced. But shall we insist on a correspondence at all points, so that we may translate the whole into spirit- ual values, or may we neglect whatever does not seem to compose a feature of the moral to be drawn? St. John Chiysostom (In Matt., Ixiv) and the School of Antioch, who were literalists, prefer the latter method; they are sober in exposition, not imaginative or mystic; andTertullian has expressions to the like purpose (De Pudic.,ix); St. Augustine, who holds of Origen and the Alexandrians, abounds in the larger sense; yet he allows that "in prophetic narrations details are told us which have no significance" (De Civ. Dei, XVI, ii). St. Jerome in his earlier writings follows Origen; but his temper was not that of a mystic and with age he becomes increasingly literal. Among modern com- mentators the same difference of handling appears.

In a problem which is literary as well as exegetical, we must guard against applying a hard and fast rule where taste and insight are required. Each of the parables will need to be dealt with as if it were a poem; and fulness of meaning, refinement of thought, slight but suggestive hints and touches, characteristic of human genius, will not be wanting to the method of the Divine Teacher. In the highest criticism, as Goethe warns us, we cannot divide as with an axe the inward from the outward. Where all is living, the metaphor of kernel and husk may be often misapplied. The meaning lies implicit in the whole and its parts; here as in every vital product the ruling spirit is one, the elements take their virtue from it and separately are of no account. As we move away from the central idea we lose the assurance that we are not pursuing our own fancies; and the substitution of a mechanical yet extravagant dogmatism for the Gospel truth has led Gnostics and Manicha?ans, or latter-day vision- aries like Swedenborg, into a wilderness of delusions where the severe and tender beauty of the parables can no longer be discerned. They are hterary crea- tions, not merely hieratic devices; and as awakening the mind to spiritual principles their intent is fulfilled when it muses on the deep things of God, the laws of life, the mission of Christ, of which it is thus made intimately aware.

St. Thomas and all Catholic doctors maintain that articles of faith ought to be deduced only from the lit- eral sense of Scripture whenever it is quoted in proof of them ; but the literal sense is often the prophetic, which itself as a Divine truth may well be applicable to an en- tire series of events or line of typical characters. The Angel of the Schools declares after St. Jerome that "spiritual interpretation should follow the order of history". St. Jerome himself exclaims, "never can a parable and the dubious interpretations of riddles avail for the establishment of dogmas" (Summa, I-I, Q. x; St. Jerome, In Matt., xiii, 33). From a par- able alone, therefore, we do not argue categorically; we take it in illustration of Christian verities proved elsewhere. It was this canon of good sense which the Gnostics, especially Valentinus, disregarded to their own hurt, and so fell into the confusion of ideas mis- called by them revelation. Irenseus constantlj- op- poses church tradition or the rule of faith, to these dreamers (II, xvi, against the Marcosians; II, xxvii, xxviii, against Valentinus). TertulUan in like manner,