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the conventional social rationale for the action with an ideological rationale by using the common topic of the contrary or opposite (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.23.1). The sleeping-friend gives bread "not" because of friendship but because of the petitioner's shamelessness. The rhetorical question asserts that a person should address God with a feeling of assurance that Father God, like a friend, will respond to a person's petitions. The objection replaces the conventional social rationale for the action with an ideological rationale based on the shamelessness of the one who asks. Social conventions are known by all, but idiosyncratic ways of understanding may generate a particular ideology. When looked at from a social perspective, the important thing is that one friend be willing to for another friend's need. If one does not, the person is not a friend. But one's understanding of the reasons why one person gives to another can be ideological-- grounded in a point of view held only by a particular group of people. The understanding in this objection does not appear to be basic social or cultural knowledge in the Mediterranean world. In other words, no clear statement in Jewish or Greco-Roman literature declares that friends give to other friends because they shamelessly ask each other for things. Friends unhesitatingly ask each other for things, but people do not perceive this request as a shameless activity. Since friends return favors, their requests are not shameless; beggars, in contrast, are shameless because they look on another's table and beg with no plan or ability to return the favor (Sir 40:28-30). Thus, verse 8 articulates a particular deductive ideology about petitioning.
The key to the ideological reasoning appears to be the willingness of the host-friend to adopt a social role of being shameless on behalf of another person's need. As we have seen above, the petition in the Lord's Prayer for one's own forgiveness raises the issue of the petitioner's relation to other people who need forgiveness. The enthymemic network about forgiveness not only includes directives to forgive others and to pray for those who abuse you, but it also includes a portrayal of Jesus' petitioning of God to forgive people who are abusing him. One sees, then, an ideo- |