Back to Robbins' Publications Jump to any page of the article: p.191 p.192 p.193 p.194 p.195 p.196 p.197 p.198 p.199 p.200 p.201 p.202 p.203 p.204 p.205 p.206 p.207 p.208 p.209 p.210 p.211 p.212 p.213 p.214

Back | 211 | Next [Inference. Fathers, if they have the Holy Spirit, will give greater gifts than earthly fathers regularly do.] [Rule. Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap (6:38).] Analogy. When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just (14:12-14).46 Example. A man gave a great dinner and invited many. When those who were invited declined, he invited the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame, then sent his slave into the roads and lanes to compel others to come in until his house was filled (14:16-24).47 Another example in Luke. Zaccheus, possessing the gift of salvation, gives half of his goods to the poor and fourfold to anyone he has defrauded (19:8-9). The result of deductive reasoning simply would be that God gives "better gifts" than earthly fathers, but once again in this rhetorical reasoning the rhetor invites abductive reasoning (the faculty of imagination) as an "assistant" to deductive reasoning. As the rhetor uses abductive reasoning to reflect on the transcendent reality of God's giving, interaction occurs once again between deductive and inductive reasoning that produces an inversion between the minor premise and the result in the deductive reasoning. Through abductive reasoning, "by shock, question, puzzlement, surprise, and the like, the rhetor or inquirer discovers similarity between" the giving of earthly fathers (deductive case) and the giving of God the father (first part of deductive rule) "because of the experience of consciousness constituted in" the greatness of God the Father (last part of deductive rule).48 In other words, the statement "all fathers know how to give good gifts," functions as a statement about human relationships, where fathers give to their children. The presence of language about God evokes a sudden experiencing of the consciousness of God's giving, which leads to an awareness that our ability to give is decisively inferior to God's ability to give. This "discovery" produces an inversion of the 46See Willi Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, SNTSMS 85 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 164, 171-73. Back 47See Braun, Feasting and Social Rhetoric in Luke 14, 164, 174-75. Back 48Cf. Lanigan, "From Enthymeme to Abduction," 59. Back Back | 211 | Next