Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the Parables of the Lost Ewe and the Lost Drachma.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter VII.—Of the
Parables of the Lost Ewe and the Lost Drachma.
You shall have leave to begin with the parables,
where you have the lost ewe re-sought by the Lord, and carried back on
His shoulders.780
Let the very
paintings upon your cups come forward to show whether even in them the
figurative meaning of that sheep will shine through (the outward
semblance, to teach) whether a Christian or heathen sinner be the
object it aims at in the matter of restoration. For we put in a
demurrer arising out of the teaching of nature, out of the law of ear
and tongue, out of the soundness of the mental faculty, to the effect
that such answers are always given as are called forth (by the
question,—answers), that is, to the (questions) which call them
forth. That which was calling forth (an answer in the present
case) was, I take it, the fact that the Pharisees were muttering in
indignation at the Lord’s admitting to His society heathen
publicans and sinners, and communicating with them in food. When,
in reply to this, the Lord had figured the restoration of the lost ewe,
to whom else is it credible that he configured it but to the lost
heathen, about whom the question was then in hand,—not
about a Christian, who up to that time had no existence?
Else, what kind of (hypothesis) is it that the Lord, like a quibbler in
answering, omitting the present subject-matter which it was His duty to
refute, should spend His labour about one yet future? “But
a ‘sheep’ properly means a Christian,781
and the Lord’s ‘flock’ is the people of the
Church,782
and the ‘good shepherd’ is
Christ;783
and hence in the ‘sheep’ we must
understand a Christian who has erred from the Church’s
‘flock.’” In that case, you make the Lord to
have given no answer to the Pharisees’ muttering, but to your
presumption. And yet you will be bound so to defend that
presumption, as to deny that the (points) which you think applicable to
Christians are referable to a heathen. Tell me, is not all
mankind one flock of God? Is not the same God both Lord and Shepherd of the universal
nations?784
Who more
“perishes” from God than the heathen, so long as he
“errs?” Who is more “re-sought” by God
than the heathen, when he is recalled by Christ? In fact, it is
among heathens that this order finds antecedent place; if, that is,
Christians are not otherwise made out of heathens than by being first
“lost,” and “re-sought” by God, and
“carried back” by Christ. So likewise ought this
order to be kept, that we may interpret any such (figure) with
reference to those in whom it finds prior place. But you, I take
it, would wish this: that He should represent the ewe as lost not
from a flock, but from an ark or a chest! In like manner, albeit
He calls the remaining number of the heathens “righteous,”
it does not follow that He shows them to be Christians; dealing
as He is with Jews, and at that very moment refuting them,
because they were indignant at the hope of the heathens. But in
order to express, in opposition to the Pharisees’ envy, His own
grace and goodwill even in regard of one heathen, He preferred the
salvation of one sinner by repentance to theirs by righteousness; or
else, pray, were the Jews not “righteous,” and such
as “had no need of repentance,” having, as they had, as
pilotages of discipline and instruments of fear, “the Law and the
Prophets?” He set them therefore in the parable—and
if not such as they were, yet such as they ought to have
been—that they might blush the more when they heard that
repentance was necessary to others, and not to themselves.
Similarly, the parable of the drachma,785
as being called forth out of the same
subject-matter, we equally interpret with reference to a heathen;
albeit it had been “lost” in a house, as it were in the
church; albeit “found” by aid of a “lamp,” as
it were by aid of God’s word.786
Nay, but
this whole world is the one house of all; in which world it is more the
heathen, who is found in darkness, whom the grace of God enlightens,
than the Christian, who is already in God’s light.787
Finally, it is one
“straying” which is ascribed to the ewe and the
drachma: (and this is an evidence in my favour); for if the
parables had been composed with a view to a Christian sinner,
after the loss of his faith, a second loss and restoration of
them would have been noted.
I will now
withdraw for a short time from this position; in order that I may, even
by withdrawing, the more recommend it, when I shall have succeeded even
thus also in confuting the presumption of the opposite side. I
admit that the sinner portrayed in each parable is one who is already a
Christian; yet not that on this account must he be affirmed to be such
an one as can be restored, through repentance, from the crime of
adultery and fornication. For although he be said to “have
perished,” there will be the kind of perdition to treat
of; inasmuch as the “ewe” “perished” not by
dying, but by straying; and the “drachma” not by being
destroyed, but by being hidden. In this sense, a thing which is
safe may be said to “have perished.” Therefore the
believer, too, “perishes,” by lapsing out of (the right
path) into a public exhibition of charioteering frenzy, or gladiatorial
gore, or scenic foulness, or athletic vanity; or else if he has lent
the aid of any special “arts of curiosity” to sports, to
the convivialities of heathen solemnity, to official exigence, to the
ministry of another’s idolatry; if he has impaled himself upon
some word of ambiguous denial, or else of blasphemy. For some
such cause he has been driven outside the flock; or even himself,
perhaps, by anger, by pride, by jealousy, (or)—as, in fact, often
happens—by disdaining to submit to chastisement, has broken away
(from it). He ought to be re-sought and recalled. That
which can be recovered does not “perish,” unless it persist
in remaining outside. You will well interpret the parable by
recalling the sinner while he is still living. But, for
the adulterer and fornicator, who is there who has not pronounced him
to be dead immediately upon commission of the crime? With
what face will you restore to the flock one who is dead, on the
authority of that parable which recalls a sheep not
dead?
Finally, if you are mindful of the prophets, when
they are chiding the shepherds, there is a word—I think it is
Ezekiel’s: “Shepherds, behold, ye devour the milk,
and clothe you with the fleeces: what is strong ye have slain;
what is weak ye have not tended; what is shattered ye have not bound;
what has been driven out ye have not brought back; what has perished ye
have not re-sought.”788
Pray, does he
withal upbraid them at all concerning that which is dead, that
they have taken no care to restore that too to the flock?
Plainly, he makes it an additional reproach that they have caused the
sheep to perish, and to be eaten up by the beasts of the field; nor can
they either “perish mortally,” or be “eaten
up,” if they are left remaining. “Is it not
possible—(granting) that ewes which have been mortally lost, and
eaten up, are recovered—that (in accordance also with the example
of the drachma (lost and found again) even within the house of God, the
Church) there may be some sins of a moderate character, proportionable
to the small size and the weight of a drachma, which, lurking in the
same Church, and by and by in the same discovered, forthwith are
brought to an end in the same with the joy of amendment?”
But of adultery and fornication it is not a drachma, but a talent,
(which is the measure); and for searching them out there is need not of
the javelin-light of a lamp, but of the spear-like ray of the entire
sun. No sooner has (such a) man made his appearance than he is
expelled from the Church; nor does he remain there; nor does he cause
joy to the Church which discovers him, but grief; nor does he invite
the congratulation of her neighbours, but the fellowship in sadness of
the surrounding fraternities.
By comparison, even in this way, of this our
interpretation with theirs, the arguments of both the ewe and the
drachma will all the more refer to the heathen, that they cannot
possibly apply to the Christian guilty of the sin for the sake of which
they are wrested into a forced application to the Christian on the
opposite side. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
