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| Concerning the King Who Made a Reckoning with His Own Servants, to Whom Was Brought a Man Who Owed Ten Thousand Talents.
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6. Concerning the King
Who Made a Reckoning with His Own Servants, to Whom Was Brought a Man
Who Owed Ten Thousand Talents.
“Therefore I say unto you the kingdom of heaven
is likened unto a certain king, who wished to make a reckoning with his
own servants.”6074
The general
conception of the parable is to teach us that we should be inclined to
forgive the sins committed against us by those who have wronged us, and
especially if after the wrongdoing he who has done it supplicates him
who has been wronged, asking forgiveness for the sins which he has
committed against him. And this the parable wishes to teach us by
representing that even when forgiveness has been granted by God to us
of the sins in respect of which we have received remission, exaction
will be demanded even after the remission, unless we forgive the sins
of those who have wronged us, so that there is no longer left in us the
least remembrance of the wrong that was done, but the whole heart,
assisted by the spirit of forgetfulness of wrongs, which is no common
virtue, forgives him who has wronged us those things which have been
wickedly done against any of us by him, even treacherously. But
next to the general conception of the parable, it is right to examine
the whole of it more simply according to the letter, so that he who
advances with care to the right investigation of each detail of the
things previously written may derive profit from the examination of
what is said. Now there is, as is probable, an interpretation,
transcendental and hard to trace, as it is somewhat mystical, according
to which, after the analogy of the parables which are interpreted by
the Evangelists, one would investigate each of the details in this; as,
for example, who the king was, and who the servants were, and what was
the beginning of his making a reckoning, and who was the one debtor who
owed many talents, and who was his wife and who his children, and what
were the “all things” spoken of besides those which the
king ordered to be sold in order that the debt might be paid out of his
belongings, and what was meant by the going out of the man who had been
forgiven the many talents, and who was the one of the servants who was
found and was a debtor not to the householder, but to the man who had
been forgiven, and what is meant by the number of the hundred pence,
and what by the word, “He took him by the throat saying, Pay what
thou owest,” and what is the prison into which he who had been
forgiven all the talents went out and cast his fellow-servant, and who
were the fellow-servants who were grieved and told the lord all that
had been done, and who were the tormentors to whom he who had cast his
fellow-servant into prison was delivered, and how he who was delivered
to the tormentors paid all that was due, so that he no longer owed anything.6075
But it is probable also that some
other things could be added to the number by a more competent
investigator, the exposition and interpretation of which I think to be
beyond the power of man, and requiring the Spirit of Christ who spoke
them in order that Christ may be understood as He spoke; for as
“no one among men knows the things of the man, save the spirit
which is in him,” and “no one knows the things of God, save
the Spirit of God,”6076
so no one knows
after God the things spoken by Christ in proverbs and parables save the
Spirit of Christ, in which he who participates in Christ not only so
far as He is Spirit, but in Christ as He is Wisdom, as He is Word,
would behold the things which were revealed to him in this
passage. But with regard to the interpretation of the loftiest
type, we make no profession; nor on the other hand with the assistance
of Christ who is the Wisdom of God do we despair of apprehending the
things signified in the parable; but whether it shall be the case that
such things shall be dictated to us in connection with this Scripture
or not, may God in Christ suggest the doing of that which is pleasing
to Him, if only there be granted to us also concerning these things,
the word of wisdom which is given from God through the Spirit, and the
word of knowledge which is supplied according to the Spirit.6077
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