External rituals and theological debates are nothing without love
The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals both practical and theological truth – and shows that without love, religion can deteriorate into emptiness.
The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals both practical and theological truth – and shows that without love, religion can deteriorate into emptiness.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How our Lord’s parable of the Good Samaritan both teaches us about charity in practice, as well as profound theological truths
That the narrative contrasts external religiosity without love against the universal law of charity written in the heart, binding Jew, Samaritan and Gentile alike.
Why the Good Samaritan’s detailed acts of compassion reveal true neighbourliness, surpassing that of the priest and Levite, and exposing the hardness of formalism without spirit.
He shows us that true fidelity is not in excuse or ritual alone, but in mercy rooted in God’s eternal law.
For more on the general context of this Parable, see Part I.
The Good Samaritan
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I, Chapter XVII
St. Luke x. 25-37
Story of the Gospels, § 100
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Have we made the wrong assumptions about the Good Samaritan parable and its context?
The Good Samaritan, external rituals and theological debates
The parable
The parable in which our Lord has conveyed His answer to the question of the lawyer is one of those in which He has chosen, by a marvellous contrivance of Divine wisdom, to instruct us at once as to our simple practical conduct and at the same time, to set forth, for the benefit of the Church in all ages, the deep theological grounds on which the virtue which He is enforcing is based as its foundation.
There is no particular in the parable in which we may not find this sublime theological teaching, while, at the same time, the narrative is so simple and touching that its practical import can escape no one. Thus we find that there is scarcely one of all our Lord’s parables that is better known, and, to a certain extent, as to its direct teaching, more easily understood than this.
At the same time, we also find that when the theologians of the Church seek to apply passages and words of Scripture or of our Lord’s teaching as recorded therein, to the illustration of such theological truths as the effect of the Fall on man and the remedy applied to those effects by our Lord in His Incarnation and Passion, they can find few passages in which these truths are more accurately and fully illustrated than that which is now before us.
‘And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who also stripped him, and having wounded him, went away, leaving him half-dead. And it chanced that a certain priest went down the same way, and seeing him, passed by. In like manner also a Levite, when he was near the place and saw him, passed by.
‘But a certain Samaritan being on his journey, came near him, and seeing him, was moved with compassion, and going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and setting him upon his own beast, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two pence, and gave to the host and said, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee.
‘Which of these men, in thy opinion, was neighbour to him that fell among the robbers? But he said, He that showed mercy unto him. And Jesus said to him, Go, and do thou in like manner.’
Scene of the incident
The picture which our Lord here sets before us, like the rest of those which are contained in the parables of this last period of His teaching, is taken as to its whole scenery and all its incidents from the part of the Holy Land in which He was now teaching. Between Jericho and Jerusalem lay a long desert, gradually sinking from the Holy City itself till it reached the level of the Jordan banks near which Jericho was built, which lay about six hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and therefore a good deal more below the position of Jerusalem.
Although the country immediately about Jericho was rich and luxuriant in its fertility, the road towards Jerusalem soon came to pass through a wild and desert tract, which was well known as the haunt of robbers, and the scene of many murders. The traveller, therefore, who was robbed, stripped, wounded, and left half-dead by the wayside, was no figure which those acquainted with the district could find any difficulty in imagining. It is probable that cases of the kind here described were constantly occurring.
The primary object of the banditti was to secure the property of the travellers whom they waylaid, but resistance naturally led to a struggle, in which they would not scruple even to take life, whether for the sake of possessing themselves of their booty, or of ridding themselves of the chance of pursuit and punishment. In this case they robbed their victim, took away even his clothes, and left him grievously wounded to die.
The priest and the Levite
The next feature of the narrative is the treatment which he received at the hands of the priest and the Levite.
Our Lord probably did not mean us to understand that the priests and Levites, as a class, were less inclined to mercy and compassion for their ‘neighbours’ than others. He may have meant to turn the attention of the ‘lawyer’ to the hard doctrines which prevailed among the class to which he himself belonged, who might easily have found reasons for releasing men from natural obligations, as we know that they did in the case of the duties of children to parents by means of their doctrine concerning ‘Corban.’
The priest and the Levite might find grounds for their negligence, in the absence of any positive written obligation of putting themselves to serious inconvenience, and even to possible danger, by the exercise of charity towards the dying traveller. They might not be certain that he was one of the chosen people, they might be engaged on some mission which was connected with their sacred office, they might say that they were unable to spare either the time or the money which the care of the wounded man would involve. They had their own journey to accomplish in safety, they were not in their own homes and so bound by the laws of hospitality.
When we consider the circumstances of opposition and persecution from, at least, the chiefs of the ecclesiastical class at this time, it seems not impossible that our Lord may have meant to add this line, representing their hardness and unmercifulness, to the many others in which He had drawn their picture for the instruction of His disciples.
In any case, the priest and the Levite must have been among those to whom the rest of the people would naturally look for instruction and example as to the question which this lawyer had proposed. It is clear that if their teaching was to be gathered from their conduct, the poor half-dead victim of the robbers was not a ‘neighbour’ of theirs in any sense which brought them under the commandment which enjoined on them to love him as themselves.
Contrast in the Samaritan
Our Lord draws a complete contrast to their conduct, and to their doctrine as exhibited in their conduct, in the picture of the Samaritan traveller.
When we say that He draws the contrast Himself, we must qualify what is thus said by reminding ourselves, that here, as in the case of several other descriptions which occur in His parables, He may be relating actual facts, of which His Divine insight into men’s hearts and His perfect knowledge of all that passed in the world might give Him the cognizance. Thus what He tells us about the unjust steward, or the unjust judge, or the rich man and Lazarus, or the Pharisee and the publican, may be founded on actual occurrences, and in the present case, the priest, and the Levite and the Samaritan need not be simply creations of the imagination.
But putting this aside, as there may have been a Divine reason for the mention of the priest and the Levite, so also our Lord may have had a special purpose in the introduction of the Samaritan as the person, who, in the words of the lawyer, showed ‘mercy’ to the poor sufferer by the wayside.
The Samaritan, according to the common Jewish doctrine, could not have been a ‘neighbour’ to the sufferer—supposing him to have been a Jew—and the sufferer would not therefore have had a right to his assistance according to that interpretation of the Law of which there was now question.
The priest and the Levite would have had an obligation over and above that which might be incumbent on Jews in general, because they were ministers of God and, in some degree, pastors of the people.
The Samaritan would have had an exemption from the obligation, over and above any that others might claim on the grounds already mentioned, because he was himself outside the Law, and would not have been treated by the Jews as included in the rights which it conferred any more than in the obligations which it imposed.
If he was bound at all, as he undoubtedly, in the mind of our Lord, was bound, it was by a more universal meaning of the Law than that which the Jews recognized, the meaning which recognized the universal brotherhood of men as the children of the one God and the descendants of one common human father. If his heart was moved by compassion which the others had not felt, it was the product of the law of nature, of which the Mosaic Law had been the republication and more formal promulgation, by which its principles were not so much introduced into the world, as insisted on and sanctioned anew. It had been given to the whole race of Adam from the beginning, and was thus binding on all the race, whether included in the special vocation of the chosen people, or left outside that special vocation.
Thus his conduct in itself, if it was prompted by anything more solid than the simple tender feeling of sympathy for suffering, was as evidence of what St. Paul calls the law written in the heart, which speaks by the voice of conscience, and enjoins actions which are based on the great original principles of human morality, principles sometimes forgotten by those who live by a strict external rule, without the interior principle of devotion or charity or duty.
For the exact observance of formal exterior religion, which took up so much of the time and attention of the priests and Levites, may often be consistent with great hardness of heart, unless accompanied and kindled into life by the interior spirit.
Actions in detail
The actions which were prompted, in the case of the Samaritan, by this interior law, are minutely described by our Lord, as if to show more completely the contrast on which He insists.
‘Seeing him, he was moved with compassion,’ although the Levite had and the priest both had seen him, and passed him by.
‘And going up to him,’ leaving the road in order to assist him, ‘he bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,’ which it seems were often used in this way in the East. He is described as if he had with him all the appliances that could be needed, as if to show the greatness of the diligence with which he relieved him.
‘And setting him on his own beast,’ which he must therefore have given up to him, ‘brought him to an inn, and took care of him.’ He therefore stopped on his own journey for the sake of devoting himself to the care of this stranger.
But this was not enough for his charity. He stayed with him the remainder of the day, and ‘the next day, he took out two pence,’ two pieces of money sufficient for the probable expenses of his cure, ‘and gave to the host, and said, Take care of him, and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I, at my return, will repay thee.’
The charity was therefore perfect in kind and degree, including personal service and labour and expense as well as simple compassion, and also the tender provision for future needs which might arise after the Samaritan himself had been obliged to proceed on his way.
And how are we to apply this in our own lives? Fr Coleridge’s commentary continues in the next parts.
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The Good Samaritan
Have we made the wrong assumptions about the Good Samaritan parable and its context?
The Good Samaritan, external rituals and theological debates
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