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Back | 196 | Next reason why God should grant the request,16 and the reason is because the people who pray the prayer also forgive everyone indebted to them. This petition participates in an enthymemic network of reasoning related to "Forgive, and you will be forgiven" in Luke 6:37-38: Luke 6:37-38 Luke 11:4 Rule. The measure you give will be the measure you get back. [Case. Judging, condemning, forgiving, and giving are measures given.] Result. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. [Rule. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.] Case. We forgive every one indebted to us. Result. Forgive us our sins. One result in the enthymemic reasoning in 6:37-38 is that forgiving is an action related to judging, condemning, and giving. In the context of early Christian discourse, the passive voice in the second part presupposes that God is the one who forgives the person who has forgiven someone else.17 The manner in which a person judges, condemns, forgives, and gives relates directly to the manner in which God judges, condemns, forgives, and gives to this person. In other words, these actions are part of the "sacred texture"18 in which human actions are intricately interconnected with divine actions. There is not space here to pursue all the topics in this network. Let us notice, however, that the statement about giving bridges back to the statement in the Lord's Prayer where petitioners pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." As the statement bridges back, it would be natural for an implication to be evoked con- 16The version of the Lord's Prayer commonly recited by Protestant Christians concludes with the supporting premise: "For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever." In other words, the reason it is presupposed that God the Father can grant the petitions in the prayer is the Father's possession of kingdom, power, and glory. Back 17God is the presupposed agent of the forgiveness in the second part, not the person who has been forgiven; see Ernst Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM, 1969) 66-107.Back 18Robbins, Exploring the Texture of Texts, 120-31. Back Back | 196 | Next