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Back | 209 | Next people cannot be inactive and receive all the benefits. Rather, they must ask, seek, and knock to have the benefits come to them. When a person undertakes these actions, however, it is God's pleasure to give the benefits of God's kingdom. While the passage of Luke 11:5-8 elaborates the petition for the Father to give daily bread (v. 3) through an argument from analogy, verses 9-10 provide the rationale for praying the entire prayer. The unexpressed premise in the enthymemic sentence in 11:9-10 exists in 12:32, clarifying that the petitioner is asking, seeking, and knocking for the Father's kingdom. The enthymemic network of reasoning that links 12:31-32 with 11:9-10 confirms that one benefit of the Father's kingdom is basic provisions for the body. There are, however, other benefits as well; an explanation of this leads us into the next steps in the elaboration. IV. A Social-Cultural Enthymeme as a Theological Conclusion in Luke 11:13 After the rationale, two arguments from comparison emerge in the form of rhetorical questions in Luke 11-12. The verses begin like verses 5-7 and, like them, expect the answer "no one." The difference is that the subject of the questions in verses 11-12 is "fathers" rather than "friends." Verse 8 suggests that friends sometimes do not act out of friendship but out of shamelessness. Therefore, relationships between friends function as an analogy but not a direct comparison to the relationship between God and humans. Verses 11-12 appeal to earthly fathers in comparison with a heavenly Father. Luke 11:13 is a conclusion to the unit in the form of an if-(then) statement that uses the common topic of "the more and the less" (Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.23.4). Perpetuating the address to "you," which plays a prominent role throughout the elaboration, this verse gathers together the topics of asking and giving in a context where it refers to God as "heavenly Father" and compares God's giving with that of earthly fathers. This comparison produces the following syllogism. [Rule. Your heavenly Father is greater than earthly fathers.] Case. All fathers, even if they are evil, know how to give good gifts to their children. Result. How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. The result in this syllogism leaps beyond the reasoning in the premises. If the reasoning remained within the boundaries of an inductive-deductive Back | 209 | Next