Reversing the Ethical Perspective: What the Allegorical Interpretation of the Good Samaritan Parable Can Still Teach Us

Abstract

The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 is often interpreted as an exhortation to broaden the boundaries of neighbor love. However, prominent patristic exegetes forego this emphasis in favor of an allegorical interpretation that construes the downtrodden man as a picture of fallen humanity and the Good Samaritan as Christ. By assimilating the identity of the outsider-Samaritan to that of Christ, this interpretation homogenizes the ethnic identities in play and thus seems to exempt the audience from confronting the concrete social boundaries of their own neighbor love. Does this homogenization thereby render the allegorical interpretation ethically inert? This article engages this question through a close examination of Augustine’s exegesis of the parable. It relates the ethnic relations emphasized in the parable itself with the divine–human relationship highlighted in Augustine’s allegorical adaptation. Calling upon insights from “care ethics,” I then argue that the acknowledgment of a transcendent other’s identification with humanity may in fact provide a better motivational foundation for ethically identifying with the outsider than mere exhortation alone.