In this interesting and stimulating book, Nick Spencer, research director of the ‘public theology think tank’ Theos, compares Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) with the use made of it by politicians, discussing among other topics how language works, calling in aid Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and Charles Taylor, how religious language can be used in a secular society, quoting John Rawls, and why this story still has an impact in a society largely unfamiliar with the bible. Spencer also has a chapter on what it means in its New Testament setting.
Spencer discusses Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, but if we restrict our focus to Britain, a politician who talked about the Samaritan more explicitly than many others in the 20th century was Margaret Thatcher, who gave it a characteristic slant in a lecture on ‘Christianity and Politics’: ‘I wonder if the State services would have done as much for the man who fell among thieves as the Good Samaritan did for him.’ Later, in a TV interview, she used him to justify inequality, on the premise that ‘opportunity and talent is unequally distributed’: ‘No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d had good intentions; he had money as well.’ Labour politicians, Spencer argues, have been more ‘allusive’ in their use of the parable, usually with a variant on the phrase ‘passed by on the other side’. One bizarre example was Hilary Benn in the debate in the Commons in December 2015 about whether Britain should join in air strikes on Syria. Benn spoke in favour: ‘As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism… We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have, and we never should, walk by on the other side of the road.’
Spencer’s discussion of the parable itself is dense and detailed. He takes care to explain, perhaps for less biblically literate readers, who the Samaritans were, why relations between them and the Jews at the time of Jesus were bad, and the role of priests and Levites in Jewish religion at the time. He also surveys the allegorical interpretations of the parable by the Church fathers. But Spencer rightly leads us to the point of the story in its gospel context. It is an answer to a trick question from a ‘lawyer’, that is, an expert in Jewish religious law: ‘Who is my neighbour?’, a question calling for an exegesis of the core of the Mosaic faith summed up as ‘Love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself.’
Spencer points out that after telling the parable Jesus turns the lawyer’s question round. He had asked: ‘Who is my neighbour?’, but Jesus’ question is ‘Which of the three was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’ In other words, to ‘inherit eternal life’, we do not have to spend time categorising who may have a demand on us; we have to be neighbours. ‘We have to stop asking and start doing.’
In his last chapter Spencer addresses the question of what is the legitimate use of the parable in British politics. To do so he engages with John Rawls’ argument that political argument must be based on ‘public reason’, ideas and concepts intelligible to all citizens. Rawls refers to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and accepts that it can be part of political argument but needs to be complemented by ‘a public justification of the parable’s conclusions in terms of political values’. Spencer argues that in British society, where ‘our culture remains haunted by Christianity’, biblical language points to ‘the ground beneath politics’.
But Spencer has one restriction. Discussing Labour MP Phil Wilson’s claim that the NHS ‘makes the Good Samaritan an everyday occurrence in our society’, he objects that this ‘places the parable in an institutional setting that rather blunts its ethical challenge’. ‘Institutions and structures’, he asserts, ‘are not amenable to quite the same ethical challenge as individuals and utterly different to the people who inhabit Jesus’ parable.’ Paradoxically, as he half-recognises, this places him not all that far from Mrs Thatcher.
Francis McDonagh worked in theological publishing and subsequently followed the development of liberation theology in Latin America as a staff member of two Catholic development agencies. He translates for the international theological journal Concilium.
The Political Samaritan: How Power Hijacked a Parable by Nick Spencer. Bloomsbury (London). 2017. Pbk. 198 pages. £12.99.